Carnival Of Souls

(1962) ****

Carnival Of Souls is in the absolute tip-toppest tier of late-night horror flicks. If all you want to do is watch something till you fall asleep, you'll be hypnotized by the dreamy pacing, by the lonely score (all pipe organ; more on that in a sec), and most of all by the near total lack of room tone in the audio. You know how when you're drifting off in front of the TV and you've shut your eyes for what seems like only an instant but it turns out later it was ten whole minutes, and all the voices and sounds you hear coming out your speakers seem like they're echoing completely out of a blank white void? This whole movie sounds like that no matter when you're watching it. And I actually wouldn't talk you out of watching this on a late afternoon sometime; just about every spooky thing that happens in this film takes place in the cold bright sunshine.

The film cold-opens in Kansas, where a playful drag-race between a car full of men and a car full of women ends tragically with the ladies' car crashing through the side of a bridge and sinking into a murky river. The authorities search the area and trawl the river bed for what must be hours, when suddenly Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) crawls, wet, muddy, and all alone, onto a sandbar. The voices of her rescuers, and even her own voice, echo out from another plane ("like black and white TV with the sound turned low", as Motorcycle Boy in Rumble Fish describes it), and the ringing in Mary's ears is ringing in ours as well. Fade to black.

The film advances rather rapidly through the next couple scenes of Mary going back to work (pipe organist; she's very, very good at it), and then later announcing to her boss that she's taking a job as a church organist in Salt Lake City. I liked how trim this part of the movie is. There's a very specific destination waiting for Mary and for us, and why waste time putting us there?

Passing through the outskirts of Salt Lake, Mary sees the burnt out husk of an gigantic recreation center off in the distance, and seduced by its strangeness and grandiosity, she winds up there over and over throughout the film. And seriously who could blame her? Look at this friggin place. 

This is a postcard of the original structure, called Saltair, which has had three different iterations on the eastern side of the lake about 20 miles from downtown SLC. The version as it exists today, known as Saltair III, hosts occasional concerts. Saltair and Saltair II were large scale entertainment meccas for the city dating back to the late 1800s when Salt Lake was still, yknow, a *lake* and not miles of salt-flat with a lake way off in the distance. The film was shot guerilla-style in the corpse of Saltair II, and 8 years later like its predecessor, the whole structure burned to the ground. 

Most of the screen time is spent here, with Mary drifting through the ruins in a reverie, and why not? Saltair II is absolutely the sort of entity a filmmaker finds on a scout and realizes immediately the kind of movie that needs to be made there. 

There're more to talk about but I can't get into the rest without getting sort of spoilery, or at least what passes for spoilery in a movie that's as free-flowing as this. Meet me after the jump.

Side note, Candace's co-star Sidney Berger is also the sort 

of entity a filmmaker has an immediate reaction to. 

"I'm making a movie. You'd be perfect as a fucking douchebag."

According to Wikipedia, the story is loosely based on Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, which is already a spoiler because anyone who's read or seen that could easily guess that Mary is already dead before the opening credits. As it happens, before I read that reference in the synopsis, I was already comparing it to another one-time Twilight Zone mini-film called The Hitch-Hiker in which a woman keeps seeing the same phantom hitchhiker at impossible intervals while on a drive to the west coast; and I think that the latter is a better comparison, and in a key way that itself makes Carnival Of Souls great for late night viewing: I actually don't think we're supposed to be scared. Or maybe *we* are, but *Mary* isn't. 

If you're already dead, those phantoms you keep seeing on the side of the road, and in the window, and in your dreams -- you're one of them. They understand you, and they want you to understand too. They don't mean you any harm. In fact, all the harm you're ever going to experience is over. And what else is there to do now but put on your best suit or dress, and dance yourself into infinity in a luxurious dancehall that's every bit the ghost that you are?

I swear I almost gave this five stars, because while it's really just a mood-piece, it's delicious as a mood piece. I'm reminded of Octo's line in his Night Of The Living Dead review, "it's eye candy, all right, but a strange pepper-flavored candy you find in Japan". The settings, the angles, the lighting and shadows, the sound; everything about this is entrancing. 

Salem's Lot 1979 and Salem's Lot 2024

Happy Halloween everybody! Julie's working late and the boy doesn't have school tomorrow so he's heading to one of those crazy for Halloween neighborhoods and crashing at a friend's. I'm here to serve the small number of trick-or-treaters we get around here. It's just past 7 as I write this and I've seen two groups of two each so far!

