The Lighthouse

"The Lighthouse" (Robert Eggers, A24, Regency Enterprises, Universal Pictures) is a black and white psychological film inspired by the avant-garde/experimental style.


Set in the late 19th Century, two lighthouse keepers are sent to the lonely and secluded island for their four week shift. The two do not get on and, trapped on the island in a storm, it seems that they both begin to lose their sanity with deadly results...


Personally, this film was not for me. Technically speaking, however, it's an interesting film. Well shot and bleakly atmospheric, it delivers a disturbing piece. Filmed on 35mm and in an old fashioned ratio adds to the cinematic experience. From what I've read, the set up and filming process were both extremely labour intensive and complicated, so the film is certainly a feat in this regard.


Both Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe give intriguing performances as the younger, less experienced keeper and the abrasive older keeper. Their relationship is taught, uncomfortable and ultimately deadly. There's also the added element that both characters are extremely unreliable narrators (given their own secrets, alcohol abuse and apparent cabin fever), so that we are never truly sure what events are happening, and what are figments of the men's imaginations.


Overall, I found the purposefully disjointed style and delivery to be rather boring and I definitely felt the full 109 minute runtime. Whilst I can appreciate the style and aesthetic of the piece, I didn't find it to be particularly entertaining and, unlike Eggers' "The Witch" (2016) or Ari Aster's "Hereditary" (2018) , I wasn't even left with the same grim emptiness or shell-shocked feeling that lingered after the credits rolled. While I think it's sure to become an important film in the future for aesthetic and style reasons, I wasn't overly impressed with it as a film and wouldn't hold it in the same esteem as I do David Lynch's surreal and uncomfortable "Eraserhead" (1977) (which no doubt played some part in inspiration). For me it played out a little too much like a project piece rather than a finished article.


So, although I can and do appreciate the film's technical and aesthetic merits, it's unlikely to be one I'd choose to revisit. However, for the intrigued, it's certainly worth catching for the experience.

[Image: A24, et al]

Hani

The Strange Door

"The Strange Door" (1951, Joseph Pevney, Universal Pictures] is a strange film, indeed. It is neither truly horror nor solely period drama. It's loosely based on a Robert Louis Stevenson short story and it hails from the post-horror period of Universal's history.

A nobleman called Alain (Charles Laughton) tricks a high-born, drunken good-for-nothing called Denis (Richard Stepley) to enter the only door to his miserable mansion with the intentions of marrying him to his neice, Blanche (Sally Forrest).

He hates his neice for he blames her for the death of her mother, his forbidden love, who died in childbirth. He also hates his brother, Blanche's father, (Paul Cavanagh) for he accuses him of stealing his 'true love' in the first place. And so, naturally, he's locked up his brother and told his neice that her father is dead... As you do.

His devious plan is foiled, however, when Denis turns out not be such a bad chap afterall, Blanche decides that marrying him would be OK with her and his manservant, Voltan (Boris Karloff), changes his allegiences and throws a man-shaped spanner in the works...

A strange movie, that doesn't feature much of its namesake strange door, the highlights are definitely the wicked and pompous brushness of Charles Laughton's character, some of the more flowery scripting which elevates the film to a more cerebral affair and, of course, the brief but important presence of the wonderful Boris Karloff, who could have definitely been given more to do.

The main drawbacks are that it's quite slow burning with very little action and too much dialogue, the Denis character has too much screentime and is of little interest when compared with his screenmates and, like some other latter Universal works, Karloff's character smacks of after-thought and comes across as a little forced.

By far it is not the best Universal movie, but it has its own charms.

[Image: Universal Pictures]

 

Hani

 

Videodrome

"Videodrome" (1983, Canadian Film Development Corporation, Famous Players, Filmplan International, David Cronenberg) explores porn and how we view life in our advancingly technology-dependent world in an excellently (Rick Baker) gore-soaked way.

Max Renn (James Woods) is a TV executive for a cable channel. It's the 80s, VHS and Betamax are still shiny new technologies, and he thinks he's found the most interesting thing ever to show on TV: foreign snuff porn of questionable quality! The underground programme is called "Videodrome" and Renn is determined to get to the bottom of it. He has become sinisterly obsessed.

As his life becomes more entwined into the cult-like Videodrome lifestyle, his view on life changes and he begins to see things that he is not sure are real or not... Is he losing his mind or is he becoming part of a new reality? His femme fatale friend, Nicki (Debbie Harry of Blondie), also gets herself involved as she and Renn fall into the Videodrome trap together.

His searchings lead him to the hub of the technological cult, but has he gone too far?

This film was a slighlty different step for Cronenberg at the time and hinted towards where he would take his movies next. Videodrome manages to balance slightly obnoxious cerebral plot with a message about society's obsession with technology, with the confusing, but gory action his audience had come to expect. He manages to make a social comment on video and technology while also exploiting just that as his platform to do so. The film remains ever relevant and the effects make for undated, uncomfortable viewing.

[Image: FilmPlan International, et al]

Hani

Beyond Re-Animator

"Beyond Re-Animator" (2003, Filmax International, Lionsgate Entertainment, Castelao Producciones, Fantastic Factory, Brian Yuzna) is the third Re-Animator film.

We find Dr. Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) in prison using meagre scraps in order to continue his experiments on rats. A young new doctor, Howard Phillips (Jason Barry), joins as prison MD and reveals himself as interested in West's research for personal reasons. His personal reasons get a load more personal, however, when the pretty young journalist he's dating, Laura (Elsa Pataky), is killed and reanimated.

West's rat experiments have opened the door to him to allow him to control his reanimated creations further, but the results can be messy when he is reunited with his neon green concoction....

Soon the prison is overrun with violent reanimated zombies and under the control of the psychotic reanimated Warden (Simón Andreu). Oh, and there's also a vicious zombie rat cutting about with a severed human zombie penis....

Yes, this is a OTT, hilarious, gore-soaked splatter romp, just as its predecessors were. No complaints here. It's brilliant. Not a cerebral film, but wonderfully silly. Combs brings back West in all his glory.

 

 

[Image: Castelao Producciones]

Hani

Lovely Molly

"Lovely Molly" (2011, Eduardo Sánchez, Amber Entertainment, Haxan Films) is a supernatural horror.

Molly (Gretchen Lodge) has just married her lorry-driver lover, Tim (Johnny Lewis) and moved in to her dearly departed parents' family home. Upon moving in, strange noises can be heard in the house and the alarm begins to sound when everyone is in bed.

But, as Tim heads back to work long-distance leaving Molly alone in the house, she begins to unravel. At first she is disturbed by a presence in the house but soon she feels that she is being followed wherever she goes! As she folds in upon herself, shying away from her sister Hannah (Alexandra Holden) and Tim she becomes sure that the force haunting her is her deceased father, and we begin to learn more about she and Hannah's dark childhood...

A bit of a hodge-podge of found footage and normal film, the scenes play out with quite a strange atmosphere. The colouring is also quite sombrely hued, which, added to the setting of the film, gives it more of a French or British horror feel than an American one which I quite enjoyed.

Solid performances from Lodge, Lewis and Holden add to the quiet but panicked atmosphere. The feeling of dread builds up and up until we see that Molly has really lost it.

The film manages to keep the creep factor on high, despite not actually showing very much which works really well with the setting and harks back to more classic films.

It's not a game changer, gives an air of uncertainty as to the full plot, and is a little slow burning with only a few jumps which any seasoned horror viewer should see coming, but I reckon it would be excellent to watch it alone in the dark!

[Image: Amber Entertainment]

 

Hani