Anyhoodle, Insidious is fun like a decent haunted house ride; there are scares, and the atmospherics in the beginning are pretty awesome. It’s a shame the ride had to make a stop in Clichetown along the way. And it introduces one of the more creepy haunted house characters i’ve seen recently, a character I shall only refer to as Darth Goat. See it for him, at least, but maybe wait until it’s on video.
Is your washroom breeding old lady ghosts?
If a friend had not asked me to go, I would probably not have seen Insidious in the theater, and truth be told it probably would have flown right through my radar without making much of an impression, otherwise. A lot of horror movies come out these days, and few of which are worth my time or money.
I’m definitely glad I went, though.
It’s not a diamond in the rough, it’s not a secret success–Insidious is one part atmospheric haunted house movie in the vein of The Others, one part magical realist/dark fantasy like House of Leaves or Clive Barker’s Thief of Always, and one part lurid freakfest. Unfortunately these themes are as clumsily meshed as the three acts of the film are mismatched, but each one on their own was entertaining.
The nonexistent segues made if feel as if I was watching one film made up of segments by 3 different directors; it reminded me of the old Tales from the Crypt series, which was a little 30 minute vignette written and directed by a variety of Hollywood’s finest and most creative. But while that works for a tv series, it doesn’t lend itself well to a film.
While the trappings of the movie–creaks, groans, mysterious things moving about, and eventually some pretty batshit-weird looking ghosts–are all fine, the story was fairly creative. There were flashes of some really interesting and innovative ideas here, but they just didn’t pan out.
Also problematic for me was the uneven tone of the movie. It starts out with Renai (Rose Byrne) and Whatsisface (Patrick Wilson, of Watchmen fame) and their three kids moving into a big old house where weird shit starts to happen. And of course, it begins happening to the wife, because when you’re driving this model of cliche wagon you had damn well better trot them all out. Women are emotional, so they have these dumb feelings, and that’s why ghosts go after and attack them. Cause they’re unable to ignore dumb shit like feelings.
What’s telling is the creepily static gender roles espoused in the movie: in the first half, when ghosts are passive-aggressively making their presence known, only the female notices and reacts predictably, freaking out, screaming, crying, etc. When things get serious and action is needed, the movie literally switches protagonists and the male becomes the center of focus.
If they had wanted to do something really interesting, they might have taken a leaf out of The Devil’s Advocate’s book; in that, we did not see the things that were happening to the wife, which made them that much harder to accept as real, and that much easier to dismiss her problems as imagined or the result of a mental illness. Imagine each day the guy comes home and his wife is acting weirder and weirder, to the point where he doesn’t know if he trusts her with his kids anymore.
Here’s my theory on the current psychology behind these ghost movies where women are the protagonists:
The ghosts, who are being passive-aggressive with their ‘walking around in the background’ and moving objects around shit, are weakly requesting attention. The stereotypical assumption is that women are better at noticing nuances of behavior, and are more likely to notice these types of behaviors. Men need more direct interaction, and only become involved when furniture flies around and the walls start oozing blood, again on the assumption that men don’t recognize nuanced behaviors as well. All of which is horseshit, but is the faulty logic upon which haunted house/woman in peril movies operate. /rant
Anyhoodle, Insidious is fun like a decent haunted house ride; there are scares, and the atmospherics in the beginning are pretty awesome. It’s a shame the ride had to make a stop in Clichetown along the way. And it introduces one of the more creepy haunted house characters i’ve seen recently, a character I shall only refer to as Darth Goat. See it for him, at least, but maybe wait until it’s on video.
In all, I think this adaptation was definitely watchable–as I mentioned, the costumes are great, the supporting cast perfect and Barnes does a marvelous job commanding every frame he’s in, but overall it doesn’t feel terribly imaginative–as a horror film it is far too light, as a thriller it has no suspense, and it’s very dark and violent for a costume drama.
YES HAVE SOME
If you haven’t heard of the most recent adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s best known work, then it’s probably because you aren’t spending your spare time stalking hot British men like Ben Barnes.
Having said that, yes, there is more to the movie than Barnes’s well-dressed hotness.
