Presidential Inception

 

I'm sure there's some kind of essay to be written on Dennis Quaid going from trying to prevent a Ronald Reagan stand-in from starting a nuclear war to, 20 years later, playing Ronald Reagan, but we'll leave that for another time. Peacock is streaming 1984's Dreamscape. Let's go.

Quick Plot: Dr. Novotny is running a successful series of studies on dream immersion, sending psychics into patients' REM cycles to help identify underlying problems in their lives. It's great for curing impotency, but Novotny's aims are peanuts compared to government agent Bob Blair, who sees this new technology as a means of far greater things. 

Since Blair is played by Max Von Sydow, you can be pretty sure such things are not exactly related to world peace.

Enter Alex Gardner (Quaid), a former psychic prodigy turned loan shark-owing gambler. Novotny brings Alex back to help develop his studies. While there, Alex falls for Dr. Jane DeVries (Kate Capshaw), a woman who could do a lot better than a jerk who sneaks into her dreams to have sex with her without consent. But it's 1984, they're both attractive, so we move on to them uniting to save the world.

See, there's a very important man having nightmares: the President of the United States. He's plagued with visions of a nuclear wasteland, which worries Blair, who would rather not see his country move to disarmament. Blair's plan is to send his pet psychic Tommy into the President's dream for a sleepy assassination. Alex has some warning from horror novelist Charlie Prince (Norm!) but as bodies begin to pile up, it's clear the only way to save the world is to do some inception.

Dreamscape is a fun little sci-fi horror dripping with its time. The script has multiple writers credited, including Chuck Russell, who would go on to use quite a few small touches from this film into the beloved Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. Director Joseph Ruben was never a stranger to oddness in genre cinema: this is the man who turned a kidnapping film into an alien invasion in The Forgotten, and who I think about every day for the last 30 years because he's responsible for the absolutely bonkers The Good Son. 

We do not talk nearly enough about The Good Son.

Dreamscape doesn't quite reach those heights (and literally, because REMEMBER HOW THIS MOVIE ENDS?)

Sorry, it's hard to ever focus on something that isn't The Good Son when talking adjacently about The Good Son.

AS I WAS SAYING, Dreamscape is neat. It feels of its time in catching that late '70s/early '80s psychological experimental era of The Brood and The Fury, but with more electric music that even bridges the upcoming early '90s with some sexy saxophone magic. Plus, there's even some timely nuclear war politics! Quaid shows the charisma that would make him a star. Capshaw is smart and sexy. The dreams are just weird enough to feel like dreams. It's a good time. 

High Points

By golly this is a good cast

Low Points

Aforementioned ickiness regarding the fuzzy sexual assault question and resolution

Lessons Learned

The best way to get a cad to do something is to invoke the IRS

In our dreams, we're often very racist

The easiest shorthand to imply 'unhinged psychopath' is simply casting David Patrick Kelly

Rent/Bury/Buy

Dreamscape is quite fun. Sure, the visual dream language is basically a karaoke music video filmed in 1992 eastern Europe, but there's a lot to enjoy here. I watched via Peacock, which did occasionally have a weird bug happening where at least two scenes weren't transferring correctly. Not sure if that was simply my connection, but I figured it was worth a warning.

Coming of Age with Superpowers

Welcome to the Annual February Shortening! In honor of the shortest month on a blog written by a short woman, all posts are devoted to stories about vertically challenged villains. If you, reader of any height, have your own mini-horror to share, do so in the comments and I'll include you in a final post roundup as the calendar changes!

You KNOW we can't start a fertile February without planting a few bad seeds first. That's right! It's the evil child installment of The Shortening!

Quick Plot: Ida is a moody 9ish-year-old who seems to be eternally sour over her developmentally disabled sister Anna. When their family moves to a high-rise for the summer, Ida quickly befriends local psychopath Ben. 

Sure, Ida got some kicks from sticking glass in Anna's shoes and squishing  innocent worms, but Ben's idea of fun involves cat murder (thankfully, clearly not in any way harming the actual cat actor). The boy must die. 

