Tag Archives: Horror

2000s, 2009, A+, Grade, Past, Review, review-movie, slasher, supernatural, Year

Film Review: The House of the Devil

October 8, 2019 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Ti West
Principal Cast	Jocelin Donahue as Samantha Hughes Greta Gerwig as Megan Tom Noonan as Mr.Ulman Mary Woronov as Mrs.Ulman
Release Date	2009
Language(s)	English
Running Time	95 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

The film opens with text claiming that it’s based on a true story regarding the Satanic Panic of the 80’s. The text fades to black which then fades into to a view of a room. A young woman, Samantha (Joceline Donahue), can be seen framed by a set of doorways and shadows; she’s tucked away within the space. The camera slowly zooms in to get a better perspective of her; she’s lost in thought and the long zoom only exemplifies the intensity of her deliberation.

Suddenly, an older woman (Dee Wallace) approaches Samantha from behind and asks the latter if she enjoys the apartment unit. Samantha snaps back to reality, turns around, and claims it’s perfect. The landlady is enthused by the response. She claims that she didn’t like another applicant who seemed like trouble and would rather Samantha, someone who reminds her of her own good-natured daughter, move into the location instead.

But while the residence appears to be perfect, it’s clear there’s an issue. Samantha gazes apprehensively at the listing’s price and the reason for her earlier indecision simultaneously becomes apparent: she doesn’t have the funds needed to afford the location. When she mentions her financial struggles, the landlady decides to waive some initial fees and put off the first payment; helping out a daughter surrogate matters more than making a higher profit. With some financial wiggle room, Samantha hops off to her dorm room.

While she traverses, the opening sequence proceeds in gusto with loud yellow credits, diegetic music introduced by Samantha’s Walkman, and a few freeze frame shots. If the opening’s “true story” homage to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Amityville Horror wasn’t enough, this sequence makes the 70’s/80’s horror milieu that the film is placing itself within clear and sets expectations of where the story is going to go, cueing the viewer to focus in on the smaller details on the journey as opposed to its destination.

Samantha (Jocelin Donahue)sees a sock on her door.

But at the end of her trek, Samantha sees a sock hanging on her door, a telltale sign that her roommate (Heather Robb) has the room occupied for carnal purposes. Frustrated, she knocks on the door and reminds her roommate that it’s morning, implying that the latter’s “adventure” has been ongoing since the night and has prevented Samantha from being able to enter her own living area. What should have been her private reprieve from the world becomes an uninhabitable space occupied by antagonistic “others”.

Unwilling to walk in and deal with her roommate and her roommate’s partner in the nude, Samantha walks off and leaves the dormitory. She passes by a bulletin board plastered with flyers: in the center is an ad for a babysitter job and surrounding it are calls to join in watching an upcoming eclipse. The camera lingers on the board with the ad positioned center-frame even after Samantha passes by it highlighting the importance of what it conveys.

Then, Samantha walks back into frame and re-reads the babysitting ad. She checks around to make sure no one’s watching her and takes the first of the slips containing the number to call. She leaves the frame and the camera zooms in on the ad, emphasizing that the “S” in “Sitter” is written with a “$” symbol; Samantha’s desperate desire to find a new residence necessitates a quick stream of cash and that’s all she can focus on now.

Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) calls the number.

She gets to a payphone and calls the number only to hear the answering machine; she leaves her name and number and asks for a callback if the opportunity is still available. The camera stays in place as she walks off, framing both her and the phone against one another; the visual importance given to the inanimate object generates a slight unease.

But then the phone starts to ring. Samantha is as surprised as us and walks back to receive the seemingly impossible call. Accordingly, she asks the caller, who is revealed to be the babysitter client, how they got the payphone number and called it; the sequence of events implies that someone had to have been watching her put the call in to call back the phone quickly enough so that she would be able to hear it and pick it up. Yet, the client sidesteps the question and presses on with the opportunity, ascertaining if Samantha is still interested. She quickly pivots; money is more important than strange coincidences and she can’t afford to question a gig offering a nice payout.

The caller asks to meet at a building in the university and Samantha agrees. She walks away from the phone again and the composition from earlier is replicated. This time, she turns around and looks at the phone quizzingly. The strangeness of the call still lingers on her mind.

Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) hesitates before opening the door.

She treks back to her room and sees the sock removed from the door knob. She hesitates for a moment, accepts the possibility of walking on her roommate having sex, and then opens the door to go in. Yet, what she enters into isn’t that much better. Her roommate’s side of the room is absolutely filthy with clothes littering the floor. After traversing the cloth minefield, Samantha tries to pack her bag but is promptly hit on by her roommate’s partner. It’s no wonder why she wants to leave as soon as possible.