He gets naked, too.
The Portrait of Dorian Gray is one of those plum stories that I think most actors hope to be a part of–which is a double-edged sword, because only the young, hot actors can hope to even read for the part. And forget poor guys like Ray Winstone–unless there’s a special production aimed only at bears, it’s kind of a restrictive choice.
You need an actor who isn’t just hot, but beautiful. Someone who is both handsome and timeless, who you could imagine springing from a painting by Waterhouse or Caravaggio.
You need someone young. Someone who is on the edge of that perfect balance of beauty and maturity, whose face isn’t yet marred by the mileage of age.
You need someone who is both innocent and cruel.
This last is crucial – many actors excel at doing one or the other, but not both. Especially depending on how the production handles the character of Dorian, who himself is more of a blank canvas than a fleshed-out character: a Dorian who is too cruel is too clearcut a villain, when at least part of the story paints him as victim, too.
I wish Dorian Gray had been a more energetic entry to the canon of adaptations; the costumes and sets are beautiful, and the cast of seasoned veterans (and newcomer Barnes) play the story well, but overall the movie feels a little restricted; as if they hadnt’ quite dared to take more risks than those of the story. Colin Firth as the world-weary, wicked Henry Wotten is perfect, and Ben Chaplin as Basil Hallward is another bit of inspired casting.
Can you spot what's wrong with this picture?
Of course the whole of the movie is Barnes’s performance as Gray–a young man whose childhood was marred by abuse and tragedy, and who has only just come to London after inheriting his Grandfather’s estate upon the old man’s death.
Immediately he is taken in and groomed by Wotten to be a high society type, and begins down a road of guilt and excess that would have put Iggy Pop and most of the Rolling Stones to shame.
The eponymous portrait, painted by Basil and unwittingly cursed by Wotten, bears the marks of this life of excess, depicting both the physical damage of so much sadistic partying, and the mental damage of Gray’s cruelty.
What’s interesting is that the filmmakers made a massive mistake in interpreting Gray’s motivations, here– they assumed that because he bears no indications of his life of excess on his body, he is ‘free of consequence.’ He’s described in their making-of featurette as a kind of proto-American Psycho, a sociopath in the making.
Barnes, however, doesn’t really play Gray that way. He plays him more as someone who doesn’t realize his impact on others, rather than someone who doesn’t care about them. He’s young and naive, and as he becomes more and more evil certainly more selfish and sadistic, but it never seems as if he’s intentionally setting out to ruin other people’s lives. In a more capable filmmaker’s hands, he might have recalled John Malkovich in Dangerous Liaisons, the definitive object when it comes to depicting Rolling Whoremongery, but he comes off as more like a very young version of same, and then later creates his own character as an arch, jaded libertine with the face of an angel. Towards the end of the film he’s very much aware of the ruinous effect he’s had on others, and even attempts to steer people away from himself to preserve them.
In all, I think this adaptation was definitely watchable–as I mentioned, the costumes are great, the supporting cast perfect and Barnes does a marvelous job commanding every frame he’s in, but overall it doesn’t feel terribly imaginative–as a horror film it is far too light, as a thriller it has no suspense, and it’s very dark and violent for a costume drama.
Seriously, how could they just change his eyes like that? They're so striking!
I can’t help imagining what this might have been in the hands of Todd Haynes (Velvet Goldmine) or even Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge), or maybe someone like Danny Boyle; there’s a lot of gay subtext that was barely touched on, and my overall impression of the film was that it was very dimly-lit and nobody had too good a time.
Which, you know, the whole point was to make his languid life of pleasure look COOL.
I can kind of see why Thirteen Ghosts didn’t catch on with its intended audience; it’s one of those horror movies that’s smarter than the ads presented it, but the excess of effects and ‘ACTION!’ tone to the marketing turned off the smarter audience who would have enjoyed it. Its writing and story reminds me strongly of the Hellblazer graphic novels, which were made into the film Constantine, and which had very little to do with the source material. But I digress.
In 2001, the Dark Castle production house was looking for another remake of a Vincent Price movie, and they found it in the strange, weirdly fun Thirteen Ghosts. I haven’t seen the original Thirteen Ghosts
BIG Scary Face!
