The Shape of Water

THE SHAPE OF WATER (Guillermo del Toro, 2017)

The life of a mute cleaning woman in the early 1960s changes dramatically when she encounters the strange creature being studied in THE SHAPE OF WATER. Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) found an amphibian man (Doug Jones) in the rivers of South America and brings this great discovery to an aerospace facility in Baltimore with the intention of using it in research to assist the U.S. in the space race with the Soviet Union. While working the late shift there, Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) grows curious about this humanoid animal.

Injuries as an orphan have left Elisa unable to speak, but lacking a voice is no barrier to communicating with the amphibian man. Elisa feeds him hard-boiled eggs, plays him music, and teaches him signs. She is horrified by the abuse he receives from Strickland. When she overhears that the amphibian man is to be vivisected, Elisa is determined to break him out. She executes her plan with the help of her artist neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins), co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer), and, to her surprise, Dr. Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg), a Russian mole posing as an American researcher.

As strange as it sounds, THE SHAPE OF WATER might be thought of as AMÉLIE meets CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. Director and co-writer Guillermo del Toro’s ravishing film swirls together fantasy, romance, black-and-white Hollywood musicals, and old monster movies into a simple and oddly affecting love story. The film emphasizes the power of being seen and accepted as one is, even if in this instance half of the unlikely couple looks like the sort of abomination spoken of in legend to terrify children. Through the perspective of del Toro, whose fondness for monsters runs through his body of work, and Elisa, who can identify with feeling out of place, the amphibian man is not to be feared but empathized with. Alexandre Desplat’s lush score feeds the sense of longing that pumps through the lovelorn characters.

Hawkins grounds the film with the soft heart and dancer’s grace she brings to Elisa. THE SHAPE OF WATER hinges on her expressiveness. Listening and reacting are often said to be the most important parts of acting, and Hawkins does both beautifully as she manifests her emotions and thoughts through the looks she gives and the smoothness of her movements.

THE SHAPE OF WATER cuts to the feelings, working in broad strokes and bold colors. The visuals are drenched in gorgeous, storybook tones indicative of the time in which the film is set and its fairy tale qualities.

Grade: A

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-

Creep

CREEP (Patrick Brice, 2014)

In CREEP Aaron (Patrick Brice) accepts a videography job in the mountains not knowing much about what he’ll be recording other than it will pay well for one day’s work. Initially the remoteness of the location unnerves him somewhat, especially because his client Josef (Mark Duplass) startles him by banging on the window of Aaron’s car by way of an introduction. Aaron’s imagination also wanders a bit when spotting an axe in front of the house but dismisses it once he starts doing what he’s been hired to do.

That’s not to say everything is normal. Josef tells him that he wants Aaron to record him all day because he has a brain tumor, likely has just a couple months left, and wishes to document who he is for the unborn son his wife is carrying. For the first thing they record Josef disrobes and pretends to give his baby a bath. The interpersonal tension at the beginning doesn’t entirely go away, but by the time they finish it seems to have been a worthwhile experience for Aaron. He can’t find his keys when he’s ready to leave, though. The longer he’s in Josef’s home, the more concerned he becomes for his safety.

CREEP is shot with the first-person perspective, which has the effect of making the viewer present in the goings-on, if not exactly an active participant. The distance between the audience and the characters is shortened so that it feels like being in the room with them even if as an unacknowledged observer. The form charges the interactions so that they are direct and intense and not mediated through the camera. The fewer number of cuts emphasize being put on the spot in awkward situations. The uneasiness cannot be relieved because you are trapped in the moment as the recording rolls.

Duplass, who co-wrote the story with Brice, excels at straddling the line of being friendly and unsettling with his overly familiar manner. Josef is a little weird, particularly where he lacks boundaries, but it’s hard to discern if such quirks are harmless breaches of social etiquette or indicative of a deeper pathology. Duplass molds Josef into the kind of person who could be fun to be around in one instance and put you on guard in another. He doesn’t necessarily come across as sinister, yet Duplass doesn’t hide the calculation in how Josef tests Aaron’s limits under the guise of honesty. Duplass’ performance highlights how someone can give you the creeps even though there may not be tangible evidence of anything dangerous about him.

CREEP reveals itself to be about how propriety can be used against the person who strains to be polite. Because Aaron is genuinely a nice guy, he gives Josef the benefit of the doubt. He also gives him leeway because it’s how we’re taught to be from a young age. Even if Josef comes across as kind of strange, many people feel the reflex not to act overly judgmental when face to face with such a person. Doing so would be rude and only serve to amplify the awkwardness. CREEP considers how that civility could be a fatal flaw when the other party refuses to abide by the contract. On the surface not much in CREEP is objectively scary, but the context of what is said and done often makes it terrifying.

Grade: B

It Comes at Night

IT COMES AT NIGHT (Trey Edward Shults, 2017)

A contagious disease has forced those who have survived so far to hole up in their homes, preferably far removed from the rest of society in IT COMES AT NIGHT. The family led by Paul (Joel Edgerton) and Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) has managed to make do in the country, but when her father (David Pendleton) catches the illness, they know they must euthanize him if the rest are to live. It’s a difficult thing for their seventeen-year-old son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) to help with. Still, what must be done must be done.

One night they find that a man has broken into their home. Will (Christopher Abbott) claims that he thought the place was abandoned and is seeking water for his wife Kim (Riley Keough) and their little boy Andrew (Griffin Robert Faulkner). Paul roughs up Will and considers killing him. Eventually he agrees that it may be safer to retrieve Will’s family and their supplies and have them move in as long as they agree to the strict rules of the house.

