Halloween Kills (2021, David Gordon Green)

Halloween Kills is a fascinating sequel. It’s a terrible movie—though probably better than the previous one just because there’s so much less Jamie Lee Curtis, so you’re not watching her embarrass herself the entire time (though she’s got some really embarrassing moments). But given it’s the ninth Halloween sequel and the second remake of Halloween II… a lot is going on in what the filmmakers do and don’t do. And if you’ve suffered through the other twelve movies or whatever… as a viewer, you too can see the creative choices in context.

So fascinating.

And terrible.

It’s so bad. At least the first forty-five minutes are a gory, cruel, humor-drained riff on a fan service sequel. Then, after establishing Will Patton didn’t die last time and then flashing back to the original Halloween and doing a non-Halloween II sequel in flashback—how they missed a Curtis in the hospital joke is beyond me, but I’m not sure I’d feel good if I felt simpatico with Kills’s makers—the movie brings back supporting cast from the first movie. Not Halloween H40 first movie—we’ve established everyone’s back already—but Halloween 1978 first movie. Nurse Nancy Stephens is back, plus little kid grown up Kyle Richards. Anthony Michael Hall appears as the other little kid grown up, as does Robert Longstreet, but Longstreet’s so indistinct it seems like a retcon. Because Halloween movies need retcons in 2021.

Charles Cyphers is also back, but later in the movie and entirely coincidentally—fatefully? Also returning are Michael Smallwood and Carmela McNeal as the disposable Black couple. They were in the last movie but apparently not memorably enough. And Dylan Arnold as Andi Matichak’s boyfriend (and Longstreet’s son). This Halloween is the one where we get the Elm Street parents going after Freddy, basically. Though not emphasizing the teenagers in danger because… well, why do teenagers when you can do stunt cameos and then little kids. Though the little kids in danger stuff turns out to be a Season of the Witch: Halloween 3 reference, which is kind of the only thing actually cool in the movie. Like, they do a solid job working it in.

Oh, and there’s also some good gore animatronics. Kills’s Michael Myers is cruel and gross, basically doing anatomy experiments, and there are occasionally good gore animatronics. The rest of the time, it’s just gross for gross’s sake, but they do an actual fine job at least twice.

Some of John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, and Daniel A. Davies’s score is good. Mainly in the first forty-five when it’s the not-funny spoof of itself. During those moments, it seems like making a good Halloween escaped director Gordon Green and his co-writers, Scott Teems and Danny McBride, with them knowingly avoiding past tropes only for it to fail.

It’ll turn out Gordon Green, Teems, and McBride have some big ideas to work out in the second half of the movie, so no, it was just them killing time before their “unjust, lawless mob” plotline, which isn’t the movie but also is the movie. It’s this movie; it’s just this movie is actually only set up for the next movie. Not doing a “Michael Myers Will Return in HALLOWEEN ENDS” is actually the filmmakers’ worst move, and they don’t make a single good one. They just don’t let the film acknowledge itself because they’re pretending it’s serious. And we get to see how Gordon Green does serious with Halloween, and it stinks. It’s embarrassing and silly, and you can tell they tried real hard.

Anyway.

Lots of bad and middling performances. Judy Greer looks really underwhelmed her sequel option got picked up. Curtis and Patton, who bond in their own Halloween II pseudo-remake, are bad. Hall’s not good, but it’s also a lousy part. The supporting cast ranges. Occasionally there will be some effective slasher sequences, possibly thanks to Timothy Alverson.

It’s hard to tell if anything’s good about Kills, production-wise, because Gordon Green makes an absurd choice every thirty seconds, and it distracts, but Alverson’s editing seems good, actually. Whereas Michael Simmonds’s photography is just not incompetent. Also not sure about Richard A. Wright’s production design. Is it terrible, or is it bad at making South Carolina look like Illinois, or is it referencing the Rob Zombie redneck Halloween remakes? Or is it all three?

Again, it’s a fascinating sequel.

Shitty movie, though. Just an utterly shitty movie.

Frankenstein’s Daughter (1958, Richard E. Cunha)

Frankenstein’s Daughter ought to be good camp. If the rest of the movie could keep up with Donald Murphy (as Doctor “Frank”), it’d be something to behold. Because Murphy gives it his all opening to close, seemingly more aware of the picture than the picture’s aware of itself. Though he’s never quite good—he’s better than anyone else, except maybe Wolfe Barzell as his assistant—but he’s captivating.

Unfortunately, he’s captivating in the wrong movie.