The resulting film is strange for a horror movie–it’s almost like a brilliant experiment gone wrong.
The action starts with F. Murray Abraham (I know, right?) and Matthew Lilliard attempting to capture the ghost of a mass murderer who haunts the junkyard where he buried his victims. Lilliard plays Dennis Rafkin, a man with strong psychic abilities who has been contracted b Cyrus Kritikos (Abraham) to help locate and capture ‘displaced spiritual energies.’ He doesn’t much care what the ghosts are being captured for, but when he realizes that the ghost they are hunting was a much more prolific murderer than they’d previously surmised, he’s horrified and almost walks away from the whole project. Also introduced are the methods by which Kritikos captures ghosts, a mixture of steampunkish technology and broadcasting chanted spells over loudspeakers, which somehow forces the ghost into a large glass cage. Also introduced is Kalina Oretzia, a sort of freedom fighter for ghost rights who has a problem with Kritikos capturing and enslaving ghosts. Oretzia is played by the beautiful Embeth Davitz, alumni of Army of Darkness and also, weirdly, Matilda.
Things Go Wrong, Kritikos is killed, but the ghost is captured and Rafkin escapes.
That’s just the first ten minutes.
I can kind of see why Thirteen Ghosts didn’t catch on with its intended audience; it’s one of those horror movies that’s smarter than the ads presented it, but the excess of effects and ‘ACTION!’ tone to the marketing turned off the smarter audience who would have enjoyed it. Its writing and story reminds me strongly of the Hellblazer graphic novels, which were made into the film Constantine, and which had very little to do with the source material. But I digress.
Enter Tony Shalhoub (HOOOUUUUB) as Arthur Critikos, mild-mannered math teacher and widower who is struggling to raise his two children after losing his wife and everything he owned in a house fire six months previous. The family moved from a nice, big house to a small, crappy apartment, and the close quarters and exigent circumstances have become the cause of much tension in the family. Also introduced are Arthur’s children: macabre, death-obsessed moppet Bobby, and the constantly grinning older daughter Kathy. I’m serious, Shannon Elizabeth’s teeth ought to have gotten their own credit, because they’re NEVER out of sight in the whole movie.
Also introduced is Rah Digga as nanny Maggie, who feels a little shoehorned into the movie to appeal to fans of Sass. She’s a great character, but ultimately doesn’t add much to the story other than the occasional one-liner and observation that ‘white people so crazy.’ Which is a shame, since she’s a capable actress and has real comedic timing, but is relegated to a supporting character and occasional comic relief.
This is as closed as her mouth gets. I'm not kidding. How does her tongue not dry out?
Suddenly a slick lawyer shows up; he’s the handler for Cyrus Kritikos’s estate, and the latter has left everything to his distant nephew Arthur, including his badass glass and clockwork mansion.
The mansion, it turns out, is actually a huge machine powered by the captured spirits, for the purposes of opening a portal to Hell in order to see the past, present, and future.
Which is, you know, almost too MUCH story for a movie of this size, but I’d also rather watch something into which too much thought was put than not enough.
Once the house is activated, the containment units holding the ghosts begin to open, which is a bad bad bad bad thing; the reason being, all the ghosts experienced highly traumatic, violent deaths and so seek to exact revenge for their pain on anyone who wanders across their path. And some of them are SERIOUS about ruining other people’s days; the interesting thing is, you kind of can’t blame them.
No matter how bad your day has been, you have nothing on this man.
For example, The Hammer was a black blacksmith in the 1890s who was wrongly accused of a crime. An angry mob attacked him, and he was chained to a tree and railroad spikes were driven into his body with his own hammer–then his hand was cut off and that same hammer driven into the stump. I kind of like this ghost a lot because he’s a reminder that American history can be really, REALLY gruesome, especially for anyone who wasn’t white.
This is where reading fashion magazines gets you, right here.