Yet, things only proceed to get more frustrating for Samantha as she waits for her caller to approach. Even though she puts her Walkman on, the music is barely audible; she can barely focus on it in preparation for what’s to come. A dissolve showcases time passing her by. When she realizes that in the time she’s waited an entire class has finished, she decides to abandon the endeavor. The disappointing scene dissolves into a sign for “Eclipse Pie” – another mention of the eclipse.

It’s at this restaurant where Samantha finally divulges the frustrations building up in her up to the point to her best friend Megan (Greta Gerwig). Her fears about not having the money to get to a place she can call home swell up and threaten to burst. The babysitter job was the perfect opportunity to get cash quickly and under the table.

Megan tries to lift Samantha’s spirits up. First, she assures Megan that the latter will be taken care of if she can’t find any money. Megan comes from a family of wealth and at the very least will help her friend with a place to stay. Second, she highlights that the job could have been awful: “the kid could be from hell.” This call-back to the opening text’s mention of “Satanic cults” adds to the unease surrounding the situation. Perhaps, it’s a good thing Samantha didn’t get the job.

When Megan offers to help Samantha get revenge by finding and tearing down all the potential babysitter ads put up by the no-show client to ensure that no one responds to their call, there’s a part of us that wants Samantha to agree and prevent the seeming inevitability. However, Samantha, the upstanding girl the landlady characterized her to be, refuses her friend’s offer to retaliate and goes back to her room to figure out what to do.

Unfortunately, while her roommate’s nighttime visitor is now gone, her roommate is still very much present and her constant snoring makes catching even a moment’s rest impossible. Samantha seldom places her head on a pillow before giving up and going to the bathroom. She flips all the faucets on. The noise generated by the streams covers the sounds of her crying. She’s isolated in the bathroom stall and the seemingly insurmountable pressure she feels is perfectly encapsulated by the image of the drain in the sink overflowing with water from a never-ending tap.

Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) writes down the Ulman address.

But back in the room, Samantha is greeted with unexpected news from her roommate who informs her that someone called and left a message regarding a babysitter job. Immediately, Samantha jumps on the opportunity, gets the number, and calls the client once more. She quickly forgives his excuse for not coming: he had a hectic morning and found himself unable to come. He mentions that he had another sitter lined up but they backed out and gave him trouble and thanks Samantha for calling back in spite of his treatment of her. Just like with the landlady, it appears that the upstanding Samantha is here to save the day and take the place of another deviant woman.

He asks her to come in for the night and babysit till a little after midnight in exchange for double the rate of pay. With no hesitation, Samantha agrees and calls up Megan for a ride. The film cuts to a shot of the moon, a reminder of the coming eclipse, as Samantha gets into Megan’s car. During their long drive up to the client’s household. Megan admits that she took down all the ads she could find; Samantha realizes that her opportunity was a result of this interference as the client had no one else to reach out to. Megan, for all intents and purposes, got Samantha her position for the night.

This revelation is accompanied by a lingering shot of a cemetery the girls drive by – a sign of things to come. The cemetery dissolves to a shot of the girls finally making it to the house. They get out and make their way to the front door and knock. A long zoom on the door handle raises the stakes on what’s to follow, creating an anticipation to discover the truth behind the job opportunity. The door opens and the girls look up as a pair of long arms extends out to greet them; the client’s face is withheld from the frame and the viewer amplifying the mystery and beckoning both the viewer and the girls to discover what lies in wait. But as the night goes on, Samantha finds herself embroiled in a dark mystery that threatens to completely destroy her life.

While the nature of the mystery, presaged by the film’s opening text and multiple subsequent clues, offers little in the way of genuine surprise, it gives director Ti West the perfect backdrop to explore the anxieties of the time and present an almost mythological depiction of the horrors associated with the respective culture shift. Like the films whose styles it pays homage to, The House of the Devil uses the literal struggle its protagonist undergoes to identify the stakes of the culture war of the era, revealing that the true horror of the “other” side stems not from their perverse desires but from the way those desires seem to mirror and pervert traditional desires.

