Shocktober Revisited: The Babadook

The Babadook is an often harrowing experience of a single mother raising an emotionally fragile, potentially dangerous son, specifically in the weeks leading up to his birthday. There's also the title character, otherwise known as Mr. Babadook, who writes horrific children's books and sneaks them onto the shelf. Specifically, the shelf of Samuel (Noah Wiseman), much to the consternation of his mother Amelia (Essie Davis). Maybe consternation isn't the right word, especially when the line "whether it's in a word, or whether it's in a look, you can't get rid of the Babadook" turns out to be very accurate. Writer / Director Jennifer Kent crafts The Babadook into a film teetering on hysteria from the word go, and ratchets up the tension. Partly due to the titular menace, but also from the already precarious mental state of Amelia, who can barely coexist with her son.

 It's actually well into the movie before The Babadook becomes any sort of tangible threat, but in the meantime there's plenty of tension to go around. Amelia's husband died while trying to drive her to the hospital, and she's had her hands full with Samuel, who bears the signs of a child who grew up in a household that never moved past "grieving." He's convinced monsters are in the house and builds home made weapons to fight them. When he takes a particularly nasty crossbow to school, Amelia is called in from her job at a nursing home, and in the ensuing argument with the staff, she removes her son from classes altogether. Amelia is just barely functional - she hasn't slept in months thanks to Samuel's night terrors, her coworkers feel she's not keeping up with her duties, and her sister Claire (Hailey McElhinney) refuses to come over to her townhouse. It's too "depressing," and she's far more concerned with keeping Samuel away from her daughter. He's prone to violent outbursts and fits of screaming, and there's something unseemly about his attachment to Amelia. (Note early in the film when he leans in to hug her and she abruptly pushes him away and yells "stop!" What exactly did he do?)

 One night, she lets him pick the book that will lead up to their abbreviate sleep schedule - one that will be inevitably be interrupted when he panics about the "monster" - and Samuel finds an oversized red volume with the title Mister Babadook on the cover. It promises a mischievous, albeit creepy, looking friend, but as Amelia turns the pages, the tone shifts to sinister. There's a promise that "once you see what's underneath, you'll wish that you were dead," and her son is understandably terrified. Now his "monster" has a name, and with homemade weapons and a love of magic, Samuel feels he's the only person who can keep the Babadook from killing his mother. Amelia tears the book up and throws it away, but not long after, it mysteriously reappears...

 If it were merely a film about the issues that Amelia and Samuel face in day to day life, The Babadook would be a film fraught with tension, but the added supernatural element pushes them past the breaking point and into truly frightening territory. Kent wisely avoids jump scares, and instead elevates the uneasy tone slowly but surely. We know something is wrong with both of our protagonists, but it's hard to tell which one is worse off. The world has essentially shut them out - or, one could argue, Amelia has alienated everyone - so when the Babadook enters the picture, there's no one and no thing to help them cope.

 Kent's masterstroke in The Babadook is to switch our loyalty in characters halfway through the film. Initially, our sympathies lie with Amelia, a beleaguered mother with the child from hell. That's something we've all seen, and something does seem to be very, very wrong with Samuel. He's violent, he's anxious, and socially maladjusted. But after he suffers an episode in Amelia's car that leaves him temporarily catatonic, Amelia begs a doctor to prescribe him a sedative for both of their sakes. He reluctantly agrees, and the first night that they both have a good night's sleep is where the swap happens. Having destroyed Mister Babadook, Amelia is alarmed to find it at her front door, with new pages included. We realize that his (its?) focus has changed - The Babadook doesn't want Samuel to "Let Me In," it wants Amelia, and provides a few graphically violent pop-ups of what's going to happen when it does. The second half of the film shifts Samuel to the position of doped up innocent as Amelia grows increasingly indifferent towards his welfare.

 Interestingly, she remains our focal point character - the film never shifts to Samuel's perspective. We instead follow Amelia as she encounters The Babadook overnight and has a series of hallucinations: first at the police station, and then late at night watching television. A series of Melies films from the early days of cinema are transformed to include the Babadook, who resembles Lon Chaney in London After Midnight more than a little bit. She sees cockroaches, first in a hole behind the refrigerator, and then inside of her car, both at disastrously inopportune times. The second, in fact, is a sly mirroring of the incident that set off her relationship to Samuel, although it's possible to not notice it once the film shifts over to "supernatural menace." The Babadook also takes on a more conventional film for horror movies, one that I won't spoil, but that promises Amelia can be normal again. At a cost, of course.

 Eventually Samuel and Amelia come to assert some control over the situation in a tense climax that I'm not going to discuss at all - that's for you to discover, although the coda of the film might come as surprising to some. Kent proposes that some things can't just be wished away, and that instead a balance must be struck between the light and the dark, however tenuous. However, there is an alternate way to read the film, if you choose to take some small pieces of information as meaning more than they seem to. We're above to dive into mild SPOILER territory here, so skip the next paragraph if you'd rather not know anything about The Babadook.

 Earlier in the film, Amelia mentions to Claire's friends that she used to be a writer, but hasn't written anything since her husband died. She has a bad habit of losing track of time due to insomnia, and to see things that aren't there, particularly later in the film. It's true Samuel finds Mister Babadook on his shelf, but who put it there? Near the very end of the film, there's a small moment between Amelia, Samuel, and the Civil Services agents that suggests what we're seeing isn't an exception, but instead the norm. Amelia tells them she always has trouble keeping things together around Samuel's birthday, and he then tells them that this year will be the first time he's ever had a party. If you choose to, particularly based on the "fixed" copy of the book, one could read The Babadook as being a traumatic episode that Amelia is dealing with, perhaps annually. If you opt to read the monster as "not real," or that she wrote the book as a means of cathartic release, then the ending in the basement is also possibly in her mind. On the other hand, I tend to think that the Babadook is a real external force exacerbating her already fractured maternal bond with Samuel.

 (Here endeth speculatory SPOILAGE)

 The Babadook is a genuinely creepy movie, one that ought to be on the radar of horror fans tired of endless remakes. It's the second movie I've seen from the same region (The Babadook from Australia and Housebound from New Zealand) that was a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale landscape of zombies and kid-friendly monsters. There is such a thing as a renaissance in horror, but you need to be okay with the fact that much of it flies under the radar. You won't get the chance to see it on a big screen most of the time (It Follows being a notable exception), but there's some very good new horror out there, if you're willing to dig a bit. Jennifer Kent's debut put her on my radar, and I look forward to seeing what she makes next.

