Weekly visions - week 38, 2024

Halloween III: Season of the Witch, directed by Tommy Lee Wallace, written by Nigel Kneale and Tommy Lee Wallace, US, 1982 - ⭐⭐⭐

This film is often lauded because it dared to depart from the Michael Myers formula of the first two Halloweens and try something different. I appreciate (and agree with) the good intention (and, even more, I like the fact that - to stress out that this is really-not-a-sequel - in this story the original Halloween exists as a film), but, per se, this feels more like a Twilight Zone episode - and a cousin to Nigel Kneale’s BBC film The Stone Tape - than an actual movie. Kneale wrote the film but then had his name removed when good old Dino De Laurentiis asked to amp up violence. The story could be easily condensed in half the runtime, and the romantic ‘subplot’ is silly - one of those developments that maybe in the ’80s were normal, but today look offensive.
Also, where is the witch I was promised?

Believer/독전, directed by Lee Hae-young, co-written with Chung Seo-kyung, based on Johnnie To’s Drug Wars by Yau Nai-hoi and Wai Ka-fai, South Korea, 2018 - ⭐⭐⭐

Having loved screenwriter Chung Seo-kyung’s work with Park Chan-wook, I watched this film hoping to find equally interesting characters; while there is some of that, for most of its running time it feels more like an American cop film (or at least that’s what it felt to me… before knowing it’s a remake of a Johnnie To’s film, which I haven’t seen).

The Purge: Anarchy, written and directed by James DeMonaco, US, 2014 - ⭐⭐

So… at this point, I started my Purge week. Chaining films from the same franchise is not something I would normally do (except for the time I watched 8 Saws in a single week, but that’s a different story), but I was on holiday on my own and the weather was awful.
Now, the lead actor being Frank Grillo (whom I generally like) instead of Ethan Hawke, I somehow knew this would be a totally different film from the first one. Nevertheless, I struggled with an underdeveloped plot - or maybe a lack of declared intention about it: Grillo’s character has business to do during this night, so he has to go from point A to point B. The three different groups of characters (including Midnight Mass’ Zach Gilford) get somehow together and then… just stick together while trying to reach point B. Oh, and to survive too. Then the thing became overly explicit in its ‘message’, and I started rolling my eyes like nobody was watching (I’m pretty sure nobody was watching).
I must admit I didn’t recognise the ’linking’ character from the first film, and I still am not really sure where the ‘Anarchy’ part of the title comes from; it seems I’m particularly disappointed by film titles this week. Wikipedia says LaKeith Stanfield is also in it.

Marrowbone, written and directed by Sergio G. Sánchez, Spain/US, 2017 - ⭐⭐

At some point in my life I will be old and wise enough to know that if a film has a very well-known cast but I have never heard of it, it may be my fault, but it’s also quite likely that it isn’t a good film (but I’m clearly already old enough to keep repeating the same things over and over: while revising the post, I found out I wrote the almost exact same sentence not even three months ago - I won’t link to it, out of shame). This horror stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Mia Goth, George MacKay and, as Netflix puts it, Stranger Things’ Charlie Heaton, is the directorial debut for the screenwriter of The Orphanage, and… isn’t great.
I would say that, if you have seen other Spanish horror stories, you probably have an idea of where this one is going. I would also say that the script makes things happen in a way that feels quite forced.
On the other hand, Tasha Robinson, whom I respect a lot, says on Letterboxd that the film is great, so it might be one of those instances where I’m just wrong.
For the record, I heard about this film on the Scariest Things Podcast.

The Purge: Election Year, written and directed by James DeMonaco, US, 2016 - ⭐⭐½

Frank Grillo is back, and this time the narrative direction is clear, sort of an Escape from Washington to keep Lost’s Elizabeth ‘Juliet’ Mitchell safe. For these reasons, I enjoyed this chapter a lot more than the previous one, at least until the grotesque and excessive third act (let’s say it’s excessive, even in today’s climate), and a glaring continuity error that distracted me a lot.
Watching the two sequels so close one to the other made me notice that in both films there is a different minor character named Sabian. Mmm, what can it mean?