Samantha’s journey seems to be a slow one, but its meticulous construction gives West ample time to set up her archetypal innocence and establish threats, unseen to her but visible to us, which bubble underneath the surface until the final few minutes of the film where the violence finally erupts. It’s when the struggle finally comes to its climax that the cinematography shifts from the slow and meticulous to the rapidly shifting and handheld, reflecting the transitional state resulting from the horrific conflict. When the dust finally settles, the camera regains its composure and documents the aftermath of the battle, tying the thematic and narrative strands up in a nice, neat, mortifying package

REPORT CARD

TLDR	The House of the Devil perfectly encapsulates the best qualities of 70’s and 80’s horror films, capitalizing on cultural anxieties to elevate macabre sequences into terrifying nightmares. This is a Satanic Panic story that simmers in wait until just the right moment before bursting into a bloody hellscape that no fan of horror should miss.
Rating	10/10
Grade	A+

Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .

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Grade, Review, review-movie, Year

Review: Green Room (2015)

October 7, 2019 The Critic Leave a comment

Who would win? A group of punk rock musicians or a gang of violent Nazi’s/white nationalists. Jeremy Saulnier’s, Green Room, follows a the band, the Ain’t Rights, as they play a gig at a far-right venue and come witness to a murder. What follows is a heart-pounding thriller that’ll keep you on the edge of your seats as you witness the group try and get out with their lives.

What makes the movie feel so tense is the normality of the characters. Obviously, I don’t mean the fact they’re musicians that take questionable gigs – rather, it’s because none of the characters have some unexplained skill set that’s perfect for the scenario. No one is actually a secret combat veteran or a perfect shot. Instead, the group is made up of normal human beings who are placed in a terrifying situation and have to use their collective wit to try and escape. The best part? For the most part, their actions and decisions are pretty believable.

This effect is achieved in part by great acting and dialogue choice. Pat (Anton Yelchin), Sam (Alia Shawkat), Reece (Joe Cole), and Tiger (Callum Turner) all play off each other great as band mates and their chemistry and sense familiarity helps create tension and investment in their characters. Amber, played by Imogen Poots, always feels a bit off-mysterious and strange- which helps keep the intrigue. Finally, Patrick Stewart as Darcy, the film’s villain, is incredibly sinister. You can feel the calculations and his performance really sells how meticulous his planning is. On top of the acting, a lot of the dialogue seems natural and makes sense. This helps create a sense of immersion so when the group makes a decision, it doesn’t feel like it comes out of the blue. This also helps a lot of the outcomes feel earned. between the viewer and the character on the screen.

The film is also gruesome and doesn’t shy away from more gory and bloody moments. This in combination with the darker color scheme, create a gritty and intense feeling that only amplifies the suspense as the movie goes.

Problems mainly occur more prominently in the latter half of the movie. Although most of the plot threads or character threads get developed, there are others that are just raised because? They feel almost like they should be important, but they never really go anywhere. The characters also seem like they all became less intelligent as the plot goes on so the ending doesn’t quite stick the landing.

Rating

TLDR: Green Room is a 90 minute heart pounding suspense film that has great twists and turns. The dialogue and characterization is mostly believable, and though some issues prop up in the second half of the movie, the journey is still a hell of a lot of fun.

Final Rating: 8.3/10. A great movie with some like-able and grounded characters – you should check it out if you want an adrenaline rush or want to feel more alive.

Go to Page 2 for my spoiler-full thoughts!

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Grade, Review, review-movie, supernatural, Year

Review: Poltergeist (1982)

October 6, 2019 The Critic Leave a comment

The moment I saw Diane’s(JoBeth William) reaction to the initial infestation of the haunting/poltergeist infestation, I knew I was in for a different supernatural movie experience. Tobe Hooper’s, Poltergeist, follows a suburban American family as their house is taken over by outside spirits. Though the haunting/infestation starts off as innocuous furniture re-arrangements, it quickly descends into a nightmare, as the family struggles to deal with make it through the ordeal

The first thing I really loved was how early on in the film the haunting is set up and its consequences foreshadowed. For example, the opening scene opens up on a television set playing the American anthem. The camera starts zooming into the TV, as the screen starts flickering. The focus on the flicker in the blue light highlights the association between a boundary flickering on and off, and is commonly used to amp up the tension of scenes or to highlight the absolute presence of the paranormal.

There also seems to be a critique of violence and appearances. As the first act continues to unfold, we see Carol Anne (played by Heather O’Rourke), watching a blank flickering screen. A scene exemplifying this that stuck out in my head occurred when Diane sees her Carol Anne watching a blank screen, calls it bad for her daughters eyes, then switches the channel to a war movie with violence on the screen. It felt like foreshadowing, as though Carol Anne would think something bad was good for her. But more importantly, it felt like a critique of how normalized violence can be. Diane immediately also turns away from the television, signalling she may not have seen what she put on for her daughter or know what the content was. This felt like a criticism of assuming the safety of common procedures- like sometimes the seemingly innocent, might have a malevolent undercurrent.