Shocktober Revisited: It Follows

For at least the last decade, there seems to be a concerted push to anoint one horror movie as the next "classic": the genre reinventing, flying-under-the-radar take that will usher us out of this endless trend of remakes and PG-13 zombie/vampire/werewolf teen-friendly tripe. Sometimes, the hype is justified (The House of the Devil, The Cabin in the Woods), sometimes not (Hatchet, Behind the Mask*), but I think it's safe to say that we're not going to get rid of the PG-13 horror trend any time soon. In fact, there was a trailer for the Ghost House Pictures remake of Poltergeist in front of the movie we'll be discussing today. It Follows has been riding on a groundswell of praise from horror fans, and Radius / TWC is finally listening to audiences and putting the film in theatres, as opposed to dumping it on VOD. By the time the Cap'n heard about it, It Follows was already being labeled "this year's The Babadook," and I was a little worried about going in with heightened expectations, so I just stopped reading about the film. Does it live up to the hype?

 (if you really don't want to know anything else, skip to the last paragraph, but the short answer is "yes.")

 Jay Height (Maika Monroe) is a college student living at home with her mother and younger sister, Kelly (Lili Sepe). She's been on a few dates with Hugh (Jake Weary), and is thinking about taking things to the next level, but Hugh's behavior is a little strange. He seems to see people that Jay can't, and is always in a hurry to leave wherever they're settling in. But she decides to sleep with him, and as she's relaxing in the back seat of his car, Hugh knocks her out with a rag and chemicals. She wakes up tied to a wheelchair in the abandoned remains of a hotel, with Hugh pacing the building, looking frantically for... something. There's something following him; it's slow, but it's not dumb, and it's going to kill him, so he passed it on to Jay. If she wants to live, she has to pass it on to someone else, or it comes after him. It can look like anyone, but if it's feeling cruel, it will look like those you love most. She's tied down to prove that he's not making this up, and before long, someone - or something - slowly walks up to where she is...

 We already know what the "It" is capable of from the opening sequence, which also establishes writer / director David Robert Mitchell's visual style: long, unbroken takes, using the most of the wide screen composition. If it helps, think of Halloween, and understand that I know how lofty of a comparison it is to make. Mitchell walks us through the moment of panic for "It"'s last victim - Hugh's first attempt to pass it on? - as she tries to escape from her house, to drive to the beach. And then a smash cut to the next morning. The stakes are established. Once Hugh explains the rules, we know what Jay is up against. We'll learn a little more about the "It," but not directly from the characters. It Follows is a film heavy on inference, on visual clues rather than exposition dump scenes. What you take away from the film depends heavily on how carefully you're paying attention.

 Mitchell packs plenty in the frame to pay attention to, as Jay and her friends Yara (Olivia Luccardi), Paul (Keir Gilchrist), Kelly, and neighbor Greg (Daniel Zovatto) try to find Hugh, who rented his place in Detroit under a fake name and presumably skipped town. When the threat could be anything, it's a demented version of "Where's Waldo" in the frame - who's really a person? Who is it? Early on, Mitchell makes it abundantly clear, but towards the middle of the film, he starts playing with the audience. Much later in the film, "It" takes the form of someone we've only seen in photographs, and he relies on the viewer to have been observant. You don't need to know who it is - or was - but it's a bonus that weighs in It Follows' favor.

 There are many things about It Follows I'd like to talk about, but would risk SPOILING plot points. Boiled down to its core, the film is a very straightforward variation on the horror trope of "Sex = Death," one that's been analyzed ad nauseum in college courses the world over. It Follows will likely join those thesis proposals, in part because Mitchell takes a very ambiguous approach to how and what we find out about the threat. They "why" is abandoned, strictly speaking, which distinguishes the film from many of its modern brethren. A reductive reading would call it "The Ring as an STD," but remove all of The Ring's second half - there is not history here. Jay only traces it as far back as Hugh (real name, Jeff, at home with his mother) - he got it from "some girl at a bar." We have some idea of what happened to Annie (Bailey Spry), the girl from the beginning, after Jay's attempt to pass it on goes horribly wrong, but it's only in flashes. What it wants is up to us to decide, and why the rules are the way they are is similarly up to interpretation.

 Instead of devoting most of the film to monster lore creation, Mitchell spends almost all of It Follows dealing with Jay's fragile emotional state, as she struggles with how to deal with her state. It's a curious wrinkle that all of the sex in It Follows is consensual, and yet Jay is clearly left violated in every situation (one in particular is left to the imagination, only holding on her face before and after she swims out to a boat). Does she want to pass this curse on to someone else? Does she want to die? There seems to be no way to stop "It," and only the "infected" can see it. "It" can see them once they've passed it on, but it isn't interested. Not yet, anyway. You can drive and get ahead for a while, but it will always be right behind you, walking slowly, emotionless.

 The inevitability of the threat could be a detriment to It Follows: in a more conventional approach, like the Final Destination series, it simply becomes an excuse to put Grand Guignol kills on display, character development be damned. But the death toll is relatively limited in It Follows, and they both count, emotionally. One sets the tone for the film, another gives us a vague insight to the first death, although what you take away is largely a matter of interpretation. I give the lion's share of the credit to the cast, although Mitchell certainly gives them plenty of time to breathe and to exist on screen. As a matter of fact, it's refreshing to see a group of young actors who don't look like the Hollywood Casting Template for Horror Films (see anything released by Platinum Dunes), and instead a cast that look like normal teenagers, that act like normal teenagers.

 I say this knowing full and well that I just saw Maika Monroe in The Guest, playing a character just a little bit older than Jay is. I saw her in The Bling Ring, too, but didn't remember he when I saw The Guest. Monroe, like the rest of the kids (adults don't factor into It Follows in many ways, aside from two, meaningful moments involving the "It") is totally believable as Jay, a young woman thrust into a situation she doesn't understand and forced to cope with it. She doesn't magically become Nancy Drew or Buffy when "It" appears. She gets frightened, panics, makes bad decisions, and when she tries to help it doesn't always work. Likewise, Sepe, Luccardi, Gilchrist, and Zovatto aren't just assigned "types." They're Jay's friends, and despite the fact that Mitchell sets Greg and Paul against each other, the end of the film still isn't as apparent as I thought it would be.

