TWIN PEAKS is happening again; Agent Cooper has returned in different places as different selves; DANGER 5 is no longer on Netflix, but THE LOVE WITCH is. Things from the past come back yet nothing from the moment leaves--the selection is so vast picking something is impossible. So we go back in time to when--if we wanted to see weird shit, sex or gore--we had to go the R-rated movie, or... in the 80s, we had to rent it, and were limited by what wasn't checked out, and by circumstance. Now we miss that simplicity, the narrowness of options. So we make movies that evoke those golden years. If you want to make a movie that looks and feels like it was made 20 years ago then you might be a retro-metatextual, but I won't judge you. I'd have to pick a version of me to do that anyway, and I'll leave that to the professionals serenely rooted in space and time. Just know STRANGER THINGS and IT FOLLOWS helped kickstart a batch of young or semi-young filmmakers seizing the opportune landscape to make a film they wanted to see back in the days of standing in front of shelves filled with empty clamshell boxes, the perfect 80s or late 70s rental to watch after trick-or-treating as a 12 year-old in the 70s - early 80s, the idealized film forms in your horror-lovin' mind. From the recently discussed SWEET, SWEET LONELY GIRL to as far back as GRINDHOUSE, a kind of borderline nostalgia future-past melancholy washes over things to free us all from the terrible burden of the overslick CGI present --wherein STAR WARS films look like video games and video games look like neo-realist crime dramas.
Neither feature film discussed below is specifically great (which is why I added a short at the end that is). In fact I'd love to sit them down with each other and have them grasp each others' faults and learn: for THE VOID, patience, tick-tocaklity and focus; BEYOND THE GATES action and surprise, the strength of convictions --willingness to crank it to eleven rather than constantly dialing back like a repressed schoolmarm resisting temptation.
THE VOID
(2017) Dir. Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski
**
The bashed-in brainchild of an art director and make-up artist in their directorial co-debut, VOID heralds a nice showcase for analog/latex effects as they depict a magical night at a closing-down hospital deep in the meth belt, wherein people start to give birth to or change into tentacled Lovecraftian behemoths. Aaron Poole stars as the shaky sheriff who lets you know how rattled he is when he shoots a patient in the head after bringing in a twitchy, wounded freak from the woods where he's running after being shot (?) The guys chasing him arrive, chased themselves by a cadre of cultists in white robes with black triangles on the hoods. Hell breaks loose literally, and about four different Clive Barker and John Carpenter movies come crashing together as the cult surrounding the cut-off hospital echoes an ASSAULT PRECINCT 13, the icky transformations evoke THE THING, the philosophy evokes the New England town beyond the shuttered bridge in IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, the church in Carpenter's PRINCE OF DARKNESS, the attics of Clive Barker's HELLRAISER, and Stuart Gordon's FROM BEYOND and the Solaris-from-Hell space ship in EVENT HORIZON, there's probably others.
That may sound great, I know it did to me. But this Gillespie and Kostanski clearly have a lot to learn about the rest of what makes a good film, like when to use dialogue and when not to, where to put the camera, and how to set up an ominous mood. They go for a Carpenter vibe but don't have the patience for Hawksian cool or the slow-building relentless dread that are amongst Carpenter's best auteur traits. Instead there are way too many balls in the air at once and screaming "c-c-calm down!" over and over doesn't count as plot development. And when it focuses on just one or two--a cult who are heavy into pyramids, to the point they spray paint black triangles on doors and wear hoods with pyramid shape viewing holes (which is a cool look but impractical)--a tweaker handcuffed to a bed, the film has a fightin' chance. But the more is less approach eludes them, as if all the elaborate monster tableaux are lined up offstage like a fashion show, and if they don't keep slithering out they'll get so congested the film will burst.
One strong element is--as one of the nurses--Kathleen Munroe (above right), a gorgeous blue-cat-eyed creature in the Famke Janssen x Franka Poetente mold who stole my wild Irish heart as a zombie equestrian in Romero's unjustly ignored SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD (see my comparison of with PET SEMETERY + the RNC National Conveniton) She's great and in her green scrubs reminds me of the cute nurses who gave me Ativan and Librium when I was flipping out in Feb. She exudes actorly grace and might have saved the movie had the writers allowed her to be a cool Hawksian heroine in the vein of Laurie Zimmer in ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13. But that would perhaps take cigarettes and balls and the film has neither. The script whisks her down the rabbit hole early on, and our trusty rattled sheriff's attempt to rescue her as they hesitate at blood-and-weirdness splattered doors as if walking through an almost-finished haunted attraction, is way less riveting than the sight of Munroe in her scrubs just walking around doing medical shit. (They also shoehorn a kind of tired 'dead child' subplot - the lazy screenwriter's shorthand for 'character development' that Carpenter studiously avoids).