Because while this movie does a pretty good riff on modernizing old Frankenstein movies—modernizing to the late fifties—it’s also a late fifties teen movie, so literal rapist Murphy comes off less creepy than regular gaslighting fifties boyfriend John Ashley. Ashley gives the film’s worst performance, which is saying something because there are lots of terrible performances. Even the better performances have some terrible stretches, like damsel-in-distress Sandra Knight and slutty-girl-who-deserves-it-for-dressing-that-way Sally Todd. If H.E. Barrie’s script were better, it’d all be about Ashley having forced Todd while they were dating, then dumped her for good girl Knight, because even though that story’s not in the script… it’s unintentionally in the performances when you try to imagine the character relationships.

Sadly Ashley figures into the third act a bunch and drags it down a bit. The movie misses the one way it could do the right thing as far as comeuppance, and it completely fails.

Though it’s hard to imagine director Cunha ever having a good idea. He’s never got any ideas. The camera stays in medium long shot outside a couple reveal close-ups. Cunha can’t even direct over-the-shoulder shots. Then again, editor Everett Dodd wouldn’t be able to cut them, but still. Oddly, Meredith M. Nicholson’s photography is fine. Frankenstein’s Daughter looks like a movie shot in and around someone’s suburban Los Angeles house and whatever sets were still up at the rental studio, but the lighting’s always solid.

The story has Murphy posing as a lab assistant to lovable old scientist Felix Locher (who’s not unlikeable but gives a lousy performance). Locher has a fetching young niece, Knight, and a lab in his house. Apparently, Murphy gets him to hire Barzell to be the live-in gardener but really to help Murphy with his monster-making. Murphy keeps trying to force himself on Knight, which is expected in the fifties, so she never really complains—besides, he’s a bookworm and not a my-daddy’s-a-lawyer regular guy like Ashley. Daughter unintentionally says a whole lot about its cultural norms.

The movie kicks off after Murphy starts knocking Knight out when Locher goes out. Not for anything rapey, but rather to inject her with experimental serum to turn her into a monster. Albeit a bulletproof one. Knight’s ostensible friend Todd sees her and tries to tell people, but she’s one of those girls who’ll say anything for attention, so why listen to her says ex-boyfriend Ashley and his bro, her current beau, Harold Lloyd Jr. Junior’s terrible but much better than Ashley.

Though Ashley at least wants Knight to wed and obey him, it turns out Lloyd Jr. could give a shit about Todd.

Todd starts flirting with Murphy to get back at Knight for stealing Ashley away. Things go atrociously for all involved. John Zaremba and Robert Dix are the credulous but still unhelpful cops. Who shoot first and ask questions later, even with white kids, so… they could be worse? Dix seems like he’d be better with direction, something Cunha doesn’t provide.

Competent music from Nicholas Carras. Indescribable shoehorned music numbers from The Page Cavanaugh Trio—if you’ve only ever heard good white kid music from the fifties, they’re an experience.

Frankenstein’s Daughter probably plays better with people talking over it, so you can’t be so horrified at its actual content. It seems like it was made with the express purpose of being mocked on “Mystery Science Theatre.” Concerningly, of course, it was not.

so you can’t be so horrified at its actual content. It seems like it was made with the express purpose of being mocked on “Mystery Science Theatre.” Concerningly, of course, it was not.

It Follows (2014, David Robert Mitchell)

It Follows is a monster movie. Somewhere in the second half of the film, the monster starts acting with more malice towards its targets, like it’s frustrated it hasn’t been able to kill them yet. Given it’s an invisible sex monster—or, I guess, possibly an invisible sex demon—there’s a particular energy to it. There’s always specific energy to the sex in Follows. It’s always transactional; it’s always wrong. Abstinence is the only way to keep the sex demons away.

But if writer and director Mitchell is doing the whole thing to tell young folks to wait until they’re married—though it wouldn’t save you either, in fact, it’s just making your doom all the more convenient. So hang on, there are rules.

The monster doesn’t “follow” so much as walk directly towards its target. It has one target at a time, but previous targets can also see it because once the current target is resolved, the one previous becomes the target. The only way to pass the target along is through sex. It’s sexually transmitted but apparently not through bodily fluids, and it’s unclear if Clinton definitions apply. Even after the Scooby Gang gets together to save the final girl-to-be(?), Maika Monroe, and they come up with plans to deal with the monster… there’s never a big exposition dump about their ideas. Given how many decisions are made offscreen or when the music gloriously blares over any conversation, anything’s possible. Because while Mitchell doing it all as a VD analogy is probably too much, he’s got the class angle in there.