 Arguably the film's weakest moment comes from Paul's plan to stop "it" by electrocution in a public swimming pool they all went to when they were younger. The plan doesn't really make sense - the pool is too big, for one - but they aren't aware of what Jay and the audience know. We know that when she tried to shoot "it" (and as she just learned how to fire a gun a few hours before, she's a terrible shot), that didn't work. Mitchell foreshadows their plan with a shot that seems to be out of place in the film - the smaller pool out back that Jay enjoys swimming in, inexplicably ripped open - but it makes sense only in retrospect. That might have worked, but in their desperation, Paul's plan backfires and it ends up hurting more than just Jay. The only thing that works in the scene is the final shot, where Jay looks into the swimming pool and sees something the others can't, an image left open to your own interpretation.

 The pool sequence is a minor stumble, but one I feel like I should point out. Mitchell and It Follows bounce back with a less conventional, more ambiguous ending that left some of the audience disappointed. Then again, I made the deliberate choice to see It Follows with a more conventional audience just to see how'd they would react. I could have seen the film at a smaller, art house theater with a more enthusiastic crowd, but it seemed like this would be an interest test case to see how the multiplex crowd reacted to less mainstream horror. They liked it while the film was going on, but seemed dissatisfied that it didn't end on some grand show down, the kind I imagine the remake of Poltergeist will (their enthusiastic reaction to the trailer was also telling).

 But here's the truth about the internet hype machine surrounding independent horror: it only works for people who are seeking out the kind of movies that are like It Follows. The buzz is not going to change the minds of people who get impatient with something different from the formula, or something as stripped down as It Follows. And that's great. It really is, because I wouldn't have known about It Follows otherwise, and I will see it again. I want to see it again, because there's so much that Mitchell packs into the frame that I know I missed some of it. I want to pay closer attention to the forms "it" takes, because they're careful hints about the creature's history. Or maybe not - it's clear halfway through the film that "it" can and will take the form of a previous victim. I want to see if I somehow missed something that led to the pool in the backyard being torn open. The sign of a great horror movie (or any movie, for that matter) is that you're thinking about it after the fact. That you want to watch it again, to dig through and pick up pieces you missed. It's what distinguishes It Follows from the more basic "Sex = Death" movies that are enjoyable, but disposable.

 I also have to point out how amusing it is to have Yara reading Dostoyevsky's The Idiot on a clamshell phone, which is a minor subplot in the film. Nice touch.

 So if you're reading this review and wondering "should I see this or is it all sizzle and no steak?" the answers are an emphatic yes and an emphatic no, in that order. If you think you'd like It Follows, then yes, see it. If you liked The Babadook - which It Follows has a tonal connection to, particularly in how it ends - or You're Next or The Cabin in the Woods or The House of the Devil, basically anything that flew mostly under the radar as horror goes, go see it. I think you're really going to like it. Sometimes the hype is justified. That doesn't mean that It Follows is "game changing" or "genre redefining," two terms overused to help sell movies of this ilk. Much like Starry Eyes, another independent horror film that's flying under most people's radars, It Follows takes a concept you're familiar with and tells it in a unique way. I don't want to undersell this film, nor do I want to oversell it, because your mileage may vary. Don't seek out spoilers. Try to see it with limited knowledge. Which, uh, means not having read this review, I guess. Oops.



 * I realize this is going to be a difference of opinion, but I found nothing in either movie worth watching: Behind the Mask either doesn't understand or chooses to misrepresent slasher movie "tropes" in order to advance its narrative, and the first Hatchet film has extreme gore and nothing else going for it. I have not seen Hatchet II or III, but have yet to see a review that made me want to.

Blogorium Review: The Babadook

 The Babadook or, as it shall now be referred to, "last year's It Follows" is an often harrowing experience of a single mother raising an emotionally fragile, potentially dangerous son, specifically in the weeks leading up to his birthday. There's also the title character, otherwise known as Mr. Babadook, who writes horrific children's books and sneaks them onto the shelf. Specifically, the shelf of Samuel (Noah Wiseman), much to the consternation of his mother Amelia (Essie Davis). Maybe consternation isn't the right word, especially when the line "whether it's in a word, or whether it's in a look, you can't get rid of the Babadook" turns out to be very accurate. Writer / Director Jennifer Kent crafts The Babadook into a film teetering on hysteria from the word go, and ratchets up the tension. Partly due to the titular menace, but also from the already precarious mental state of Amelia, who can barely coexist with her son.

 It's actually well into the movie before The Babadook becomes any sort of tangible threat, but in the meantime there's plenty of tension to go around. Amelia's husband died while trying to drive her to the hospital, and she's had her hands full with Samuel, who bears the signs of a child who grew up in a household that never moved past "grieving." He's convinced monsters are in the house and builds home made weapons to fight them. When he takes a particularly nasty crossbow to school, Amelia is called in from her job at a nursing home, and in the ensuing argument with the staff, she removes her son from classes altogether. Amelia is just barely functional - she hasn't slept in months thanks to Samuel's night terrors, her coworkers feel she's not keeping up with her duties, and her sister Claire (Hailey McElhinney) refuses to come over to her townhouse. It's too "depressing," and she's far more concerned with keeping Samuel away from her daughter. He's prone to violent outbursts and fits of screaming, and there's something unseemly about his attachment to Amelia. (Note early in the film when he leans in to hug her and she abruptly pushes him away and yells "stop!" What exactly did he do?)

 One night, she lets him pick the book that will lead up to their abbreviate sleep schedule - one that will be inevitably be interrupted when he panics about the "monster" - and Samuel finds an oversized red volume with the title Mister Babadook on the cover. It promises a mischievous, albeit creepy, looking friend, but as Amelia turns the pages, the tone shifts to sinister. There's a promise that "once you see what's underneath, you'll wish that you were dead," and her son is understandably terrified. Now his "monster" has a name, and with homemade weapons and a love of magic, Samuel feels he's the only person who can keep the Babadook from killing his mother. Amelia tears the book up and throws it away, but not long after, it mysteriously reappears...

 If it were merely a film about the issues that Amelia and Samuel face in day to day life, The Babadook would be a film fraught with tension, but the added supernatural element pushes them past the breaking point and into truly frightening territory. Kent wisely avoids jump scares, and instead elevates the uneasy tone slowly but surely. We know something is wrong with both of our protagonists, but it's hard to tell which one is worse off. The world has essentially shut them out - or, one could argue, Amelia has alienated everyone - so when the Babadook enters the picture, there's no one and no thing to help them cope.