I miss doing this; when I discuss movies with people I talk about the Horrorthon experience a lot.  I'm certainly down to give it another go, a better go, next year.  It's tough to do Horrorthon during an election year, and not coincidentally I know 2016 was the one where I seriously flaked off. We had good energy back then and while it probably won't ever be the same, I'm amped to keep it going one way or another.

There's more in the Salem's Lot franchise history than just these two versions. I've yet to see the 2004 TNT miniseries starring Rob Lowe, and I tried to watch Return to Salem's Lot directed by Larry Cohen, but I dozed off and what I saw didn't inspire me to revisit.  But one night a week ago I saw that Max had produced a new version and were also streaming the 1979 original, so I watched them both.

Salem's Lot (1979) ***1/2

It's famous lore in my family that my younger brother Tim (Timmy at the time) made the unwise choice one night to stay up with the big kids and watch the 1979 Salem's Lot, most of which he did completely covered in a blanket with one wide-open eye showing.  I can date that night to 1984, which is the first time I saw the movie, which means I was not as brave as my little brother when I was his age and Salem's Lot was first on TV (or probably I just wasn't allowed to).  But I knew about it when it came out, and if you were 10-ish in 1979 you can probably remember why if you think about it for a second.  Here's a two-part hint:

Tell me that doesn't spook you even a little.  You're lying.

It honestly warmed my heart how creepy it still is seeing little Ralphie Glick hovering outside the window. The scratching, the smile. Logically it makes no sense that he's in his pjs, that's not what he was last wearing, and the amount of movie smoke outside the window is pretty silly, but it doesn't matter at all. This is really happening in the story but it's spun with the visual language of a nightmare. Older brother Danny, racked with guilt over losing Ralphie in the woods, wakes from a fitful sleep, wearing a blue version of the same style pjs. The abstract setting out the window, Ralph in his pjs, the hideous unearthly glee on his face -- it's a beautiful combo of the familiar and the just plain wrong. It's good stuff! And it didn't matter how old you were when it came out, because there were only 3 TV channels and you'd wind up seeing the commercial for it any old time.

Embedding video is escaping me at the moment, check it out here.

If you bother watching that it might surprise you how the notion of showing the entire movie in the trailer was already very much a thing by 1979. As a bunch of kids in 5th grade we all saw that ad, and we all talked about the scary floating kid. Yeesh!

Unfortunately, that's a high point that this movie doesn't really ever get back to.  And since it was originally a two-part miniseries, you're in for a three-hour tour if you take it on. The journey is uneven.

While I suppose you could look at Salem's Lot as the first in the wave of modern vampire movies, in a way it's pretty much the same story you get from Hammer and Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Guy comes to village, village is beset by something bad that's getting worse, it's vampires, guy storms the lead vampire's castle to attempt to stake him in the heart. It is Stephen King, of course, who makes all the difference here. He's so good at developing his characters and intertwining their stories he makes the little town come to life, in a way so authentic it can't even be ruined by 70s made-for-TV hamfistery. 

There's something comforting and familiar when we watch the drama unfold as Fred Willard arranges a rendezvous with his married secretary at her house, pictured here in the actress's IMDB image which is pulled from that very scene:

Perhaps you remember how Fred Willard's tale ends, with him running outside in the dark in his red boxers only to be waylaid by a strong music cue and a TV freeze frame so dark and out of focus you can barely see the creepy hand coming in from off frame.  There's a lot that's watered down for TV.  Some of it works, like when two locals pick up the head vampire in his coffin, which is in a huge crate. The truck is really cold and the crate gets closer and closer to the cab as they drive... I thought "So what? It's a crate. That's what happens when you don't lock things down." But it was still pretty creepy. 

Some of it doesn't work, because of course it's 70s TV and there's a lot of music getting in your face and telling you how to feel. Salem's Lot spends a lot of capital telling you that you're supposed to be very unnerved by footage of James Mason just... driving around... 

As an example of the general tone, here's the introduction to our main villain.  It's too dark and for 45 seconds of the minute-long video nothing happens, and then BAM there's the big ol' vampire face. Check it out here.

I have a soft spot in my heart for this movie, but it's not one of the prime soft spots in my heart.  It's in a so-so neighborhood.  It's goofy but I can't help liking it.