While the gang isn’t Richie Rich, they’re doing a lot better than many residents of their neighboring city, Detroit, MI. At the beginning of the second act, there’s a scene where they drive through the city and stare out at the urban blight, only to talk about it later on. And it’s going to figure into the resolution. So it’s very much there. Of the two symbolisms, he went with the white American bourgeoisie being devils over VD being their undoing. It works out. Like, it’s solid symbolism. If Mitchell had any third act tricks up his sleeve whatsoever, who knows where it would’ve led.

But the third act is a mess. It’s an initially ambitious mess, where the ideas just stop being good at a certain point, and there’s nothing left to do but wait for a sequel. Or not.

The film’s a stunning mix of monster, horror, slasher, and teen angst. But good indie teen angst, handheld teen angst. Bringing all those moods together is the sensational music by Disasterpeace. It’s electronic, occasionally very video game sounds (intentionally), keeping the atmosphere in check. Without the music, It Follows wouldn’t be anywhere near as potentially terrifying in its mundane. The music’s particularly vital in the first act before the Scooby Gang sets off, and it’s all about Monroe’s recovery from trauma. It Follows is never more actually violent or intense than the first act, but only because the film ends if Monroe dies and it’s a hundred-minute movie; in other words, there are many actual breathers, even as the film keeps the tension up. If only Mitchell had another fifteen minutes of ratcheting up the tension, it’d be incredible.

As is, it’s still damn good. Monroe’s a good lead, and the Scooby Gang’s all effective. There are multiple love triangles, always involving Keir Gilchrist—more like he inserts himself in them—including dreamboat neighbor with a past Daniel Zovatto, who Monroe’s little sister, Lili Sepe, likes. Olivia Luccardi’s the other friend, who reads Dostoevsky on a pocket clamshell (literally) e-reader. They all get personalities but always in the background. Mitchell’s script and direction are wonderfully efficient in the setups.

Excellent photography from Mike Gioulakis for most of the film; third act, it goes slightly to pot (for the big finale, so it’s essential) and never really has a chance to come back. Great editing from Julio C. Perez IV. The editing’s the most important thing. Perez and Mitchell have a great sense of timing (ditto Disasterpeace for the music).

It Follows is outstanding, but Mitchell bunts the third act, which is disappointing.

The Exorcist (1973, William Friedkin), the extended director’s cut

The extended director’s cut of The Exorcist runs ten minutes longer than the theatrical version. The last time I saw the theatrical, I thought the movie needed some more time to figure itself out. Turns out I was wrong. The ten extra minutes just make it sort of tiresome. Like, the third act of the film—with the lengthy actual exorcism sequence—is already a slog without having to slog through to get to it.

The first two acts of The Exorcist is a series of vignettes, intentionally doing a stilted summary. Director Friedkin, cinematography Owen Roizman, editors Evan Lottman and Norman Gay—even screenwriter William Peter Blatty—it’s all for effect. The film oscillates between Hollywood movie star living in Georgetown to film a movie dealing with daughter Linda Blair’s seemingly neurological decline and local priest Jason Miller’s family problems. Miller’s mom is sick and broke and he went to Ivy League schools on the Church’s dime to become a psychologist and it’s not like the Church is going to pay for her health care. Eventually the two storylines converge, with some (delicate) prodding from the script, and the film slowly moves out of summary for the third act.

Except it’s just for the exorcism. And the exorcism is long and boring (I mean, it’s a Catholic service). The film entirely loses momentum, especially since everything else building fizzles in the third act. After being simultaneously under intense focus and ignored, top-billed Ellen Burstyn’s disappearance becomes all the more obvious. It’s no longer about Blair getting better, it’s about Max von Sydow and Miller fighting the evil one.

Also, was it so obvious in the original version when Miller doesn’t mention to von Sydow how the demons possessing Blair requested him—von Sydow—by name? It’s a major plot hole and removes the oomph of von Sydow’s reappearance in the film. The Exorcist opens with a lengthy prologue set in Iraq where priest-archeologist von Sydow gets worked up over some recent relic finds and is overly dramatic about it. It’s long, seemingly pointless, utterly competent and occasionally inspired—kind of a metaphor for the film succeeding it—it’s a distinctive non sequitur of an opening. But when von Sydow comes back–actually coincidentally even though Miller’s heard a tape of Blair’s demons saying the character’s name—the prologue retroactively loses the distinct factor. It’s just a prologue.