That's easier said than done once Ben starts to display Carrie-like abilities. Meanwhile, another young neighbor named Aisha is experiencing some kind of psychic connection to Anna, helping the girl speak for the first time in her young life. What in the village of the damned is going on here?

The Innocents doesn't really tell you, and that's okay. Written and directed by Eskil Vogt (half of the team behind Thelma and The Worst Person In the World), this is an unusual film in the best of ways. There's an immediate undercurrent of something very wrong. Young Rakel Lenora Fløttum as Ida initially makes for the perfect bad seed until Ben proves to be far worse. As that unfolds, we get to realize our own mistake in how quickly we judged Ida. 

J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan is commonly thought today as a celebration of youth, but what makes it so interesting today is how clear-headed it is at understanding the utter selfishness (and in Barrie's words, "heartlessness") of children. We love to romanticize the beauty of childhood innocence, but it typically takes us a whole lot of years of heartbreak to understand what cruelty is and how dangerous a thing it is to wield. 

The Innocents is fully aware that children's souls are a mess. Sure, a kinder kid like Aisha might already know right from wrong, but someone like Ida, who has clearly grown up resenting that her sister demands more attention from her parents, is still working through morality. It's not until she's fully confronted with what seems like pure evil that she starts to make decisions more in line with the light side.

There are a lot of ways to read The Innocents, and an analysis could go even deeper if you dig into the racial and gendered elements also at play. I'll leave that for another day, but in the meantime, check the film out and come back with your own takes. 

High Points

I'll always champion a strong genre film that makes effective use of daylight, and The Innocents is high on that list. Children are terrifying BECAUSE of how fresh-faced and innocent they look under the sun. Why bother to hide it with unnecessary darkness?

Low Points

I blame myself for having to break The Innocents up into three chunks to watch over the course of two days, so the odd pacing is more on me than Vogt. I was shocked when I realized I had reached the end of the film because, well, it feels a bit like something is missing. But how much of that is Vogt's unusual storytelling and how much is me watching under less than optimal conditions, I leave you to decide

Lessons Learned
We can whine about kids today preferring mobile devices to the outdoors, but tell me you still feel sad about that after watching this movie

When someone is mean, you tell a grownup

There are few ways to die that are sadder than doing so in the middle of boiling frozen hot dogs

The Good Son Watch

Considering how many times I reference this movie, I think it's time to make the callouts an official section. And yes, there are plenty of thrillers starring obscenely blond children that aren't The Good Son, but I can't help but think of it when a key moment of violence involves a highway overpass. 

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Innocents is yet another recommendation findable on Shudder. I don't know that it will please everyone, but it scratched my evil child itch in a wonderfully unexpected way.

Because There's No Such Thing As Too Much Good Son

Look!

Er, I mean, LISTEN!

I hitched a pod ride with the one and only Elwood Jones to discuss two of my favorite young adult classics, the glorious coming of age tale Stand By Me and the insane pre-Orphan powerhouse that is The Good Son. Head on over to your podcast listener of choice for the MBDS Showcase's latest episode. 

Dress well.

And don't forget your comb. 

You Know I'm Bad

Hop in!

We're riding over to Rupert Pupkin Speaks for my list of favorite (cough cough) bad movies.  Blogmaster Rupert has been inviting a slew of cinemaniacs over to his virtual crib to share the best of the worst, and I encourage all to browse through his recent archives for a ridiculously unhealthy, yet oh so enjoyable batch of recommendations.

And let's face it: you know you've found the right film loving community when you're not the first, but the SECOND person to mention The Guy From Harlem.

What's Great About The Good Son

There are few things I love more than modern trash. The fact that inappropriate and slightly offensive films like Orphan  can still be made in the era of enforced child labor laws makes me smile in ways that should frighten social workers.

Joseph Ruben’s The Good Son is like a delicious candy bar made from cocoa you know was picked and harvested by overworked 3rd world children who sleep 12 in a room and are too exhausted to cry.

Despite being a mainstream release that, at the time, starred the hottest child actor since Shirley Temple, The Good Son is pure B-movie material, an over-the-top mean-spirited Bad Seed takeoff created to shock.

Quick Plot:

Big-eyed 10 year old Mark (post-Huck, pre-hobbit) promises his cancer-ridden mother that he won’t let her die.

