Like a Purge-in

Like any opinionated movie fan, I don't hate to say I told you so. 

Back in 2014, I found myself one of the few defenders of the first installment of The Purge. It's a decent one-off horror film, but more importantly, it was clear that writer/director James DeMonaco was setting up such a fascinatingly ripe world for more explanation. Here's what I had to say/predict:

"There's probably a whole novel that could be written about how the homeless community deals with the event, not to mention the mysterious history of what brought American society to this point in the first place.

My point is that The Purge is a great idea that deserves A LOT of further exploration and thankfully, its box office success seems to have guaranteed that. Perhaps a lot of early reviewers were disappointed with the film narrowing its focus to one family, but now knowing that we'll get more Purges, I'm happy to say that such a decision on DeMonaco's part was the right one."

Two incredibly fun sequels, one prequel, and a genuinely fun TV series later, I'm proud to have been right. I don't know that any of the Purge films have reached truly top levels of filmmaking (Election Year comes closest for me), but every one has been as fun an experience as it was weirdly, terrifyingly relevant in the current political climate. 

Now let's go back to the beginning. 

Quick Plot: After swooping into political power, the New Founding Fathers of America decide to begin beta testing the night that will become the infamous Purge. Due to its isolated location (and more importantly, high low income non-Caucasian population), Staten Island is chosen for the trial run.

The citizens are of mixed opinion, especially with government offering $5000 for any resident to remain in place for the night, with a bonus if they wear high tech body cams (in the form of cat-like contact lenses) and actually participate in the violence. Led by the politically active Nya, the more peaceful Islanders attempt to wait it out in a secure church. Others, including some vengeful bag ladies and drug addicted Skeletor, dig on in, channeling all of their anger at the world into embracing the Purge.

The level of Purge enthusiasm isn't high enough for the NFFA, who send in swarms of mercenaries to up the death count. This comes at the dismay of Dr. Updale (Marissa Tomei!), the ace psychologist who developed the night's concept based on responsibly gathered research only to watch it be corrupted by the racist party now in control.

With its "Keep America Great" tagline, Election Year cemented The Purge franchise as being a dark funhouse mirror version of current American politics. The First Purge fully leans in to smart effect. This is the first Purge film not directed by DeMonaco, and his passing the reins over to Gerard McMurray, a black man, feels incredibly significant.

While all previous Purges have dealt with race, The First Purge is really the first to center itself on the topic. Look, I'm the last person to want less Frank Grillo, but it's refreshing and right that most of the cast members are people of color. DeMonaco's script and McMurray's direction feature diverse characters not just in their physical race, but in how they're represented. 

With all that said, I didn't *quite* have as much "fun" with The First Purge as the last two sequels. This isn't necessarily a fault of the movie; the idea that a genre film is a little too relevant is in no way a bad thing. Horror has always been a powerful tool to explore society's ills, and it's genuinely admirable how DeMonaco has managed to use his series to satirize modern America. 

It's just sometimes hard to watch.

High Points

The First Purge makes a great decision in its leads. Y'lan Noel and Lex Scott Davis are incredibly watchable, and it's impossible not to root for their safety

Low Points

On the flip side, it's something of a shame that Marissa Tomei doesn't get nearly enough to do

Lessons Learned

In Purge math, five bullets are more valuable than one spatula

Never go to a Staten Island church sermon without a fulls supply of liquor

Purge dance parties are going to end exactly how you expect

Rent/Bury/Buy

The First Purge is probably the the film in the franchise that I'll revisit least, but it's an absolutely solid effort and feels like exactly the right installment for this time. I can't really complain about the fourth film in a horror franchise being too politically relevant just because it makes me think too much about the state of the world, right? There are important things happening in this series, and it's exciting to watch. Just...a little less fun. 

Gone Girls

Bumping a random flop of a 2012 teen-aimed thriller seemed like a great light way to kill 90 minutes.

Then the world happened.