Though von Sydow isn’t going to save the day with archeology, he’s going to do it with a good old-fashioned exorcism, which the film’s been building to since the opening titles and amped up with doctor after doctor failing Blair so they’re going to need an Exorcist. It’s inevitable. Though it’d be amazing if they hadn’t tied the threads together and it was just character studies.

Anyway.

The third act’s a wash. The epilogue sort of saves things. The exorcism scene never looks as good as it should. Not the special effects, which are fine (also pea soup is gross) or better, but the visual scheme Friedkin and Roizman go with for the third act. They just don’t crack it. The rest of the movie, they’ve got it down. But inside Burstyn’s house for the battle with the Dark Lord… Friedkin and Roizman don’t have it.

I sort of knew the “extended director’s cut”—director’s definitive cut–wouldn’t actually fix The Exorcist but I didn’t think it’d make it worse.

I was wrong.

Flatliners (1990, Joel Schumacher)

I spent much of Flatliners’s first half trying to figure out if there was anything technically redeeming about Jan de Bont’s photography. While it’s easy to qualify certain failings—with Schumacher’s bad directing, with Eugenio Zanetti’s obnoxiously ostentatious production design, could de Bont actually shoot it well? No, he couldn’t. But it also doesn’t somehow excuse the photography, which doesn’t improve on any of Schumacher’s bad ideas. The nearest I can get to a compliment is to say it also doesn’t worsen any of Schumacher’s bad ideas; it’s also impossible to imagine Schumacher’s bad ideas being worse so it’s all a wash.

We get a sense of Flatliners’s race towards the bottom from the first scene, which has “star” Kiefer Sutherland unable to essay talking to Lake Michigan on the morning he’s going to die. Peter Filardi’s hack script skips the first act where medical student Sutherland decides he’s going to shock himself to death to see what’s on the other side. Instead, the film starts in the second act with Sutherland ready to go ahead with his plan and trying to cajole his classmates into helping him (basically combination grooming and guilting them, or threatening them with vague sexual assault in Julia Roberts’s case). Though, on that last one, it’s not like Sutherland’s an outlier in predatory behavior towards only girl on in the club Roberts, all the other guys—William Baldwin, Oliver Platt, and Kevin Bacon—treat her similarly. It’s just a question of who’s going to successfully coerce her into the sack.

I think even “good guy” Bacon is the one who tells her it’s not okay for her to be friends with dudes and not hook up with at least one of them.

Bacon ends up being the good guy because after Sutherland dies and comes back—the Museum of Science & Industry stands in for the extremely unsanitary medical school (there’s no medical advisor in the credits, not sure if they couldn’t find one or Schumacher thought he knew all the possible doctor stuff) and the “lab” where they’ll be killing each other and bringing each other back to life looks like a thirties Frankenstein set, albeit with a bunch of wall-size Rembrandt reproductions. But when Sutherland comes back, he doesn’t tell his friends the truth—they all want to be on “60 Minutes” talking about proving Heaven is for real—because the truth is a ghostly little kid, Joshua Rudoy, has followed Sutherland out of the afterlife to beat the shit out of him on the regular.

The only good thing about Flatliners is Rudoy’s scenes where he beats the crap out of Sutherland. Everything else is one kind of garbage or another, with the only not incompetent performances coming from Roberts, Bacon, and Platt, though it’s a stretch with all of them. Overall Roberts is probably best because she’s got the least bad to do, while Bacon’s lousy for the first quarter of the film but gets better once he’s got to play hero opposite Sutherland’s jackass villain. Platt’s just around for occasional comic relief and to drop expository hints from the things we missed in the absent first act of the story.

Baldwin’s bad but Sutherland’s terrible. Baldwin’s just playing a sexual predator himbo, which he can handle through his impressions of his older brother(s)—his hair’s a trip though—whereas Sutherland’s supposed to be complicated and complex but is really just a potentially murderous dick (he wants to screw with Bacon’s afterlife experience because Bacon’s better at conning Roberts into the sack than Sutherland, who’s just creepy and threatening with her, not charmingly grooming her).

It’s a very long, very stupid movie with hilariously bad composition from Schumacher—who shoots it Panavision but composes it for the VHS pan-and-scan transfer—with bad music from James Newton Howard, bad editing from Robert Brown, atrocious writing from Filardi, and that unfortunately indefensible photography from de Bont.

Flatliners “flatlines” from the first scene. Waiting to see if it somehow improves from rancid garbage is on the audience.