Then there’s the Angry Princess, a woman suffering from body dysmorphic disorder who got a job with a plastic surgeon for the express purpose of ‘fixing’ everything that was ‘wrong’ with her. Denied a surgery, she tried to perform it herself one night and was convinced she’d mutilated herself. She slashed her wrists in a bathtub, scrawling the words ‘I’m Sorry’ on the floor in her own blood. Isn’t that compelling character creation? Also a walking argument against the fashion industry?
There are other little surprises to the movie, as well. One unexpected delight is Matthew Lilliard’s portrayal of a man cursed rather than gifted with psychic abilities–he almost steals the show as the twitchy, loud Rafkin, especially when he points out that the only way he could make money to support himself was by working for Cyrus. Whenever Rafkin touches someone he experiences ALL the pain they’ve ever experienced in their lifetime drilled into his head in a few seconds. Depending on how you feel about Lilliard (I was never that big of a fan, until this movie) you’ll almost want to see his character go on to have more adventures. He creates an engaging character not just with the comedic touches, but with his emotionally stirring performance as well.
Another interesting thing about 13 ghosts is that it is a movie about trauma, and how different people deal with it. The death of Arthur’s wife has affected him profoundly, but he manages to struggle on, not just for his children’s sake but for his own. Rafkin, though his entire life has been nothing BUT trauma, attempts to stop what is going on in the house and begs Arthur to get his children out of the house before something terrible happens, revealing that though he has a checkered past, he is not beyond redemption. The ghosts themselves, whose life stories are not really gone into except in these neat little vignettes on the DVD, have chosen to deal with trauma by repeating the cycle, and visiting their personal horrors on others.
I have to say though, that a major failing of the movie is the house itself; it never felt LARGE enough, as if the living and the dead, in all about twenty people, were somehow able to avoid each other in a space comparable to a medium-sized shoe store. Also, the glass walls with spirit writing on them were cool, but ultimately make you feel like a person who gets lost in a see-through maze just might not be trying hard enough to stay alive. Even if there’d been some kind of conceit that caused the glass to go opaque every once in a while (like the doors in those Japanese bathrooms–it’s a clear glass door until you hit a switch and it goes opaque) it would have been a vast improvement to the feeling of constricted movement in the movie.
*************SPOILER*************
The Wikipedia entry lists Arthur as the 13th ghost, the sacrifice of the broken heart needed to stop the house from opening the door to hell, but since Dennis sacrifices himself in order to save Arthur I have to conclude that it was Dennis’s selfless act that saves the day. I also just plain like that interpretation better, because Dennis is allowed to redeem himself for the terrible things he’s done, and he’s such a likeable character you want him to have that chance. I would totally watch a movie where ghost Dennis Rafkin and somene else team up and solve mysteries or something.
Ghost Ship is a fun time to be had–the scares are a little creaky haunted house, but the effects are good and the story–at least until the gold shows up–is interesting. The way the characters puzzle their way through what they should do is also refreshing, since in most horror movies people just run around screaming and bumping into things. It doesn’t make the movie scary, but it’s fun and at least well-written enough to entertain.
I see this same image when people show me their cruise pictures. It's not them, it's me.
I’ve been pretty honest about how unbiased I can be when reviewing movies–I sing the praises of total shit while I lambast something that fell just short of the mark of greatness (Not GI Joe–that was a mess from the start). I make no apologies, only offer the explanation that if I know what the movie’s going for, I will probably get on board.
HA! I made a pun.
Ghost Ship is a 2002 product of Joel Silver’s ‘Dark Castle’ movie production house, which was formed in order to remake the horror movies of classic schlock horror master William Castle. They started out with 1999’s dumb-but-fun House on Haunted Hill (any movie starring Geoffrey Rush in a role Vincent Price created is an automatic WIN), and then Thirteen Ghosts, starring Tony Shalhoub as a man who inherits a bizarre house which doubles as a machine that can open the gates of hell and is powered by the damned. Or something. Both movies were way more fun than they should have been–watching both were like that first time you step into the Halloween Store in the autumn, and all the rubber masks, feather boas, monster teeth and polyester suits have been taken out of storage for another year’s worth of cheap scares and wacky fun. Dark Castle has since branched out from horror, producing Ninja Assassin and The Losers, but they still put out horror every now and then. Basically it’s the Hollywood equivalent of that one house on the block that goes totally balls-out for Halloween, who is otherwise normal if not downright boring the rest of the year.
