(AMC+/hoopla/kanopy/peacock/tubi/etc.) TRIANGLE is a sort of THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT meets TIMECRIMES horror-thriller that’s tautly and expertly woven by SEVERANCE (2006) writer/director Christopher Smith. It features Melissa George (best known by me via her time on ALIAS but she was also a lead in 30 DAYS OF NIGHT), and really, that’s all you need to know.
Film
CATHERINE CALLED BIRDY (2022)
(Cinemas/Prime) I was one of the few folks who watched HBO’s GIRLS simply because it was from the director of TINY FURNITURE. I know that Lena Dunham is a rather polarizing individual in media, but I love her voice, while realizing that it is extremely selective, it is also very distinct.
CATHERINE CALLED BIRDY is no different, despite the fact that it’s based on a children’s book that Dunham didn’t pen. It’s the story of a medieval youth, Catherine, often called Birdy (the brilliant Bella Ramsey, who stole every scene she was in on GAME OF THRONES as Lyanna Mormont), trying to navigate life while her alcoholic father (Hot Priest Andrew Scott) tries to sell her off to a suitor.
While that sounds rather tragic, it ultimately isn’t. It’s a carefully calibrated tale of life and emotion and struggles, and features Dunham’s quick wit and humor (as well as all of the trappings that come with her work).
MESSIAH OF EVIL (1973)
(epix/Prime/Shudder) MESSIAH OF EVIL was the first film from power-couple Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, who went on to pen AMERICAN GRAFFITI and INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (and HOWARD THE DUCK, which almost certainly killed their Hollywood careers), but you wouldn’t quite know it from the ramshackle structure of the film.
MESSIAH OF EVIL feels like a very padded CARNIVAL OF SOULS by way of George Romero; it almost feels like outsider art at times. It’s barely cohesive, it’s clearly borrowing from Italian giallo films — to the point where I was shocked to see an Los Angeles-based Ralph’s appear — but I found it to be a fascinating work, partially due to its use of Godard-ian pop art, splashes of paint, and flashy production design. It’s not a great film, but it’s an extraordinarily striking horror film, and that’s enough for me in October.
BOXING HELENA (1993)
(DVD) I had the following (slightly paraphrased) discussion with my wife the day after a triple feature of Sherilyn Fenn films at Chicago’s Music Box Theatre:
Me: “Oh, and I caught [Jennifer Lynch’s] BOXING HELENA, a mostly unseen NC-17 cut, which I can’t reliably compare to the original because I haven’t seen it since I was a sophomore in college.”
Her: “Really? I thought you’d seen it several times over, because you talk about it a lot.”
I repeatedly discuss and write a lot about a lot of cult films, obviously, hence this site. Didn’t think that was the case with BOXING HELENA, an extraordinarily controversial and unpopular film from Jennifer Lynch (yes, the daughter of David Lynch) that has never received any sort of resurgence of interest, but apparently pulled a pin in me some time ago.
I first saw it on VHS, on a tiny TV in my college dorm room, and was blown away. I hadn’t paid any attention to the production issues of Kim Basinger taking herself out of the picture (https://ew.com/article/1993/04/09/boxing-helenas-controversies/), but I vaguely recall folks protesting the film because of the depiction of men’s violence against women.
Ah, yes, the 90s, when folks got upset about women telling meaningful tales about women being abused. The New York Times review explicitly said: “If Jennifer Lynch wants a real challenge in life, she should try to make a movie with a positive, feminist theme. Now, there’s an unconventional movie.”
If you aren’t familiar with the storied film: Helena (Sherilyn Finn) a willful, brusque, extraordinarily independent model, has a one-night stand with rich, celebrated genius doctor Nick (Julian Sands). He remains infatuated with her, ignoring his current girlfriend, and Helena continues leading a pleasantly sexually autonomous life.
Nick orchestrates a major party, invites Helena, who has already decided to ditch her current dirtbag (a very shaggy, shitheel, rock-and-roller Bill Paxton) and take a solo trip to Mexico — booking the trip in Spanish — but decides to swing by Nick’s party the night prior.