 Kent's masterstroke in The Babadook is to switch our loyalty in characters halfway through the film. Initially, our sympathies lie with Amelia, a beleaguered mother with the child from hell. That's something we've all seen, and something does seem to be very, very wrong with Samuel. He's violent, he's anxious, and socially maladjusted. But after he suffers an episode in Amelia's car that leaves him temporarily catatonic, Amelia begs a doctor to prescribe him a sedative for both of their sakes. He reluctantly agrees, and the first night that they both have a good night's sleep is where the swap happens. Having destroyed Mister Babadook, Amelia is alarmed to find it at her front door, with new pages included. We realize that his (its?) focus has changed - The Babadook doesn't want Samuel to "Let Me In," it wants Amelia, and provides a few graphically violent pop-ups of what's going to happen when it does. The second half of the film shifts Samuel to the position of doped up innocent as Amelia grows increasingly indifferent towards his welfare.

 Interestingly, she remains our focal point character - the film never shifts to Samuel's perspective. We instead follow Amelia as she encounters The Babadook overnight and has a series of hallucinations: first at the police station, and then late at night watching television. A series of Melies films from the early days of cinema are transformed to include the Babadook, who resembles Lon Chaney in London After Midnight more than a little bit. She sees cockroaches, first in a hole behind the refrigerator, and then inside of her car, both at disastrously inopportune times. The second, in fact, is a sly mirroring of the incident that set off her relationship to Samuel, although it's possible to not notice it once the film shifts over to "supernatural menace." The Babadook also takes on a more conventional film for horror movies, one that I won't spoil, but that promises Amelia can be normal again. At a cost, of course.

 Eventually Samuel and Amelia come to assert some control over the situation in a tense climax that I'm not going to discuss at all - that's for you to discover, although the coda of the film might come as surprising to some. Kent proposes that some things can't just be wished away, and that instead a balance must be struck between the light and the dark, however tenuous. However, there is an alternate way to read the film, if you choose to take some small pieces of information as meaning more than they seem to. We're above to dive into mild SPOILER territory here, so skip the next paragraph if you'd rather not know anything about The Babadook.

 Earlier in the film, Amelia mentions to Claire's friends that she used to be a writer, but hasn't written anything since her husband died. She has a bad habit of losing track of time due to insomnia, and to see things that aren't there, particularly later in the film. It's true Samuel finds Mister Babadook on his shelf, but who put it there? Near the very end of the film, there's a small moment between Amelia, Samuel, and the Civil Services agents that suggests what we're seeing isn't an exception, but instead the norm. Amelia tells them she always has trouble keeping things together around Samuel's birthday, and he then tells them that this year will be the first time he's ever had a party. If you choose to, particularly based on the "fixed" copy of the book, one could read The Babadook as being a traumatic episode that Amelia is dealing with, perhaps annually. If you opt to read the monster as "not real," or that she wrote the book as a means of cathartic release, then the ending in the basement is also possibly in her mind. On the other hand, I tend to think that the Babadook is a real external force exacerbating her already fractured maternal bond with Samuel.

 (Here endeth speculatory SPOILAGE)

 The Babadook is a genuinely creepy movie, one that ought to be on the radar of horror fans tired of endless remakes. It's the second movie I've seen from the same region (The Babadook from Australia and Housebound from New Zealand) that was a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale landscape of zombies and kid-friendly monsters. There is such a thing as a renaissance in horror, but you need to be okay with the fact that much of it flies under the radar. You won't get the chance to see it on a big screen most of the time (It Follows being a notable exception), but there's some very good new horror out there, if you're willing to dig a bit. Jennifer Kent's debut put her on my radar, and I look forward to seeing what she makes next.

Blogorium Review: It Follows

 For at least the last decade, there seems to be a concerted push to anoint one horror movie as the next "classic": the genre reinventing, flying-under-the-radar take that will usher us out of this endless trend of remakes and PG-13 zombie/vampire/werewolf teen-friendly tripe. Sometimes, the hype is justified (The House of the Devil, The Cabin in the Woods), sometimes not (Hatchet, Behind the Mask*), but I think it's safe to say that we're not going to get rid of the PG-13 horror trend any time soon. In fact, there was a trailer for the Ghost House Pictures remake of Poltergeist in front of the movie we'll be discussing today. It Follows has been riding on a groundswell of praise from horror fans, and Radius / TWC is finally listening to audiences and putting the film in theatres, as opposed to dumping it on VOD. By the time the Cap'n heard about it, It Follows was already being labeled "this year's The Babadook," and I was a little worried about going in with heightened expectations, so I just stopped reading about the film. Does it live up to the hype?

 (if you really don't want to know anything else, skip to the last paragraph, but the short answer is "yes.")

 Jay Height (Maika Monroe) is a college student living at home with her mother and younger sister, Kelly (Lili Sepe). She's been on a few dates with Hugh (Jake Weary), and is thinking about taking things to the next level, but Hugh's behavior is a little strange. He seems to see people that Jay can't, and is always in a hurry to leave wherever they're settling in. But she decides to sleep with him, and as she's relaxing in the back seat of his car, Hugh knocks her out with a rag and chemicals. She wakes up tied to a wheelchair in the abandoned remains of a hotel, with Hugh pacing the building, looking frantically for... something. There's something following him; it's slow, but it's not dumb, and it's going to kill him, so he passed it on to Jay. If she wants to live, she has to pass it on to someone else, or it comes after him. It can look like anyone, but if it's feeling cruel, it will look like those you love most. She's tied down to prove that he's not making this up, and before long, someone - or something - slowly walks up to where she is...

 We already know what the "It" is capable of from the opening sequence, which also establishes writer / director David Robert Mitchell's visual style: long, unbroken takes, using the most of the wide screen composition. If it helps, think of Halloween, and understand that I know how lofty of a comparison it is to make. Mitchell walks us through the moment of panic for "It"'s last victim - Hugh's first attempt to pass it on? - as she tries to escape from her house, to drive to the beach. And then a smash cut to the next morning. The stakes are established. Once Hugh explains the rules, we know what Jay is up against. We'll learn a little more about the "It," but not directly from the characters. It Follows is a film heavy on inference, on visual clues rather than exposition dump scenes. What you take away from the film depends heavily on how carefully you're paying attention.

 Mitchell packs plenty in the frame to pay attention to, as Jay and her friends Yara (Olivia Luccardi), Paul (Keir Gilchrist), Kelly, and neighbor Greg (Daniel Zovatto) try to find Hugh, who rented his place in Detroit under a fake name and presumably skipped town. When the threat could be anything, it's a demented version of "Where's Waldo" in the frame - who's really a person? Who is it? Early on, Mitchell makes it abundantly clear, but towards the middle of the film, he starts playing with the audience. Much later in the film, "It" takes the form of someone we've only seen in photographs, and he relies on the viewer to have been observant. You don't need to know who it is - or was - but it's a bonus that weighs in It Follows' favor.

