Don't Look Now (1973)

Laura: One of your children has posed a curious question: if the world is round, why is a frozen lake flat?
John: That's a good question.
Laura: Ah, here it says that Lake Ontario curves more than 3 degrees from its Eastern end to its Western end. So frozen water really isn't flat.
John: Nothing is what it seems.

This brief exchange in the opening minutes of Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now comes about as close as is possible to understanding one of cinema’s most difficult films. The movie, equally an existential search for understanding, an examination of grief and coping with loss, and a study of faith and doubt, is one that constantly keeps a definitive explanation at arm’s length. With its myriad of visual motifs, fluid concept of time, and fragmented style of editing, it’s a movie that encourages audiences to interpret, while at the same time resists interpretation. The movie’s ending doesn’t make any grand proclamations of intent, instead providing the audience with more confusion. Roeg has gone on record as stating, “For me, the basic premise is that in life, nothing is what it seems.” Not to get too philosophical, but at its core, it’s a movie that reflects man’s internal struggle with his world – that constant need to understand or believe, despite not being able to fully do either. It’s about trusting what you know, not necessarily what is known. The fact that all of this is infused into a tragic ghost story makes it all the more wonderful.

The film, adapted from Daphne du Maurier’s short story of the same name, ends up being one of the most literate examples of moviemaking in film history. Everything about the film – the narrative, editing, setting, imagery, score, acting, etc. – is a means to an end. The story isn’t going to provide many answers on its own, but, combined with all the other elements involved in crafting a film, it is able to create meaning. Oddly, despite being a Hollywood favorite (she had many short stories and novels adapted into movies, among them Hitchcock’s 1940 Best Picture winner, Rebecca, and his 1963 film, The Birds), du Maurier wasn’t considered an exceptionally literary author. It speaks quite a bit to Roeg’s directorial talent that he was able to mount such hefty ambitions onto what is a rather straightforward horror tale.

This is a movie that uses so much more than just a narrative to get its message across; focusing on the plot to analyze this film would leave you puzzled at best. The story concerns a couple, John and Laura Baxter (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie), who have to deal with the death of their daughter, Christine Baxter (Sharon Williams). They temporarily relocate to Venice because John has been hired to restore a dilapidated church. In Venice, weird shit starts happening. What do all of these weird things mean? Do they mean anything at all? What the film does impeccably is marry its story with film technique. The editing intentionally meshes and confuses time. We often see things from the past or future in shots of the present. For instance, take the sex scene between John and Laura. We have a passionate sex scene between two grief stricken parents intercut with the mundaneness of them getting dressed to go out afterwards. It blends time and two seemingly unrelated acts (intercourse and getting dressed) to show the drastic difference between each partner’s method of coping. This is a couple that’s coping with the loss of a child, yet they still have the desire to express their love for one another. However, afterwards Laura is seemingly on the path to recovery while John turns to alcohol. The meshing of time makes the point that time itself isn’t going to heal the couple’s wounds – only directly dealing with them will. There are a number of examples where the film is edited for a similar effect, all to make the point that time is illusory. Our behavior and feelings are influenced by past, present, and future, and the film attempts to condense that all into one.

The way Roeg uses symbolic imagery and motifs throughout the film is another way he adds to the narrative. Water, glass, and pictures all recur to create meaning. The film frequently shows glass breaking before something terrible happens (Christine’s death, John falling in the church, Laura fainting at dinner), which serves as a reminder of how tragedy and coping with grief can shatter even the most healthy family. The film closely associates water with death. Christine drowns at the beginning of the film, bodies are dragged from canals in Venice, even Venice itself, a city where waterways are common modes of transportation, is being ravaged by a serial killer. With water being the most essential component to sustain life, Roeg is able to turn the idea on its head in an effort to comment on the precarious link between life and death. The recurring pictures are part of a larger doubles motif throughout the film. John, an architect, looks at pictures of the church he is restoring and the real thing. He also takes tiles from a mosaic in need of repair and attempts to differentiate between the manufactured and the authentic tiles. Part of this “doubling” involves people as well, as a handful of times throughout the film people are mistaken for someone else. In fact, the ending of the film is an example of this idea. Roeg’s point is made clearest with this motif – in a world where “nothing is what is seems” how can one tell the difference between a fake and the real thing?

Don’t Look Now is a movie that uses everything a movie possibly can to create meaning. It’s a movie I wish happened more often, but I’ll take it when I can get it. Roeg creates an atmosphere, mood, and uses specific film techniques throughout his story to compliment it. Everything about the movie is done to convey its theme to the audience. It’s a film that demands multiple viewings, but will also likely reward them. In short, it’s a very different kind of film than audiences are used to. Still, it’s a wonderful one and is instantly among my favorite horror movies.

