Weekly visions - week 48, 2024

Tomie: Replay/富江 replay, directed by Fujirô Mitsuishi, written by Satoru Tamaki, adapted from the manga by Junji Ito, Japan, 2000 - ⭐⭐⭐

In the third episode of her adventures - and the first that looks like it actually has a director -, Tomie goes back to being scary: she works her usual ways around her boyfriends, but she also becomes a full-fledged curse for everybody who witnessed her rebirth, and everybody around them. Also, she behaves like a demon, and clearly she took lessons from Aliens.
But, as the actress in the series keeps changing and Tomie’s characterisation also does, I find the films leave absolutely no trace and no emotion in me.

The Pope’s Exorcist, directed by Julius Avery, written by Evan Spiliotopoulos, Michael Petroni, R. Dean McCreary, Chester Hastings, Jeff Katz, from the books by Gabriele Amorth, US, 2023 - ⭐½

Instead, this film left me with some emotions but probably not the ones it set out to provoke. I know it should be taken as a campy horror-comedy but still, I can’t dissociate the name of Gabriele Amorth from the controversially-opinionated real person that Italian people were quite familiar with. I definitely didn’t expect him to be pictured as sort of the Vatican Indiana Jones. Since the Pope character in this film has been made up, why not just make up the exorcist’s name as well? Ah right, because they paid for the rights of the books, which sounds sooo crazy to me.
But this allows the script to include a flashback where the lead exorcist faces fascist soldiers during the Second World War: something that nobody has done before…
If you ask me, Alex Essoe didn’t put enough Wendy Torrance (which is, objectively, probably the right thing to do) in her new role as a mother of a boy threatened by evil forces. But also Asmodeus the demon, despite provoking a few cool hallucinations, didn’t summon a guy in a bear suit (maybe to avoid traumatising Peter DeSouza-Feighoney before Winnie The Pooh 2? Who knows).
On the bright side, Russell Crowe’s accent is better than I expected, only occasionally sliding into the Italian-American caricature that lesser actors usually put on.

Daniel Isn’t Real, directed by Adam Egypt Mortimer, written by Brian DeLeeuw and Adam Egypt Mortimer, US, 2019 - ⭐⭐½

The first twenty minutes were amazingly unpredictable to me. Unfortunately, for the rest of its running time, it follows an inevitable path, feeling like the dark side of Fight Club if Tyler Durden was Patrick Bateman. Even the name of the therapist (a quite disappointing turn from Chukwudi ‘High Evolutionary’ Iwuji) is Cornelius. It recovered a bit towards the end, but that’s thanks to Hieronymus and to the fact I love that kind of symbology.

The Sacrament, written and directed by Ti West, US, 2013 - ⭐⭐⭐

I went into The Sacrament knowing only it was a found-footage Ti West film, so at the beginning I was hoping it would go in a Wicker Midsommar direction (I must admit I got a bit worried when I read ‘produced by Eli Roth’). But I guess that, without proper traditions, there can’t be folk horror, just real-life horrors.
I was surprised to learn this was made after The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers, and also after Adam Wingard’s You’re Next, with which it shares part of the cast. It feels such a step back.

Heretic, written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, US, 2024 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I felt like I couldn’t breathe for almost two hours, and instead, I kept looking at the screen thinking Are you sure you are Hugh Grant?
In short: Grant is really terrifying, the other leads (Chloe East and Sophie Thatcher) are also amazing, and Heretic is a really suspenseful experience - just lagging a bit in the middle where the villain feels less like an intellectual foe and more like an Internet mansplainer pretending to teach me about The Hollies’ The Air That I Breathe. And what’s the thing about deities being born on December 25th? Also, having him saying platitudes like ‘You drink the Kool-Aid’ feels very much out of place (and having seen The Sacrament just the day before, was also quite unpleasant).
But this is nitpicking. Heretic is a film to watch (once).

Equinox, directed by Jack Woods and Dennis Muren, written by Jack Woods and Mark Thomas McGee, US, 1970 - ⭐

It’s a highly influential film, they said. It’s the template from which Sam Raimi copied Evil Dead, they said. If it’s in the Criterion Collection, it’s because it’s great, they said.
It’s not. They lied. This was an unbearable amateurish experience. Yes, the special effects are better than what I could do, but then I would have preferred re-watching 1933’s King Kong.
Sorry Asmodeus, it’s the second film you’re in this week that I actively disliked. I guess I’m not a fan. Please don’t possess me.

Before We Vanish/散歩する侵略者, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, co-written by Sachiko Tanaka, from a play by Tomohiro Maekawa, Japan, 2017 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Uncharacteristically, I bought a Blu-ray disc without having previously watched the film. I think I have reached that unusual level of trust in Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Luckily, I enjoyed the movie a lot, probably thanks to a more marked sense of humour than usual for this director. Most reviews describe it as over-long, but it’s a little over two hours, and the variety of the characters’ behaviours keeps it interesting. It feels a lot like it was made after the pandemic, which is amazing and, post-Covid, a bit disheartening.