The Amityville Horror (1979, Stuart Rosenberg)

Despite not watching the horror franchises of the eighties while growing up in the eighties, I was familiar enough with them to know most franchises—so long as they started with an A list cast—had a generally well-received first installment before going to heck. And I knew The Amityville Horror was an exception; no one thought the first one was any good. And I was assuming it’d be bad. But I didn’t realize how low into the great Long Island undiscovered oil reserve this Horror would go.

There is nothing redeeming about Amityville Horror. Certain aspects could be even worse, but nothing is approaching good. Stuart Rosenberg can’t direct a horror or suspense sequence, which is fine because screenwriter Sandor Stern couldn’t script one. Maybe cinematographer Fred J. Koenekamp could shoot one, but only also maybe not because Koenekamp’s only decent photography is the exteriors (sans the silly thunderstorm shots) and none of the horror takes place outside. Even if Koenekamp could, Robert Brown wouldn’t know how to cut them. And then there’s Lalo Schifrin’s sadly silly score. It’s like the entire crew of the film is incapable of making this movie scary. Or interesting.

The actors don’t help things. They’re all in a race for worst performance. Rod Steiger wins if only because he’s energetic and terrible. Margot Kidder’s… better than “lead” James Brolin, but she shouldn’t be so much better. Brolin gets really bad. Like, in the big finale the dog seems embarrassed to be acting opposite him (in addition to being embarrassed with the whole production; the dog’s the hero, but it’s not worth it for the two hours). Sure, the script is terrible and Brolin’s character arc is incompetently executed, but it’s still mostly Brolin’s fault. Because if he’s actually trying instead of just phoning it, it’s worse. Steiger’s already won because he’s obviously trying and failing; Kidder’s resigned; Brolin’s… Brolin.

Supporting cast is all bad too. Worst is either Val Avery as a cigar-chomping stalker detective, Don Stroud as priest Steiger’s protege, or Natasha Ryan as the daughter. Stroud and Avery are bad in a way Amityville seems like a spoof of itself. Ryan’s just a terrible kid actor. Some of the problem is clearly Rosenberg either not being able to direct his cast or just not doing it. Incompetence or negligence seem to be the only two Amityville options, with the obvious caveat its running downstream from on high; i.e., no blaming Kidder for her negligence because what the hell else could you do.

Now, the story involves Native American burial grounds, exiled New England witches, tar pits, guys who kill their families, along with a lot of things to say about Catholicism.

Horror doesn’t have real subplots, but occasionally there are minor exposition dumps, and they’re often very weird. Kidder’s either a divorcée or widow with three kids. Brolin marries her, converting to Catholicism, which is a big enough deal his business partner, Michael Sacks, gives him crap about it. Maybe Sacks is just a piece of shit. Whatever. But Kidder starts the movie wearing around modified Catholic school girl outfits because part of being married to her is Brolin gets like impromptu nookie unless one of the kids needs something or there’s a ghost or whatever. Seems all good to start—including a really pointless, leaden sex scene—but Brolin’s soon very sick of playing papa bear to other cubs.

But it’s like it takes very long. Brolin’s sick of the kids before the end of the first act, so then it’s all about him chopping wood to show his displeasure with Kidder and the life she’s got him locked into thanks to her Catholic school girl outfits. Meanwhile there’s a whole subplot about the Church not supporting Steiger’s clinical psychology based determination it’s a Hell House because he’s got a secular master’s degree and what kind of loser believes in ghosts. Murray Hamilton’s the head Church official, hopefully getting a solid, easy paycheck. He’s really highly billed for three and a half minutes tops. But even if the Church is negligent in protecting Kidder and company, the house is able to mess with Steiger through the whole movie from afar, when Steiger’s in the church, so clearly the Church has no power?

Meanwhile, Ryan starts seeing an imaginary friend—actually a demonic little girl who appears in the form of a warthog—and messing around in the house, kind of old school gaslighting Brolin and her brothers by messing with objects, closing doors, sneaking up. She’s a little psychopath who locks her babysitter in the closet or whatever. The first act of Horror kind of shows the “rational” explanations for the horror events, but stops and goes all in on supernatural because Rosenberg isn’t incapable of doing things like implying. The whole film is seemingly allergic to subtext. Stern’s script rushes into the main story, filling in details as it goes, but never naturally, always in giant expository dumps the actors, director, and Stern’s script can’t successfully realize.