Salem's Lot (2024)  ***1/2

I'm giving this movie the same rating as the the 1979 one but it's for different reasons.  A number of the surface elements are better because that's how production values work, but it doesn't have the charm.  Look at main baddie Kurt Barlow's head there. It's like the 1979 version, but his jaw opens wider, and, and, uh... his head has more veins! Yeah!  That's sort of this movie's whole approach.

They don't do the Ralphie Glick floating through the window scene. Instead his brother goes into the back yard, which is so obscured in movie darkness he can only see one end of the see-saw. A decent setting for some creepy little brother stuff, but suddenly two long not-Ralphie's arms come down from the top of frame, grab Danny by the head, and pull him up out of sight.  Huh.  It was such a curve ball I pretty much spent every scene bracing for that to happen again.

Redeeming elements include: In this vampiverse all crosses glow when a vampire is near, even ones made just now from tongue depressors and tape.  I like anything in movies that would immediately make me believe in religion if I experienced them personally. The climax takes place at the local drive-in theater, which is cool for various reasons. And it's less of a time commitment than the original!  

I see by the clock on the corner of my screen that's Halloween is minutes from ending on the east coast, so I'm publishing this now.  Love you guys! Horrorthon!

Happy Halloween!

 

After giving out candy to about 600 kids (would have been many more but I ran out of candy), I took a stroll in the cemetery near my house and made this video with my favorite snapchat filter. I still hope to watch one horror movie this horrorthon season...I guess that means tonight...hmmm. The problem is I've gone soft. I live in an 1800s, possibly haunted house, and I'm afraid I won't sleep. I have fond memories of past horrorthons and I promise I'll be braver next year. 

X

(2022) *****

Okay, so a funny thing happened. 

In my review of Pearl, I referred to it as "a massive expansion of filmmaking scope over its predecessor in the trilogy", meaning this one here. I don't know what I was high on when I said that. I rewatched this (and Pearl, actually; a friend of mine and I caught them both as a Saturday night double-feature at an outdoor screening in Highland Park). Turns out this is outstanding in its own right, and I can easily explain why it took me till now to see that.

What's the shortest thing you would say to describe what this movie is about? I myself would fall back on, "it's a slasher about a porno". So I've managed in one fell swoop to invoke *two* genres (Porn is a genre, right?) that people immediately associate with mediocrity, lack of talent, lack of class. Well, not all horror flicks are Anal Graveyard, just as not all movies that are about porn exist to be smutty. Are you really going to stand there and call Boogie Nights smut? Because if you are, we're having a completely different conversation anyway. 

It's comically unironic that one of the characters in X is a cameraman who thinks an *elevated* porno flick can be made, and another is a porn director who's willing to let him prove it. Six people drive out from Dallas to the Texas countryside to shoot a porno, and not one of them is stupid or lacking in imagination. And director Ti West gives everyone ample screen time to think about things and to react like actual people, and not just like whatever you would assume about a bunch of sex-perverts in a horror film. In fact till the halfway point, other than some occasional bits of foreboding (barely five minutes into the movie, the van drives past a bunch of state emergency vehicles dealing with the roadkill of a cow on the highway, for example), it would be hard to distinguish this from an A24 movie about people considering their life choices while shooting a porno.

I mean, lol, I guess it kind of is anyway, but for completely different reasons. 

In any case, if you're inclined to be judgy about Horror or Porno, go into this with an open mind, because there's more to it than that. And I haven't even started talking about the old couple that owns the farm, but to do that I'd need to get spoilery, and so I'll give anyone who hasn't seen X yet a chance to tap out. More after the break.

The porn crew is shooting their movie on the farm of a husband and wife named Howard and Pearl. They're old. Howard is only a few good shocks away from a heart attack, and Pearl (when she can sneak away from under Howard's protective eye) floats frailly about the property, mostly keeping her distance from these young gorgeous women and handsome men. When she does encounter any of them up close, she can't bring herself to look directly at them. 

A careless viewer would put a rubber stamp on Pearl reading "crazy old lady with a poor sense of boundaries", and would in doing so completely miss things like how long she lingers showing one of the starlets, Maxine, an old picture of her dancing on the farm grass, beatific -- a photo, by the way, of her looking *strikingly* like Maxine herself. Even Howard falls curiously silent for an extra moment when he first lays eyes on Maxine...until Maxine's husband and director snaps him out of his confusion and reverie. 