 There are many things about It Follows I'd like to talk about, but would risk SPOILING plot points. Boiled down to its core, the film is a very straightforward variation on the horror trope of "Sex = Death," one that's been analyzed ad nauseum in college courses the world over. It Follows will likely join those thesis proposals, in part because Mitchell takes a very ambiguous approach to how and what we find out about the threat. They "why" is abandoned, strictly speaking, which distinguishes the film from many of its modern brethren. A reductive reading would call it "The Ring as an STD," but remove all of The Ring's second half - there is not history here. Jay only traces it as far back as Hugh (real name, Jeff, at home with his mother) - he got it from "some girl at a bar." We have some idea of what happened to Annie (Bailey Spry), the girl from the beginning, after Jay's attempt to pass it on goes horribly wrong, but it's only in flashes. What it wants is up to us to decide, and why the rules are the way they are is similarly up to interpretation.

 Instead of devoting most of the film to monster lore creation, Mitchell spends almost all of It Follows dealing with Jay's fragile emotional state, as she struggles with how to deal with her state. It's a curious wrinkle that all of the sex in It Follows is consensual, and yet Jay is clearly left violated in every situation (one in particular is left to the imagination, only holding on her face before and after she swims out to a boat). Does she want to pass this curse on to someone else? Does she want to die? There seems to be no way to stop "It," and only the "infected" can see it. "It" can see them once they've passed it on, but it isn't interested. Not yet, anyway. You can drive and get ahead for a while, but it will always be right behind you, walking slowly, emotionless.

 The inevitability of the threat could be a detriment to It Follows: in a more conventional approach, like the Final Destination series, it simply becomes an excuse to put Grand Guignol kills on display, character development be damned. But the death toll is relatively limited in It Follows, and they both count, emotionally. One sets the tone for the film, another gives us a vague insight to the first death, although what you take away is largely a matter of interpretation. I give the lion's share of the credit to the cast, although Mitchell certainly gives them plenty of time to breathe and to exist on screen. As a matter of fact, it's refreshing to see a group of young actors who don't look like the Hollywood Casting Template for Horror Films (see anything released by Platinum Dunes), and instead a cast that look like normal teenagers, that act like normal teenagers.

 I say this knowing full and well that I just saw Maika Monroe in The Guest, playing a character just a little bit older than Jay is. I saw her in The Bling Ring, too, but didn't remember he when I saw The Guest. Monroe, like the rest of the kids (adults don't factor into It Follows in many ways, aside from two, meaningful moments involving the "It") is totally believable as Jay, a young woman thrust into a situation she doesn't understand and forced to cope with it. She doesn't magically become Nancy Drew or Buffy when "It" appears. She gets frightened, panics, makes bad decisions, and when she tries to help it doesn't always work. Likewise, Sepe, Luccardi, Gilchrist, and Zovatto aren't just assigned "types." They're Jay's friends, and despite the fact that Mitchell sets Greg and Paul against each other, the end of the film still isn't as apparent as I thought it would be.

 Arguably the film's weakest moment comes from Paul's plan to stop "it" by electrocution in a public swimming pool they all went to when they were younger. The plan doesn't really make sense - the pool is too big, for one - but they aren't aware of what Jay and the audience know. We know that when she tried to shoot "it" (and as she just learned how to fire a gun a few hours before, she's a terrible shot), that didn't work. Mitchell foreshadows their plan with a shot that seems to be out of place in the film - the smaller pool out back that Jay enjoys swimming in, inexplicably ripped open - but it makes sense only in retrospect. That might have worked, but in their desperation, Paul's plan backfires and it ends up hurting more than just Jay. The only thing that works in the scene is the final shot, where Jay looks into the swimming pool and sees something the others can't, an image left open to your own interpretation.

 The pool sequence is a minor stumble, but one I feel like I should point out. Mitchell and It Follows bounce back with a less conventional, more ambiguous ending that left some of the audience disappointed. Then again, I made the deliberate choice to see It Follows with a more conventional audience just to see how'd they would react. I could have seen the film at a smaller, art house theater with a more enthusiastic crowd, but it seemed like this would be an interest test case to see how the multiplex crowd reacted to less mainstream horror. They liked it while the film was going on, but seemed dissatisfied that it didn't end on some grand show down, the kind I imagine the remake of Poltergeist will (their enthusiastic reaction to the trailer was also telling).

 But here's the truth about the internet hype machine surrounding independent horror: it only works for people who are seeking out the kind of movies that are like It Follows. The buzz is not going to change the minds of people who get impatient with something different from the formula, or something as stripped down as It Follows. And that's great. It really is, because I wouldn't have known about It Follows otherwise, and I will see it again. I want to see it again, because there's so much that Mitchell packs into the frame that I know I missed some of it. I want to pay closer attention to the forms "it" takes, because they're careful hints about the creature's history. Or maybe not - it's clear halfway through the film that "it" can and will take the form of a previous victim. I want to see if I somehow missed something that led to the pool in the backyard being torn open. The sign of a great horror movie (or any movie, for that matter) is that you're thinking about it after the fact. That you want to watch it again, to dig through and pick up pieces you missed. It's what distinguishes It Follows from the more basic "Sex = Death" movies that are enjoyable, but disposable.

 I also have to point out how amusing it is to have Yara reading Dostoyevsky's The Idiot on a clamshell phone, which is a minor subplot in the film. Nice touch.

 So if you're reading this review and wondering "should I see this or is it all sizzle and no steak?" the answers are an emphatic yes and an emphatic no, in that order. If you think you'd like It Follows, then yes, see it. If you liked The Babadook - which It Follows has a tonal connection to, particularly in how it ends - or You're Next or The Cabin in the Woods or The House of the Devil, basically anything that flew mostly under the radar as horror goes, go see it. I think you're really going to like it. Sometimes the hype is justified. That doesn't mean that It Follows is "game changing" or "genre redefining," two terms overused to help sell movies of this ilk. Much like Starry Eyes, another independent horror film that's flying under most people's radars, It Follows takes a concept you're familiar with and tells it in a unique way. I don't want to undersell this film, nor do I want to oversell it, because your mileage may vary. Don't seek out spoilers. Try to see it with limited knowledge. Which, uh, means not having read this review, I guess. Oops.