But with Ryan, it’s almost entertaining because the rational explanation for her hijinks are obvious. It’s not entertaining though, because Ryan’s terrible, the directing of those scenes is terrible, and so on and so on. Amityville never (from the AIP logo to be honest) suggests it might be good, but it also never even gets vaguely interesting. It’s always dull. Every shot, every scene, every minute… dull.

The Amityville Horror is The Amityville Horror.

That dog’s a good boy though; shame he didn’t get a credit.

Night of the Demon (1957, Jacques Tourneur)

Despite Dana Andrews and Peggy Cummins being perfectly serviceable leads, Night of the Demon never really comes to life without antagonist Niall MacGinnis around. MacGinnis is a Satanic cult leader who conjures forth demons from Hell—hence the title—to deal with his enemies and—while he never explicitly confesses to his enemies… he takes a delight in his villainy. That delight helps quite a bit with all his expository speeches, which lag whenever he’s not giving them.

At first it seems like the film’s going to have some expository shortcuts—for example, Andrews’s introduction is inventive and pragmatic—but then start the various info dumps. Eventually Cummins gets involved—she and Andrews have a mostly chemistry-free relationship other than some seemingly platonic concern (though they have a good “cute meet” on an airplane). Andrews is flying over to England to help fellow psychiatrist Maurice Denham investigate MacGinnis. Cummins is Denham’s niece and returning for some contrived reason. See, once MacGinnis sicks a demon on Andrews, he’s got to be the skeptic but there also needs to be a reluctant believer: Cummins.

The film establishes almost immediately whether or not MacGinnis is full of it on the demonology business; there’s a voice over setting things up, ominously set against various shots of Stonehenge, then it’s time for Denham to confront MacGinnis and we find out what’s really going on. So Andrews’s protracted investigation—which involves local farmer Brian Wilde’s murder trial and a convention to debunk paranormal thinking, specifically MacGinnis’s cult—doesn’t promise a lot of pay-off because the film’s clued the audience in on things he doesn’t know or even suspect.

Andrews even has a separate supporting cast for this subplot, whereas Cummins sticks to the MacGinnis side of things, getting involved with MacGinnis’s sympathetic mother, Athene Seyler.

So most of Demon is rapid exposition—Tourneur gets excellent readings from Andrews and Cummins during their scenes, with this neat trick of delaying reactions so they don’t get in the way of more exposition but they do build up so they’ve got more weight when they do break, sometimes with a nice cut courtesy editor Michael Gordon. When it’s not rapid exposition, the film’s suspense sequences. Tourneur, cinematographer Edward Scaife, and editor Gordon create some spectacular suspense sequences in the film. They’re able to get tension out of MacGinnis offering Andrews a light, but then they’re also able to scale up to full action special effects set pieces too. They can do ominous empty, they can do jumbo action set pieces. Scaife’s night photography is stunning; he and Tourneur do some great work on the suspense here.

Clifton Parker’s music helps too, though not as much as Gordon and whoever did the sound (looks like Charles Crafford). The film teaches Andrews—and the audience—to be afraid of the dark, starting from the first scene after the opening titles. And it’s always night time in Demon. There are some day time scenes in the first act, but pretty soon everyone’s out after dark, whether it’s for a dinner date, a seance, or the paranormal debunking convention. There’s always somewhere for monsters to hide.

Because Demon’s not just a suspense thriller about a Satanic cult out to rid itself of meddling American anti-paranormal psychiatrist, it’s also a monster movie. Maybe. And Tourneur and the crew adeptly pivot between the two genres. It helps the effects are excellent. There’s a quite a bit of process photography during chase scenes, for instance, and it’s always outstanding.

There’s just too much of the exposition in the second act. Even with it “solving” the problem for Andrews, it takes forever while Cummins and presumably MacGinnis are off having a lot more interesting things going on than giving a lecture. If Andrews were better, it might work out. He’s fine, he’s sturdy, but he’s far from compelling. Even with less to do, Cummins manages to be a lot more appealing; Andrews and MacGinnis are both playing jackasses, one of them just happens to be more right than the other about the existence of demons. They play well off each other, with Andrews lighting up for the conflict in a way he doesn’t for the exposition dumps with Cummins.

Excellent direction from Tourneur throughout—even when the narrative is slogging—is key. He likes his jump scares too; while he doesn’t rely on them, he does play with them, trying to keep the audience on their toes but also to jazz up the film after it’s been dragging. It’d be nice for it not to drag, but Tourneur’s compensations work out.