Knowing nothing of Pearl's backstory at the time, anyone with a heart and a sense of clarity about life and what happens to us when we get old would see that Pearl is just a human, well along in years, stirring to memories of what it was to be young with desires rather than very old with desires. And right in the middle of all of this churned up longing, we have a break in the action which would seem cartoonish in a movie that actually was just smutty: the pervs in the guest house sit around their living room and listen to Jackson Hole (I *know*!), the male porn lead, play the acoustic guitar while Bobby-Lynne Parker, one of the female porn leads, sings a pastoral rendition of Landslide by Fleetwood Mac. And I have to say, speaking in my capacity as a professional musician, the guitar solo that Jackson takes is not one that can be so casually played by someone who hasn't spent time knowing and loving the instrument, and the process of learning it.

And as the lyrics roll through, Ti West takes us split-screen through a thoughtful montage of shots lovingly edited to sync up with the lyrics -- including a shot of Pearl's crabby bones poking under the skin of her back as she puts on her nightgown over the lyrics "time makes you bolder, even children get older, and I'm getting older too."

Let me put it this way: there's a genuinely heartfelt narrative taking place in between some rather tangibly porny stuff, and an ending that gets [makes the head blow up gesture with his hands] BCCCHHHH -- verrry bloody. And it may take you, as it did me, a couple times watching X and Pearl to grasp it, but Ti West has painted an entire world in Blood and Soil with these first two movies in his trilogy, and the depth of the detail and subtext becomes more apparent the longer a look you're willing to give it. 

Now I'm *really* looking forward to rewatching Maxxxine.

The First Omen

(2024) ***1/2

When I first saw the title of this most recent installment in The Omen anthology, I thought about Julie's review from back in 2008 of the sequel to It's Alive in which she says, "I started calling the baby puppets, the "It's Alives,"as in, "he better watch out! There's an It's Alive in the pool", and I wondered whether there were people out there calling Damien himself, "The Omen", like "that woman better watch out! She might get impregnated by Satan's semen and give birth to a The Omen". That just me? Nobody? Okay, whatever.

I went into this skeptical, just waiting for some sign that this was going to turn out to be mediocre, and though my skepticism spiked right around the time the filmmakers swiped the "it's all for you!" bit from the original film (modifying it only by adding gasoline and fire to the equation), by the time the movie was half over, I realized I didn't hate it at all. In fact, there's a key philosophical difference between this one and all its predecessors that aligns more with my own morality that kind of makes me feel like if I'd seen this first, it might have been my favorite. I have more to say on this, but it's hard to talk about without spoiling the plot, so I'll give you a chance to tap out now. I'll just say that the only reason I don't feel like giving it 4 stars is that the original is one of the films listed as an example of a 3.5 star film in Thonscore and I don't want to rate this higher cause I feel like I already used up my Golden Buzzer in my review of Pearl. This is rather good though. It's shot and edited beautifully; Nell Tiger Free shines in the lead role and also has the name Nell Tiger Free which I'd award 5 stars in the yet to be published namethon.blogspot.com; and all the things that are supposed to be scary land where they're aimed. If I were giving it a straight thumbs up or down, it's thumbs up for sure. 

I guess in the '70s people just took it on faith (literally) that, in a movie about the Church confronting Satan that all of the Church people were worthy of our trust, and that their foes were Evil with a capital E and were here to do nothing more than kill only good people, and take over the world and that would be...bad, somehow? Certainly nothing like the ends and means of the unimpeachable Catholic Church, here to protect us from all that Evil lurking about. And then time passed and stories made their way into public knowledge of Catholic priests using their power to unsavory advantage, and their clout to cover it up.

Similarly The Omen is just about a shitty little kid who is destined to become Evil incarnate and will be protected in the meantime by mean-looking people and some large dogs. We never stop to think that anyone responsible for bringing Damian to the Thorn household would be any different. The First Omen decides to be more nuanced, presenting two conflicting factions in the Church itself, one more Humanist and one purely Liturgical, and shows preoccupation with fulfilling the word of the Bible can sometimes, even at best, lead to self-defeating and cruel practices, and at worst do the Devil's work for him.

All told, The First Omen is a reinvigorating addition to the series that does everything you'd hope a sequel will do while falling short in none of the ways sequels often do. Solid piece of work; worth a look.

