Into the Dark: They Come Knocking (2019)

directed by Adam Mason
USA
85 minutes
2 stars out of 5
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I love Black Eyed Kids, they're one of my favorite pieces of urban folklore and I've been fascinated by them for probably over a decade. Which is why, like with Pooka!, I was really hoping this movie would focus more heavily on the creature and less on the feature. They Come Knocking is mostly about a family who are still raw from the loss of their mother and are tossing blame around like a football all while getting stuck in an RV out in the desert. The family stuff is... fairly cliche, not necessarily badly done or anything, and also I have never undergone the same experience as the people in this movie, so I can't be the best judge. But it didn't feel original, is all.

I guess it kind of makes sense from a filmmaking standpoint that we don't see the BEKs for the brunt of this movie. Not a lot is known about them and there's only so much you can do with creatures whose only features are that they have black eyes, they look like kids, and they ask to be let in, after which time they do... something. We don't even know what they do when they get let in. I don't think more than a handful of BEK experience tales tell us what happens to people who let them in. There's a slight implication in They Come Knocking that they're going after the youngest member of the family to presumably turn her into one of their own, which is super interesting, but again, not elaborated upon. Some other extraneous stuff is added like growling noises and the ability to appear as other people that is definitely not part of the original stories, but hey, stuff mutates over time I guess?

I do really appreciate that they had a little girl character who dressed somewhat androgynously, in jeans and collared shirts under sweaters. That was "girl who absolutely refuses to wear girly clothes" representation and I rarely ever see it for girls that young.

Ultimately I don't think this really commits any major sin other than being boring when it's based on source material that had the potential to be super interesting, since there still aren't many Black Eye Kid-themed horror movies out there. I usually go nuts for "camper van stranded in the desert" movies but this one failed to be as enjoyable as even the less original, more hammy ones. I appreciated it, but it isn't the best.

Into the Dark: Pooka! (2018)

directed by Nacho Vigalondo
USA
90 minutes
3 stars out of 5
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I wanted to see this for a long time because of the hype around it, but I had trouble finding it since I had no idea it was considered an episode of a TV series rather than a movie on its own. I'll be referring to it and the others in the Into the Dark anthology series as "movies"/"films" for simplicity. Also, I was very hopeful that this would have something to do with the actual Púca (or whichever way your particular tradition spells it), the folklore creature, but it really doesn't.

Sometimes when I watch a movie I'll get a feeling like it's deliberately leaving something out, and sometimes that feeling will be because it had a surprise up its sleeve for the final act, and sometimes it won't. I was getting that vibe in spades all throughout the beginning of Pooka!- just feeling like it was too simple, too cut-and-dry, falling back on too obvious tropes and leaving us with too little information. This is deliberate and sets up for a final quarter that whacks you in the face.

I liked most things about this, especially in retrospect after all those reveals at the end, but the one thing that bothered me is the same thing that bothers me about the Annabelle movies: nobody would deliberately design a toy like that. I'm not denying the appeal of ugly-cute, and I'm not trying to say that kids aren't weird and don't bond with weird stuff. I became very attached to a camera tripod as a child and considered it my friend. But the difference between that and the Pooka toy is that the toy was designed and manufactured to look really, obviously ugly. Not in a cute way; no one who looks at it can find any kind of comfort or identification- the two things that seem to draw children to toys- in its cold, pupil- and iris-less, segmented eyes. Nor can I figure out what the purpose of a toy that just says stuff back to you in different voices is. I feel like this movie was an idea first, and the filmmakers had trouble coming up with a physical form to back that idea.

But it is fun. Nacho Vigalondo hasn't done anything egregiously terrible thus far, in my opinion, and this does have his thumbprint on it, although it's got a bit of a different tone than his usual stuff. I'm looking forward to seeing the other installments in this series to see if, like Pooka!, they all have more of a "TV" feel than a "movie" feel.

Biotherapy (1986)

directed by Akihiro Kashima
Japan
36 minutes
4 stars out of 5
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I can say from experience that the absolute best and most enjoyable splatter films are A. Japanese, and B. usually under like 50 minutes long. To be living in Japan in the 80s and coming across these bizarre, quick trips into a universe of neon and ketchupy blood on tape at an underground video store must have been a revelatory experience. Nowadays we just come across them as unlisted youtube videos with under 20 views, which is less magical, but I suppose still preserves the spirit of discovery.