The Loved Ones (2009)

Adolescence, that romanticized period of great suffering, seems like the most natural point of entry for the torture porn film. Having seen 2009’s Australian import, The Loved Ones, I’m left wondering what took so long. Teenagers make for great fictional fodder, and there’s no kind of film that can depict suffering of any sort better than torture porn. The result is a wholly original take on a typical, standard horror story.

Writer/director Sean Byrne’s debut film follows main character Brent Mitchell (Xavier Samuel) as he attempts to deal with the guilt of killing his father in a car accident. Brent’s ways of dealing with that guilt are as misguided as you would expect from an adolescent. He smokes weed, cuts himself with a razor, and ponders suicide. His lone source of hope is his girlfriend Holly (Victoria Thane). One day at school, fellow classmate Lola Stone (Robin McLeavy) asks Brent to prom, and he politely refuses because he’s already planning on going with his girlfriend. It’s quite a nice rejection, and there’s no reason to think Lola would take offense. However, what Brent, and the entire town, doesn’t know, is that Lola and her father, Daddy Stone (John Brumpton), are about as sane as Leatherface’s parents. Brent goes for a walk on the day of the dance, is attacked as he listens to music, and finds himself being held captive in the home of the Stones. From that point on, the film decidedly earns its torture porn label.

Instead of simply showing the audience Brent’s ordeal with Lola and her father, which ends up being about as standard a torture porn trope as you could find, Byrne juxtaposes the happenings with some good, old-fashioned, grounded in reality, teenage angst. Brent’s best pal Jamie (Richard Wilson) ends up going to the dance with his dream girl, the goth Mia (Jessica McNamee). It’s this plot line, which in a lesser filmmaker’s hands would feel superfluous and unrelated, that manages to give the film a little more substance than one would initially expect. I’ll spare the details since the movie reveals them slowly, but it’s fair to call Mia one psychologically fucked up chick. Like Brent, she’s incapable of healthily dealing with her problems, and resorts to drinking, drugs, and fucking to release her pain. Some might fault the film for how open ended it leaves this plot line, but any sort of resolution would be forced and condescending. Mia’s predicament isn’t something that just gets better. We end up getting a full picture of who Mia is, and that’s all that’s necessary for the film since her character exists as a point of contrast. If anything, the film ties itself together a little too neatly. Everything and everyone is connected. The point, I guess, is to show the impact Lola and her father’s serial killings have had on everyone in the town, but it doesn’t really feel important. We’re drawn to the film because of the teenagers, and anything else just feels unnecessary.

The real strength of the movie is the aforementioned teenage characters. Byrne manages to create a handful of characters that are fairly representative of the teenage experience in a running time of less than 90 minutes. They may be broadly drawn, but I’d argue that most teenagers are anyway. The people they are aren’t exactly people everyone knew as a teenager, but they’re close enough. The film creates a hyper stylized, incredibly violent version of teenage life. Brent’s the loner who does what he wants; Lola’s the spoiled rotten brat whose parents cow-towed to her every wish; Holly’s the popular, pretty girl; Mia’s the goth chick with issues; and Jamie is the typical male friend who’s only looking to get laid. The only difference is in this world, the princess gets to lobotomize her crushes so she can keep them forever and torture them the way she feels tortured.

The film’s concerns with the uniqueness of being a teen isn’t quite The Breakfast Club (it’s about a step or two down in terms of insight), but it counteracts that with gory, grisly violence and a very dark sense of humor. Unlike most torture porn movies, The Loved Ones doesn’t bog itself down with simply trying to gross its audience out. The requisite gore and violence is certainly present, but it strives for a bit more, and that’s always a worthy aim. Those looking for a straight torture porn movie in the vein of the Saw films might not be happy with Byrne’s film, and art-house audiences might find its bluntness off-putting. It’s destined to be a cult film once it finds itself an audience.

The Wicker Man (1973)

Most movie watchers are accustomed to horror films where the horror arises strictly from situations the characters encounter through plot development. In that regard, 1973’s The Wicker Man is a different breed of horror film entirely. The story unfolds more like a slow burn thriller (with the occasional odd musical interlude) than it does anything resembling your typical scary movie. In fact, until The Big Reveal of the last 10-15 minutes, it’s tough to even consider it a horror film. The movie is much more concerned with the ideas and causes behind what is taking place than it is with strictly what is taking place. It ends up being a picture that’s less visceral and more intellectual – one that’s scarier when you sit down and think about it.

The film’s plot is rather simple: Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) comes to the island of Summerisle to investigate the disappearance of a young girl. Howie is met with indifference and resistance when he starts his investigation. As the investigation moves along, Howie soon realizes he’s being told lies and suspects a town-wide cover up of the girl’s death. While the story deals solely with Howie’s investigation, that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what the movie is really about.