 * I realize this is going to be a difference of opinion, but I found nothing in either movie worth watching: Behind the Mask either doesn't understand or chooses to misrepresent slasher movie "tropes" in order to advance its narrative, and the first Hatchet film has extreme gore and nothing else going for it. I have not seen Hatchet II or III, but have yet to see a review that made me want to.

Shocktober Review: Curtains

 Curtains is (by some) a much beloved slasher / thriller from the "first wave" that came in the wake of Halloween and Friday the 13th. Had I not known the story behind the film before watching it, Curtains may have been more confusing. Characters are introduced and then disappear at random, there are abandoned subplots and radical tonal shifts, and at least one kill that defies the laws of physics. And yet, I really, really enjoyed the movie. Frankly, considering its tortured production existence, I'm amazed the movie works at all, let alone as well as it does.

 Originally, director Richard Ciupka and screenwriter Robert Guza, Jr. designed Curtains to be a psychological thriller, one built around director Jonathan Stryker (John Vernon) casting his film Audra. His original choice for the lead, Samantha Sherwood (Samantha Eggar) went so far as to have herself committed to an asylum for "research," but Stryker grew tired of her erratic behavior while locked away. He invites five women to audition at his secluded mountain home: actress Brooke Parsons (Linda Thorson), figure skater Christie Burns (Lesleh Donaldson), ballerina Laurian (Ann Ditchburn), comedian Patti O'Connor (Lynne Griffin), and aspiring actress Tara DeMillo (Sandra Warren). His sixth choice, Amanda Teuther (Deborah Burgess), never makes it to the house - she's murdered inside of her apartment.

 It seems like much of Curtains was supposed to be about Stryker's mind games with the girls, particularly after Samantha (who escapes from the asylum with the help of a woman whose face we never see) crashes the auditions, hoping to reclaim the role. Traces of that film are still in Curtains, but producer Peter R. Simpson was unhappy with Ciupka's early cut of the film in 1980 and brought the cast back together in 1982 to reshoot large portions of the film, in the hopes of making a more commercially viable slasher movie. The credits actually feature two separate production crews, and Ciupka had his named removed from the film (instead crediting Curtains to "Jonathan Stryker"), and while the seams are at times painfully apparent, somehow the bastardized hybrid of Ciupka and Simpsons visions works.

 Throughout Curtains, there is a palpable sense of tension, even during the prologue (introduced, as many transitions are, by curtains framing the image). Samantha is onstage, and clearly not impressing Stryker, so the two cook up a scheme where she goes "insane" and he sends her away for her own good. Unfortunately, being left to her own devices among actual mental illness does Samantha no favors. Whether Stryker expected her not to be able to leave or if it's just another game on his part, he simply gives up on his part of their charade. We never find out who helped Samantha escape - the scene is clearly designed to set up either a red herring or an accomplice - but her presence at Stryker's home doesn't amount to much by the end. There's some dramatic satisfaction on her part (contrast her first scene with Stryker with her last), but it's much ado over nothing.

 Similarly, the inclusion of Michael Wincott as Matthew, Stryker's groundskeeper, seems to be more important than his character ends up being. It's possible he never existed in Ciupka's cut - Matthew is mostly there for a sex scene with Tara in the hot tub and then to disappear for the middle of the film, only to show up (SPOILER) dead in a cut-away. There's even a scene where the masked killer watches Matthew ride off on a snowmobile that hints at a kill we never see*.

 After watching Curtains, I thought I had some idea of what was Ciupka and what was Simpson, but after watching The Ultimate Nightmare: The Making of Curtains, it turns out I had it all backwards. The opening and closing 15 minutes were all added by Simpson, which means everything in the asylum and all of the "prop room" scene in Stryker's garage weren't originally part of the film. The latter, I suspected, but the former was a little bit of a surprise. Apparently the dead giveaway in the very last scene is that one character's hair is considerably shorter, so I missed that. Chalk it up to me being invested in the story, or just no eagle-eyed enough.

 Ciupka explains that his Curtains begins with Amanda's dream sequence, but he isn't clear about any of what happens to her before the dream starts. Amanda's section in the film is limited to two locations (her apartment and the side of the road) and nobody else from Curtains appears. Most of the scenes play close to the "slasher" angle: Amanda is stalked by a man in a mask who, it turns out, is her boyfriend (she has a weird "rape" fetish that admittedly makes the scene a little uncomfortable), and wanders around drinking wine and reading Stryker's script. In what turns out (SPOILER) to be a dream, Amanda is driving to Stryker's house when she notices the creepiest doll ever in the middle of the road. She stops to pick it up, but it grabs her and won't let go, and then her car pulls forward and hits her - smash cut to waking up. The creepy doll is still next to her bed, and she's stabbed mysteriously by a stranger.

 It's odd, because it feels like this part was included post-completion, but according to Ciupka most of the middle of Curtains is his cut of the film. I had thought that Simpson used the reshoots to include doll and the mask Stryker has Samantha put on as the "tools" of the murderer. The doll shows up buried in snow when Christie goes to practice, and the killer is wearing the mask in every scene other than Amanda's death. It seemed like since we're introduced to the mask before we know what's it's in the house for, you can either take it as a red herring or a dead giveaway of the retroactive adjustments made in rshoots. But apparently that's not the case. Instead, quite the opposite. I'm looking forward to watching the film again and try to figure out how the original narrative worked (Ciupka doesn't mention his original ending, or beginning, for that matter, only the changes). A mystery inside an enigma wrapped in of a puzzle box, this Curtains.

 That said, I really don't have many problems with Curtains. It may seem like the jumbled nature of its production would stop the film dead in its tracks, but the truth is that Ciupka creates an off-setting tone, where it's unclear what is and isn't happening, and Simpson's more over, "slasher" sections are dripping with tension. At a certain point I didn't even mind the mishmash of styles, and despite the fact that much of the cast and crew don't have kind words to say about the end result, I really thought Curtains worked. It's the exception rather than the rule when it comes to this much interference and revisionism, but somehow, some way, it prevails as a pretty damn good entry when slashers were a dime a dozen.



 * Technically, Ciupka / Simpson intended for Matthew to be a body introduced near the end of the film, but not in the hot tub. His snowmobile-related death was replaced, in a manner of speaking, by making the Stryker's physically impossible fall out of one window and into another.