Another thing missing that would have helped here is a source drug: meth is name-checked but there's no evidence of it. The source of all this strangeness turns out to be bizarre rituals carried out in this lonesome meth lab cabin. But where is the meth, damn it? Seems to me the meth is the key to Lovecraftian horror evocation and these Gillespie and Kostanski would be better prepared to explore this aspect if they'd done meth --write what you know, bro. (sniffle) I bet that cult leader doctor could get his hands on some wonderful drugs. I would have loved to see all sorts of directions it could have gone - fostering the connection between drugs and this hell dimension, for example. The high of meth opening their pineal glands the way FROM BEYOND's tuning forks do or my own Salvia Divinorum + Robitussin + light-sound machine + Mingus "Black Saint and the Sinner Lady" journey to Balloon machine elf time-space mandible-weaving adventures.
Gillespie and Kostanski have interesting imagination, there's some superb sequences near the climax and it's inspiring that they demonstrate the chops to create their tentacled visions in real analog time but the problem is perhaps real life experience. The blurry frenzy of action in THE VOID has the air of fear and doubt, so they just throw it all on the screen at once and run. A huge tentacled thing erupting out of a dead man's stomach would be plenty on its own, but here it's got to go down with a flickering overhead light gone to strobe, crazy camera movements, cross-cuts to a screaming pregnant woman about to get a C-section with no anesthesia and a hysterical pre-med intern whining like a little bitch, and around ten people yelling at the top of their lungs as people shoot and swing axes at it. The camera seems half in the way of the action instead of chronicling it, like a nervous spectator with one eye on the door, making Carpenter's genius all the more remarkable and precious. He took his time to make sure we got properly creeped out by the slow evolution of the THE THING. It was creepy because it was legitimately fucked-up movie trying to pass as 'everything's cool' normal. At the end of, say, the intense autopsy arm-chomping scene, for example, there's a kind of a joke (the king crab head of the dead man) and Kurt's exclamation 'Jesus Fucking Christ." It's funny and all the more terrifying for keeping it 'real' like that. Carpenter knows horror takes time to react. It's like hooking up with someone for the first time: the catch-and-release involved in making out with someone the first time, the going in and coming back out, the teasing and languor of leaning in and teasing vs. tongue; if you just lunge at the person with tongue extended and don't give them a second to breathe, well, honey, it's called 'suffocation.'
That's the deal here, with so much going on, nothing ever has time to happen. ASSAULT gained suspense from the camaraderie between the cops and outlaws in the face of a common enemy and the cool Hawksian focus of Zimmer; the quiet omnipresence of the nonspeaking gang members. Instead of the eerie silence of the gangs we're forced to listen to the head bad guys' rambling overly theatrical 'stage-voiced' dissertation on the new flesh through what sounds like the PA system for way too many minutes. The bulk of the characters are all annoying as hell, between the screaming pre-med intern who panics and lets the pregnant woman almost die while she hams it up like a little brat and the two rough townies there's so much negative energy that well, I had to go back to ASSAULT afterwards and be reminded Hawksian cool exists. Even Even SUICIDE SQUAD knows how to pace itself (that great bar interlude) and create some genuine rapport.
As for the score, a good deep droning retro-analog synth score (as in STRANGER THINGS or IT FOLLOWS) would have helped immeasurably. Another missed opportunity. There's four different composers used and none can hold a candle to Disasterpiece or Umberto. Next time, boys, instead of watching just emulating JC movies, watch the movies he emulates. Watch RIO BRAVO, EL DORADO and THE 1951 THING. Soak 'em up, buttercup. Don't make me tell you again. Give Kathleen Munroe some cigarettes and a match and let's see what we can see.
BEYOND THE GATES
(2016) Dir. Jackson Stewart
**1/2
BEYOND THE GATES' musical score on the other hand is an effective melange of Goblin-esqe analog synths by the great up-and-comer retro-analog heavyweight Wojciech Golczewski. The film's chosen 80s milieu excuses its occasional sleaziness and a grasp of why analog synths are so great that seems to have eluded the four different source artists for THE VOID. Like that film, it's not set in the 80s so much as set within a universe clearly delineated by 80s horror films, specifically with GATE those old VHS rentals that used to come in big clamshells and cost just under a hundred bucks each (priced to rent, not buy). I never saw the commercials nor the game, but there was also a weird play-along video board game called NIGHTMARE which I'd never heard of it before this film--but it's clearly the inspiration. The story has a pair of semi-estranged brothers getting together years after the video rental store owner father vanished. The 'dead' video store is a great subject for a horror film (as in SOUTH PARK, where Stan's dad buys a Blockbuster for $1 and ends up holing them up in it during a snowstorm and getting all Jack Torrance), though it's seen only in the first reel and only to put the brothers in contact with the last thing dad was watching, the videotape in the 'video board game' (the title) hosted by Barbara Crampton in new wave hair and eye liner, easily stealing the show.