Effects wise, the movie is gorgeous. Some of the special effects seem corny now, but I’d assume they looked a lot scarier back at the release date. However, this only happens a few times. For the most part, some of the visual scares were downright disturbing. They looked real and alive, as though they actually came from some demonic realm.

Most of the problems I had with the movie stem from some early characterization which may or may not be unfair. I felt like some of the actions the characters took felt out of place with the events unfolding, but thankfully these moments were few and far between.

Rating

TLDR: Poltergeist was a beautiful film with great visual effects and an well-developed and fleshed out exploration of a family dealing with the unimaginable.

Final Rating: 9/10. This seminal work deserves a watch from crowds old and young. There’s something in it for everyone and no matter how scared or not scared you are by the end, you’ll have been entertained.

Go to Page 2 for my spoiler-full thoughts!

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A, Grade, Review, review-movie, Year

Review: The Shining

October 5, 2019 The Critic Leave a comment

What’s real? Who can I trust? Does it matter? Stanley Kubrick’s , The Shining , dives headfirst in its examination into the inner workings of the human mind. This story of an isolated family, forced to man and take care of an otherworldly hotel, tackles issues associated with violence, dependence, and isolation-making sure to weave a narrative that highlights each of the above in nuanced and diverse ways.

The first shot sets the tone and really drives home how isolated the main environment of the movie, the Overlook Hotel, is from society. As we follow Jack Torrance’s, played by Jack Nicholson, car driving up the long, winding, mountain road we get to see he how far away the area is from the rest of society.

As he enters the hotel we’re greeted with one of many “timeline” narration cards. I loved how they were used frequently to give a sense of progression of time in the movie, but more interestingly, they made the movie feel more like a novel. I haven’t read the Stephen King novel, this adaptation is based on, but the structure of the acts and their respective lengths made the movie feel like a visual book, as opposed to a normal movie. Almost like it wanted to convey the sense of progression and growth a book can do. The effect felt really impactful in highlighting character progression/regression. Furthermore, the use of one-point perspective for a lot of the scarier and more visually striking shots helped the more intense moments of the movie feel haunting. I couldn’t avert my gaze, and a lot of the times, the “lead up” to the eventual reveal was as if not more intense than the final image, due to the amount of tension and anxiety it created.

The family dynamic present between him, his wife, and their son serve as the catalyst for a lot of important plot points. Paying attention to their interactions at the beginning of the movie, you can tell despite the initial strain, there’s an attempt at kind of coming together and connecting. But as more information gets revealed, the faces slowly reveal fear and paranoia, and a fuller picture of the family comes up. Watching Wendy’s (played by Shelley Duvall) expressions to her husband’s continued eccentricities was simultaneously engrossing and petrifying. I did find it interesting that despite being most intimately connected to the “shining,” Danny (played by Danny Lloyd), doesn’t play as big a role as I thought he would. He was believable in the sequences he was in though, and I enjoyed his other voice/performance.

However, any discussion of the acting in the movie would be remiss if it didn’t go over Jack Nicholson’s performance. He stole the show here and really helped sell the mood and theme of the whole movie. From the moment we meet the Torrance patriarch, he seems like a man on the edge of a see-saw, almost like he’s teetering on the edge of madness. From his facial expressions, to his responses to scenarios he feels like an volcano, ready to blow. As the events of the movie progress, we see him desperately try and maintain a sense of control-of not only himself, but his grasp on reality.

Thankfully, for Jack , Kubrick wants the audience to join him, by casting doubt about everything. Characters say things that contradict previously understood information. Then something happens to confirm the contradiction. Then something happens that maybe throws that previous thing out of the water. Or maybe not. That’s the beauty of the movie. It leaves a lot open-ended, but it does so in a way that feels earned and not sloppy. Camera angles, transitions, and brief still images constantly kept me on edge, wondering if I really did have a grasp on what was going on.

Rating

TLDR: The Shining is a haunting tale of the effects of isolation and dependency. By using an already strained family as the main characters and splashing in elements of the supernatural, it takes its themes and questions to some of their most interesting destinations.

Final Rating: 10/10 Beautifully paced, shot, and executed. I’ll be thinking about the ending for a while and who was actually telling the truth

Go to Page 2 for my spoiler-full thoughts!

