Gerald's Game

GERALD’S GAME (Mike Flanagan, 2017)

With declining intimacy in their marriage in GERALD’S GAME, Jessie (Carla Gugino) and Gerald (Bruce Greenwood) go to an isolated lake house to spice up their relationship. She agrees to entertain his sexual wishes and consents to being handcuffed to the bed, but Jessie draws the line when he wants to play out a rape fantasy. Whether brought on by anger or something else, Gerald has a heart attack, collapses, and falls onto the floor when Jessie pushes him off of her. While her husband’s lack of movement and blood pooling around him is highly worrying, Jessie has a more pressing concern. She is shackled to the bed, cannot get free, and has no one nearby to hear her cries for help.

This desperate situation becomes more fraught when a hungry stray dog wanders into the bedroom. Seeking an escape of any kind, Jessie flees into her mind where she strategizes with herself, is taunted by her husband, remembers a painful child incident with her father (Henry Thomas), and avoids looking in the corner where she saw the death-like Moonlight Man (Carel Struycken).

The filmography of GERALD’S GAME director and co-writer Mike Flanagan reveals an aptitude for spinning psychological horror out of action largely confined to a house. Whether focusing on the brother and sister trying to capture evidence of an evil mirror in OCULUS or a deaf writer in the woods attempting to fend off a masked killer outside her home in HUSH, Flanagan demonstrates a knack for using location limitations to wring out the tension. The houses in these films don’t need to be inherently scary if they harbor an unhappy family history, expose vulnerabilities, or isolate, as in GERALD’S GAME. Although a dog licking its chops and the embodiment of death appear, the mind’s assessment of danger, coupled with its difficulty to produce a solution, generate the terror.

GERALD’S GAME shows that as a mental protection strategy, compartmentalization can be useful. Jessie bottles up her anxiety as best she can because it will help her survive. She summons strength by breaking things down into manageable bits and blocking out the rest as much as possible. Gugino’s performance relies on conveying an active mind scanning Jessie’s options for a solution. The character is bound and vulnerable, but Gugino displays the toughness and ingenuity that identify how constraints don’t have to make one weak.

The primary horror in this Stephen King adaptation is psychological. Flanagan expertly sets up the situation with a highly tense sequence that draws immediate identification with Jessie. While GERALD’S GAME pokes at mental discomfort, the director allows for one excellent gross-out moment that ought to provoke plenty of seat-squirming even if this film is only available to see on the smaller screens at home. In the film’s end Flanagan unnecessarily literalizes points, yet it’s hard to be too critical for the nice notes he plays regarding overcoming trauma.

Grade: B

It

IT (Andy Muschietti, 2017)

In October 1988 Georgie Denbrough (Jackson Robert Scott) goes out in the rain to play with the paper boat his older brother Bill (Jaeden Lieberher) makes for him, but he never comes back, having been attacked by the sewer-dwelling Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Bill Skarsgård). In IT Georgie’s tragic disappearance is curiously unexceptional. In Derry, Maine missing kids are like a seasonal crop. The next summer Bill remains persistent in his search for Georgie. The hunt he leads will bring him and his bullied friends, including jokester Richie (Finn Wolfhard) and Beverly (Sophia Lillis), the lone girl among this circle of self-identified losers, closer to whatever evil emerges every twenty-seven years.

Screenwriters Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga, and Gary Dauberman don’t attempt to adapt all 1100+ pages of Stephen King’s source novel for this version of IT, yet the film still feels like it’s racing to cram in as much plot as possible in 135 minutes. It’s breathlessly paced, which is a positive quality in a monstrously sized page-turner and a detriment when trying to build suspense and instill horror in a movie. Films create more tension through the anticipation of something will jumping out of the shadows. Alfred Hitchcock explained that suspense comes from letting the audience know something will happen and stretching out the moments until that event, such as knowing when a time bomb will go off. Having that bomb explode unexpectedly in a scene is merely surprise, providing a jolt for a few seconds rather than the suspense of several minutes. Instead of massaging scenes for the inherent terror in skulking around dark places, IT exhibits a tendency to cut right to that fleeting payoff when the evil thing reveals itself.

While IT feels unsatisfactory as a scary movie, it is more perceptive regarding the nature of fear. What frightens people is individualized, making the evil in Derry so horrific because it looks different according to the observer. Whether one is unnerved by clowns or not, Skarsgård’s friendly manner laced with menace and Pennywise’s extra-long, front teeth, suggesting a predatory, animal-like quality, makes this particular manifestation of a sinister, supernatural entity so disturbing. The double bind of a welcoming figure who exudes a sense of malevolence stirs up unease that can be easier to intuit than explain. The way Skarsgård overenunciates his t’s, like a sledgehammer smiting a spike, puts one on edge.