 

Poltergeist II: The Other Side

(1986) ***1/2

Look, I've watched Poltergeist II many times (that's just something that comes with being a child of '80s cable television; we rewatched everything). I've read all the reviews. I hear and understand everything that all of the critics don't like about this, and by and large I agree. This sequel didn't need to be made. The FX were already two years out of date. Ghostbusters looks better and came out in '84 and you could even make the argument that the first Poltergeist, which came out in '82, and which channeled its budget into a smaller scale, itself looks superior to this. HR Giger himself, who designed the FX, claimed in interviews to be disappointed in the results, and wished he'd opted to be on set to supervise directly.

And still, I don't care about any of that stuff because Julian Beck is so freaking great as Kane, it more than makes up for anything about Poltergeist II that doesn't work.

Weird thing is, he doesn't actually do much more than talk, and chuckle, and smile through a mouth impossibly full of teeth. But even when he's smiling, he projects an energy that makes you think probably that all the plants on the block he just came from right before he walked up your walkway are dying. Merely on physical attributes alone, the man oozes malice on a level few horror movie villains have ever matched. 

So there he is on the Freeling doorstep, already having passively made both the Freeling kids and mom Diane even the dog feel like they need to go hide somewhere, and in two minutes alone with dad Steve, he unbuckles everything in Steve's mind that he hopes nobody else can see.

        Kane: What you fear is that you're not man enough to hold this family together.

        Steve: <thunderstruck> H-how do you know?

        Kane: Because...I'm *smart*. And I'm your friend. And I know what you're thinking.

And now that I'm playing all this out in my memory, I'm going back up to the top of the review and changing my star rating from 3 to 3.5. Because setting aside whether or not this sequel "has no reason for existing beyond the desire to duplicate a financial success", as critic Nina Darnton of the NY Times put it, if we're going to agree to be put under the magic spell of an original film, we must also agree that anyone who survives Part I had a life that came after it. For better or worse, Poltergeist II is the story that came after, and at the very least the characters here all behave like they just experienced real metaphysical trauma. I was too young to pick up on this sort of thing when I was watching this as an 8 year old, but now as an adult with a lot of friends who are fathers, I can appreciate how much pressure he must be placing on himself to hide how scared he was when the monsters came into his house a year earlier. 

Of course he'd be an alcoholic. Of course he'd mock the weird Indian guy shaking his medicine bag and dancing around the Freeling's new house (and by the way, scoff along with him if you'd like, but Will Sampson, whom you'd recognize as The Chief from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, frikkin kills in this too). And of course he'd be easy prey for the serpent-tongued Reverend on his doorstep demanding to be let inside. 

Blame the studio for forcing an unworthy sequel, blame HR Giger for not being there to make sure Brian Gibson and his crew weren't fucking up all the lovely FX mockup art. But writers Michael Grais and Mark Victor, and the entire returning cast from Poltergeist absolutely deserve credit for taking the time to ask themselves how real people would react to the horrors of living in two consecutive homes sitting on top of a doorway to hell.

As a bonus for getting through this review, here's a terribly useful .gif I made. Use it for good or evil. I don't care. I'm proud of it either way.

Frankie Freako

(2024) ***1/2

Is a movie that's *trying* to be Stupid And Annoying, and succeeds at being both, therefore a good movie? It really depends on who's making it, and what kind of humor lands with you. Frankie Freako is Stupid And Annoying. If you want some idea of how Stupid, notice that the can the dude in the picture above is holding. It's a soda. It's called Fart. Fart Soda (with caffeine). The Freakos spend the entire movie drinking the stuff. This isn't Oscar Wilde, is what I'm saying. If you want some idea of how Annoying, know that the movie is about this guy and his friends, who come to your house and do this kind of shit to it.

So what kinds of Stupid And Annoying work? I honestly couldn't give a short explanation. Anyone who has seen both Zoolander and the Hustler/Jenna Jameson horror comedy Zombie Strippers, could probably say that there's a difference in quality between those two movies, even without being able to do anything more than name jokes that landed in one and jokes that failed in the other. Frankie Freako is definitely more like Zoolander, although I actually think a better comparison would be Dicks: The Musical. Or if you haven't seen that, it's like you're watching an episode of MST3K and that audio on the original movie cuts out for some reason, so Joel and the bots have to make up their own dialogue: the people in the movie say and do terribly Stupid And Annoying things, but their lines are written by smart, funny people who know the difference.