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A, Grade, Review, review-movie, science fiction horror, Year

Review: The Thing (1982)

October 3, 2019 The Critic 2 Comments

From the opening shot of the John Carpenter’s masterpiece science-fiction horror film, The Thing, I knew I was in for something different. After all, the first real thing we see is a UFO crash into the Earth before a great transition to the title card. Then immediately after, we cut into a helicopter chasing around a dog in the Antarctic, desperately trying to gun it down. The best part? This is only the beginning, and the story that follows is even grander and raises even more questions.

The story follows a group of American scientists, their encounter with an unknown alien creature that can imitate any organism it consumes, and their subsequent struggle to survive and eliminate “the Thing.” The acting is phenomenal from the entire cast . It genuinely feels like everyone is certain that they’re a “good” guy and everyone else is suspicious or corrupted by the alien creature. . Lighting and perspective are played around with a lot to amp up the feelings of paranoia. Furthermore, Kurt Russel as MacReady was captivating. He took charge of the scenes he was in, much like his character did during his movie. His serious reaction to a lot of the more imaginative scenes in the movie, really sell the impact and gravity of what’s going on.

However, what makes the movie truly mesmerizing and in turn, genuinely disturbing is attention to detail. From set design, to lighting you can tell a lot of the choices were done intentionally to seed additional doubt over the status of certain characters and to constantly cause the viewer to feel uncertain. The visual effects on display made me actually lean back in fear. The monster was disgusting and didn’t even feel out of place compared to special effects in movies today. I was shocked to see that this movie was actually almost forty years old. It’s aged phenomenally! There’s one scene in particular that I’ll go into more detail in the spoilers section, but after reading on how much work went into it, I appreciated how much more it actually scared me. This does come with a warning to my more squeamish friends- some of the visual scares are a bit bloody and there’s some really out there imagery, so be warned.

Put together- the elements of the movie present, at least in my opinion, a pretty bleak interpretation of human affairs and left me with a sense of nihilism. I can see why critics at the time weren’t huge fans. But despite, the seemingly bleak nature of the movie- it’s beautiful in it’s portrayal of the costs of survival and the things we’re willing to do in its name.

Unfortunately, I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise or horrors so the spoiler free thoughts end here.

Rating

TLDR: The Thing is bleak and ambiguous, leaving a lot up the viewer for interpretation. From the effects to the cast, the story will constantly keep you on edge, nervous, and paranoid, just like the characters.

Final Rating: 10/10. It’s good. Real good. Take the deep dive. I know I know. A 10 in the first 3 days? I promise- it’s well worth it.

Go to Page 2 for my spoiler-full thoughts!

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A, Black-Comedy, Grade, psychological, Review, review-movie, slasher, Year

Review: Scream

October 2, 2019 The Critic 2 Comments

Director(s)	Wes Craven
Principal Cast	Neve Campbell as Sidney David Arquette as Dewey Courteney Cox as Gale Weathers Jamie Kennedy as Randy
Release Date	1996
Language(s)	English
Running Time	111 minutes

” Movies don’t create psychos, movies make psychos more creative! ” No sentiment could better describe, Wes Craven’s 1996 slasher film/satire Scream. The movie chronicles the journey of Sidney Prescott, portrayed by Neve Campbell, and her friends as her small town is struck by a series of gruesome and horrific murders.

The opening scene of the movie really sets the pace of the whole film and I was shocked by the end of the movie, at how brilliantly the themes of the beginning shot are kind of followed through. Casey Becker, played fantastically by Drew Barrymore, starts her night off nonchalantly, and playfully entertains the phone-calls from her soon to be killer. But within the first few moments, the mood turns sinister and a Dutch angle is used to exemplify the tonal shift- something’s wrong.

Skip to 30 seconds to see what I’m talking about.

Introduction to Scream

This is repeated through the movie. There’s always a shift in perspective when something is off.

The visual effects were also amazing. Watching the movie, I never felt like I was watching something aged. The deaths were just as gruesome and I was blown away with how intricate some of the early deaths in the movie were portrayed.

Complimenting the narrative is one of the most imaginative scores I’ve heard in a horror film. There were a lot of songs that either served to foreshadow scenes there were to come or were just impactful because they didn’t feel like something that’d belong in a horror movie. For example, Youth of America, which sounded awesome, just felt really high octane like something you’d hear in an American Pie-esque movie, but after listening to the lyrics it just works.