Quick Plot: Diner waitress Jill lives with her hard-studying college student sister Molly. While Molly spends most of her time immersed in economics books and her boyfriend (pre-Bucky Sebastian Stan), Jill roams a nearby forest seeking evidence of her own alleged abduction a year earlier. 

One day, Jill returns home to find Molly vanished--er, GONE. JIll immediately jumps into action mode, digging for clues at the scene of the crime and calling the detectives who handled her own past cast.

Turns out, nobody believes Jill, neither then nor now. Since no evidence had been found to corroborate Jill's previous experience, the Portland PD has written off the young woman as a pathological liar. The fact that Jill spent some time in a mental asylum certainly didn't help.

Without the law on her side, Jill decides to hunt down Molly's abductor herself. Thankfully, most strangers are pretty willing to help an attractive young woman, especially since Jill has such an uncanny knack for making up elaborate lies on the fly. 

Directed by Heitor Dhalia, Gone premiered in the much simpler time of 2012. Back then, it opened to little fanfare, an 8% Rotten Tomatoes score, and the general consensus that it was an overcomplicated but underwritten PG13 dude. I'm not here to say that Gone is anything worthy of the Criterion Collection, but when you make the randomly mistimed decision to watch the day after Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the highest court in the nation, it's weirdly relevant.

Nobody believes Jill, but the male cops REALLY don't believe her. The film isn't quite good enough to explore that in a way that says much, but there is an extremely dark undercurrent to the idea in 2018. Along with that is the somewhat ahead-of-its-time recurring motif of men encouraging Jill to lighten up and smile. Any woman can tell you why that's a horror in itself.

Is Gone a good movie? Not especially, but it has that kind of earnest intensity that I tend to enjoy. I've always found Amanda Seyfried to be incredibly watchable, and her crazy saucer eyes are used to grand effect here. It's also fun to see a random assortment of attractive character actors inhabit the red herring of the moment, from Jennifer Carpenter as a single mom diner waitress to Wes Bentley as the world's shiftiest rookie cop.

Perhaps more or less importantly, Gone is a different movie when watched in October of 2018. We can thank this vomit of a government for a lot of horrible things, but seeing a mediocre thriller turn into a weirdly relevant social message about believing women? That's a new one.

High Points

While I don't quite know how to feel about the final stinger of Gone, the main ending involving Jill's decision is incredibly satisfying in concept (even if the film is a little too distracted to truly earn it)

Low Points

Red herrings are expected and required for this kind of movie, but there's something annoyingly disappointing about just how carelessly Gone handles its handful

Lessons Learned

The way to a teenage girl's trust is the promise of a Justin Bieber concert ticket

Chasing split tail is for firefighters, not detectives

No woman taking a self defense class wants to be called "sweetie" by her male partner

Hell hath no fury like whatever it is living on the head of Daniel Sunjata's partner

Rent/Bury/Buy

I have no idea who should watch Gone. Like the occasional better-than-it-should-be Lifetime flick, it's probably more enjoyable to my eyes than most. It's also (and perhaps by the time November elections come up, less so) oddly infuriating until it becomes (mild spoiler alert) even more oddly uplifting in its depiction of how women are looked at by authority figures. The world is a strange place.

Coma Chameleon

As Buffy Summers, Sarah Michelle Gellar saved the world a lot. 

As Possession’s Jess, she gets to deal with her husband’s soul maybe being transferred to his no-good brother’s body. 

Or something.

Welcome to Possession.

Quick Plot: Jess is basically living what happens at the end of a Hallmark Christmas movie and the season changes to spring. She's an ambitious hard-working lawyer who comes home every day to the most obnoxiously romantic artist-husband of all time. Ryan (Final Destination 2’s Michael Landes) spends most of his time writing daily love letter to Jess and doing other normal husband activities, like carving stone busts of his beloved and snipping roses to leave in her pocketbook. Seriously, it’s EXHAUSTING.