Blogorium Review: The Woman in Black

 The Woman in Black is the highly anticipated prequel to Frank Laloggia's 1988 thriller Lady in White. Wait? It's not? Oh... that actually makes more sense then. It's actually a film presented from the revamped Hammer Films and is the first post-Harry Potter appearance of Daniel Radcliffe in theatres*. It's a stylish, atmospheric ghost story that does remind one of Hammer's "gothic" reputation from the 1950s and 60s. While it has some minor issues, I have to say that I enjoyed The Woman in Black and found parts of it to be quite creepy.

 Albert Kipps (Radcliffe) is a solicitor and widower at the turn of the twentieth century. Haunted by memories of the death of his wife (Sophie Stuckey) during childbirth, Kipps has had difficulty paying his debts and is on thin ice with the law firm he works for. He is sent north to settle the Eel Marsh House and the estate of Alice Drablow, and despite the warnings of nearly everyone in the adjoining village, he travels to the abandoned manor to retrieve her papers. Slowly but surely, Arthur comes to realize he isn't alone in the house, and that the specter of a woman dressed in black isn't simply interested in haunting him. No, the titular character has her sights set on vengeance on all of the children of the village, due in no small part to a wrong visited on her by the Drablows and a tragedy involving their son.

 The Woman in Black opens with an ominous sign of things to come: three sisters are playing with their dolls when, for reasons unclear, something off camera they can see (but the audience cannot) wills them to walk, side by side, out of the window and to their deaths. Before we've met our hero or have any idea why this might be happening, we have some idea of the threat posed to children in the film. Child endangerment is an effective tool in horror, as are fog shrouded islands, dusty, dark old houses, and creepy dolls / toys. The setting is appropriate because it isolates Arthur as soon as he arrives: the telephone hasn't made it north yet and when he desperately needs to prevent his own son  (Misha Handley) from arriving, a supernaturally influence fire prevents him from being able to send a telegram.

 The only person in town who has a car is Sam Daily (Ciarán Hinds), a man who remains skeptical about anything "haunting" Eel Marsh House, even though he and his wife Elizabeth (Janet McTeer) lost their son under mysterious circumstances. Even as Arthur's presence in the village, traveling back and forth from the manor, causes more tragic deaths of children (in horrible ways like ingesting lye or self immolation), Daily remains unconvinced of any ghostly interference. Arthur, on the other hand, becomes more convinced that the Woman in Black is tied to all of this, just as the villagers warned him. He decides to solve the mystery surrounding the ghost when several revelatory documents appear around the house. That is, if she doesn't have plans for him first...

 One of the things that works so effectively for The Woman in Black is the Eel Marsh House itself: it's situated on the other side of a, well, a marsh, and during high tide the estate becomes an island, separating Arthur from any assistance until the waters subside. It raises the tension, in part, because the ghost isn't beholden to any type of day, and what Arthur doesn't know about her is the source of the chills early in the film. As the film transitions from "haunted house" to "supernatural mystery" and we learn more about who the people who lived in that home, the film loses its footing a little bit, but still remains creepy.

 If I had to point to a weakness in the film, it would be fair to note that the resolution to the "ghost" story is a bit of a cheat: you can think of it as a variation on what happens in The Ring in the third act, but The Woman in Black doesn't quite resolve itself as well. It's a thematically appropriate ending, I'll give it that, but considering the highly efficient buildup I couldn't help but feel underwhelmed at the ending. It also raised a larger question which is moderately SPOILER-ish: if the Woman in Black is able to kill the children of other villagers when anyone sees her, and Alice Drablow lived in the house where Arthur sees the ghost repeatedly until her death, how are there any children left in the village?

 This is a minor nitpick, but I can't help but feel that The Woman in Black could have reached its conclusion without the fake resolution followed by a rushed "twist," followed by an abrupt ending.

 Honestly, even with those minor points, I highly recommend The Woman in Black. It has a similar atmosphere to The Haunting or The Others and relies less on "jump" scares and more on the audience slowly noticing details in the background that Arthur does not. When things cut loose later in the film, it still manages to balance quick shocks with mounting tension, interspersed with hallucinatory dream sequences, flashbacks, and visuals. Daniel Radcliffe and Ciarán Hinds are both very good as the co-leads of the film, and Janet McTeer makes an impact in just a few scenes as the traumatized victim of the ghost. While I do wish that writer Jane Goldman and director James Watkins had spent more time with the closing of the story (which reorganizes some of the narrative of Susan Hill's novel of the same name), I still feel that many horror fans will appreciate The Woman in Black's "old school" approach to generating scares.

 Postscript: Hammer Films have announced they are planning a sequel to the film, set forty years later with different protagonists. I suppose it could work in a World War II setting (although it's going to provide even more tonal and visual similarities to The Others), I'm not really sure this is a story that needs to continue. What keeps the narrative moving in The Woman in Black is the mystery surrounding Eel Marsh House, and there's not a lot left to discover in re-visitation of the manor. I'd prefer Hammer continue making other films, but then again, how many Dracula sequels starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, or both were there?




* Okay, movie theatres. He'd been on Broadway with How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying for the better part of 2011.

Blogorium Review: Absentia

 There were a number of happy surprises for the Cap'n at Nevermore this year, but I'm giving the top spot to Absentia from writer / director Mike Flanagan. Why? Because had I not given this film a chance because of the horror film festival last weekend, I wouldn't have ever considered watching Absentia.

 It's not because the film doesn't sound interesting: Tricia (Courtney Bell) welcomes her sister Callie (Katie Parker) into her Los Angeles apartment at a critical juncture in both their lives. Callie has been struggling with addiction for years and is finally clean, and has come to support her sister as she finalizes papers to declare her husband Daniel (Morgan Peter Brown) dead in absentia. Daniel has been missing for seven years without any trace of where he might be or what happened to him. Tricia is pregnant, possibly due to a subdued relationship with Detective Mallory (Dave Levine), who kept an eye on her during Daniel's unexplained absence. Finally ready to move on, Tricia and Callie discover something more sinister behind Daniel's absence, something ancient and unstoppable. But can the sisters save each other, themselves, or anyone else?

 Absentia begins as a domestic drama with a hint of "ghost story." Tricia, troubled by the thought of giving up on Daniel, begins to see his malevolent spirit when she sleeps and meditates, and he isn't happy about the direction she's taking without him. Had the film continued on this path, I guess it would have been okay, but thankfully the phantom Daniel is just that - a projection of Tricia's neuroses. Her meditation helps, as Callie's newfound Christianity helps her overcome demons... for a while. Nevertheless, there's more to the story than just Daniel, and as we slowly learn what happened to him (and a number of other people), what a tunnel under the highway might have to do with it, and the factors that prevent anyone from believing Callie when the truth manifests... ah, but I'm saying too much.