The key to the movie is the contrast between Howie’s devout Christianity and the inhabitants of Summerisle’s devout Paganism. It’s all tied into the narrative about the missing girl, but there’s no mistaking by the end of the film that the religious aspect is what’s been more important throughout. Howie sees the islanders as heathens, and they see him as a fool. Neither accepts the other as anything more than a weirdo or outsider, and that’s where the film’s main source of conflict arises. Both Howie and the people of Summerisle see the world through their separate religious perspectives. There’s no way they’re ever going to understand one another or learn to coexist because they’re unable to comprehend why someone would be different in the first place. These people are all living as if their one way is the only possible way.

There’s a sequence in the middle of the film where our “hero” visits the island’s local schoolhouse that goes a long way to explaining exactly what this film is about. After chastising the teacher’s methods as “corrupting the young” (because, you know, since he’s a Christian police officer, he’s an authority on these things), Howie shows the students (all girls) a picture of the missing girl, and asks if they know who she is. They claim they don’t, but Howie notices an empty desk and asks whose it is. When he takes a look at the desk, he opens it up and sees a beetle walking around a nail that it’s tied to with a piece of string. The creepy young girl looks at him and says, “The little old beetle goes 'round and 'round. Always the same way, y'see, until it ends up right up tight to the nail. Poor old thing!” It’s a wonderful visualization of the movie’s theme – that people who blindly follow anything (in this case religion) are ultimately controlled by that thing, and end up “right up tight to the nail”. In addition to showing how the theme applies to Howie, just before the schoolhouse scene begins, the sergeant is watching the school’s male students parade around a wooden pole while holding long streamers attached to the pole. It’s a visual parallel to the beetle going around the nail used to condemn the townspeople’s way of life just as much as Howie’s. These sorts of subtle visual metaphors are all over the film (the ending visually echoes Christ’s walk to the cross), and I imagine rewatching the movie would be rewarding.

It should be noted that The Wicker Man has a number of flaws. For all the inspired moments of visual metaphor, there are far too many moments of dullness. At times, the way certain information is relayed to the viewer is uninvolving. For instance, Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee) and Howie have a long talk about Paganism that ends up being a clumsy way to communicate his back-story and his religion to the audience. There’s another instance where Howie is reading a book on Paganism in the library where, via voiceover, the contents of the book are relayed to the audience. Again, that’s a sloppy and uninteresting way of giving the audience information.

There’s also the problem with the way the main character is presented. Howie functions as something of a surrogate for the audience. We’re invited to see things the way he does since he’s the typical “hero” of these kinds of movies. I imagine this was a more successful tactic in 1973 than in 2012, as being open minded about religion has become a bit more typical. Plus, the fact that Howie is an uptight jerk makes him a difficult character to relate to unless you’re also an uptight jerk. This misstep ends up being the film’s most significant fault. The ending, where it’s revealed that the townspeople have orchestrated the entire missing girl case as a test of Howie’s faith (they need his pure faith to make a successful sacrifice to their Pagan gods), would have been incredibly affecting if the movie had spent time making us root for Howie. Instead, we get a really smart, clever condemnation of everyone, but one that is emotionally hollow. You get the sense that Howie gets what he deserves rather than the complete shock that would result from identifying with him. I’m not necessarily against an unlikable protagonist, but the lack of identification with literally everyone in the film, made this a hard one for me to care about. As stated earlier, it’s more of an intellectual exercise than anything else. However, the movie successfully makes its point, which is something that’s always appreciated.

The Wicker Man was a movie that initially left me feeling a bit indifferent, but the more I contemplated the ideas of the film, the more I appreciated what it is trying to do and how smart it really is. I can’t give it an unconditional recommendation, but it’s definitely a movie I can see getting better with repeated viewings. It’s much more invested in its visuals than its story (especially at the end; I can’t stress enough how smart it is), which is something to be appreciated for a horror film. There just isn’t enough feeling in it for me to agree with the film’s exquisite reputation.

Night of the Comet (1984)

Disclaimer: I'm switching the format for this month in order to write about horror films. There won't be a money shot, just a review/analysis of 15 different horror movies this month. Since I haven't posted in a while, 15 in one month might seem like a daunting task to some. Not me.

The definitive moment in 1984’s horror/sci-fi comedy Night of the Comet takes place about halfway through the film as humanity’s last hope, teenage sisters Reggie and Sam Belmont (Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney, respectively), parade around a seemingly vacant shopping mall trying on the latest trends in 80s teen fashion while Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” blares from the speakers. No one’s going to accuse the moment of being subtle, but it does manage to get the movie’s point across. It doesn’t matter if it’s a girl or a guy – teenagers just want to have fun.