Writer-director Trey Edward Shults treated the searing family drama of his debut KRISHA like a horror movie. With IT COMES AT NIGHT he’s made a horror film featuring two families. While his latest may have more surface commonalities with genre films, both films study the dynamics in a closed system when tensions run high. In IT COMES AT NIGHT the stakes are elevated to matters of life and death rather than feelings and relationships. Of course, the latter can feel like the former among relatives.

In spite of its narrative and scenic asceticism, IT COMES AT NIGHT generates a fair amount of uneasiness. Shults doesn’t provide many details about the doomsday scenario the characters exist in, but he keeps the audience keenly aware that the smallest break from protocol could have fatal results. The suffocation is felt as the camera slowly wanders down a dark passage in the house and into a heavily wooded area. Shults understands that living in persistent dread is perhaps worse than terrible things popping out at you on occasion.

Although the spareness of IT COMES AT NIGHT is undeniably effective, it reaches a limit where the lack of detail becomes more frustrating than rewarding. The film doesn’t need a news report to fill in a lot of backstory about how things have devolved to current conditions, but it would help to have a better sense of the immediate threats and how the characters might keep the most pernicious one--the disease--at bay. If Shults is commenting on the insular and potentially damaging nature of families, then the film needs a stronger point of view. It’s aligned with Travis, who is at an age when, under normal conditions, he would be able to start establishing an identity separate from his parents. That can’t really happen when it’s everyone or every unit for themselves. Travis is exhibiting signs that he is developing different opinions, but IT COMES AT NIGHT doesn’t develop this angle enough for it to be fruitful.

Keeping everything cloaked in generality grants assigning all sort of meaning to what little action there is, yet the sinking feeling in IT COMES AT NIGHT is that the mystery amounts to less than the scraps examined for clarity.

Grade: C+

Murder Party

MURDER PARTY (Jeremy Saulnier, 2007)

Christopher (Chris Sharp) is preparing to spend Halloween night watching horror movies, but his plans change when he finds an invitation on the sidewalk to a so-called murder party. He makes a Sir Lancelot costume out of a cardboard box in his closet and turns the smashed jack-o’-lantern on his doorstep into pumpkin bread to bring to the hosts. Christopher makes his way to the isolated Brooklyn warehouse where the party is being held in MURDER PARTY not expecting the dangerous situation he’s entered.

The collective of artists who sent out the invitations can hardly believe someone showed up. They anticipated spending the evening getting high and doing some work, but now that a victim has arrived, they intend to kill him and document it as provocative art. They’re mounting this project in the hope of getting grant money that Alexander (Alex Barnett) claims access to. While they wait until the witching hour to begin, tensions among the artists emerge, giving Christopher his best chance to get out alive.

MURDER PARTY plants the seeds for what writer-director Jeremy Saulnier refines in BLUE RUIN and GREEN ROOM. The protagonist becomes entangled in circumstances that greatly exceed what he is ready for, and the consequences are quite bloody. Although all three of Saulnier’s features mix horror and comedy, MURDER PARTY is more directly or broadly comedic, particularly as the artists bumble their way through their clearly unorganized plan and squabble as interpersonal relationships fray. Much of the humor is marked by a self-knowing quality puncturing the self-seriousness of artists, especially those seeking initial validation. The shots fired at these characters are on target but tend to be the most obvious jokes.

MURDER PARTY was made with a low budget and actors performing multiple tasks on the technical crew. Those factors imbue it with the sense of a bunch of friends making something for fun, which translates in the looseness of the effort. The special effects have inexpensive, handmade charm. The overactive Steadicam usage suggests acquiring access to a nice piece of equipment and using it as much as possible without taking its creative purpose into account. The smooth, swinging motions are more distracting than anything.

The varying calibers of the performances restrict MURDER PARTY from being as suspenseful as it could have been. Saulnier is aiming for something goofier, as these would-be killers are not geniuses in art or crime. Still, he doesn’t exploit the apprehension inherent in the scenario. Rather, it limps along until a flip gets switched to increase the body count. MURDER PARTY plays like a really good film to share among the social circle that made it but one that could stand more polish to reach those beyond that group. It contains indications of promise that Saulnier developed in the films that followed, making it of interest more as an early work than as a standalone achievement.

Grade: C

Train to Busan (Busanhaeng)

TRAIN TO BUSAN (BUSANHAENG) (Yeon Sang-ho, 2016)

The passengers on a train bound for South Korea’s second biggest city see news reports of riots breaking out across the country but expect they are largely shielded from it as they zip across the land in TRAIN TO BUSAN (BUSANHAENG). Unfortunately for them, an infected person slipped onto the train without notice and starts turning others on board into zombies.

Among those fighting for their lives are fund manager Seok-woo (Gong Yoo) and his young daughter Soo-an (Kim Soo-an), a high school baseball team; and a pregnant woman (Jung Yu-mi) and her husband (Ma Dong-seok). A large number of riders emerge unscathed from the initial attack after noticing that the zombies lack object permanence. If they can’t see you, whether in the dark or by covering a window, they won’t pursue. The passengers plan to disembark at the next station, but when it proves to be overrun with the living dead, the best choice is to get back on the train, even with its threats, and go to Busan, which is reportedly still open.