Cut to her funeral in the red-brown sands of Santa Fe.

Dad David Morse (who due to The David Morse Code, can only be cast as a douche or kind-hearted yet ineffectual supporting character, the latter which he embraces with a perm here) has to head to Japan to “close a deal,” the nature of which is never revealed but for some reason, lingers as ominous. Responsibly enough, he leaves his mourning son in the care of his estranged (or so it would seem, since the families haven’t seen one another in 10 years) brother, who lords over a stately Maine manor with wife, good son, spritely daughter, and ghost of their drowned baby boy.

We’ve met a lot of very dumb parents in cinema history, but have any quite matched the Evans in impressively low (for a golf score) IQ? When we meet Henry, the boy is sporting a creepy paper machee mask and punching his cousin at the dinner table. 

Two scenes later, he’s killing dogs, dropping a dummy from a bridge to simulate a 10-car pile-up, attempting to push kid sis headfirst in broken ice, and revealing the not-so-surprising fact that he is indeed responsible for kid brother’s death. In an age before Grand Theft Auto, where was this demon child letting off steam before the arrival of Mark?

The quickness to which Henry’s evil develops is on one hand alarming, on the other, expected from an 80 minute thriller that immediately introduces about 9 foreshadowed death traps. In their first playdate, Henry and Mark do the following:

-break windows in an abandoned factory

-climb a precarious 60 ft. high treehouse

-dance atop a deep stone well

-shoot homemade dart guns at cats

-hang out on a rocky cliff

Gee, I wonder if any of these locations and toys will come back into play.

The most important fact you will need to keep in mind watching The Good Son is that Macaulay Culkin was simply playing Kevin McAllister if that precocious 9-year old was never actually left Home Alone. He would still savor inflicting pain on others through crafty do-it-yourself  means; under coddling (and daft) parents, it would just be more obviously diagnosed as sociopathy.

This also brings me to my favorite The Good Son anecdote, newly discovered (thanks IMDB) and quickly rising the ranks of my all-time behind-the-scenes stories*. SPOILERS follow

So if you haven’t seen this movie, stop, cue it up on Instant Watch, and see it for yourself. Advertised as “one of the most shocking endings ever!” it delivers on so many inappropriate levels.

Anyway, now that you’ve witnessed The Best Ending of ALL TIME, here’s the great trivia behind it: Macaulay Culkin had to complete a part of his dramatic fatal fall sans stunt double. Scared and reluctant (because, you know...the kid was TEN), his parents promised him a BB gun upon completion of the stunt. 

A BB gun. For falling 30 feet on film.

If you’ve seen Henry’s tumble into sharp rocky cliffs, you know that young Mr. Culkin was probably shooting his eye out before the premiere.

Prior to the other night, I last saw The Good Son in a movie theater in 1993. The impression it left on me has lasted through my teens and twenties. Not that it ever actually scared me: if my long-lost cousin essentially threatened my life within two days of meeting him, I’d simply tattle. Though that would be sad if it meant no campily awesome film got made as a result.

Because I love trash.

Seriously. This began as another old-fashioned Doll’s House review, but within the first paragraph, I realized that I do indeed want to have this movie’s children. Its good sons, of course. 

Immediately after watching the film, I gave it a 5 star rating on Netflix.

Immediately after watching a very good movie the next day, I turned to my cats and said “That was really good. But it wasn’t as awesome as The Good Son.”

I don’t know quite how else to say it. The Good Son is fast, tacky, trashy and mean. It’s like a stolen sports car covered in candy corn. The only thing you can learn from it is to not raise a sociopath, to not share a bedroom with one, to not go ice skating with one, and ultimately, to pick up on EVERY SINGLE WARNING SIGN THAT YOUR CHILD IS EVIL.

So really, just watch the movie. With alcohol. Or alter a drinking game where instead of taking a sip at every blatantly evil thing Macaulay Culkin does onscreen, you slap your cheeks with your hands and scream at your television.

It will do you good.

The Good Daughter

I love the taste of liquid butter when accompanied with a fresh theatrical horror release and for that reason and several others, I heart Jaume Collet-Serra’s Orphan.