Naturally, career-minded Jess doesn’t even realize it’s her one-year wedding anniversary (no worries: Ryan has baked a cake, lit their spacious wooded backyard with Christmas lights, and encased a miniature love letter in blown glass and put it on Jess’s dead mother’s silver chain). Perhaps she’s distracted by work and, more plot pointedly, Ryan’s little (but much taller) brother Roman, an ex-con with a violent streak taking unwanted residence in their home.

Ryan agrees to evict Roman, which sends the firebird out on a raging truck ride across the Golden Gate bridge. Ryan hops in his own car to track him down, only for—and this is the logic of this movie—the two of them to somehow crash into each other, putting themselves into matching comas in a double hospital room. 

I’m almost surprised the set designers didn’t work in bunk beds.

Because their blood mixed together on the pavement (or something; go with it) strange things happen. Roman awakens believing himself to be Ryan, right on down to detailed memories and a new hankering for writing perfectly calligraphic letters. Jess can only resist for so long, finally giving in to the idea of her sweet husband now living in the sweeter body of his formerly less sweet brother. Since said brother is played by Lee Pace, it’s not that far a leap of logic to make.

The terribly titled Possession is a remake of a South Korean film named Addiction. Made in 2007 and shelved due to its studio bankruptcy, it has a certain kind of bigger budget Lifetime thriller charm that makes it weirdly watchable, especially since it’s completely bonkers.

Much like the completely unrelated but pure Lifetime The Bad Seed, Possession suffers from not quite understanding just how ridiculous it is. Directors Joel Bergvall and Simon Sandquist handle the material with a modest level of heaviness, which means Possession never really lets loose with its premise. 

High Points

Maybe it’s just the turn of the seasons, but Possession is awfully pretty to look at. You’ve got a secluded forest-covered old house, Gellar modeling chic wool coats and Buffy-esque boots, and, well, Lee Pace’s face.

Low Points

The fact that there’s a 30 minute alternate ending (which actually shares the reveal, but lets its characters react completely differently) tells you that this is the kind of movie that never had a great read on what it wanted to do

Lessons Learned

When trying to understand why your husband’s brother has become your husband, there’s really no better source than a yahoo search engine

I think I say this any time he shows up on film, but my gosh: Lee Pace is a tall, tall man 

On the same note, you never realize just how short your wife is until you’re body swapped with Lee pace

Rent/Bury/Buy

I rented Possession from Netflix and have no regrets, but it’s certainly not a film you should invest any real energy in tracking down. 

Hear Me, Hear Me (IN PERSON TALKING ABOUT CATHY'S CURSE!)

There are a lot of things one can do on a Tuesday night, but do any come close to the potential glory of watching Cathy's Curse on the big screen?

AND HEARING ME INTRODUCE IT?

That's right: next Tuesday, November 13th, I'll be presenting the Canadian treasure that combines possessed dolls, inebriated caretakers, and foul-mouthed little girls. Appropriately enough, it was the very first movie covered in this here blog some nine years ago, back when all I had was a scratchy Mill Creek pack print and a dream.

If you happen to be in Brooklyn on November 13th, come on down to the 9:30PM screening at the Alamo Drafthouse. You can get your tickets right here. Be sure to say hi, and I'll do my best to not channel an inner demon voice and sew your eyeballs shut. 

Happy Halloween!

No pumpkins in my corner this year, but I did manage to grease my wheels in time to move Dorothy along her way. 

Hope everyone else has a wonderful high holy day filled with full-sized candy bars, crunching autumn leaves, and especially gooey silver shamrocks!

It's the Great Pumpkin...Thing

There is something inherently fascinating about a terribly boring movie. 

Trick or Treats embodies this well.

Quick Plot: For reasons never given, Joan has her husband Malcolm committed to a typical '80s movie coed insane asylum. 

"Several years later" (specifics are rarely to be found in Trick or Treats), Malcolm is mad (BUT STILL NOT CLEAR IF INSANE) as hell and decides to not take it anymore. He escapes via the age old "grown man wearing a wig and skirt being enough to convince every person he comes across that he's a woman who should be hit on" trick to wreak his vengeance on the woman who wronged him.