Finally, the plot is amazing and filled with twists and turns, as you desperately try and figure out who the actual killer is. There were multiple times where I thought someone was the killer, just like certain characters on screen, but then the movie would do something to caution me against that belief. Then when I would least expect it, new information would be revealed that eroded my previous certainty in the situation. This describes the whole movie and that’s what it makes it genuinely scary. You honestly feel unnerved. You’re never certain what’s going to happen

The constant stream of horror references really reinforces the point and makes the movie that much more enjoyable if you consider yourself something of a horror buff. Whenever a movie is referenced, the movie usually tries to parody an element from the same which gives you cool Easter eggs. But more importantly, those allusions create expectations of certain rules characters should follow and constantly subverts them which only adds to the tension.

Unfortunately, the number of references also feels like kind of a problem at times. This may just be because I’m trying to watch the movie years later or because I haven”t seen a lot of the movies, but it almost felt like the movie kept trying to drop more and more names, and I became less interested because it started feeling too convoluted. This wasn’t a serious issue, but was something that I started feeling near the end of the movie.

Tone also felt a bit mishandled at some times- almost as if the transitions were a bit rough. The film does try to be scary, a satire, and a form of black comedy, but the serious feel of some of the scenes make comedic bits feel a bit out of place. It did work well most of the time, so I don’t think it’s too big of an issue.

Report Card

TLDR	Scream is filled with twists and turns and brilliantly pokes fun of and subverts tropes. You may feel a bit lost, but no matter what you’re in for in for a phenomenal mystery and a great time.
Rating	9.3/10
Grade	A

Go to Page 2 for my spoiler-full thoughts!

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1960's, 1968, Grade, Review, review-movie, S+, Year

Film Review: Hour of the Wolf – 1968

October 1, 2019 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Ingmar Bergman
Principal Cast	Max von Sydow as Johan Borg Liv Ullmann as Alma Borg
Release Date	1968
Language(s)	Swedish
Running Time	88 minutes
Report Card	Click to go Review TLDR/Summary

Text appears on the screen, presumably written by the movie’s in-universe director, indicating to us that the movie to follow, the story of the disappearance of a painter named Johan (Max von Sydow) , is informed by both a journal formerly owned by him and a personal verbal account of the events leading up to the same by his wife, Alma (Liv Ullmann). As this information is presented, stage direction can be heard in the background. Is this the director giving instructions for the movie that’s about to start? A voice yell, “Quiet.”

The expository text gives way to the introduction title sequence, during which stage directions can be heard from the background. In this way, the “real” world and the movie world bleed into each other, revealing the duplicity of the barrier between our conscious and unconscious worlds. As if to confirm the point, upon saying “Action”, the screen fades from “Svensk Filmindustri” to

As “Action!” is called the screen dissolves to a small cottage where Alma resides. She comes out of the abode to answer some of the “director’s” questions. She talks directly at the camera presumably to the director, but her direct approach feels more like she’s addressing the audience. Her eyes, however, can rarely meet our gaze for more than a few seconds. As she talks about her missing husband, it’s clear to us that not only does Alma not know what has happened but that whatever she has witnessed is something that escapes her explanatory capabilities. Unable to continue conversing she stares down and the camera dissolves to black once more, bringing us to the world of the “real” narrative.

These first six minutes are a light serving of what’s to come. First, this introduction, both the text and Alma’s testimony, reveal the ending of the story. We know Johan is missing and is not coming back and we know that Alma will make it to the end, ready for a new life with her soon to be born child. By giving us this information, we can focus on the why and how of the upcoming surreal imagery as opposed to the what which primes us to be more involved in deciphering the hallucinatory events culminating in his disappearance. This also has the double effect of pushing us towards Alma’s corner because we start the movie with her and know we’ll end with her, a move that becomes quite important as it gives us an anchor to hold onto as wade through the torrents of meaning.

Second, the inclusion of stage directions during the title sequence demonstrates the constantly fluctuating border between art and reality. The initial text message is written by the “real” director of the movie. We know the real director is Ingmar, but the second level of an in-world director taking charge of the movie adds another level of intrigue. This is exacerbated by the nature of the movie’s sources- testimony. Testimony which we know is in fact fiction. It’s no wonder then why the nature of the surreal sequences provokes so much confusion as the nature of what’s happening is up to interpretation- what reality does it belong to?

Third, the shift from an “objective” textual account of the overall story to the “documentary” like interview with Alma to the story “proper” demonstrates the way perspectives bleed into one another on top of imbuing the movie with a misty dreamlike quality. At a structural level Hour of the Wolf is a movie within a movie, the former of which contains both interview footage and what we’d normally consider a movie. It’s told from an “objective” perspective which seeks to synthesize two experiences of a person – one from a diary and another from word of mouth, both equally subjective. What does subjectivity mean if we can encapsulate the experience of another in such a way as to inhabit it? Likewise, what does objectivity mean if our experience of ourselves is one that slips outside of our understanding? Thus, the stage is set for the story to take place.