You’ve seen the posters. Maybe read some wildly mixed reviews, which range from a glowing 3.5 Ebert enhanced stars to The New York Times’ raging dismissal. Now just see the movie


...after reading this:


Quick Plot: Well-off Connecticut couple Kate (Vera Farmiga) and John (Peter Sarsgaard) are trying to recover from a few more-than-unpleasant recent events: the stillborn birth of their third child, the near drowning of young daughter Max, and the unsteady acknowledgment of Kate’s alcoholism (“I didn’t go to AA. I just stopped drinking.”). Naturally, they’re in the perfect position to adopt a child.

The lucky orphaness is none other than Esther, a well-spoken and well-dressed (for the Victorian era) Russian lass who survived a mysterious house fire that not suspiciously took the rest of her family. A talented little artist, Esther charms her new dad with paintings that would totally kick the skinny hipster ass of Ethan Hawke’s tortured Great Expectations hack while quickly bonding with Max by learning the complete sign language dictionary in the time it takes eat a fun-sized Milky Way.


Life would be fine and fairy tale happy if, you know, this wasn’t a horror film. Thankfully, Orphan has plenty of tension to build thanks a good deal in part to Farmiga’s Kate. You might recognize her as the token what-do-I-do-with-her female in Scorcesse’s overrated The Departed (a good film, but more a cheap attempt to apologize for snubbing Goodfellas than a Best Picture and Director earner). Here, Farmiga creates a completely believable and complicated woman. Sarsgaard is somewhat burdened with the doofier role, but in their shared scenes, these two create a realistic married couple who love one another, but must at times deal with personal distrust and the fact that they both simply love their children more.

It’s not that Orphan is revolutionary in its approach to the bad seed formula. If anything, there are certain set pieces that just scream to be used in the final act and leave you little surprised at their execution. At the same time, Orphan is richer than Esther’s velvety choker when it comes to tossing in some shockingly bizarre oh-no-they-didn’t moments. Most importantly, the entire cast equips itself with full dedication in bringing to life a nice enough family and the incredibly evil presence about to invade it.

I wasn’t entirely sold on the film’s resolution, but for two hours, I was amused, a little disturbed, a moment or two frightened, and entirely entertained.


High Points
Young Aryanna Engineer is both angelic and sympathetically real as Max, the sweet but far too trusting little sister-to-be

Orphan’s opening sequence is unsettling in more ways than one; yes, there’s the whole scary childbirthing blood, but it’s the Freudian role play that makes it work on a deeper level. I’ve never given birth, but I imagine that during such an experience, I too would cast the father of my outcoming fetus in a rather villainous role


Farmiga gives Kate her all throughout the film, but my personal favorite moment of her performance comes the morning after Esther causes a slight coitus interruptus. The hopeful look on Farmiga’s face after her clearly rehearsed explanation of what sex means to adults is pitch perfect

Low Points
There’s a whole lot of predictability throughout Orphan, which definitely whittles down its scare factor by a bit


I get that the film is trying to hold onto bloodthirsty viewers during its non-violent middle chunk, but quick cut jump scares involving bathroom mirrors feel far too forced


Lessons Learned
Fantastical treehouses that could only exist in cinema and television (just how did Bart or Homer build such a sturdy little cabin anyway?) are as flammable as they are impressive

Snorphan jokes are funny, but a tad tasteless when said on the way to adopting a child


Setting a film in winter will automatically earn it bonus points because peacoats, precariously iced over ponds, and clumsy gloves are naturally good scare factors

Connecticut cops are not prompt


See/Skip/Sneak Into
Skip two days of iced cappuccinos and see this movie. Not only does it deliver $10 worth of entertainment ($12.50 if you reside in that darned NYC) but enough fans paying for original horror sends a positive message to creativity-challenged studios about what we really want.


My motives for seeing Orphan were in no small part due to one Mr. Matt-suzaka, whose thoroughly splendiforous new blog featured a truly inspiring horror call to arms, which is not to go unread or unheeded. His post actually forced my Merrill sneakers to hit the subway and see what indeed was wrong with Esther, and for that I’m quite thankful.