And oh boy, that woman. Joan still occupies the same upper middle class suburban home, but has now filled it with new husband David Carradine. Also, she might be a magician. Or he might be one. Or they're semi-famous tuxedo-clad magicians eager to climb the magician social ladder by accepting an invitation to a lavish Vegas ... magician Halloween party? 

The details are murky--a LOT of Trick or Treats is--but it's clear that Joan and Malcolm's awful son Christopher is planning on continuing the family trade, or just being a terrible child who delights in playing obnoxious pranks on strangers. Babysitter/struggling actress Linda is called to watch him while mom and stepdad go gallivanting in Sin City, but not before Carradine gets to sexually harass the young blond and have an intense staring contest with his demon seed stepson. 

Linda is immune to Carradine's charms because, you see, she's in love with Brett (Steve Railsback), a community theater actor who promises to stop by after he finishes playing white Othello in his big premiere. 

SPOLIER ALERT! Brett never actually shows up because, I assume, the movie forgot about him or ran out of the money needed to bus Railsback to a different set. Note that I did not forget that he is playing, for reasons unexplained, white Othello. 

You know what else this movie forgets about? The dog. Joan clearly instructs Linda to feed the dog. 

We never see a dog.

Look, even  Blade Runner has detailed plot holes but the ones in Trick or Treats are so weirdly specific that it's REALLY hard to ignore. 

At some point, Malcolm makes his way to Linda (prior to that, we have SEVERAL painfully non-funny-but-someone-probably-though-were-funny scenes where he trades clothes with a nurse, punches a security guard, gets hit on in LA's red light district, and forces a homeless man to give him his outfit, underwear included). A cat and mouse chase ensues, with Christopher's obnoxious dime store magician tricks occasionally helping out. 

I don't know that I have enough words to effectively explain just how strange a movie Trick or Treats is. Much of that probably comes from writer/director/cinematographer Gary Graver, a man with one of the most fascinating IMDB profiles I've ever seen. 

Somewhere between serving as Orson Welles's final DP and making a LOT of cleverly titled porn films (Maverdick and Cape Rear sound the most fun), Graver tried out his mainstream auteur chops and, well, ended up making Trick or Treats. I have to believe that So I Married a Lesbian was better written. 

There's just so much weirdly wrong in Trick or Treats to the extent that you start to wonder, much like Cats: The Movie, if everyone involved was being blackmailed (though the child actor playing Christopher, being Graver's real-life son, was probably just earning his allowance). Or perhaps it was some kind of elaborate training session for lead Jacqueline Giroux to practice hanging up phones. Because SERIOUSLY: she has do it about 30 times in the movie, and never once does she put the phone back in its receiver the way any biological human being would.

Again, when a movie is this bad, you notice the details. Every. Single. One. Of. Them.

High Points

Most of the characters seemed to know most of their lines and only stumbled over their words every other scene or so. I feel like that took a lot of work

Low Points

I know the running time said 90 minutes, but I'm pretty sure Trick or Treats went on for at least eighteen hours. Or possibly days. Or lifetimes...

Lessons Learned

The standard uniform of high end babysitting agencies in the 1980s combined an unflattering nurse-cut romper with a weirdly inviting easy-access front zipper

Movies are ultimately made in the editing room. Side note: I don't think Trick or Treats has an editing room

If your production location includes a pool, you might as well use it in at least 50% of all your film's shots because you clearly just had that pool cleaned and why not get your money's worth?

Rent/Bury/Buy

Make no mistake: Trick or Treats is a terrible, nearly incompetent movie lacking any real intrigue, sexiness, scares, or, well, anything logical whatsoever. That being said, if one were to "find the wine" (as the babysitter so responsibly says) and invite your pals and white Othello-boyfriend over for the night (as the babysitter so responsibly does), then hey: this is a good time. A terrible, incompetent, good time. Thank you, Amazon Prime.