At said party, she consistently shrugs off Nick’s advances, shoving all sorts of personal items — including her purse — into his hands for him to babysit, then Helena knowingly takes one of Nick’s younger fellow doctors, strips to a slip, and enthralls herself in Nick’s opulent water fountain. After toweling off, she then takes Nick’s co-worker by his arm and leads him out the front door, looking over her shoulder as he meekly stares at her; it’s a very obvious ‘fuck you’ to Nick, practically shouting: “This is what happens when you endlessly pursue what I will no longer allow you to have.”
Unfortunately, Helena finds herself at the airport sans her purse. She rings Nick and demands that he drive to the airport and return it, which he does, but is severely late in doing so. She checks the contents and finds her address book missing. Nick convinces her to head back to his house so he can find it, and she has no choice but to comply. Upon arrival, Nick has laid out an elaborate lunch, pours her a drink, then after Helena’s increased anger, he unveils the address book as one would unveil a prized meal. She grabs the book, storms out of the house and, while backing away from him while berating him, she’s brutally struck down by a reckless driver, who then subsequently drives over her legs.
Next we see Helena in a guest bed of Nick’s, legless. It all goes downhill from there.
As I’m an able male, I don’t have the background to discuss many of the particulars. However, it is a striking and singular work about want and forced complicity at any cost.
The end, unfortunately, is a bit of a dodge, but given where the film goes, how far it dives, I can’t blame Jennifer Lynch for taking that approach.
PEARL (2022)
PEARL is the opportunistic prequel to X, shot partially due to the fact that Ti West and the crew of X were stuck in New Zealand during the pandemic, they were listless, and he certainly made the most of it by fleshing out the ‘X’ storyline.
PEARL takes place in 1918, during the height of the “Spanish Influenza” — conveniently having a writerly reason for masks while shooting through the COVID pandemic — and concerns itself with the youthful edition of the elderly murderous wife featured in X, the titular Pearl. Unlike X, this is more of a character study, but includes faux-Technicolor bravado mimicking the films of John Ford, George Cukor, and Douglas Sirk.
We get the back-story of young Pearl, a woman — a farmer’s daughter — who thrills in killing creatures and feeding them to the nearby crocodile (also featured in X), one that dovetails with her zeal to be immortalized by Hollywood, not unlike X’s Maxine’s go-for-broke need to be seen by others. Matters escalate, most notably regarding a local theater projectionist who has a thing for skin flicks, in which Pearl finds her agency.
While there isn’t much more on the page than that — and those expecting PEARL to be as blood-soaked as X will be disappointed — it features Ti West’s heartfelt warmth towards sympathy for his protagonists, as murderous as they may be. It’s slower, it revels in long shots and eye-popping color — a welcome change from the miserable desaturated hues of most films nowadays — but oddly ramps the visual tone up when necessary, including a jarring giallo-esque segue near the end that you’ll know when you see it.
I’m not surprised that he made this paean to 50s Technicolor melodramas, but I am surprised he managed to get it made, and I can’t wait to see MAXXXINE — the closer to the trilogy.
NOPE (2022)
This won’t be a full and proper post, but simply a place for me to scrawl down a few thoughts about Jordan Peele’s latest film NOPE. If you haven’t seen it, while I don’t believe in spoilers, I do think it’s best enjoyed going in with as little knowledge of the film as possible.
Also, the following notes may not make much sense without having seen the film.
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If I had to review this film for a traditional outfit, one which required me to suggest whether the layperson should see it, I’m afraid I simply would not be up for the job. While NOPE leans on a lot of modern visual setups, mostly of the Spielbergian kind such as lots of low, center framing with the camera swooping up to them, it is primarily concerned with giving the audience a crash course in early film techniques and process.