Biotherapy is relatively light on plot but heavy on ideas, if that makes sense. It takes a framework that only needs a few words to sum it up (an alien tries to steal a new secret formula from a group of scientists) and adds a barrage of exposition towards the end that makes it go from just fun to watch to fascinating and original. Out of nowhere the end of the entire world is invoked and the gravity of the film increases a thousandfold. We witness in slimy glory the turning point that defines this generation of humanity against a disturbing future "other" who nonetheless presents some valid points. Biotherapy is a mirror to ourselves, asking how far we can go before we become unrecognizable. It's also very interesting that the "alien" is almost identical (well, with the mask on) to the "Hat Man" figure who's become a bit of a modern urban legend.

My favorite thing about this is that it seems to almost revel in how gooey the practical effects are. I feel like this film knows how good it looks and wants to show it off. Often, during particularly gory bits, the camera will do that "record scratch" effect where it skips forward and back by a frame, for no reason I can see other than emphasis on the ooze. Once or twice a freeze-frame closeup is also used. I have to love any movie that feels as enthusiastic about its own practical effects as this one.

Braid (2018)

directed by Mitzi Peirone
USA
82 minutes
4 stars out of 5
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At first glance Braid appears chaotic, a parade of psychedelic colors and drug references that never ever chills out ever, but there's an intricate method to the madness: for one example, the motif of things coming in threes repeats throughout, from obvious places like three dolls lined up or three statues in a garden to things that make you think "was that intentional?" like a neon "XXX" sign on a character's bedroom wall.

Accompanying the eye-popping aesthetic is a highly original plot. Two girls in dire need of money after an unspecified mess-up with their formerly lucrative drug business turn to a last resort: their reclusive third wheel from childhood, now living alone in a mostly-empty mansion dedicating her entire life to playing "house". What at first starts as a mission to retrieve a safe stuffed with cash (because the weird ones always have a safe stuffed with cash, don't they?) turns into an all-encompassing ego death trip that stretches genre boundaries. "Braid" as a title seems to be a reference to the inevitably intertwined nature of the three girls, although that could be grasping at straws. Even though everything is ambiguous and arguably can be chalked up to lots and lots of drugs, there's something unsettling at the heart of Braid, and after a while everything starts to feel fake in a way that echoes the repeated shots of dollhouse interiors matching the appearance of the full-size sets.

In this house we love and appreciate Madeline Brewer and all her Weird Girl™ roles. There's kind of an unpleasant undercurrent of stereotype in Braid, and some of the conclusions it draws about behavior are predictable, but I feel like having a movie where a girl can maybe bend reality with her game of make-believe can only be understood by the characters who are un-involved with the game (like the cop) with expressions like "insanity", even if the truth is far more bizarre than any kind of mental or physical condition.

I think this movie takes some risks by leaving so much either ambiguous or unexplained, but also I'm one of those people who, when viewing a movie where "maybe it was ghosts?" is a possible explanation- no matter how half-hearted and even if it's used as a poor excuse- will immediately draw the conclusion that it definitely was ghosts. This isn't supernatural in the sense of hauntings or demons, but there's high strangeness. For a minute I was going to criticize this movie for its empty use of a popular design motif (the amount of neon and bright colors it uses) but then I realized, what's the point of splitting hairs over whether something is doing surrealism or simply emulating surrealism? At best, taking a gatekeeping stance like that is reductive and prejudiced, especially for someone like me who can't claim to be able to do any better. Braid should be taken at surface value, from the complexity of its plot to the way it looks. But it is also best enjoyed with a very open mind.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)

directed by André Øvredal
USA
111 minutes
3.5 stars out of 5
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Like most people my age, a large part of my introduction to horror as a child was defined by Alvin Schwartz' series of Scary Stories books accompanied by Stephen Gammell's persistently horrifying drawings. Seeing the movie in adulthood after being permanently affected by those books, as opposed to going into it without being familiar with the source material, is an entirely different experience that constructs the film as something with an equally balanced ratio of good things to bad.