Frankie Freako, and two fellow Freakos, Boink Pardo and Dottie Dunko, rain wild-party chaos on Conor Sweeney (whose real name is, I swear to god, also Conor Sweeney) and his square, predictable life. It's not like the Freakos don't warn him ahead of time. He called their 900 number and they asked if he was ready to party and he said yes. That's on him now. 

It's important (god, like *really* important) to be able to contextualize what it's like watching the Freako chaos unfold against what it's like watching Conor's normal life before the Freakos get there. He works, what a person in not Freako-adjacent world would identify as, a really dorky job and, while utterly convinced he's being creative as fuck, he spiffs up a work presentation by making his coworkers wear party hats. Then he goes home to his lovely girlfriend Kristina (real name: Kristy Wordsworth), and gets as far as holding her hand for five seconds before collapsing in satisfaction on the bed, oblivious to Kristina's disappointment, to watch his favorite antiquing show, on which the host spends minutes explaining to clients why their item is cute before merely telling them that it's worthless. If this were normal life, Conor would be single, fast. This is farce, so Kristina is still there like normal the next morning. 

Does that sound stupid? Like it would be a really, really stupid and annoying movie to watch? Guess what: I already fuckin *told* you that's what it was. That's on you now. Someone else might watch this and want their 85 minutes back. I, myself, snort laughed throughout most of it, my palm on my forehead. I make no promises either way.

Pearl

(2022) *****

Here comes the most outrageous thing I've ever said in Horrorthon review: as of 2022, Pearl isn't just my favorite horror film of all time; it's one of my favorite films overall. In its disdain for horror as a genre, the Academy straight up *robbed* Mia Goth of a well-deserved Oscar nomination for best actress. 

This is the second film in Ti West's excellent X Trilogy, and I feel about Pearl vis a vis X and Maxxxine, the way I feel about films like The Road Warrior, The Godfather II, and Evil Dead II, vis a vis their place in their own trilogies: it's a massive expansion of filmmaking scope over its predecessor in the trilogy, and with hindsight after the release of the third, remains the best of the bunch. 

If X is West channeling a grainy polaroid, and Maxxxine is West channeling early 80's Brian De Palma, then Pearl is West channeling an Edward Hopper painting. Blue skies and pink clouds soar across the screen over the simple industrious beauty of American farmhouses and endless golden cornfields. As the film opens and the first few bars of the opening score play out, we're hearing symphonic strains worthy of comparison to Aaron Copland or maybe to John Williams's score for Superman...and then the theme evolves; not by jump or jolt, but a nonetheless unsupported change in the harmony takes place, as if something important has been left out of the development. Then things get weird and dark. And then back. And so on.

All of that is by way of saying that if the score were a person, it'd be Pearl herself; at a glance, simply and unpretentiously pretty, but observe her behavior for some time, and one senses that there are gigantic gaps in the narrative she's telling herself about her life on the farm she so desperately wants to escape, and about what life will be like in the big wide world outside once she finally escapes it. We spend no more than a couple minutes watching her twirl about the family barn, idly chatting with the family cow, before we realize that there is something awfully wrong with Pearl, as she savagely pitchforks a goose who wanders in through the barn door. Why does she do it? Because she can. Because she's already holding the pitchfork. Because nobody is watching. There's no telling how many animals she's slaughtered before with nobody around to judge her for it, but this doesn't feel remotely like her first, nor does it entirely feel like she'd talk herself out of doing it to a person should the opportunity arise one ordinary American day.

Meanwhile she gets along famously with people who don't see enough of her to encounter the inconsistencies. She flirts with the handsome Bohemian projectionist at the theater in town, and she's conspiritorially chummy with her sister-in-law Mitsy. A lot of my favorite acting choices Mia Goth makes in this movie are when Mitsy is around. Mitsy represents everything Pearl wishes she has (and ironically already *has* at hand just by being friends with Mitsy): an impish sense of fun, confidence, charm, and above all *effortlessness*. The look on Pearl's face when Mitsy is gossiping with her is what you'd see on the face of a shy 1st grader hanging out with a friendly, and way cooler 2nd grader. Awe. Gratitude just to be included in the hijinx for once.

