Horror

BOXING HELENA (1993)

October 6, 2022

(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.

OPPLOPOLIS (2012-)

October 5, 2022

OPPLOPOLIS comes from the mind of Kit Roebuck and his brother Alec. If you were around in the nascent days of web comics, you may be familiar with Roebuck’s 2003 webcomic NINE PLANETS WITHOUT INTELLIGENT LIFE, an existential and experimental series of online comics, often utilizing the web browser as an infinite canvas.

OPPLOPOLIS premiered in 2012 and, as Roebuck notes it’s vastly different experience. While it’s still heady, it’s far more propulsive; a sort of ‘tomorrow paranoid thriller’. I remember finding it quite enthralling as each issue dripped out, but to my dismay, it rather abruptly ceased in 2015.

However, Roebuck opted to bring it back, presumably because he saw UNDER THE SILVER LAKE and said to himself: ‘Hey, I was doing this years ago and my take was far more interesting!’ and if that’s what he thought, I would certainly agree. It’s surreal while still feeling grounded; romantic without feeling pandering.

Also, let it be said that Kit’s command of figure work — while always great — has vastly increased over the years. You can practically feel the heft of the character actions as they poke and prod over the panels.

It’s a fascinating work, one that is absolutely free to you to click through, but one that I hope will fully find its way to print some day.

https://www.bohemiandrive.com/opplopolis

PEARL (2022)

October 4, 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)

October 3, 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)

October 2, 2022

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:

RESURRECTION (2022)

August 4, 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.

HAPPENING (2021)

June 5, 2022

(Theaters only/VOD soon) Audrey Diwan’s HAPPENING (original French title: L’ÉVÉNEMENT), adapted fromAnnie Ernaux’s autobiography of the same name, may initially look like a slice-of-life character drama: It’s France in the early 60s and Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei) is a devoted student of literature, ready to buckle down and pass her final exams. Her parents are supportive, albeit overly industrious small bar owners and, after sunset, she enjoys a bit of the nightlife with her clique, while occasionally being glared at by her enemies.

In another film, that could be the opening of a quaint, comfortable ‘that one crazy summer’ movie. Not HAPPENING. Underneath its sun-washed gauzy palette of aqua blues and verdant greens is a tense, unwavering tale of a young woman under pressure as she realizes that she is pregnant in a country where abortion is outlawed and vehemently taboo. Anne is gravely aware of her ticking clock and she is determined to roll it back.

Anna gets to work and, as she goes from one failed plan to another, we see how her possibilities and her world shrinks. The already-tightly composed framing — shot in an 1.37 aspect ratio, closer to the boxed-in look of a standard definition TV show than a widescreen film — finds the camera inching closer in on Anna; rooms she inhabits feel smaller, more constrictive, she takes up more of the frame, her wide, defiant eyes inhabiting more and more of the screen. Her friends distance themselves, and those she talks to cower in fear of being jailed for simply hearing her broach the idea.

Anna’s solutions become more desperate, the world increasingly hostile to her escape attempt, and the camera refuses to flinch or turn away, brusquely displaying her efforts through longer and longer takes. Her strength and vitality wane, exhaustion sets in due to the strain of the clock, the machinations of her body draining her, and she finds herself more and more emotional drained by her time spent lurking in the shadows.

Yet, during all of this, Anna unwaveringly brandishes her physical desires with confidence. That detail helps to set HAPPENNING’s scope to that of a steadfastly look at an unjust twist in a singular person’s life as opposed to one part of a grander coming-of-age tale or a film consisting of well-meaning scare tactics.

HAPPENING is an affecting work that resonates past the France of the 1960s, a headstrong tale of individual survival. Diwan, who is open about having had an abortion, had the following to say about why she adapted L’ÉVÉNEMENT:

“Lots of people told me in the industry, ‘Why do you want to make the movie now, because we’re in France and we already have [a law legalizing abortion]?’ And I was like, ‘OK, I really hope that you’re going to ask the same question to the next filmmaker that comes to you and says they’re going to make a movie about World War II. Because I guess the war is over.’ It was not easy to have them understand. I mean, look at how many women died on that battlefield and tell me it’s not a war. It’s a silent war.”

WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR (2021)

April 17, 2022

(Cinemas, VOD) WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR was often described as creepypasta during its film fest tour last year, which — fair, given that it’s about (mostly) teens performing ritualistic summoning acts based on internet content, and then recording themselves online to document the results of said acts — but I find it more to be a character drama lined with horror elements, as opposed to a modern technological horror tale.

(As usual, I’ll keep spoilers light, but if the above sounds appealing to you, perhaps just watch the film and read this after!)

To summarize: ‘Casey’ (an astounding debut from Anna Cobb) is a high-school teen who lacks a mother, hides in a bedroom attic from an asshole father whom is rarely home, and has no friends. She loves horror and darkness and is -extremely online-. She decides to take ‘The World’s Fair Challenge’, which consists of repeating ‘I want to go to The World’s Fair’ three times over — Bloody Mary/Candyman style — then pricking your thumb and bleeding onto a screen, and lastly, watching the ‘The World’s Fair Challenge’ video via said screen, all of which she records via her very underwatched online channel.