As someone who has a dog-eareard Eadweard Muybridge photo study bookmark in my satchel right now, obviously I will respond to this film far differently than most. I simply could not judge this film without taking that facet in mind. Here’s my very lengthy evidence:
“No, please don’t look in the horse’s eyes,” horse trainer OJ says on a film set, just as a technician swivels around a reflective globe, causing the horse to see itself which results in on-set bucking.
Later on in the film, we see the incident that caused a trained chimpanzee to go wild on a 90s TV sitcom set: a group of reflective balloons cause the chimpanzee to see itself. (Some may argue that it was the popping of a balloon, and perhaps; I’d have to see it again, but this feels neater and more intended than a simple balloon pop.) The chimpanzee snaps and a violent spree ensues. As the chimp is coming down, it senses the wide-eyed stare of young sitcom co-star Ricky watching. (The result is a clever almost-fistbumb, mimicking Spielberg’s E.T., but that’s irrelevent here.)
After the first act, OJ, his sister, and a Fry’s Electronics employee are all concerned with catching an alien roaming in the desert sky on camera, hoping it’ll solve all of their financial problems, creating their own camera coverage setup, effectively shaping their own film studio, with the alien as their elusive star player. All they needed were some overpowered spotlights to complete the picture.
The alien starts off as what could be construed as an eye, but it’s designed more like a lens. The sand typhoons viewers see? Dust motes. When we see the audience of Jupiter’s Claim travel through the alien, that’s not just done because it’d be grossly amusing; they’re energy traveling down the lens to ultimately be embedded into the alien. I believe that’s why hear their screams, even after we know they’re long gone.
(Yes, upon re-reading this it makes that sound bonkers, but it works.)
Antlers Holst’s crank-based IMAX camera may seem to be important here as a callback to the days of hand-cranked filmmaking, but it’s the camera reload that is the most important part here. Yes, it heightens the suspense, but it also shows the audience how film cameras work.
There are the white eyes of the inflatable dancing noodles, an absolutely perfect visual that also doubles to underscore the use of reflective light.
As they continue to damage the alien, its form changes, until by the end it appears to be zooming in via bellows, trying to capture the glances it’s finding harder to perceive. (In this case, I believe we’re rolling back to static photography.)
There’s the mimicking of an eye with the well and the flashpot bulbs.
One could make the argument that the use of the Ricky balloon blocks the alien’s sight and that’s its downfall, but I think that might be a reach.
While all of these devices are used to thrilling effect in NOPE, they’re not arbitrary: they serve to 1) showcase the history of early film techniques and 2) underscore how something like an eyes and lens use each other: light bounces off of the iris allowing us to see, while lenses absorb the light, casting it against a rendering surface. (Or: the eye emits, the lens takes in.)
There’s a lot more to unpack from NOPE, from Hollywood’s history of shooting outdoors, before the days of reasonable artificial lighting, to the way they would use portholes with their indoor studios to illuminate them. The way the desert was used by Hollywood in the days of the westerns, for example.
Also, there’s the undeniable aspect of how people of color are often poorly lit in films, poorly portrayed in films, and thus poorly seen in general.
These are all just thoughts from an initial viewing, and I may be incorrectly remembering them, so I reserve the right to tweak this post accordingly after a second viewing! I just had to get it down before my viewing experience faded.
THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL (2009)
Filmmaker Ti West is back in the news, due to the surprise announcement that his X-Factor film series will be a trilogy, which is great! I loved X, just saw PEARL, and am looking forward to MAXXXINE!
However, if you haven’t seen his debut — THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL — you should rectify that immediately. I’ve seen a lot of modern (and I use that term loosely given that it’s a decade-old film) throwbacks to 80s satanic horror films, but it is fantastically emblematic of what Ti West does with horror films: namely, embue character into them. Simply put: this is a nightmare babysitter gig, but the victims aren’t ‘Co-Ed No.1’. They have names and are fully fleshed out folks, ones with their own conflicted motivations.