Unlike THE VOID this has a compulsive watchability due to taking time with its characters and always making us think some dreadful thing is waiting around the next corner. That said, the pair of brothers don't make too much sense. I can understand that they're opposites in style and temperament but they seem to share no memories in common and of all the time they must have spent in and around this video store they never mention a single film. Also, though one is kind of cool it's a bit odd that they're such pussies that they have to stop playing the game every two seconds, and when the game master mentions they need to find their father, the first thing they do is call their cop friend, like there's anything he can do about it. Fucking narcs, man. Would they call the cops if they found a stash of weed back in dad's office too? Also, if any movie seemed to invite some SCREAM-style meta commentary it would be this one, dealing with two brothers working at a video store, where one would presume they've seen a few films. They haven't. Nary a single reference or reverie doth pass between them. Son, that's all my brother and I ever talk about. It's a way to connect, but there's no connection or even a shared joke, nor is there family resemblance and there's no real understanding why for some reason one brother seems to have inherited the house and store with the other a kind of stumble bum (Chase Williamson, so good in JOHN DIES AT THE END).
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| You da man, Chase |
My main issue though lies with the dour lack of any sort of pulse on behalf of the square brother (Graham Skipper - unpictured), a character so unlikeable it makes it impossible to tell why anyone would want anything to do with him (imagining being his girlfriend is a singularly nauseating experience). I wanted to smack the glasses off his head and make him do whiskey shots -instead he's supposed to be sober and in AA, though I'll tell you frankly, we'd kick him out for being a lightweight. What, did he have a shot too many one night and throw up? Good lord what a pussy. It was heartening to see him finally get around to killing and stabbing with brotherly gusto with the cool but there needed to be more of a character change over the course of their shared trauma than going from withdrawn and stilted to less stilted. I would have loved to see him finally relent, have a shot or two and cut loose, like Nick Frost in THE WORLD'S END. Instead, what does he do? He pours his dad's liquor down the sink. I may be back to being sober, but my thought was kill him! KILL! In AA we hate hearing about people who commit that kind of drink wasting. Give it away to some needy friend off the wagon, like that tweaker at the local pub (go-to dirtbag Justin Welborn), who--incidentally--is right to want to deck you and steal your horny girlfriend (Bea Grant) who flew in just to be with you in your time of need, and who you reward by thinking of lame excuses not to fool around. Urgh. If ever a punk needed shots, either gun or whiskey... it's this annoying pisher. Sorry, no offense, Graham.
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| I wish these girls (from the NIGHTMARE-esque viral trailer actually were in the movie, they'd have made it a lot better |
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DARK DUNGEONS
(2014) Dir. L. Gabriel Gonda
***
Shot on the cuff, DD has a great zero budget courage of its convictions gonzo spirit, a deadpan reverence for the Chick source material and a rich mostly-female and very cute cast and a great embrace Jesus ending. If you've even been out on a deep limb end and prayed the 'no atheists in a foxhole' lullaby then you'll relate. I don't know the extent to which the whole Christian pamphlet ending with the cathartic book and DD module-burning bonfire is meant satirically or not. If not, it's way more genius than I gave the Christians credit for. I'm glad I don't know for sure, it's funnier that way, and that the spiritual solution is at least treated with some modicum of decorum and real love. Jesus wouldn't be offended either way, methinks. The filmmaking team behind the crowdfunded (but which crowd? the hipsters or the Christians?) little miracle are perhaps the Ron and Suzy Ormond of their time! Know what else can now be found on Prime? the Ormonds' own MESA OF LOST WOMEN. (On Amazon Prime):
See original tract here
PS: Let me also point you towards high recommendations for other scrappy retro-ish indies floating around the streaming sites and elsewhere at the "moment" whenever that is:
Pharmageddon: JOHN DIES AT THE END
Burnt Persona Jessica Dies Again: SWEET, SWEET LONELY GIRL
Badass Babes for a Bernie Nation: BOUNTY KILLER
Heil, Bizarro World Independence Day Streampunk: IRON SKY
Bell, Book and Hallucinogenic Tampon: THE LOVE WITCH
Let the Darioni Nuovo entrain your Dissonance: AMER