TRAIN TO BUSAN bolts through its stripped-down premise like the fast zombies terrorizing South Korea. Director Yeon Sang-ho, a co-writer with Park Joo-suk, uses the urgency and efficiency in the zombies-on-a-train scenario to keep the film in a constant state of tension once the outbreak begins. It’s the kind of genre exercise that is essentially bulletproof. Put people in a contained space with their antagonists, and let the survivors get sorted out. Yeon and Park come up with several different situations for the humans to fend for their lives as though they are video game heroes completing levels. Pace and novelty are maintained while characterization and topical interests lag behind.

TRAIN TO BUSAN’s lack of backstory is a virtue because there isn’t a pressing need to know why this is happening, just that it is. The details that might bring more color and resonance to the struggle get papered over amid the excitement of sticking close to the protagonists as they try to avoid nasty bites. The characters are ciphers who don’t need names because each with any prominence has an identifying characteristic while the rest serve as set dressing. Whether or not the passengers abide by the Golden Rule carries significance, but the simplistic sprinkling of thematic import hardly provides serious contemplation of the pros and cons of altruism.

Still, this lean and vicious zombie movie is effective in a visceral way. Those in the hungry mob are unsettling with their spastic movements. TRAIN TO BUSAN isn’t especially gory, but the quickness and violence of the attacks and the snarling sounds imply visions of more horrific wounds than what gets seen. Although the film doesn’t aspire to achieve much beyond the basic thrills, it’s sufficiently satisfying in that regard.

Grade: B-

Raw

RAW (GRAVE) (Julia Ducournau, 2016)

Justine (Garance Marillier) grew up in a vegetarian household, and she fully intends to maintain her principles when she begins veterinary school in RAW. Animals are for assisting, not eating. Her older sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf) has been going to the school, but rather than provide full cover for her inexperienced sibling, she insists that Justine learn to deal with the hazing that the older students dole out. Justine is willing to put up with most of the demands, like how to dress or address her senior peers. She draws a line, though, when asked to consume raw rabbit liver.

Assuming Alexia refused to take part in the ritual, she calls upon her for support. Instead Alexia eats some and then forces one of the organs into her mouth. Justine has a bad reaction, breaking out all over in a rash. This first taste of meat will not be her last, as she finds herself craving it in spite of how she was raised. Having erased one taboo, Justine finds herself wanting the truly forbidden, human flesh.

Writer-director Julia Ducournau applies the art horror treatment to an otherwise familiar coming of age story. RAW is about a young adult on her own for the first time and who experiments with the freedom that comes when there are no watchful eyes. Justine’s turn from herbivore to cannibalistic carnivore is just an exaggerated version of the sheltered kid who goes to college and engages in all manner of reckless acts because mom and dad aren’t nearby. RAW’s provocations aren’t reactionary means for a moralizing end but disturbing and, at times, darkly funny observations of the wildness that can come with independence.

Ducournau depicts the gore like an anthropologist might nonjudgmentally write about a custom that is revolting to her native culture or as a naturalist might consider a predator . The matter-of-fact quality to the violence lends more potency to it and queasily charges scenes of Justine wolfing down shawarma and gnawing on a raw salmon fillet. The ferocity of her appetite and how she tries to mitigate it make up the internal struggle she needs to resolve.

Marillier presents Justine as a meek and disciplined person who hasn’t questioned the world. She knows the rules and abides by them, so facing a fundamental conflict between her guideline and the group’s norm casts everything in a new light. Marillier doesn’t cut an intimidating presence, yet in discovering her taste for people, she builds uninhibited danger into the mere way she looks at someone. Not knowing what you are capable of until you try can be a good thing. In RAW it’s also the scariest thing to learn about oneself.

Grade: B

Get Out

GET OUT (Jordan Peele, 2017)

In GET OUT Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) is right to be a little worried about meeting the parents of his his girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams). She’s not told them that he’s black, although Rose shrugs off his concern about his race mattering to her family. Things can be a little uncomfortable when they arrive at the private estate, but the tension is more because of Rose’s mom Missy (Catherine Keener) and dad Dean (Bradley Whitford) awkwardly conveying their ease rather than signaling objections to the interracial relationship. They even try to smooth over any wrong ideas Chris may get from spotting two black servants working in their home.

While there doesn’t appear to be any reason for alarm, the weekend gets weirder for Chris after Missy hypnotizes him to help him stop smoking. Chris and Rose have unknowingly come to the Armitage house when Missy and Dean throw an annual party, so he also feels out of place among a bunch of monied older white people. He’s relieved when he sees another young black man, Andrew Logan King (Lakeith Stanfield), in attendance, but his atypical behavior heightens the sense that something isn’t right.

With comedian Jordan Peele as writer and director, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect that GET OUT might be a humorous update of GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER. It’s been fifty years since the then-controversial movie about a white woman accompanied by her black fiancé paying a surprise visit to her liberal, upper-class parents. After all, a lot has changed in American society in the intervening time. While there are satirical and comedic elements to GET OUT, most notably with Lil Rel Howery as Chris’s suspicious friend, Peele guides the situation to play as horror. The monster of racism hasn’t disappeared; it’s just hidden itself better.

Peele has fun playing with appearances. Kaluuya goes to great pains to be agreeable as Chris. He doesn’t want to create a stir when a police officer presses him for his ID after they hit a deer even though he wasn’t driving. Rose pushes back strongly, calling out the demand for what it is, but her insistent response is also a function of the privilege she has because of her race. Chris would have every right to protest too, but the situation might not play out the same. Rose’s parents and the party guests overdo it in trying to show their enlightened viewpoints or interest so that their politeness is laced with offense. Chris’s amiable and unassuming behavior, which has helped him in code-switching until this situation, proves to be what makes him most vulnerable.

