{"id":13328,"date":"2020-06-20T12:09:32","date_gmt":"2020-06-20T16:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=13328"},"modified":"2020-06-20T12:14:16","modified_gmt":"2020-06-20T16:14:16","slug":"thats-where-i-shed-some-blood-three-short-horror-flick-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2020\/06\/thats-where-i-shed-some-blood-three-short-horror-flick-reviews.html","title":{"rendered":"That’s Where I Shed Some Blood: Three short horror-flick reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

From least-good to best! Also, all of these are currently available on Shudder\u2026 I am not being paid to say this.<\/p>\n

The House of the Devil<\/strong><\/em>: Intense late \u201970s\/early \u201980s nostalgia here, not only in setting but in the languorous pacing (as Kindertrauma points out<\/a>). A Final Girl Type with a fun relationship with her feisty BFF gets a gig babysitting at an isolated house\u2026 but the \u201cbaby\u201d is not what she expected! Devilry ensues. Basically the atmosphere was fun and the suspense was great<\/em>\u2013all the scenes where the babysitter is just wandering the house were incredibly tense. And then it all just dissipates when the action starts, because this movie has nothing really to say or contribute except that feeling of suspense. The payoff is a bog-standard Satanism tale, the Bolex watch to Rosemary\u2019s Baby<\/em>\u2018s Rolex. Felt like I was on an endless rattling ride up the rollercoaster, filled with anticipatory fear, and then when we crested the hill it just sorta rolled away. You can read KT\u2019s review, linked above, for a more enthusiastic take.<\/p>\n

God Told Me To<\/strong><\/em>: Another film where I loved the setup and wasn\u2019t too compelled by the payoff, but both those things are much weirder here and the emotions are rawer and more earned. This 1976 tale from Larry \u201cThe Stuff<\/a>\u2026 oh hey, and Black Caesar<\/em>\u201d Cohen starts with a fantastic scene of a sniper targeting randoms from atop a water tower. When he\u2019s approached by a police negotiator and asked why he did it, he replies\u2026 \u201cGod told me to.\u201d<\/p>\n

So creepy, right? And then there\u2019s more of them, inexplicable mass killers who say only, God told me to<\/em>. And then. And then! The movie really thinks through some of the ramifications: News reports spark hysteria, people use the God angle to cover up self-interested killings\u2026. Just smart and twisty. It doesn\u2019t hurt that the cop investigating the murders is a devout-ish Catholic (albeit also adulterous-ish, it\u2019s the \u201970s). And the Deadly Doll names<\/a> the film\u2019s two genuinely wrenching scenes: a father explaining, calmly, reasonably, why he killed his family, and an old woman remembering the worst night of her life.<\/p>\n

Well, and then we find out what\u2019s happening. I would have liked this to be either a theological horror film along the lines of The Rapture, or a mystery, a movie which leaves some central questions unanswered. Instead we get answers and they\u2019re not theological. I won\u2019t tell you what\u2019s actually going on, and I get that for some people it might work or be thrilling or intriguing in some way, but whoof, I could not care less about the explanation we get, it\u2019s almost calculated to repel my interest and make the whole theological aspect of the drama seem pointless.<\/p>\n

Absentia<\/strong><\/em>: Mike Flanagan! Man, that guy gets around. Mike Flanagan wrote & directed Hush<\/em>, which a lot of you horror mavens liked (me too, sure); Ouija: Origins of Evil<\/em><\/a>, which was fairly dumb but also fairly Catholic so, you know, two points for that; but also and most importantly Oculus<\/em><\/a>, a real recent gem. Oculus<\/em> is a smartly-plotted evil mirror film which slowly reveals itself as a haunting portrayal of child abuse. It\u2019s a nice light movie!<\/p>\n

This is the film he made before Oculus<\/em>. It opens when Callie, a recovering (?????) drug addict and new Christian, comes to California to help her pregnant sister Tricia get through the final days of having her vanished husband declared dead \u201cin absentia.\u201d From the first scenes with these two women I was on board with the movie. They\u2019ve been through so much, they love each other so much, they feel real<\/em>\u2013all the relationships and characterization in this movie feels so lived-in. Actresses Catherine Parker and Courtney Bell are fantastic and the writing gives them everything they need\u2013realistic dialogue with hints of tension but no overexplanations. (Also there\u2019s a jarring, realistically unfinished discussion of the two sisters\u2019 respective religious beliefs, Tricia\u2019s Buddhist<\/a> striving for detachment and Callie\u2019s Catholic suggestion that \u201csome people are \u2018victim souls,'\u201d which is tense and painful in the moment and then pays off for Callie in a big way toward the end of the film.)<\/p>\n

As in Hush<\/em> and Oculus<\/em> the jump scares are way above standard. I sometimes find it hard to respect a movie heavy on jump scares; not this time, the pacing is perfect and the jumps don\u2019t feel cheap. We know from the beginning that the plot will somehow involve the sinister tunnel under the bridge<\/a> near Tricia\u2019s house, where Callie leaves a Tupperware of charity sandwiches for someone she assumes is a mentally ill homeless person. The explanation of this tunnel and its inhabitants draws on everything from \u201cTam Lin\u201d (it\u2019s no coincidence, I think, that the time Tricia has to wait before her husband can be declared dead is seven years<\/a>) to The Three Billy Goats Gruff<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I disagreed with the Deadly Doll<\/a> that this film doesn\u2019t solve its central mystery. They tell you what happened! All the pieces fit! It\u2019s just that the explanation is something you\u2019d expect from a much kookier or campier horror film, not this emotionally-realistic downer. The movie the Doll watched, about \u201cthe limitations of how much we can ever really know a person<\/span>,\u201d would be more to my taste than this movie, since its answers weren\u2019t super meaningful to me. I didn\u2019t discern a theme or insight along the lines of Oculus<\/em>\u2018s real insights into the experience of abuse.<\/p>\n

That said, it\u2019s pretty clear that Flanagan makes movies I want to watch, so I went ahead and added Doctor Sleep<\/em> to my Netflix queue. Tentatively considering his adaptation of Gerald\u2019s Game<\/em> also even though that is something I have intentionally avoided in both book and movie form. He\u2019s got a forthcoming TV project called \u201cMidnight Mass\u201d and yeah, sure, I\u2019ll eat it.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From least-good to best! Also, all of these are currently available on Shudder\u2026 I am not being paid to say this. The House of the Devil: Intense late \u201970s\/early \u201980s nostalgia here, not only in setting but in the languorous pacing (as Kindertrauma points out). A Final Girl Type with a fun relationship with her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[119,1463],"class_list":["post-13328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","tag-horror","tag-mike-flanagan"],"yoast_head":"\nThat's Where I Shed Some Blood: Three short horror-flick reviews<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"From least-good to best! Also, all of these are currently available on Shudder... I am not being paid to say this. 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