But the people who spend enough time around Pearl eventually start to see the missing pieces. Observe this exchange between her and her mother Ruth:

 P: If I go to this audition and I don't get picked, then I'll come home and I'll never speak of it again, I swear. But I have to know that I tried, or I'm going to regret it for the rest of my life. Please mama, you have no idea what I'm capable of.

R: Oh yes, I do. I've seen the things you've done, in private, when you believe that no one's watching. You think others won't notice?

The pieces come apart faster and faster as the story goes on, as we know they must. And the whole thing culminates in one of the most fascinating monologues I've ever watched in my life, and *the* most fascinating mid-credit scene I think I will ever see. I've spoken in other reviews of movies I've loved about the feeling of dread at having to review them, not wanting to undersell their brilliance, and I've never felt that more strongly than I do about Pearl. I'm in thrall with this film, and I'm relieved to finally finish a few meager lines of text explaining why. Ti West and Mia Goth each already boast an impressive body of work, and I believe when all is said and done, Pearl will rank among the best things either of them ever do. This is a clever, gorgeous, heartbreaking, and brutal piece of work. 

 

Poltergeist III

(1988) **1/2

Carol Anne gets sent away from her family, halfway across the country to live with her aunt's family, and to attend a school for gifted but troubled children, and receive psychological care and analysis by <takes a breath> the most insufferable psychiatrist in the history of horror cinema. There's a few reasons why I'm rating this 2.5 stars ("no big deal if you miss it", per the Thonscore Rating System) and not 2 ("pretty lame"), and I'll enumerate some of them below, but I'd be lying a little if I didn't admit that part of it is as a reward to the rest of the characters for not liking him either.

Poltergeist as an entire trilogy, even at its best, is not a hill I would ever die on, and yet I would argue that there's at least something redeeming going on in each of the three movies (never saw the remake), and that includes this one. First, let's talk acting: Poltergeist III features workmanlike performances by numerous cast members -- the usual professionalism by Tom Skerritt and Nancy Allen, a promising debut performance by Lara Flynn Boyle, and an expanded role for Heather O'Rourke who, in her own youthful way, exhibits what could have eventually evolved into some solid acting chops. Zelda Rubenstein is such a monumental, walking x-factor that it doesn't really matter whether or not she's "good". She's like Bobcat Goldthwait; bringing something to the table that simply defies qualitative comparison to any other actor. Richard Fire, is probably perfectly fine as Dr. Seaton, but Dr. Seaton is such a bonerface that I can't separate my analysis of the performance from how much I don't want to have any memories that he's even there. Ditto Kipley Wentz as Scott whose earnestness and geniality and generally positive vibe are offset by his stupid rosy cheeks and his eminently punchable face

As for the technical aspects of the filmmaking you may fairly deduce from the screenshots I'm using that I'm a fan of the whole mirrors thing going on in this movie. All of it is practical effects (was CGI even really a thing yet?), and it was all so meticulously planned that, according the IMDb Trivia page, "the script was eight inches thick because it laid out all the storyboards, camera movements, and technical setups". Obviously, an independently moving reflection is a great opportunity for a jump scare, and there's a bunch in Poltergeist III that are rather effective if you haven't seen this before and aren't expecting them. But even the ones that aren't meant to be jump-scary are suitably eerie. Lay all that on top of otherwise pro-level cinematography and angle-selection, and there's really nothing to complain about on a technical level.

But there are too many pieces missing; too many plot points that we're left expecting that we're going to see a corresponding scene that never comes (like, hang on -- where the fuck did Scott go??); too little chemistry among the cast members (despite the professionalism behind individual performances). Maybe the most glaring problem is the replacement of Julian Beck with Nathan Davis in the role of Kane. There's a hill I will die on: Julian Beck is the best thing about *any* of the Poltergeist movies, and it's not close. You don't replace a performance like that. If the actor dies, you make another plan.

All told, this is probably not as terrible a movie as you remember, but there's not nearly enough good stuff to overcome the numerous flaws. 

I Saw The TV Glow

(2024) ****

So I'm a dummy who doesn't pick up on symbolism. Turns out after reading the Wiki and IMDb for this, I realized it's totally and obviously an allegory for transsexuality. I actually spent a while afterwards considering my own preconceived notions (and, full disclosure, I spent another while combing this review to edit out all the Hims and Hers), and hope that it's a good sign that I didn't pick up on the allegory because I was too busy just empathizing with everyone as a human being to consider what they were self-identifying as. I just thought it was about feelings of loneliness and being misunderstood in this peculiar era of human history in which we have just enough information to understand that people are different, but lack the maturity to know how to talk about it or empathize (or to find people who will empathize with us).