Peele’s directing debut displays a strong visual sensibility and a great amount of forethought. The way one character runs initially reads as a broad joke, yet it carries a larger meaning. There are numerous other examples that demonstrate the care with which seemingly insignificant details are pregnant with implications. GET OUT isn’t a scary movie in that it doesn’t induce armrest-gripping. Rather, the terror in it comes from perceiving the way Chris experiences the world differently from the white characters.

Grade: B

A Cure for Wellness

A CURE FOR WELLNESS (Gore Verbinski, 2016)

When a Wall Street financial services firm’s CEO writes that he will not be returning from the Swiss spa where he is vacationing, rising company star Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) is called upon to bring him back. In A CURE FOR WELLNESS Lockhart expects to pop into the sanitarium at the top of the hill, get his boss Pembroke (Harry Groener), and go back to New York City, but the staff are not inclined to make things so easy. The spa’s director Volmer (Jason Isaacs) relents somewhat to demands to talk to Pembroke but requires Lockhart to return later in the day to see him. As Lockhart’s driver is taking him down the hill, they are in an accident. Lockhart wakes up with a broken leg and discovers that he’s been admitted as a patient at the spa.

The facility specializes in hydrotherapy but does not seem like an ordinary wellness center, even if accepting that it operates like one might have a century or more ago. For example, it seems that no one who checks in appears to check out ever. Old movers and shakers in international business without family members make up the clientele except for a girl named Hannah (Mia Goth). This place in the Alps is built on the ruins of a castle supposedly burned down by villagers who were outraged by a purity-obsessed baron who wished to marry his sister.

With a mysterious retreat looming over a village populated by resentful residents, A CURE FOR WELLNESS is rooted in a mix of early literary horror and fairy tales. Director Gore Verbinski and cinematographer Bojan Bazelli find extravagant beauty amid the psychological terror at a resort that would have been the height of luxury in the middle of the nineteenth century. The pale blue and white interiors could function as soothing surroundings for those on the mend, but they also connote something sinister because of the rigid and blank uniformity. The tanks that patients use for rehabilitation look more like torture devices, although the film’s production design turn them into peculiar but aesthetically pleasing marvels of old technology.

The foundation and look of A CURE FOR WELLNESS are inviting in all their polished insidiousness, but the significant characters fail to make an impression. Although Lockhart suffers from a childhood tragedy and an advanced case of a corrupted corporate soul, he is not as complex as the screenplay’s structure tries to make him out to be. He’s also not particularly quick on the uptake regarding all of the strange goings-on at the sanitarium. Secrets surround Hannah, but she doesn’t know them. What gets revealed about her won’t come as a surprise. Isaacs’ Volmer stands out a little more in putting a calm face on a suspicious character, but his character is mostly surface, even if he isn’t to be trusted.

For a widely released major studio film, A CURE FOR WELLNESS has to be one of the weirder offerings to come down the pike in awhile. The sheer oddity helps to propel it through a nearly two and a half hours that aren’t needed. While Verbinski has a few memorably chilling images up his sleeve, especially one for those sensitive to seeing dentistry practiced, the emotional beats fail to connect. He’s striving to evoke the reactions of Grand Guignol but yields a more tepid response.

Grade: C+

Split

SPLIT (M. Night Shyamalan, 2016)

Being abducted and locked in a cell-like room is terrifying enough for three teenage girls in SPLIT. Even more disturbing is discovering that Kevin (James McAvoy), the man holding them against their will, has multiple personalities. Like anyone would be in the situation, Claire (Haley Lu Richardson) and Marcia (Jessica Sula) are at wit’s end. Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), who’s more of an acquaintance of than a friend with the other two, appears to have gone into survival mode as she assesses how they might escape.

Their best bet is through Hedwig, Kevin’s child personality. He taunts them with the information that they are there as sacrifices for The Beast, but he’s also naïve enough that he might be fooled into bringing Casey to his room, which he says has a window. On the outside the girls’ best hope is Kevin’s psychologist Dr. Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley). She doesn’t know what he’s done, but she has a good relationship with him and senses that there may be a power struggle among Kevin’s personalities that could have caused him to do something terrible.

Although it’s probably unfair, writer-director M. Night Shyamalan has a reputation as a filmmaker whose works succeed or fail based on their plot twists. Not that there aren’t surprises in SPLIT, especially the exclamation point of a scene in the end credits, but in this film what you see is what you get. Shyamalan settles into the scenario to reap it for all of the possible terror. His use of close-ups and preference for longer takes than is typical for current Hollywood genre pictures creates a sense of claustrophobia. Cinematographer Michael Giouliakis captures horrific beauty in the musty setting where much of SPLIT takes place. Whether hinted at or depicted, the film’s brutality comes in bursts that conjure the feeling of helplessness.

People dealing with trauma, often poorly, recur in Shyamalan’s films. His characters tend to resist accepting the way things are through a kind of willful blindness. Whether questioning God or a stand-in authority figure, Shyamalan’s protagonists reject reality for a more comfortable but self-harming illusion. What differentiates SPLIT from his other films is that he weaponizes existential anger and confusion. Underneath the thriller elements are a story about coping with abuse and choosing whether mental and physical scars provide a means of protecting oneself or destroying others.