Ghost Ship was put out after the production company had been riding high for a little while, and wanted to do something a little different.
As I’ve previously mentioned, I have a completely irrational fear of the sea, yet am also fascinated by it, especially maritime lore. The Mary Celeste, the Flying Dutchman, shipwrecks, ice ships like the Schooner Jenny and the Octavius, it’s ALL good. I might not be able to stand seawater that goes over my knees, but I LOVE the drama of a shipwreck.
Ghost Ship was right up my alley.
The opening segment is one of the more beautiful and interesting in a horror movie in recent memory- a fancy party with a super, super SUPER hot Italian diva performing is taking place on the deck of a luxury ocean liner. We are introduced to a little girl, alone, who dances with the avuncular captain. There’s a freak accident, the girl is horribly alone, (I won’t spoil it) and we get the titles.
The story begins with a salvage crew, a well-oiled machine of a team that includes such heavies as Gabriel Byrne, Julianne Margulies, Isaiah Washington and delicious morsel Karl Urban. For a goofy horror movie, that’s a pretty pedigreed cast, right there. They’re approached by mild-mannered pilot Jack Ferryman, who reports that he’s seen a giant hulk in the Bering Straits from his plane and who needs their help with the operation. It could mean a big payoff for the crew, whose life philosophy is that ‘The only plan is there is no plan.’
But once they actually find the ship, there’s a hitch – it’s the Antonia Graza, an Italian luxury ocean liner that disappeared in 1962, but had been sighted every now and then by captains around the world. Whoever finds it would be rich ever after, and it’s no coincidence that Murphy (played by Byrne) has been fascinated with the ship all his career.
Once on board, the ship is a rusty, sea-soaked ruin. Remnants of her former finery are everywhere, in the carved paneling, the fallen statuary, and peeling gilt flourishes. The whole thing would be familiar to anyone who’s played the Bioshock games, and it wouldn’t surprise me if some of the imagery had inspired that game, if only a little.
But all is not well. The crew find a digital watch, and what appear to be bullet holes in one of the pools. Also evident is the image of a young girl in a blue dress who keeps appearing to Epps (Margulies), the only woman in the group. Nevertheless, they get underway with the salvage operation, planning to patch holes in the hull.
Here she is with makeup, which she does not need.
Epps is one of the better-written female characters present in horror movies. She isn’t exactly Ellen Ripley, but she’s more well-rounded and believable as a competent salvage operator–she’s physically strong, wears no makeup (Margulies is one of those women who really doesn’t need much–I covet her glorious eyebrows) and doesn’t take shit from the comedy duo of Dodge and Munder. She’s Murphy’s right hand, almost like his daughter.
Also refreshing was the fact that the team seem like intelligent people–they go about their business with a brusque competence that indicates their experience, and it’s clear they know what they’re doing. People used to say that the sea is a harsh mistress, and that’s goddamn right: all the tech in the world won’t save you if you don’t know what you’re doing, and boats STILL capsize or go missing all the time.
There's also this lady, an Italian songstres who lures men to their deaths. She TOTALLY gets naked.
Ghost Ship is a fun time to be had–the scares are a little creaky haunted house, but the effects are good and the story–at least until the gold shows up–is interesting. The way the characters puzzle their way through what they should do is also refreshing, since in most horror movies people just run around screaming and bumping into things. It doesn’t make the movie scary, but it’s fun and at least well-written enough to entertain.
The Fly is named on many ‘Best Of’ science fiction and horror lists, and there was some buzz (HA!) that Goldblum would be nominated for an Oscar–alas. They could have used his ‘barfing on donuts’ footage! Oscar magic, right there.
Let’s get it out there: The Fly, David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake, is gross. But then, you knew that, both from pop culture legends about it’s grossness and also because David Cronenberg couldn’t knit a sweater without incorporating the most sordid and hideous elements of The Body Grotesque. His entire body of work (HA!) has been informed by this theme, that no social or psychological horror is as horrific as that of the biological processes of the body.
Yes, have some.