I’ve heard a number of complaints levied at THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL and they all boil down to: ‘Yeah, this film enacted this plot twist before.’ That’s not what West is interested in. He wants to make it substantial, to make it something relatable. There’s no better example than the dance sequence from THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, featuring THE FIXX’s ‘One Thing Leads to Another’:
It’s a singular scene about how one acts when they feel they aren’t being seen, until they feel that they are not. It has far more depth than any of the films others have said West has ‘ripped off’ and utterly justifies the film’s existence.
Trailer:
SEE HOW THEY RUN (2022)
I am an unabashed Agatha Christie fan. I’ve read every Christie-penned Poirot novel. I’ve seen a live rendition of THE MOUSETRAP, albeit, not in London’s West End (although, not for want of trying). I’ve spent many hours watching adaptations of hers, partially because I’m simply fascinated with how folks adapt her works.
Folks nitpick her, saying she’s a sloppy storyteller, which due to possible Alzheimers, that’s fair concerning some of her later works, but when she was at the top of her game she was endlessly inventive, and constantly challenging herself and her readers.
I can’t say that SEE HOW THEY RUN is as ambitious as Christie’s best works, such as THE A.B.C. MURDERS or THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD or AND THEN THERE WERE NONE. However, it is slightly more ambitious than the Christie work it’s riffing on, THE MOUSETRAP, which is a very thin, very perfunctory murder mystery radio play — originally named THREE BLIND MICE, as Christie loves utilizing nursery rhymes and schoolyard songs — that Christie adapted into a short story. It then became the longest running theatrical play in history; perfect for dinner theatre, but not much else.
Famously, Christie sold off the film rights with the caveat that production could start shortly after the West End play closed. It’s still playing there to this day.
Instead of creating an adaptation of THE MOUSETRAP, SEE HOW THEY RUN is a meta-version of THE MOUSETRAP, where the murder mystery takes place during a production of THE MOUSETRAP. Not the cleverest conceit, but it’s serviceable enough to bring in a game — albeit underutilized — cast, which includes short-lived Adrian Brody, Sam Rockwell as the inspector, and the highlight of the film, Saoirse Ronan as the delightfully winsome Constable Stalker.
Frankly, I just want an entire series about Constable Stalker, and Saoirse’s endless enthusiasm practically sells the film in-and-of-itself.
That said, SEE HOW THEY RUN also has some stellar production design and camera work, and comes together far better than, say, Branagh’s tragedy of DEATH ON THE NILE, although it is a bit too tidy.
I can’t say this film will please everyone, but if you’re into Christie, it fits the playbill.
TRASH, ART, AND THE MOVIES (1969)
Pauline Kael’s TRASH, ART, AND THE MOVIES is an essay I want to hand out to everyone.
Kael simmers about being bored with films, about how she luxuriates in the garbage nowadays as opposed to the ‘prestige’ pictures, such as 2001 (a film she deftly eviscerates, an unpopular opinion around here, but one I respect given how she backs it up).
Ultimately, it’s Kael saying: stop trying to preach, give me something new, something interesting, take big swings! Trash with a glint of charm is far more intriguing than most art, and stop pawning off all film as art, because so many works are born of a simple consumerist need.
It’s a timeless piece, one that holds up over fifty years later, one that is still provocative.
Instead of blathering on about it, I’ll simply send you along to read her words. The entirety of TRASH, ART, AND THE MOVIES is available here:
https://genius.com/Pauline-kael-trash-art-and-the-movies-i-annotated
Or in her third collection of film reviews and essays, GOING STEADY: FILM WRITINGS 1968-1969:
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780714529769
Or if you have a HARPER’S MAGAZINE subscription, you can read it here:
https://harpers.org/archive/1969/02/trash-art-and-the-movies/
RESURRECTION (2022)
(Theaters/VOD/Shudder soon) Horror films have been pilloried recently by so-called genre fans for works that they feel focus too much on personal trauma. Films like HEREDITY have been dismissed as over-wrought projected therapy that shouldn’t exist, solely because they prioritize emotional trauma.