SPLIT’s portrayal of multiple personality disorder is not going to be supported by the DSM-5 or getting a ringing endorsement from the American Psychiatric Association. (It would be fascinating to do a detailed comparison of how the director portrays therapists throughout his filmography.) Still, McAvoy does an excellent job of being convincing and quietly menacing in Kevin’s various personalities. There’s nothing actorly about the performance, yet he crafts distinct individuals in his different guises. Shyamalan and McAvoy collaborate to hit the proper tone with a tricky character who could be laughable. When he’s dressed and acting as Patricia, it’s unsettling to see this guy with a shaved head who believes he is an officious woman. That earnest belief in the moment, regardless of the truth, is why SPLIT disturbs.

Grade: A-

Ouija: Origin of Evil

OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL (Mike Flanagan, 2016)

With the help of her daughters Lina (Annalise Basso), a high school sophomore, and nine-year-old Doris (Lulu Wilson), Alice Zander (Elizabeth Reaser) makes a living in 1967 as a fortune teller out of their Los Angeles home in OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL. Alice doesn’t have a gift that allows her to commune with the dead but views what she does as a different form of counseling for those who need it. To add some variety to her sessions, she purchases a Ouija board.

Alice’s husband was killed by a drunk driver, and she and the girls are still in pain because of his absence. One night Doris uses the Ouija board to attempt to contact her father. She seems to succeed, as well as being able to see and communicate with other spirits that may be less friendly. Doris’ facility with the Ouija board leads Alice to think that her daughter has the supernatural gift that she does not. Lina becomes increasingly troubled by Doris’ behavior. When she finds pages of notes her sister wrote in Polish, she takes them to their school principal, Father Tom Hogan (Henry Thomas), in the hope that they can be translated. What he learns is not reassuring.

OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL is a prequel to the so-so 2014 horror film OUIJA, although knowledge of its predecessor is unnecessary. The board game instigates the action but does not play a major role. Ultimately this is all just an excuse for Hasbro to try to sell some toys. Still, director and co-writer Mike Flanagan incorporates the board effectively, especially when showing the view through the planchette. As the camera peers through it, the limited perspective in a dark room heightens the feeling of vulnerability.

Flanagan picks his spots to show the malevolent forces threatening the Zanders’ well-being. He recognizes that the power of suggestion can often be as scary or more frightening than what can be seen. The board itself is not a fearsome object, yet the evil energy mentally invested in it something taboo charges its appearance on screen. OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL’s most disturbing scene is a conversation Doris has with a boy interested in Lina. The little girl describes in great detail what the sensation of being strangled is like. The unsettling nature of what she is saying exists only in the mind, yet it conjures such strong feelings and images. When a character reaches inside a hole in the wall or crawls through a tight duct, the empathetic impulse that puts the viewer in that person’s place injects tension simply from imagining what it would be like.

OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL puts a nice twist on fear of old things through its period setting and form as a film. Flanagan adds reel change markers and slight warps on the soundtrack when they take effect, adding a little raggedness and sense of unpredictability to the digital file being watched. Again, it’s working toward creating a state of mind that anything could happen, often for the worst.

Grade: B

The Invitation

THE INVITATION (Karyn Kusama, 2015)

After a tragedy and the subsequent dissolution of their marriage, Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his friends don’t see his ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard) and her new husband David (Michiel Huisman) for two years until they all are invited to a lavish dinner. The situation is especially awkward for Will in THE INVITATION as the party in the Hollywood Hills is being hosted where he used to live, which is also the site of the accident he’s still grieving over. His girlfriend Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) and social circle are especially concerned about Will’s frame of mind. Eden and David have a disquieting sense of calm about them that gradually unnerves everyone when they begin testifying about the group that have brought them inner peace.

For the last two years they were often in Mexico with The Invitation, a New Age-like self-help organization that some consider a cult. The presence of two other group members also adds stress to the dynamic of the gathering. When David leads their guest in a game learned from The Invitation, the party becomes more uncomfortable. Will is deeply bothered by the weird tone of the evening and suspicious of Eden and David’s tranquility, but friends reassure him that the reunion was never not going to be awkward.

THE INVITATION plunges Will and the others into a scenario that seems off from the get-go, yet by identifying with his traumatized character, it’s uncertain if feeling ill at ease is the product of personal anxiety or the hosts’ behavior. Director Karyn Kusama brings the film along at a slow boil and subverts distrust at enough points to call Will’s perspective into question. Is he actually disturbed, or is he right to be on alert? THE INVITATION feasts on the tension between trying to go along with the crowd while simultaneously feeling discontent. Even if the rest of Will’s friends aren’t entirely on board with the way the night is shaping up, they are convinced that restoring old relationships is worth the trouble.

For a significant portion of its running time, THE INVITATION provides the experience of being confronted with soft but insistent peer pressure. It’s like dealing with a salesman who is friendly, if a little too familiar, and won’t take no for an answer. The guests are being plied with expensive wine, which lowers their inhibitions, but when all want to heal old wounds, they will be inclined to adapt despite any objections they may want to make. Kusama understands that suggestibility comes gradually in a strained environment like this. Although Will’s friends are sympathetic to the resistance he puts up, they just want to make the circle whole again. The nerve-racking nature of the party emerges in weighing desires versus a flight response that is pinging like crazy.

Grade: B-

Under the Shadow

UNDER THE SHADOW (Babak Anvari, 2016)

Life in post-revolutionary Iran for Shideh (Narges Rashidi) delivers one reminder after another of her vulnerability in UNDER THE SHADOW. Shideh’s political activities as a student during the revolution are held against her when she wants to return to school to become a doctor. The ongoing Iran-Iraq war takes her physician husband Iraj (Bobby Naderi) to a battle zone as part of his governmentally required service. Iraj suggests she take their daughter Dorsa (Avin Manshadi) from Tehran to the less attacked city where his parents live, but they have made her feel like she isn’t capable of caring for her child, so leaving is out of the question in her mind.