For me, much of the reason the books stuck with me so much was because they were entirely new and I didn't fully know how to comprehend them. I was familiar with the category of "ghost story", but I had never seen anything as bizarre as those wispy, spidery illustrations or the nonsensical stories that somehow, nonetheless, had a vibe of finality and inevitability to them. Now I'm used to seeing weird stuff as an avid horror fan, so it packs less of a punch. Scary Stories the film does the creatures of the original book justice, although it uses them too sparingly. It picks and chooses what stories it represents and often the ones it shows aren't the freakiest or most memorable. Huge props for the lady in the hospital hallways, though. It took that already terrifying illustration and transformed it into something even more uncanny for its ability to move.

Anybody going into this movie expecting hardcore, unsparing straight horror a la Hereditary or The Witch will be disheartened, because this is something that feels like it aims at a younger demographic, and that's great. I feel like adults take it as a personal insult when adaptations of the things they loved as children feel too much like they're aimed at children, because we forget that we were children too when we first read them. Scary Stories feels like a teen movie (although a lot of it is really gnarly for a PG-13 rating) and I'm really happy to imagine the next generation of horror fans seeing themselves onscreen in the character of Stella.

This is somewhat tangential, but half the reason I wanted to write this review is because I was so disappointed with how they handled Ramón in the end. His big secret is that he's dodging the draft, because he's seen firsthand through the death of his brother that the Vietnam war is no place for him. The injustice of the war and Nixon's awfulness is a recurring theme, and yet somehow, the last time we see Ramón, he's on an Army bus. Is that supposed to be hopeful? Because to me all it's doing is proving that Ramón was the one in the wrong, and in doing so, proving that the monster composed of body parts who barks "Coward!" at him was right. That Nixon was right. That the sneering cops and judgey high-schoolers were right, and that he was a coward. It didn't feel like a happy ending at all.

A Traffic Controller on Crossroads (1986)

directed by Phyo Kwang
North Korea
59 minutes
3 stars out of 5
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So this is a North Korean propaganda movie about a traffic controller who stops a man for using a business truck for personal use, only to later find out that he was using it to deliver a washing machine to her apartment. They have run-ins throughout the film after that, and she's torn between being nice to this guy and fulfilling her duty to the State. It's fairly easy to guess which wins over in the end.

The situations in this film are weirdly relatable because of that brand of slightly uncomfortable, mundane humor that's popular in the U.S. and Britain- being a traffic cop and fining somebody and then running into them over and over again off-duty and having to be polite sounds like it could be a one-off plot from Seinfeld or something. It's easy to get wrapped up in the strangely wholesome story until the film hits you with that obligatory speech about doing your duty to the current regime, etc. I wanted to talk about this movie because the way people in the U.S. talk about North Korea is really messed up. We talk as if we live in a bubble of freedom that everyone should aspire to emulate exactly. How many mass shootings have there been in the past week again? And on a less deadly scale, how chaotic are most of our roads in big cities?

I used to see these television advertisements for the U.S. Army that showed a young adult sitting down with their parent/s and talking to them about wanting to join the Army. The parents were shown as briefly conflicted, and in that quick expression of fear and uncertainty was implied the ugly truth about the Army: so my child wants to voluntarily go to another country and be prepared to kill people? What if they end up as a drone operator who bombs a school, a library, a mosque, a hospital? Also implicit in that expression of uncertainty was the fact that as a U.S. citizen you are socialized to put aside these extremely valid fears and do your duty for the country anyway. The only difference is we don't have a draft, at least not yet. How different is that to being a North Korean traffic controller and being told you have to choose enforcing the rules, even if it loses you friends, over letting small things slide? 

I have to note, because people get very easily bent out of shape about this and lose the point or ignore it completely, that I am not in favor of North Korea. I am not in favor of a regime that oppresses its citizens in any way. However, this also means that I am not in favor of the current U.S. regime. America and North Korea aren't two sides of the same coin, one bright and shining and full of freedom and the other a wasteland full of sawdust-filled bread and coat factories. They're cut from the same cloth, with different P.R. guys at the helm.

The Hole in the Ground (2019)

directed by Lee Cronin
Ireland/Finland
90 minutes
3.5 stars out of 5
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This was one of those movies I'd been looking forward to for a long time, but had forgotten why or what it was specifically about other than having a sort of air of dark mystery to it. It is very very new but I don't believe it's embargoed or anything because there are a lot of other reviews out there.