 One of the pleasant surprises of watching Absentia was not knowing where things were headed. I had a good idea that it had everything to do with the tunnel, and was silently making "Death Tunnel: The Tunnel That Eats" jokes while the plot slowly unfolded. Fortunately, there's more to it than just that - the plot drifts away from strictly a horror film and heads in a "fairy tale" direction midway through. It has a kicker of a final shot, very good performances, and some great atmosphere for a low budget film. And I probably never would have given it a shot.

 Why? The poster / cover / artwork does Absentia NO favors at all. I see a lot of artwork for horror movies I've never heard of before, and the one above really turned me off. For starters, it really does make the film look like ghosts dragging someone (I guess that could be Callie, but honestly I wouldn't have guessed that without putting photos Katie Parker side by side with the poster) into the Death Tunnel. It's the kind of poster that sells a different kind of movie than the one I saw, and it frankly didn't make me want to watch Absentia.

 Sure, it's (no pun intended) gripping, but it looks like the poster for Filth to Ashes Flesh to Dust, so much so that I forgot they were for two different movies until I started looking into Absentia. I have no idea what Filth is about, but the same "being dragged / trying to escape from something horrible" artwork did nothing for me. Absentia's looked like a "haunted torture porn" film, and I was happy not to think about it again. In fact, when I went looking for Absentia's poster, I found two more that are more reflective of the film's tone (foreboding with a touch of horror "action"). They aren't as exciting, per se, but they made me rethink initial conceptions I had when I saw the "catchy" poster for the first time.

Well, my rant about misleading artwork took up more of the review than I'd planned. Absentia is a rather effective, if leisurely paced, horror film with a heavy dose of "fairy tale" in its menace. There's plenty of opportunities for Absentia to go one way and instead it goes in another direction, ending with an appropriate and satisfying (if inevitable) conclusion. Bell, Parker, and Levine are all very good and the film never feels hindered by its budget (around $70,000, funded in part by Kickstarter). In fact, its strengths come from what you don't see but simply hear. When it comes out, I hope the poster above isn't the cover you see on DVD shelves, but if it is, overlook what feels like a generic horror flick and settle down for a pleasant surprise.

Horror Fest 6 Day Two: Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2011)

 What you're probably going to notice here is a similarity to the review of The Dead; we came into the Guillermo Del Toro produced (and co-written) remake of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark with knowledge that it had been critically praised but was generally overlooked by the movie-going public. I thought it might be a creepy way to push Horror Fest into the late hours, and for a time the film does a very good job of ratcheting up the "don't go in there" factor with its sound design and shudder-inducing monsters. But it has two fatal flaws, and at the expense of making a cheap joke, Katie Holmes isn't one of them.

 Poor Katie Holmes - we gave her hell during this movie, in part because her character Kim was such a wet blanket for so much of the movie. Guy Pearce's Alex was arguably the worst father ever; a guy who clearly wasn't interested in his daughter Sally (Bailee Madison), who had been passed off by her mother on the west coast. Sally was sent to live with her architect father and his interior designer girlfriend while they renovated the Blackwood Estate, which we already know is bad news bears.

 In the prologue, we see Blackwood (Garry McDonald) trick his housekeeper (Edwina Ritchard) into coming down to the spooky basement. He insists that creatures have taken his son and they want teeth or Blackwood will never see him again. He removes his own teeth, then his housekeeper's, and offers them on a plate to the creatures in a hole beneath the ash pit. They take him instead.

 While not directed by Del Toro, many of his favorite narrative flourishes are on display in Don't Be Afraid of the Dark - the child left alone to wander, the hidden surprise they discover, a world hidden within our own, one of fairies and creatures both fascinating and terrifying. The tree imagery can, at times, be overwhelming for the film - the front door and basement entrance are both elaborate carvings of trees, one with a bird that eagle-eyed viewers will be able to reference as the reason for the very last scene.

 The early moments in the film where the creatures are calling to Sally to let them free are, in fact, quite eerie, and as they slowly begin to creep around in the house there are certainly hair-raising moments for audiences. Director Troy Nixey milks the suspense for all it is worth, giving the audience monster's-eye-view shots of where they are in relation to the protagonists, and what they plan to do that Alex, Sally, and Kim are blissfully unaware of. We're already ahead of Alex and Kim, who refuse to believe Sally that monsters are giving her nightmares, and based on a few conveniently placed items, it's understandable why they would. Still, it takes Kim most of the movie to start believing Sally and Alex has an eleventh-hour change of heart that I'm not sure I really buy.

 It's later in the film, though, when they become a visible menace and start attacking in swarms that Don't Be Afraid of the Dark loses its potency. I can buy Kim and Alex not really paying attention to a certain point, and am even fine with the first time you really see the creatures attack Harris (Jack Thompson), the grandson of the worker who closed the basement. They surround him and give him a carpenter's equivalent of the "death of a thousand cuts," and it's still creepy. Unfortunately, it's only the beginning for how much more we're going to see of the little buggers, who are somewhere between rats and tiny primates with spindly arms.

 The more you see of them, the less disturbing they are, and the more difficult it is to believe that only Sally seems to notice them everywhere. It comes to a head during Alex's big dinner presentation to Chalres Jacoby (Alan Dale) of a major architectural magazine. He's hoping to impress Jacoby enough to land the cover, but Sally keeps snapping photos with her Polaroid camera and makes a fool of herself at the dinner table. At this point, the stakes are supposed to be pretty high, but it plays out like a straight-faced version of the "dinner" scene from Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell. That it's followed by a visual effects heavy assault on Sally in the library only increases how much it stands out in the film.

 I don't necessarily mind the ending (and by this, I mean the very ending, after we understand who the creatures really want), although the film gives such scant indicators as to why it happens that I'm sure most audiences had no idea what was going on. Without saying too much more, it develops Katie Holmes' Kim a little further but relies heavily that you remember one particular detail from the beginning of the film. Like The Orphanage (another Del Toro production), it takes the horror and places it within the realm of fairy tales, but only in a way that makes sense if you pay attention to a minute detail of an underdeveloped character.

 Don't Be Afraid of the Dark isn't a failure per se but I wish the monsters had a much smaller visual presence in the film. Without a doubt that would result in a more effectively creepy film, one that already knows how to work the spine-tingling moments early on. It's worth checking out, but I can't help but feel like it could have been more.