The First Purge, directed by Gerard McMurray, written by James DeMonaco, US, 2018 - ⭐⭐

At this point in the series we start the franchise game of ‘did we say the previous film was the last one? No, this one actually wraps everything up nicely, promise!’.
In this prequel when we learn that a David Cameron lookalike (Arlo Sabian, played by Patch Darragh) and none other than Marisa Tomei (well, her character Dr. May Updale - could she have a niece or a nephew who calls her aunt May?) are the architects of the whole Purge idea. Tomei’s presence is the most unexpected part of the film, but she is given very poor material - not even reaction lines - and must have been too expensive to keep around for too long (she explained why she took the role).
I hoped at some point that this would be a Purge take on a slasher film: instead, it goes back quite early to the urban war scenario of the previous two, but without Grillo’s ‘white lead’ (not exactly a ‘white saviour’, as he was given, in both previous, instances substantial help from the black/Hispanic communities). Thanks, I suppose, to an African-American director at the helm, this film is even more focused on the point of view of non-Aryan American citizens and manages to further amp up its political message.
I appreciated that in this ‘first Purge’, the TV commentators also were wondering why ‘purging people’ wear masks. My answer is that it makes the film posters scarier than the movies (politics aside) actually are.

The Purge, written and directed by James DeMonaco, US, 2013 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Three sequels in, and considering that none of them was great, I felt the need to go back to the original and see if I had been wrong about it all along. Turns out, I agree with my former self (I still love it), but now I’m puzzled about how DeMonaco could write such a compelling home invasion film that includes serious choices for his characters to make, and then go on writing several additional movies that contribute very little to the film’s themes, only making them more and more explicit sequel after sequel. But maybe I’m wrong and it is important (as Spike Lee would say) to call out racially-charged violence as openly as possible.
There’s a Sabian character here as well, only seen at a distance through one of the security cameras in the house.

But I noticed that in the thank yous section of the credits, an ‘Andrea Sabian’ is mentioned. A person with this name is the owner of a law firm ‘DeMonaco & Sabian’ in Staten Island (which is where James DeMonaco grew up). Are they a relative of his? But then, why call the main baddie of the series with the same surname? I guess we’ll never know.

The Forever Purge, directed by Everardo Gout, written by James DeMonaco, US, 2021 - ⭐⭐½

Finally the Purge embraces a doubt I’ve had since the second or third film: what guarantees that after the ‘official’ 12 hours, violence won’t go on indefinitely? This is also the ‘Latin-American’ spin on the franchise, with a Mexican director and Mexican leads (Ana de la Reguera and Tenoch ‘Namor’ Huerta). Thankfully, the ‘forever’ aspect of the Purge is not the only rule being broken, as we move away from the urban setting to a Texas ranch, and there is even good cooperation between privileged caucasian characters and Hispanic leads.
In the second half of the film we even get a couple of 1 and 2-minute long shots (my impression is that they should have been an even longer continuous take, but something went wrong), which were a welcome directorial change.
I’m not sure there was a Sabian character in this one.
So long, The Purge. At least, until the next one (already announced, allegedly featuring Grillo again).

The Devil’s Doorway, directed by Aislinn Clarke, written by Michael B. Jackson, Martin Brennan and Aislinn Clarke, Ireland/UK, 2018 - ⭐⭐⭐

A creepy Irish found footage film set in 1960, where the horror plot (two priests are sent to a Magdalene Asylum to investigate a statue that allegedly weeps blood tears) is the façade to discuss the way ‘penitent’ women were imprisoned and treated in such institutions in Ireland… up to 1998. It does an effective job in both respects, though on the scary side (at least, not the historically inaccurate one) there is nothing really original (especially if seen this year, where a certain type of event is super-common in horror films), and it gets a bit lost (literally and figuratively) by the end (it reminded me a bit of The Borderlands, that also shares a rather similar premise). Great performance for the lead actors (the older priest played by Lalor Roddy, and the Mother Superior played by Helena Bereen - once I got Derry Girls’ Sister Michael out of my head).
For the record, I found out about this film by listening to the Nuovi Incubi Podcast (in Italian).

Caveat, written and directed by Damian McCarthy, Ireland, 2020 - ⭐⭐⭐½

Everybody’s talking about Oddity, so while I wait for it to arrive on my side of the world, I finally managed to watch McCarthy’s previous film. I have to say that, while I enjoyed the weirdness of the whole situation, I found it to be quite funny (in an intentional way) rather than scary. Even the weird mechanical bunny - which doesn’t feature as much as the reviews mention it - is not as menacing as I was expecting it to be. But in all honesty, the weirdness won me over.