The constant threat of an air raid is always in the background. When a missile strikes her apartment building and leaves a big crack in the ceiling, the recognized danger of the circumstances becomes even more apparent. Watching over her daughter grows more stressful. Dorsa fears the djinn, or a demon-like spirit, that a mute neighbor boy tells her about. She falls ill after the apartment is hit and seemingly will not recover. Dorsa is also inconsolable over the loss of her doll, which, if the folktales are to be believed, the djinn has taken and is using to attach itself to her. Shideh dismisses talk of spirits as superstition, but as the girl’s behavior becomes stranger and she herself starts to believe she is seeing and hearing things, the easier it is to think that something supernatural endangers them too.

UNDER THE SHADOW is keenly attuned to civilian life under a restrictive regime and the terror of wartime. Writer-director Babak Anvari uses the horror filter to examine the psychological effects of having limited freedom and enduring years of bombing campaigns. Shideh has a comparatively privileged existence, yet, like all other women, she cannot go outside with her head uncovered and must hide the illegal VCR in their home that she uses to work out to bootleg Jane Fonda exercise videos. Her social position and the vigilance she must practice takes such a toll on her that it becomes the new normal like the routine of taping the windows to protect from the shattered glass if their building is bombed. Whether the djinn is imagined or not, she is right to fear the intangible forces controlling aspects of her life as a woman.

Although not subtle thematically, UNDER THE SHADOW is more judicious in how it produces scares familiar to genre filmmaking. The djinn is seen sparingly, with Anvari wringing a lot of tension out of something as mundane as Shideh looking out a window or taping a crack. The fright arises from uncertainty. That extends to Shideh’s feelings of inadequacy as a mother. Like THE BABADOOK, the film delves into what it is like to deal with the sense of not being able to keep a child from harm when the expectations to do so rest with you. UNDER THE SHADOW’s directness may be somewhat too neat, but it’s effective nevertheless.

Grade: B-

Don't Breathe

DON’T BREATHE (Fede Alvarez, 2016)

Rocky (Jane Levy), her boyfriend Money (Daniel Zovatto), and their friend Alex (Dylan Minnette) keep cash in their pockets by breaking into houses and committing small thefts in the Detroit area in DON’T BREATHE. Alex’s father runs a home security company, so the three thieves know how to disable the systems and have access to keys for the properties they target. Rocky and Money are eager to skip town for California but need a big score to make that possible.

Rumor has it that a blind Gulf War veteran (Stephen Lang) has squirreled away a large amount of cash from a lawsuit over his daughter’s wrongful death in a car accident. The blind man lives alone in a neighborhood that has been otherwise abandoned. From scouting his place, it appears that he doesn’t leave very often, which would be a problem for them in almost every other instance. Ordinarily they wouldn’t rob a residence when someone is in it, but based on the homeowner’s visual impairment and the supposed $300,000 waiting to be taken, they decide it is worth the risk. Things don’t go according to plan, though. The blind man becomes aware of the intruders in his home and locks them in with the intention of killing them.

Although the blind man’s home has numerous points of egress, director and co-writer Fede Alvarez does nimble work in eliminating escape routes for the thieves to maintain the tension. When they find what seems like a sure way out, the option is inevitably removed for a sound reason. Alvarez treats the house as a labyrinth whose dead ends also contain some unwelcome surprises. Rather than battering the audience with lots of quick cuts and a clamorous soundtrack, DON’T BREATHE provides space via longer, smooth shots to let the dread-raising hunt develop and through the quiet stillness necessary for the hunted to avoid detection.

For all of the solid effort put into sustaining a high degree of uncertainty regarding who will endure the ordeal, DON’T BREATHE’s brief, in media res opening seems like a significant dramatic mistake. With the limited number of characters trying to flee the house, revealing one of those who will survive at least close to the film’s conclusion reduces much of the guesswork and thrills related to this person’s path to that point. It isn’t a fatal error, as Alvarez is skilled at conveying the urgency of individual moments, but the choice seems misguided in view of the care put into the thriller’s suspenseful design.

Although DON’T BREATHE features no conventional heroes, Lang’s blind man is, without question, the villain. The character already is at an advantage by knowing the layout of the house, and with some scenes occurring in near or total darkness, his blindness can serve as an edge he holds over his prey. Lang’s rippling arms and intense demeanor solidify his position as the predator. The thieves, while clearly on the wrong side of the law, are in over their heads. Levy in particular registers the terror of the situation and the instinctive will to live beyond the traumatic experience. The requirement to hint at potential sequels is a lamentable staple of the genre--continuing this story seems like a fool’s errand--but it doesn’t undermine the scares DON’T BREATHE musters.

Grade: B

Goodnight Mommy (Ich seh ich sech)

GOODNIGHT MOMMY (ICH SEH ICH SEH) (Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, 2014)

During lazy summer days twin brothers Elias and Lukas (Elias Schwarz and Lukas Schwarz) keep busy in the usual ways young boys do. They explore the woods behind their glamorous and remote country home, go swimming, collect bugs, and generally enjoy the freedom that comes from having no obligations. Aside from the conspicuous absence of any adults, it seems like a pleasant situation. Things change when their mother (Susanne Wuest) returns in GOODNIGHT MOMMY (ICH SEH ICH SEH). She has undergone an operation, presumably cosmetic surgery, that has resulted in her head being heavily bandaged while she recovers.