The couple makes their way to the deserted island.

We start with the couple making their maritime trek to a supposedly isolated island. The trip is long and the camera emphasizes its length by focusing on the bow of the boat. This is a long way from civilization. As the couple makes their way to shore, it becomes evident that they’ve come here for the long haul. Johan’s general dislike of people has led the couple to seek out a place to be alone.

However, it isn’t long before the two of them realize they’re not the only inhabitants on the island. As the couple’s path crosses with other people, their idyllic island life begins to come under siege. One hand, the other islanders exacerbate Johan’s anxieties, constantly probing into his status as an artist and relationship with art, leading him to become more aloof and distant. Despite being apparent fans/patrons of his work, these “others” spend most of their time mocking Johan and the supposed value of art in the world. On the other hand, Alma’s concerns and attempts to understand something about Johan’s mental state led her to places of utter desperation as she struggles to maintain stability between her husband and herself. She constantly strives to make a genuine connection with Johan in spite of his apparent apathy. Meanwhile, Johan finds himself besieged on all sides and is unable to find any respite, most of all during the hours between midnight and dawn, for it is during this “hour of the wolf” where nightmares are born, people die, and babies are born – a liminal place where anything and everything can happen.

In this way, the narrative can be read as a demented ménage à trois depicting an artist trying to run away from any investigation or prodding (outside of what he desires) being chased by his partner who wants nothing more than to understand him at his most intimate who are both being harangued by a mob that seeks to explicate the couple’s motivations and decisions. Both parties, Alma and the others, want to gain an understanding of Johan. The former wants to do it through intimacy, carving out a path for mutual understanding through love. The latter wants to do it through domination, carving out an interpretation of Johan according to their own ideas of what he ought to be. Johan stands in the middle, caught in a whirlpool of torment. Every gambit on Alma’s part designed to save him is met by an equally brutalizing action by the part of the other islanders designed to condemn him – a tug of war for the direction of his soul. Every question any party asks is met by a surreal answer that feels more like a question than the original inquisition. Issues of identity bleed into questions of art bubbling into the movie’s primary question: is it possible for a person to truly ever know another person – art or otherwise?

Johan (Max von Sydow) holds Alma (Liv Ullmann) next to the tree near their house. The scene is serene and calm.

This indeterminacy in exemplified in the visual style of the movie. When Alma initially starts her narration, the lighting is calming and feels natural. Her initial encounters with Johan are serene and warm – an Earthy grounded feeling. However, as the couple are made to interact with the others, the Earthy comfort gives way to Gothic terror. The lighting in these moments is exaggerated and more impressionistic, suggesting a break with reality. The cheerful face of Alma gives way to the sunken and sneering faces of the others. The stable camera associated with Alma gives way to a swerving, arcing camera completely unbounded and out of control. This change from calming to chaotic is also reflected in the soundscape which goes from sedated to disjointed and erratic. Multiple moments of the macabre are accompanied with an unnerving droning noise or characters voices completely disappearing as the background noise takes full control.

By modulating the appearance and presentation of each spectacle, Bergman is able to keep the carnival of terror going in an authentic, yet opaque way. Early on, Johan describes a series of grotesque drawings – a women with a removable scalp, a menacing bird-man, and so on – to Alma. These descriptions prime our minds to look for certain visual clues and serve as the starting “motifs” for the horrors to come. Later on, we get to explore excerpts from Johan’s journal. These mental excavations add to the texture of the motifs we have access to. When these projections bleed into the “real” world of the story, we’re never fully shown whether or not Alma and Johan are viewing the same thing or something different. Has Johan lost his mind and is Alma just humoring him? Has Alma been able to interpret Johan so much as if to share his delusion?