One thing that isn’t made enough of in discussion of the film is the pure genius it took to take Jeff Goldblum and make him unattractive.
Because towards the end, Ye Gods.
Nasty.
Between the suppurating pustules, nodules, weird bristles, slime, hair loss, tumors, nightmarish eating habits (like a real fly, he barfs a powerful digestive enzyme on his food before consuming it) and general overall grossness of his physiological changes, he has gone from a delicious muffin to a nightmarish morsel of roadkill.
If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, here’s the story in a nutshell: Seth Brundle (Goldblum) is a shut-in mad scientist working on a device that can teleport matter, Wonka-style, by breaking the object down to the elements of its DNA and then reassembling it on the other side of the room. He can do inanimate objects, but anything alive gets–well, turned inside out. He meets science journalist Veronica (Geena Davis) and takes her back to his big weird loft in order to impress her. They begin a relationship (despite Veronica’s boss and ex-lover, a childish, pedantic man with the bizarre name of Stathis Borans throwing fits at her constantly) and it is after some hot sexy time that Brundle realizes what’s missing from his science stuff: the computer doesn’t understand flesh.
After reprogramming it, he successfully teleports his test baboon and the two are thrilled. Then, after a lover’s spat where she leaves, he gets drunk and decides to teleport himself, just To Show Her. Unfortunately, a fly gets into the telepod with him.
At first, he feels great. He feels purified, remade, and performs startling feats of gymnastic strength and rocks Veronica’s world All Night Long, over and over again until she’s plumb worn out. When she can’t keep up with the New Improved Brundle, he tries to force her to teleport, insisting she’ll be New and Improved too, and thus able to keep up with him sexually. Distressed by his New Improved Manic state, she leaves again, and things go downhill for Brundle from there.
Oh that's Nasty.
Various cinematic pundits point to this transformation as symbolic of a few different things: the horrors of drug addiction, as in how Brundle tries to force Veronica to experience teleportation herself, insisting it’s the ultimate rush and then dumping her when she ‘can’t keep up’; the aging process and mortality (hairs in weird places! Pustules where there were no pustules before!) ; and the withering ignobility of dealing with a terminal disease. Some specifically cite AIDS as an inspiration, but that read seems a little too specific–after all, the interpretation lies in the interpreter, and if one thing doesn’t mean different things to different viewers then it’s not a symbol, it’s an explicit sign.
Another interpretation could be about the changes people undergo in relationships; stay with someone long enough and you won’t be the same people you were at the beginning. In Brundlefly’s case, that is quite literally the truth, as his bathroom cabinet collection of lost body parts illustrates.
Yeah, his dick fell off. Cronenberg may be a genius, but he still managed to work a dick joke in, even if you blink and miss it.
Things don’t go too great for Veronica either–a nightmare sequence at an abortion clinic was the only thing about the movie I clearly remembered from the first time I saw it, in 1993 or so. Let’s just say Cronenberg’s grasp of body horror isn’t just limited to male functions.
'Be Grossed Out. Be Very Grossed Out.'
Since Brundlefly’s gradual loss of humanity is the heart of the story, Davis acts as a compassionate observer to his gruesome transformation. Even at his most loathsome, we are able to see Brundlefly at least a little bit as he once was, and not as the walking, oozing cold sore he is, completely due to her willingness to see and interact with him. One of the most horrific moments for me is when she visits Brunflefly at about stage 2 of his change, pictured above, and still will not only see him as someone worth saving, but will embrace him as someone who is terrified at what’s happening to him.
That basic element of human compassion takes a film that could have just been about the grossout and elevates it to a beautiful examination of the gradual disintegration of their relationship. Although in Brundlefly’s case, he’s less disintegrating than integrating an external part into himself–the fly and its strange, primal view of the world.
The Fly is named on many ‘Best Of’ science fiction and horror lists, and there was some buzz (HA!) that Goldblum would be nominated for an Oscar–alas. They could have used his ‘barfing on donuts’ footage! Oscar magic, right there.
The Fly is available on Instant Watch. I have to say if you’re going to watch it you ought to know what you’re getting into–and for heaven’s sake, don’t eat while you’re watching it!