Night of the Demon succeeds, with Tourneur, the crew, and MacGinnis picking up the slack for the script and—consequently—Andrews and Cummins, who always manage to be sympathetic and appealing, but nothing more. It makes the film even more impressive it’s able to get away with not having effective heroes. Good thing it’s so exceptionally well-made.

The Bay (2012, Barry Levinson)

Most of The Bay is tolerably tedious and mediocre. Levinson’s doing a found footage documentary—he may also provide the voice of filmmaker—about a bunch of sea cockroaches eating its way through a little Maryland town. It plays like a combination low rent Michael Crichton adaptation—the action skips to various government agencies and their internal camera systems—and a lower rent Jaws. Or more accurately Piranha.

There’s one problem so significant they can’t succeed with it—they’re going to need a bigger boat—that problem is narrator and occasional protagonist Kether Donohue.

So three years after Homeland Security covers up a bunch of mutant sea lice eating hundreds of people in a vacation town on the Fourth of July, Donohue and an unseen documentarian (voice by Levinson I think) get together to have Donohue narrate all the video footage from the incident.

They’re able to get it because screenwriter Michael Wallach and Levinson’s target audience is people who don’t understand how WikiLeaks worked; the in-movie WikiLeaks, Wiki-whatever, gets all the footage and so then Levinson assembles like a horror movie and has Donohue record narration.

The problem is Donohue’s terrible at the narration, terrible at the speaking directly to the camera. She ends up ruining the movie in the end, but for a steady clip during the second act she’s barely narrating and it’s… tolerable.

Though it helps some of the cast can act even with the found footage thing going on. Levinson mixes all sorts of formats without much thought, though I suppose putting too much work into realizing Wallach’s insipid screenplay might have been hard to get excited about. The movie's target audience is also people who don’t understand how 24-hour clocks work. In addition to technology and probably protein in chicken shit. The film’s got a strong environmental message about pollution but it’s also very bad and very silly at times so it’s impossible to take it very seriously.

If it weren’t for Donohue—and if the acting from government officials weren’t so terrible—The Bay probably would be okay. It wouldn’t be good because Levinson’s got zero touch for the found footage thing and no apparent ear for “real” dialogue, but it wouldn’t be as bad.

Stephen Kunken’s okay as the doctor—it’s obvious The Bay does not care about verisimilitude when they don’t even bother finding out what Kunken’s position at an ER would be called. He’s something like the attending personal physician for waiting room patients. It must have been hard to watch this one as a personal friend of Levinson and have to talk to him about it.

Frank Deal’s terrible as the mayor, who’s got that factory farmed chicken money in his corrupt pockets and calls in the National Guard without anyone knowing to keep the outbreak isolated.

Christopher Denham and Nansi Aluka are okay as the oceanographers who get a very important flashback subplot threaded throughout the micro-monster movie so it’ll have maximal impact for presumably disinterested audience. Levinson’s pretty craven in his indifference to trying to make The Bay good at all. It’s contemptuous of the found footage horror audience it assumes it’ll have.

Kristen Connolly is almost good as a vacationer. She’d be good if it weren’t for the movie itself being bad.

And then a quick shoutout for Robert C. Treveiler, who plays the CDC guy who’s got terrible, goofy dialogue but Treveiler still holds it together reasonably well. He’d probably be the hero in a big budget version.

The Bay is bad. It’s worse than it needs to be thanks to Donohue’s terrible turn as narrator; she’s even likable in the found footage parts too. Even though you’re predisposed to dislike her because of the narration. Worse, the opening scene with her is she and Levinson talking about how he should’ve hired someone who would do the narration better.

It’s like you’re agreeing to give it a pass on the bad from the start, which is an interesting device but maybe shouldn’t be the most significant device you come up with for a piece of work. Then again Levinson giving up after the first three minutes are a flop explains a lot.

The Invisible Man (2020, Leigh Whannell)

The Invisible Man is surprisingly okay. I mean, once you realize it’s just going to be lead Elisabeth Moss in constant terror of an invisible abusive partner lashing out at her and Moss is good at being terrified for long periods, it seems like a bit of a gimme, but until the middle of the movie… it could potentially be good even.

Unfortunately director (and writer) Whannell can’t figure out how to turn his actual invisible man into a good visual monster—the eventual set pieces are like video games where you’re in stealth mode and the biggest effects sequence ends the second act, which… I guess is good if it’s because Whannell’s got no confidence in his abilities to pull off a bigger set piece. Odds are it would’ve been disappointing.