In the grander context of Bergman’s filmography, Hour of the Wolf is Bergman’s first movie after Persona, which makes sense given how many of themes and image archetypes the former continues from the latter. Both movies deal with a character named Alma who deals with a character they can’t seem to fully pin down. Both movies tackle the ways memory, cinema, and reality effect and bleed into one another. Both movies employ vampiric imagery in association with identity to probe the limits of what it means to know oneself and to know another. However, Hour of the Wolf feels far more autobiographical. Johan feels like a doppelgänger for Bergman himself. Among other things they’re both artists who bemoans themselves and the place of artists while continuing to create pieces that move people. Some of the monologues given by Johan are close to quotations given by Bergman verbatim, both in person and in previous films like The Magician. Watched in this way, Hour of the Wolf takes a paradoxical quality as Bergman’s psyche becomes both the movie’s subject and its object of fascination. It’s no wonder then that my appreciation of the movie has only grown over time as I’ve become more devoted to Bergman and the worlds he creates/created.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Hour of the Wolf asks the question, “Can we every really know anyone else?” and answers in a cascading series of surreal nightmare sequences that never fail to captivate. This narrative ménage à trois features an artist, his wife, and his patrons and fans. He seeks solace in ignorance. She seeks union in transparency with him. They seek, what seems to be, nothing more than the utter humiliation of the artist despite consuming his goods vociferously. Issues of identity bleed into issues of the nature of art which bleed into issues of intersubjectivity culminating in a melting pot of utter delirium. Those seeking a haunting time with no easy answers need look no further.
Rating	10/10
Grade	S+

Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .

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Past, Uncategorized, Viewing Challenge

Halloween 2019: 31 Day Horror Marathon

October 1, 2019 The Critic Leave a comment

This year I’ll be watching 31 horror movies- 1 for each day in October. I haven’t watched most of these movies or don’t remember watching them because I was too young to comprehend them at the time, so most of my thoughts to them will be pretty raw.

After watching and thinking about the movies, I’ll be posting my review/thoughts up on here. I’d love it if you left your feedback and experiences as well. Or if you want to lurk and follow along- that’s cool too. The more the merrier.

NOTE(10/3/19): I might move movies around, but if I do, the list below will be updated to reflect the change. The movies themselves will not change, however.

NOTE (10/28/19): After a few friends of mine pointed out that Joker is not officially categorized as a horror on any mainstream sites like Wikipedia , I’ve decided to add a bonus horror movie as a substitute. I do think the Joker movie is a horror and will address that concern later, but I think the arguments against it are decent enough to warrant a bonus movie. As such I will be watching Hell House LLC for a bonus 32nd movie.

The Selection Process

Most movies were picked off of the Dreadit Movie Guide. I usually watch a lot of supernatural movies and shy away from anything that has even a little bit of gore which is why I tried to “face my fears” on this list and add them on . I also wanted a bit of variety which is why there’s a healthy mix of sub-genres. I wish I could add more foreign films – goals for next year.

The List

DATE	MOVIE	DIRECTOR
10-1-2019	Hour of the Wolf	Ingmar Bergman
10-2-2019	Scream	Wes Craven
10-3-2019	The Thing	John Carpenter
10-4-2019	Zombieland	Ruben Fleischer
10-5-2019	The Shining	Stanley Kubrick
10-6-2019	Poltergeist	Tobe Hooper
10-7-2019	Green Room	Jeremy Saulnier
10-8-2019	The House of the Devil	Ti West
10-9-2019	Night of the Living Dead	George Romero
10-10-2019	The Texas Chain Saw Massacre	Tobe Hooper
10-11-2019	A Nightmare on Elm Street	Wes Craven
10-12-2019	The Cabin in the Woods	Drew Goddard
10-13-2019	The Silence of the Lambs	Jonathan Demme
10-14-2019	Shaun of the Dead	Edgar Wright
10-15-2019	In the Mouth of Madness	John Carpenter
10-16-2019	Saw	James Wan
10-17-2019	An American Werewolf in London	John Landis
10-18-2019	Joker	Todd Phillips
10-19-2019	Nosferatu	F.W. Murnau
10-20-2019	Cube	Vincenzo Natali
10-21-2019	Black Swan	Darren Aronofsky
10-22-2019	28 Days Later	Danny Boyle
10-23-2019	Candyman	Bernard Rose
10-24-2019	Event Horizon	Paul W. S. Anderson
10-25-2019	Friday the 13th	Sean S. Cunningham
10-26-2019	The Devil’s Backbone	Guillermo del Toro
10-27-2019	The Others	Alejandro Amenábar
10-28-2019	Jaws	Steven Spielberg
10-29-2019	The Lighthouse	Robert Eggers
10-30-2019	Zombieland: Double Tap	Ruben Fleischer
10-31-2019	Ringu	Hideo Nakata
Bonus	Hell House LLC	Stephen Cognetti

The Critic's Sanctum

Tag Archives: Horror

Film Review: The House of the Devil

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Review: Green Room (2015)

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Review: Poltergeist (1982)

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Review: The Shining

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Review: The Thing (1982)

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Review: Scream

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Film Review: Hour of the Wolf – 1968

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Halloween 2019: 31 Day Horror Marathon

The Selection Process

The List

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