IT director Andy Muschietti excels at capturing how kids act with one another and coaxes terrific performances from his young cast. Depictions of teenage life on film often veer toward idealized reminiscences or sensational portraits of trauma. IT recognizes that the casual cruelty and extraordinary kindness teenagers are capable of are points on a spectrum, and the simplicity of moving along that line is what can make this particular stage intimidating and exciting. The group of kids is clever but not in a precocious way. Their wisdom is still limited by their ages. Unlike the caricature of a character he was saddled with in THE BOOK OF HENRY, Lieberher portrays Bill with the vulnerability and fortitude believable for a teen wrestling with tragedy. Lillis impresses in playing Beverly as someone whose experiences have made her wise beyond her years and aware of her power. As horror, IT can be lacking, but as teen drama it can be quite effective.

Grade: B-

Creepshow

CREEPSHOW (George A. Romero, 1982)

In sports it’s said that you play the game because having the best team on paper doesn’t guarantee wins.  Adapting the truism for movies, you watch a film because there’s no certainty the end product will be artistically successful no matter how good the assembled talent is.  CREEPSHOW boasts the director of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and DAWN OF THE DEAD and a screenplay by one of the most popular contemporary horror writers.  George A. Romero and Stephen King’s key roles seemingly assure spooky fun, but the anthology film turns out to be a mediocre effort short on scares and laughs.

CREEPSHOW plays up its 1950s horror comic book inspiration by occasionally setting action within printed frames, including captions, and utilizing page turn and panel wipe transitions.  In the prologue an angry father throws away his son’s horror comic, an action which he suffers for in the epilogue. The film’s five scary and comedic tales ostensibly come from the pages of this disreputable book.

In “Father’s Day” a family awaits the annual arrival of a relative who always visits her dad’s grave on the holiday when she murdered him.  “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” features the titular hillbilly (King) discovering that he shouldn’t have touched the meteor that landed on his property.  In “Something To Tide You Over” a vengeful husband (Leslie Nielsen) buries his wife (Gaylen Ross) and her lover (Ted Danson) up to their heads on the shore.  Unleashing the terrifying contents of a hidden box from an 1834 Arctic expedition has benefits and drawbacks for two college professors (Hal Holbrook and Fritz Weaver) in “The Crate”.  A ruthless businessman (E.G. Marshall) tries to eradicate the roaches invading his futuristic, supposedly germ-free penthouse in “They’re Creeping Up On You!”

Inevitably some segments will be better than others in omnibus films, but CREEPSHOW stacks the worst entries at the beginning. “Father’s Day” is essentially a long set-up for a gory punchline.  “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” has a couple amusing touches, like the character’s belief that the local college has a Department of Meteors to purchase his find and a suitably sick conclusion, yet King’s hammy performance obstructs any semblance of terror in the scenario.  Although “Something To Tide You Over” marks a shift toward striking the right balance between fear and dark humor, especially with shots that convey the drowning sensation, it’s padded with unmenacing scenes.

It’s not until “The Crate” that CREEPSHOW finally begins to deliver on the promise of its primary creative forces.  One professor’s fantasies of killing his vulgar wife (Adrienne Barbeau) lack comedic or horrific surprise, but there is a satisfyingly grisly death when a graduate student gets a chunk bitten out of his neck by the hideous monster.  Romero also sustains tension from the simple act of slowly trying to lock a crate.  The segment dallies in the beginning but works overall as a thematic exploration of the darkness that lurks in the hearts of men.  

CREEPSHOW largely avoids the broader social concerns in Romero’s other films until “They’re Creeping Up On You!”  The story is built around a cutthroat executive whose wealth allows him to be literally sealed off from society, which isn’t exactly subtle but makes the point effectively nonetheless.  More than the other entries, it taps into consistent creepiness by virtue of those nasty bugs, especially in the punctuating gross-out images.  

Although the humor in CREEPSHOW often falls flat, the film’s light touch with horror offsets some of the narrative tedium and predictability.  Two good stories out of five produces the kind of success rate acceptable for baseball batting averages, not movies.  A Romero and King collaboration had potential, but CREEPSHOW is about as frightening as a Halloween sound effects record.

Grade: C