At first the boys are happy that their mother is back, but it doesn’t take long for them to sense something different about her. In fact, they suspect that she is not actually their mother. She’s sterner than the woman they last saw. She insists that the blinds be closed at all times. The twins are not to bother her, and if they must, they need to knock on her bedroom door. She demands that they stay quiet while playing in or close to the house and are not to have anyone over. The more time passes, the more Elias and Lukas look for ways to test if this woman is who she is presenting herself to be.

GOODNIGHT MOMMY thrives on a dread-filled atmosphere. Common sounds, like the scratchy static of a walkie-talkie, the roar of a vacuum, and the sharp snap of closed blinds, are violent interruptions in a sleek, spacious home already tense with silence and suspicions. The artwork and photographs on the walls do nothing to ease the impression that something is off-kilter about this place. Paintings that seem to resemble the mother have blurred her face. A grouping of family pictures have empty spots where some have clearly been removed. Snapshots have clearly been purged from a photo album, as if their physical absence might erase the existence of whatever was captured in them.

Co-writer/directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala build GOODNIGHT MOMMY around the terror of living with someone who behaves in a way no longer familiar to you. Although physical violence is a comparatively lesser portion of the horror, the bloodletting and torture are felt more acutely because of who performs these deeds and the tactile nature of them. The film draws its unsettling power from the psychic disturbance of coexisting in an environment where two oppositional realities compete in the minds of the inhabitants. If one side in a home perceives the fundamental truth of a relationship unlike the other, then trust and security are under a constant strain.

GOODNIGHT MOMMY provides a good example of how the approach to material can matter more than what the story is. Franz and Fiala take a boilerplate scenario and minimize plot details and the characters’ backgrounds. Such ambiguity heightens the stakes as the viewer’s perspective on the situation is charged with uncertainty. GOODNIGHT MOMMY stokes the anxious ambience and seems to be unconcerned with a secret hiding in plain sight because the goal is to chill, not to make a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes.

Grade: B+

Crimson Peak

CRIMSON PEAK (Guillermo del Toro, 2015)

In CRIMSON PEAK Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) is an aspiring writer of ghost stories, although the publisher wishes she would come up with something more conventional and romantic. Edith admits that the ghosts are metaphors for the past, but she has been visited by the spirit of her mother bearing the warning not to go to Crimson Peak. She meets Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) and his sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain) when they come to Buffalo to find investors for his invention. Thomas and Edith become romantically involved against her father’s objections, but after tragedy strikes, Edith weds Thomas and accompanies him to his crumbling family estate in England.

Director and co-writer Guillermo del Toro has made it a point of emphasis while doing the publicity rounds that despite the film’s ghosts, CRIMSON PEAK is not a horror film but a Gothic romance in the tradition of JANE EYRE and REBECCA. In truth there’s not really much romance in it either. Edith and Thomas’s marriage is an arrangement of convenience and exploitation. Although feelings change, CRIMSON PEAK never boils with erotic passion between husband and wife or inside one of them.

And yet while CRIMSON PEAK lacks heat or surprises in its conventional story, del Toro captures the imagination with sumptuous visual treats throughout. The spacious, decrepit house is a marvel of production design and art direction. The intricate costumes manifest the emotional undercurrents, with Edith dressed as though she’s wearing a chrysalis while living at Allerdale Hall and Lucille bound in what she wears as tightly as she and her brother are connected to their home. The clay-reddened snow that looks like it’s been bloodied is such a striking image, especially with that imposing manor looming over it. These elements contribute to the mood, which del Toro treats with primary importance rather than investing energy into the familiar plot. The romance, it turns out, is with the look and feel of rotting mansions and scarred psyches. In that CRIMSON PEAK has more than enough to keep one captivated.

Grade: B

Lost Highway

LOST HIGHWAY (David Lynch, 1997)

LOST HIGHWAY follows the dual stories of tenor saxophonist Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) and mechanic Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty) and the women in their lives who bring about their ruination. Patricia Arquette plays Fred’s brunette wife Renee and Alice Wakefield, a gangster’s blonde squeeze who initiates a torrid affair with Pete. Fred suspects his wife may be cheating on him and becomes disturbed when videotapes with footage shot inside and outside his house are left on his home’s front steps. Pete struggles to explain how he is found in prison having taken another man’s place.

In David Lynch’s singular style the Möbius strip of a film addresses the insecurities men have about women. Dark interiors hint at endless mental corridors to get lost in as these curdled souls obsess over the true motivations of the femme fatales they’ve fixated on. The low, persistent white noise on the soundtrack suggests a nagging concern hissing inside the protagonists’ heads that the women they love will do them wrong even as they are helpless to resist. The pale-faced Mystery Man (Robert Blake) who greets Fred and Pete familiarly seems like a manifestation of the anger and fear they’ve invited into their thinking. LOST HIGHWAY is suffused with dead of the night dread, a half-lucid, creeping sensation that one’s doom awaits in the shadows.

Lynch’s mastery of sustaining an unsettling tone carries the film through patches when the opaque plot confuses, yet watching this film not quite two decades later reveals his use of doubling and dream logic and atmosphere as a rough draft for the greater achievement to come in MULHOLLAND DR. LOST HIGHWAY’s mystery does not grow as it continues to befuddle. Pete’s section builds to confirmation of the horrible things both character’s believe their women are capable of doing to them, yet Getty doesn’t convey the torment inside of him as tangibly as Pullman does in Fred’s scenes.