That thought is preposterous. Horror as a genre, especially in film, has always been about reckoning with trauma. One of the first iconic horror films, THE CABINET OF DOCTOR CALIGARI, displays the cultural guilt of a post-WWI Germany. The noir horror/thrillers of the 40s grappled with post-WWII anxiety regarding gender, male displacement, and general PTSD. Atomic horror films of the 50s were born from nightmares of nuclear destruction. Slashers of the 70s were creations of the senselessness of the Vietnam war and even more PTSD. Slashers of the 80s inherit from the 70s, but turn reactionary in the same way as noir horror of the 40s with male anxiety towards women, and women being seen solely as prey. So much of 80s and 90s horror is based on the (lack of) reckoning with the AIDS pandemic.
SCREAM, as I’ve previously noted, opens with Sidney already being a survivor. That entire franchise is an ouroboros of media-centric trauma.
Horror has always been a safe space for reckoning with personal and cultural trauma, and it will always be one, allowing for works like RESURRECTION to exist.
That said, placing yourself in these spaces is often not a pleasant experience.
A post-film text to my wife:
“Why the fuck do I put myself through this?”
RESURRECTION is the second feature from NANCY, PLEASE director Andrew Semans, and fully features Rebecca Hall (CHRISTINE, THE NIGHT HOUSE) as Margaret, a successful higher-up at a pharmaceutical company and single mother to a daughter who is about to head off to college. Margaret has an intern who she recognizes is in a bad relationship and helps to ease her from the toxicity, as she recognizes the symptoms. Margaret appears to have it all, someone who has it all figured out and deftly navigates her career and life, at least until she sees ‘him’ again at a work conference.
The interloper — ‘him’ — is David (Tim Roth), a scientist friend of Margaret’s parents who worked on an expedition of theirs when Margaret was traveling with them as a teen. While being a lauded scientist, he’s also an expert in coercion, and thanks partially to the pre-occupied eyes of her libertine parents, Margaret and David became entangled.
It’s been years since Margaret has seen David, and she presumed him dead, but he then appears everywhere. She believes he’s stalking her, but then he reveals why he’s been appearing, and it has to do with the monstrous events that occurred in her past.
He then falls back in line with his prior behavior, gaslighting her, playing with her, and she falls in line, following his instructions, feeling powerless.
A follow-up text:
“(Don’t answer that question. This was just a bad idea in general.)”
A lot of digital ink has and will be spilled about the absurdity of the events portrayed in RESURRECTION, and how only an actor of Hall’s caliber could sell them but, as I was watching, I found it all too relatable. I’ll restrain from detailing the film any further, but if you’ve lived through even an iota of what Margaret has been put through, it feels too familiar.
Regardless of how you read the film, how real the events are or aren’t meant to be — Semans has gone on record as saying that it’s up to audience interpretation — the character of David appears out-of-nowhere and completely upends Margaret’s life. If you’ve lived with trauma, abuse, or persistent anxiety and memory recall, it will feel all too relatable. RESURRECTION absolutely nails that inscrutable feeling of someone who will always have some command over your life, whether they’re physically there or not. You are endlessly haunted by them. They will always follow you. They will always find you.
Horror as a storytelling genre is fundamentally about confronting the darkest depths of what people are capable of, but it’s also about how those entangled in those webs react. While horror works are often written off as cautionary tales, it feels like we’ve culturally progressed to a point of acknowledging that there’s no avoiding being harmed. You will be hurt. You will be abused. You will be taken advantage of, and you will be haunted by those who have taken advantage of you, and all you can try to do is what Margaret does, which is to recognize and rebuff, and then dig deep and tear asunder, even if those around you don’t understand your actions.
Hopefully you have friends and loving families, but if you don’t, you have fictional works like RESURRECTION to allow you to keep your head above water, reminding you that you are not alone, that it’s okay that you feel haunted, that you hurt, that you will not forget, even if you desperately want to.
POSTSCRIPT
I highly recommend reading Katie Rife’s piece on RESURRECTION which is a far better review than mine.