So the film is about a young mother who's going it alone with her young son after an un-elaborated-upon incident in her past involving the father of her child. It follows in the tradition of horror movies that touch on the wilder fears of any single parent regarding their children- first, that they might be in physical danger, then that something darker might be encroaching upon them. The titular hole in the ground is an unexplained and deeply unnerving image that is shown only when it absolutely needs to be, and it's much more effective for that. You expect it to be just sort of person-sized, right? Nasty things can still come out of a relatively small hole. Well, it's not. This is a yawning chasm, an eerily mobile gigantic hole large enough to swallow a small house. Looking down into it provides that sense of the "call of the void" that a smaller hole would not.

There's a recurring theme in this film of things being broken open and exposed. We see it once in the protagonist's waking nightmare of her son violently forcing someone's arm sideways so hard that it cracks open and exposes the bone, and again in a second vision of her son pulling at the edges of the scar on her forehead until it rips open. And we see it most importantly in the hole itself: it's not just a static thing with no bottom, it's a constantly widening seam in the earth that leads to somewhere bad- somewhere other. I think this movie draws a lot on the fear of confronting yourself that can become loudest when you're alone; symbolism like doppelgangers and mirrors enforce this.

There were times that I felt like The Hole in the Ground did things too predictably and didn't go as far into true horror as it could have. It uses elements that are very well-worn in the genre and doesn't make them any more interesting than any of the other times we've seen them, like for instance the trope of the random "insane" person delivering a warning that no one believes until it's too late. But at other times I also felt like it was too direct with what it was showing us, like the boy's slightly ridiculous, immersion-breaking feats of strength and the CGI towards the end- although in the latter case it was shrouded in darkness enough that it stayed in keeping with the realism of the rest of the film. These are small complaints that don't take away from the fact that this is a good, dark slow burn of a movie with some fantastic child acting to back it up. I think at this point A24 is the only studio that I truly count on for good quality, even if there is still a spectrum from "just decent" to "amazing" in that promise of quality.

The Omega Man (1971)

directed by Boris Sagal
USA
98 minutes
2.5 stars out of 5
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(putting this review up a day early for the book club)

I know that this movie and Charlton Heston's whole career are regarded as extremely hammy, and I'm not going to argue with that because it's true, but in comparison to I Am Legend, I have to say The Omega Man is the more faithful of the two to the original story. This is because the vampires in Omega Man have agency, whereas I Am Legend takes one look at that idea, scoffs, and goes "our CGI department has a fix for that". Also, if you read the book, the main character is Charlton Heston. It's like he was written with that actor in mind.

So as I said, this one gives its vampires agency, which I'm thankful for, but the problem is that it takes that agency in the wrong direction. The original vampires are frightening because they're too close to being us. Neville struggles with redefining his criteria of a human being, and ultimately decides that it only includes him. In The Omega Man, the vampires are scary because they want to get rid of war and destruction. That's literally it. They're a big group of albino people who disavow the fact that capitalism, warmongering, science used for ill, and political tensions ended the world, and apparently that's terrifying. Who would want to end war but a devious vampire? They glossed over the actual "vampire" bits as well, because the creatures in Omega Man didn't seem to care about Neville's blood. They just wanted to kill him for hanging onto his precious weapons of mass destruction.

Also, where do they get all those black robes from? I feel like maybe the vampires could have been more efficient if they devoted more time to planning and less time to coordinating a group fashion routine.

The whole idea of this film is a white man's fear that somebody is going to come take his power. It's probably not an intentional choice (or if so, not a choice intended to reflect power imbalances) that one of the main vampires is a black man, and that multiple other black people are shown turning into vampires, but it could also be taken as a powerful metaphor for the fear that everybody is going to become equal, and Neville as a white man will no longer have anyone to subjugate. The original book seems more concerned with treating women as sex objects than thinking critically about race (although there is a pretty appalling one-line caricature of a black man in there), and as a whole none of the films adapted from it have really touched upon any social themes. But I feel there is a missed opportunity to do so.

The Omega Man is really fun trash, not a lot of substance at all and certainly not as dark as the book. It breezes by at 98 minutes, a runtime that I feel is typically at the upper end of holding my attention, but unfortunately it doesn't have a dog in it, so how good can it really be?