The film follows teens Owen and Maddy, who bond over a mutual love for a Buffy-esque TV show called The Pink Opaque. It's a weekly ritual, Owen sneaking out of the house to watch with Maddy, and then sleeping on Maddy's floor, and then sneaking out of *Maddy's* house before dawn to avoid detection by Maddy's abusive father. The show runs for five seasons (or does it??), and the pair watch and rewatch, their investment in the show giving them something to identify with -- giving them the only thing to identify with, I should say. They don't have any other friends, and only cautiously occupy space with each other. They speak in cold, bored tones to each other, but one easily senses two souls screaming beneath the surface -- not to connect with others, but just to be seen and identified. Clearly establishing the defensive perimeter one afternoon, Maddy declares "I like girls -- you know that, right? I'm not into boys," and when Owen responds that that's okay, Maddy asks meekly whether Owen likes girls, and then asks more meekly, boys. Owen replies, "I think I like TV shows".

Things eventually get rather weird, and I don't want to say much about that part of it, except to say that it's not a gory movie, but it vibes very hard. It's satisfying as a horror film -- though maybe it's more like discomforting Sci-Fi? Doesn't matter. What matters is that it's quietly a terribly sensitive film, and director Jane Schoenbrun feels obvious love and tenderness towards Owen and Maddy even while they lack the same tenderness towards themselves.

Malevolent

 2018  ***1/2

It's 1986 for some reason, and a team of paranormal investigators are making a big name for themselves all over Scotland.  But they're liars! We see them "cleanse" a home to help a grieving widower and his little girl, making sure to let him know who to give the check to.

Black Widow's little sister Florence Pugh is the star of the show as the team psychic; she minces around the house and "feels" things.  But she's a liar too! And she doesn't even know it!  Right at the end of the scam job she sees something... off, and it's a standout scene because of what isn't there -- there's no keyboard mashing music cue.  ARE YOU LISTENING JAMES WAN

It's a great moment, and soon there's another vision that is quiet, out of the corner of the eye, and never spoken of.  Teen Black Widow is in a weird spot: she's too scared to pretend to see ghosts because she's actually seeing ghosts.  I'm already a fan of "we're scamming people into believing in the supernatural AH IT'S REAL" plots, and even more a fan of "Oh gosh no, my so-called 'powers' are all fake, ha ha ha AH IT'S REAL" plots.  

In the prologue of the graphic novel From Hell, two old, well-dressed duffers are walking on the English seaside, reminiscing.  It's revealed one of the old men got rich as an amazingly popular stage act in which he had fits and fell down and uttered garbled visions of the future.  This comes up because he's admitting to his friend that it was all a complete act -- he faked the whole thing and just said whatever random stuff occurred to him at the time.  "But," says the friend, "Everything you predicted, all of it -- it all came true."

So cool, right?  Or remember when Illeana Douglas hypnotizes Kevin Bacon at that party in (warning crap title) Stir of Echoes? Later he's all "hey man you unlocked psychic powers" and she's all "yeah I read half a book" or something.  Sometimes these accidental, home-grown brushes with The Beyond really work for me.  

Back in the movie I'm supposed to be talking about, the gang gets a gig out in the boondocks, and I don't really need to get into the plot further but a bad time is had by all.  Things aren't what they seem, yadda yadda, eek watch out, badda bing, we gotta get out of here, bomp ba domp ba doo. If I sound a little disappointed it's because those hints of originality at the beginning didn't really play out like I hoped.  

The unspooling story isn't flawed per se; it doesn't drag, and the cast does a great job of making you care about them, but some of you more experienced viewers might find this a bit paint-by-numbers.  I thought it was giving it a good honest try, like when Teen Widow's jerk older brother, who runs the scam and is in too deep with loan sharks to refuse work, keeps listening to motivational tapes on his Walkman.  You hate him but you like him.  

So to the connoisseurs, I recommend watching Malevolent just for these few standout touches.  It's exactly for this reason I gave it the half star over base average.  But in the larger scheme of things it lands squarely in the populous land of known as You'll Be Okay Throwing 90 Minutes At This But It Won't Change Your Life.