When Fred has the police searching his house for signs of unlawful entry, he’s asked if he has a video camera. Fred responds that he hates the devices because he likes “to remember things my own way”. The tension in LOST HIGHWAY comes from the disconnect between the way things are and how they are recalled or imagined. With memorable and disquieting imagery, Lynch’s terror-fueled exploration of how latching onto the virgin/whore dichotomy can destroy men’s minds, but LOST HIGHWAY also plays like a less coherent version of the director’s better work.

Grade: C

It Follows

IT FOLLOWS (David Robert Mitchell, 2014)

In IT FOLLOWS Jay (Maika Monroe) is enjoying her time as a teenager in a Detroit suburb until the night she chooses to sleep with her 21-year-old boyfriend. After their coupling, he reveals to her that a previous sexual partner passed along a ghost or monster to him that he has now given to her. It can change its appearance but isn’t visible to those not infected. It approaches at a slow, steady pace, so there can be time to escape it, but whatever it is remains unrelenting in its pursuit it catches you or is passed along to someone else. If that person doesn't give it to someone else or is killed, it returns down the chain to the previous person.

IT FOLLOWS achieves great success as a horror film with an antagonist that can be anyone and anywhere. Is that just a stranger shuffling along in the distance, or is it a mortal threat slowly creeping up? The need to remain vigilant scanning the background for any person coming near Jay and her friends is part of the fun writer-director David Robert Mitchell works into the film’s fabric. In this instance a slow approach is a virtue in developing a sense of perpetual unease. The unnamed menace in IT FOLLOWS scares because its presence does not attract attention and can be escaped for an indefinite period of time but not forever. The camera hunts the characters with frequent slow push-ins.

The thematic richness points toward this thing representing the fear of death itself. Before Jay’s boyfriend infects her, they play a game in which they try to guess what person around them each would like to trade places with. He doesn’t choose the guy with the hot date or the dad with a seemingly happy family but the kid. He says that the boy has his whole life ahead of him, also suggesting that he has not yet lost the innocence of youth. Other conversations revolve around recalled incidents when they lost some of their naiveté. IT FOLLOWS appears to be set during the summer, that seemingly endless time of joy for kids. The vintage quality of its unspecified era, like a slightly futuristic past, gives it a dreamy atmosphere out of time that accretes with reminiscing.

To draw out the metaphor, worrying about mortality is something that can be defended against and delayed, especially through sex according to the Freudian view, but short of a religious perspective, a finite end is in store for everyone. Mitchell presents a good mix of primal anxiety and intellectual deliberation, making IT FOLLOWS terrifying whether looking to be jolted while in one’s seat in the theater or much later when thinking about it all.

Grade: A-

The Lazarus Effect

THE LAZARUS EFFECT (David Gelb, 2015)

In the opening shot of THE LAZARUS EFFECT we can tell that a medical experiment of some kind is being performed on an animal, but it’s not exactly clear what we’re seeing tightly framed in the viewfinder. That single close-up summarizes the dilemma for the five main characters, who have a sense of what’s happening when their actions yield unintended consequences but can’t explain the results. The first shot also serves as a convenient allegory for the primary problem with this horror film. It identifies what is under thematic examination but doesn’t focus on it.

Project leaders and engaged couple Frank (Mark Duplass) and Zoe (Olivia Wilde) and their assistants Niko (Donald Glover) and Clay (Evan Peters) are working on a serum that can safely bring someone back from death without any physical deterioration or cognitive effects. If they’re successful, it means doctors will have more time to perform life-saving procedures on patients in crisis. They invite documentary filmmaker Eva (Sarah Bolger) to the subbasement to capture their efforts for posterity. As luck would have it, she’s recording when they mark their first major breakthrough by reviving a dog. Remarkably the canine’s cataracts are gone six minutes after being brought back to life. The dog doesn’t want to eat or drink and later displays some hyper-aggressive behavior, but nevertheless, this is a huge development in their study.

Excitement is short-lived, though, as soon thereafter the grant holder shuts down their unsanctioned experiment and confiscates all of their findings. The team wants to be able to prove that they are responsible for this landmark medical discovery, so they sneak back into the lab one night to duplicate the test. When Zoe gets electrocuted in an accident, the plan changes as Frank insists they use the serum on her. They resuscitate her, but she now talks of having been in hell for the hour when she was dead. Zoe feels herself changing, although her co-workers don’t observe any differences.

Rather than dig into the questions the material raises, director David Gelb is content to let THE LAZARUS EFFECT play out as a rote exercise in scary movie conventions. Although the film takes place in a confined space, it contains virtually no tension as members of the team are picked off one by one. THE LAZARUS EFFECT’s sympathies are aligned with Zoe, yet the dramatic logic is confused. She’s treated as victim and villain while not being accountable as either.

THE LAZARUS EFFECT’s unexplored ideas function as a placebo. The screenplay by Luke Dawson and Jeremy Slater injects medical ethics, the role of corporations in academic research, and a matter of the soul but produces nothing of value by putting them in the system. For instance, Zoe is established as a Catholic with a recurring bad dream about an incident from childhood, and the character wrestles with the question of if it is ever possible to atone for a mistake or sin. THE LAZARUS EFFECT doesn’t need to dive into advanced theology, but it could make more of an effort to ponder the religious implications of the film’s developments. Everything that could give the film weight has no contemplative value.

Grade: D+