What happens next is questionable for all involved, but it always involves some sort of physical transformation. While this could be construed as a teen puberty allegory, it has more depth.

(It’s at this point that I should note that the director, Jane Schoenbrun, is trans, but hadn’t started transitioning when she started writing the script. I highly recommend reading her spoiler-free interview with IndieWire’s Jude Dry)

‘Casey’, based on her videos, hears from an older male-presenting person known solely as JLB (the memorable character actor Michael J Rogers), who constantly frets about her. Matters escalate, but in ways you wouldn’t suspect.

At the center of WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR is a meditation on finding one’s identity and transformation, not in thrills or scares. (Although it does have a few of those.) While some would write this off as a COVID-centric film — apart from a sole snippet in one scene, no two major players act alongside each other — it’s also about how people reach out through technology when there’s no other way. It’s a heartfelt, singular work, and I can’t wait to see more from Jane.

Lastly, I’ll note: this may seem antithetical for an -extraordinarily online- work, but try to make the effort to see it in the theater if possible. The use of negative space, of silence, of punctuational sound — especially rain — and most certainly of hard-cuts to loading animations is so goddamn effective when blown up and taken out of a smaller screen context. It becomes almost overwhelming and daunting in a way that one rarely thinks about, but one that is certainly intended.

“I swear, some day soon, I’m just going to disappear, and you won’t have any idea what happened to me.”

SCREAM (2022)

April 7, 2022

(VOD/Paramount+) The SCREAM franchise has always been culturally and technologically relevant so I can’t say I’m surprised that the fifth SCREAM film — which self-describes itself as a reinvention, despite slavishly adhering to the original’s trappings — was a financial success.

However, even if this is a franchise that is fundamentally about being paint-by-numbers, SCREAM (2022) rings a bit perfunctory at times. It certainly doesn’t feel as inventive as directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s previous very violent take on Agatha Christie’s AND THEN THERE WERE NONE: READY OR NOT. It replays the first SCREAM’s opening scene and mimics many of the initial film’s beats and the rules the franchise has previously underscored (as opposed to invented — it’s practically an adaptation of everything laid out in Carol J. Clover’s brilliant series of essays on slashers: MEN, WOMEN, AND CHAINSAWS), although that’s not quite a crime given the understood confines of the slasher genre.

I always felt the initial SCREAM film was far more interesting because it lead with Sidney Prescott already being traumatized by the rape and murder of her mother, as opposed to being some naive teen. She was a survivor from the very opening, living and coping with her trauma, which is surprisingly rare with initial slasher entries.

There’s a similar, but completely different weight hanging over SCREAM (2022) lead character Sam Carpenter (the versatile Melissa Barrera) that I won’t spoil, but it is an interesting — albeit far-fetched — character note.

Along with Melissa Barrera, it has a brilliant supporting cast: a goofy Jack Quaid (TRAGEDY GIRLS) as Sam’s boyfriend, Jenna Ortega (YOU and JANE THE VIRGIN) as Sam’s sister, Jasmin Savoy Brown (THE LEFTOVERS) as the queer film nerd, the ever-defiant Mikey Madison (BETTER THINGS), and the very game returning cast.

Is this as good as the first SCREAM? No, of course not, but that was something singular and I’m sure SCREAM (2022) lands differently for youths than it does for someone like me who was alive when it first hit screens. Is SCREAM (2022) a wild and unpredictable ride? Yes and no, respectively. Is it worth your time? Certainly, it’s very well-honed and executed, as colorful and full of camera motion and crane shots as the original, and a despite a bit of flab, mostly tightly plotted.

“How can fandom be toxic? It’s about love!”

YOU WON’T BE ALONE (2022)

April 3, 2022

If forced to describe YOU WON’T BE ALONE, the first film from Goran Stolevski, in a simple log line, I’d say: it’s equal parts Truffaut’s THE WILD CHILD, Virginia Woolf’s novel ORLANDO and Sally Potter’s film adaptation, and Angela Carter’s THE BLOODY CHAMBER and Neil Jordan’s adaptation, THE COMPANY OF WOLVES. (Then again, every single one of those works were very formative for me, so I’m perhaps not the most reliable narrator for this write-up.)

While that may sound very specific, it doesn’t quite do YOU WON’T BE ALONE justice. Set in 19th century Macedenoia, it’s about a young girl promised to a wolf-eateress named Maria (a ruthlessly great Anamaria Marinca) — for all intents and purposes, a witch — by her mother to account for being set fire to at the hands of their community. Her mother then forces her daughter into an enclosed cave for the rest of her youth, in an attempt to prevent the witch from absconding with her and turning her into a wolf-eateress/witch.

Once the feral girl is grown, Maria kills the mother, takes on her disguise, and abducts Biliana (Alice Englert, who also appeared in THE POWER OF THE DOG), predictably changing her into a witch with the hopes that she’d be the daughter she never had.

What follows are a number of physical transformations, of Biliana exploring her humanity but in a rather flailing way, and often being disappointed by the results, all portrayed by depictions of fundamental elementals; hair, water, fire, earth, blood and skin.

It’s a bewildering work, one far more sensitive than I thought it’d be, with a wildly roaming camera that knows how to sit still when necessary. It’s visually astounding while also being quietly desperate; a stunningly heartfelt first film.