The movie stops being scary once they “visualize” the invisible man, it stops being much good in the third act. The Invisible Man runs two hours. Even with ten minute end credits, Whannel has to pad a bunch of it out so there are multiple twists and reveals. Especially since there are no subplots and the whole “everyone thinks Moss is making it up” stuff only matters for a bit at the beginning of the second act and then it’s inconsequential because everything’s a long suspense sequence. Moss’s friends not believing her is just the longest expository section before the next suspense sequence, it’s not like Whannell’s actually got narrative ambitions.

The movie opens with Moss escaping abusive boyfriend Oliver Jackson-Cohen (who’s terrible). Moss’s sister, Harriet Dyer (not good and definitely the worst performance before Jackson-Cohen gets to shine), helps her but they’re not close enough Moss has told Dyer why she needs help.

Moss stays with family friend Aldis Hodge, who’s a cop we find out later–Invisible Man loves cops, at one point Moss tells Dyer she’s awesome because she’s like a cop, it’s a weird flex but Whannell’s dialogue is fairly vapid and Moss’s worst scenes are the expository ones so whatever. Hodge being a cop isn’t really going to be important. The movie pretends it’s important, up until the very end, but it’s not important at all.

Hodge isn’t good. He’s profoundly disappointing.

Storm Reid is his precocious teenage daughter. She’s pretty good. It’s not a good part and she’s eventually and inevitably reduced to potential slasher victim number four or whatever. But she’s pretty good. Especially compared to Hodge and Dyer.

After some relative calm and good news and putting her life back together stuff, we get to the invisible man antics. Only The Invisible Man is low budget and pragmatic about it so the antics are mundane, pseudo-inventive stuff. Pseudo because there’s CGI and it’s easy to get rid of any strings.

And because Whannell shoots everything in long shot and then has the action unfold in the long shot. Again, easy now thanks to CGI and relatively effective so long as Moss can stay terrified. And she can.

Before The Invisible Man and during the ineffective stylized opening titles, I wasn’t expecting much. By the hour mark, I was expecting at least something. With the blah third act and so many middling (at best) performances, it comes in definitely about not much but decidedly below at least something.

But still much better than expected regardless.

As Above, So Below (2014, John Erick Dowdle)

As Above, So Below is a combination of a Goonies rip-off, a Tomb Raider rip-off, an Indiana Jones spin-off (which might just be the Tomb Raider rip-off), and, I don’t know, either Blair Witch or every other found footage horror movie where the third act just decides it’s time for image overload in lieu of narrative.

But for the first one and a half acts, following “We Called Your Grandpa’s Dog Indiana” archeologist Perdita Weeks (basically if she weren’t terrible, the movie could be at least solid until the third act but she’s terrible so it doesn’t matter from go) as she tries to find the Philosopher’s Stone underneath Paris. Presumably a London-based sequel would have them looking for the Sorcerer’s Stone across the Channel. Wokka wokka.

The opening is her recording herself adventure archeology-ing in Iraq. Apparently the camera is in the hijab. One thing about Dowdle’s direction—it’s more inept than bad. Like Dowdle and cinematographer Léo Hinstin have no idea where to place the cameras to get the camcorder feel. Especially once they start using “pen cameras” in their headlamps. It doesn’t help the documentarian—oh, right, in the story proper Weeks isn’t filming herself, she has a sycophant cameraman Edwin Hodge—it doesn’t help Hodge is both bad and poorly written.

Then there’s Ben Feldman as an Aramaic scholar who breaks into historical buildings and repairs their features for the benefit of mankind. Feldman’s not good but he’s really, really likable. Watch “Superstore.” Not instead. Just watch “Superstore.” Also, obviously instead.

Then there are the French catacombs climbers… François Civil, who constantly looks like he’s surprised they’re making a real movie, punk damsel in distress Marion Lambert, and finally Ali Marhyar, who gets the least to do in the movie and is—consequently, it seems—the best. Always good when Marhyar gets a moment. They’re never bad.

There are ghosts of dead little brothers, dead dads, dead friends. There are scary French hipster witch covens. There is Weeks—after not getting anywhere near as much male gaze throughout as one might expect from the genre—finally down to her tank top and slick with blood.

The script, by director Dowdle and Drew Dowdle—based on the ineptness of the script, they’ve got to be related—seems like an elongated second act sequence in a tent pole movie. Like one where Indiana Jones’s granddaughter comes across the last Goonie and they go for an adventure.

Sadly, no sign of One-Eyed Willie, but they do find the Last Crusader. Oops, spoilers. But not really because you shouldn’t be watching As Above, So Below, because there’s “Superstore.”