That message, trite and unsophisticated as it may be, fits the B-movie vibe of the film like a glove. The film’s effects were probably dated a week after production wrapped, and the highest praise I can give the acting is passable at best. The rough plot – Earth passes through the tail of a comet that ends up killing most of the planet’s population and morphing the rest into zombie-like fiends, save for a select few who accidentally or knowingly barricade themselves under steel enforced structures – is nothing more than an amalgam of just about every late night cable horror/sci-fi movie you’ve ever seen. If you’re reminded of The Omega Man (made 12 years prior and itself a remake of 1964’s The Last Man on Earth and also remade in 2007 as I Am Legend), or the original Dawn of the Dead, you’re on the right track. Countless (bad) movies that no one remembers have been made using a similar premise as well. Night of the Comet has little in common with those films (the good ones or the bad ones) in the details or spirit, and that ultimately makes it a much different film than its predecessors.

In addition to the horror/sci-fi combo, the film mixes in another genre that was wildly popular at the time: the teen comedy. It ends up being the movie’s most interesting aspect and the main reason it rises above the cheese-fests it initially appears to hold as brethren. You can’t really talk about the 80s in film without mentioning the titanic wave of teen comedies. Whether you’re talking about Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Porky’s, the Revenge of the Nerds series, Teen Wolf, Back to the Future, Say Anything, Heathers, or the vast majority of John Hughes’ filmography, you just can’t ignore the sheer number of successful teen films made during the decade. In 1984, Night of the Comet fell firmly within a Hollywood culture that was very interested in making money off of teenagers and their plight. So, what we end up with is a mesh of horror/sci-fi and 80s teen comedy. It’s a unique sort of genre blending, and probably something only possible in the 80s.

The movie is worth seeing and praising because of how it manages to convey a tone that’s completely at odds with the world it creates. Someone searching for some deeper meaning might say that the conflict between the film’s background influences (horror/sci-fi films) and it’s more upfront influences (teen comedies) reflects the mindset of your typical teenager at odds with the teenage and adult worlds. The movies referenced by the plot give the viewer an automatic expectation of a movie that’s about survival and the loneliness of being the last few people on Earth. However, the film only generically touches on any of that. As the referenced scene at the beginning of this write-up alludes to, survival comes second to being fashionable. Hell, one might even make the case that in a teenager’s world, being fashionable is essential to survival.

There’s a clever one-liner towards the end where Sam “surprisingly” shows up in the nick of time to rescue Reggie that illustrates just how concerned the movie is with celebrating teenage life. Instead of Reggie giving Sam a hug or thanking her for saving her life, she utters the line, “cute outfit.” It’s certainly a girly, cheesy moment, but it’s played for laughs and works well within the context of the film.

Let’s also take a look at how the girls are able to survive the comet in the first place. It’s mentioned that being within a steel structure is the probable reason the comet doesn’t turn the girls into burnt orange dust. However, the reasons they’re in those steel structures in the first place are more important to the movie than them simply being underneath steel beams. Reggie is holing up in the projection room of the movie theater where she works to have sex with her boyfriend. It’s also worth mentioning that she lied to her step mother about where she would be for the night. Sam gets into an actual fight with her nasty, bitch of a stepmother, and runs away from home and sleeps in a yard shed. It’s also later revealed that Hector (the last man on Earth, and the man the girls bicker about) spent the night in the bed of his steel truck with a woman he recently picked up. The point is all three are behaving like normal teenagers by lying to their parents, fighting with their parents, having sex, and running away from home. Since we’ve all seen Scream and know the “rules of horror movies”, these actions would normally land them all as the first victims of the film. Instead, these kids aren’t killed for acting irresponsibly, but are rewarded for their actions and become the heroes of our movie.

The film’s final act introduces us to a group of scientists who prepared for the comet’s arrival by creating an underground bunker. They’re working on a serum that they hope will cure those who survived but are being turned into zombies. The idea behind this plot thread is to serve as a point of contrast to the teenagers. The scientists represent the adult world’s conservativeness and selfishness. The group eventually becomes exposed to the virus because of a silly little detail they overlooked. They begin coaxing younger people (teenagers and children) into their underground bunker, in order to use them as guinea pigs to find a cure. They are quite literally sucking the life out of these kids. The point is that by not trying to safeguard against every possible negative outcomes, and instead having some fun, you’ll live a better life. It’s an interesting way to state your point, but this plot development bogs the film down and takes away from the unadulterated fun vibe the first two-thirds of the film has.

Given the odd combination of movie genres that make up Night of the Comet, it’s easy to see why this is more of a cult film than a classic from the 80s. To me, a movie described as a teenage zombie comedy is something I’m going to make a point of seeing. That’s because I’m awesome. Not everyone is, and that’s something we all have to come to terms with. Night of the Comet isn’t a great, or scary, movie, but it’s a fun one because of its attention to detail, clever writing, and energy. There’s more brains put into this than you would expect, and more than in virtually any blockbuster made today. I appreciated the effort and the result.