The Taking Of Deborah Logan

(2014) ****

Even if not a single supernatural thing took place in the movie The Taking Of Deborah Logan, it would remain a chilling look at the decline of a woman as her brain is slowly eaten by Alzheimer's. I'm reminded a little of the opening scenes in The Descent, in which we spend enough time getting to know our characters to identify with their pain as things start to go bad for them, and to be appalled along with them when things go from bad to grotesque.

The Taking Of Deborah Logan is presented in documentary form from beginning to end; the "original" footage (as opposed to graphics and newscast clippings) is shot by a PhD film crew live-reporting on the experiences of Deborah and her daughter Sarah. It's good enough as a movie; it'd be an astoundingly good documentary. The editing is very trim, so there's barely a wasted moment, and the videography provides us with a lot of savorable shots of our characters' face as things happen to them.

The two leads are excellent. Anne Ramsay (Sarah), I've been aware of since her small, but notable role in A League Of Their Own. She has a lovely face and a smile that shines through resting features that I would nonetheless describe as "hardened". Her face evokes a lifetime of challenging emotions. We see a lot of Jill Larson (Deborah) in torment, and her face does torment really well. And because of the Alzheimer's, we see her go through a torrent of emotions, often shifting rapidly within the space of a moment: politesse, confusion, fury, shame.

Things eventually do get very weird, and about that I'll say very little. In fact, all of my screenshots are from the first half of the movie. I will say that if I'm withholding that half-star extra that Crystal Math included in her review, it may merely be an example of what Stephen King described in Danse Macabre as an innate challenge in horror filmmaking: impressing the audience with the real scare. He wrote, "the protagonist [throws open the door], and there is a ten-foot-tall bug. The audience screams, but this particular scream has an oddly relieved sound to it. 'A bug ten feet tall is pretty horrible', the audience thinks, 'but I can deal with a ten-foot-tall bug. I was afraid it might be a hundred feet tall.'" I will also say that I don't believe my "relief" is due to any weakness in the presentation of what happens or how we get there. The special effects include seamlessly some rather gross things, and the transition from unease, to anguish, to horror is seamless as well. This is a good and creepy movie.