"Accomplishments"At home: 2026's OTHER "Ready or Not" was They Will Kill You, and for my money, it's the better flick. Zazie Beetz is great as Asia Reeves, who infiltrates a Satanic hotel filled with cultists to rescue her sister, resulting in a bloodbath of demented proportions. She's not called Asia for nothing, and the Japanese and Hong Kong inspirations for the stylish action are evident (and appreciated). There's perhaps too much CG assist on the gore, but some of that would be difficult to do without it. On the surface, it's "What if John Wick fought the supernatural?", but that's enough to give it its own identity. My only real complaint is that there's an awful lot of exposition up front, exposition that SOUNDS like exposition, even if the script alleviates some of it by showing rather than saying. But otherwise, it's just a lot of fun. The action is crazy, the plot is insane, Beetz is badasss as hell, and it's as funny as it is exciting.
Giving rise to an entire genre of horror film titles (as the town name is real and uncopyrightable), The Amityville Horror uses a real life multiple murder and the subsequent flight of another family from the house, who (according to only SOME sources) complained of supernatural phenomena, as the basis of a horror film that's a cross between The Exorcist and The (not-yet-releaed) Shining. I liked the result! James Brolin is going crazy and walking around with a giant axe; Margot Kidder is his sultry but religious new wife who comes with her own children (including one that will grow up to star in Voyagers!, and another who plays with a ghost). Clergy come to the house often and have a severe allergic reaction to it - I found myself unusually invested in Rod Steiger's Catholic priest and his story thread - but the evil radiation affects almost everyone. It's atmosphere above all - the weakness of the "true story" format calls for vignette storytelling and a rather abrupt ending - but that's not an impediment to my enjoyment.
One gets the sense that The House That Screamed walked so Suspiria could run. A Spanish film, set in France, dubbed in English, and with an international cast - a truly European film, "La residencia" proposes an isolate girls' boarding school where headmistress (Lilli Palmer and her wonderful eyes) acts as the girls' jailer, the eldest student acts as their torturer, and one wonders who their killer is. For when a girl "escapes", never to be seen again, it's not exactly freedom she's found. The mystery's solution isn't too hard to guess, but the ending still holds a surprise. In any case, this is more about atmosphere than plot, with an air of menace floating about the place, hand in hand with undercurrents (and OVERcurrents) of sexual awakening, some lesbian in nature, some not. The way it presents sex and violence without really showing it is quite interesting - I loved the roll in the hay, for example - and thus worth the watch.
At least some of its posters make Door out to be supernatural in its horror - and one of the sequels apparently goes that way - but it's rather more of a human-based thriller that delves into psychological horror. Keiko Takahashi is a housewife and mother beset by door knockers and spam calls at the family's new apartment. Tension mounts, exacerbating the natural anxiety with stranger ringing your doorbell. One door-to-door salesman is a particular problem, going from not accepting no for an answer, to stalker, to total psycho who puts our heroine under sexual threat. Can she mamma-bear herself out of this? Director Banmei Takahashi (husband to the leading lady, hm, ick?) builds tension well, and that sequence that flies around the apartment in the climax is very cool, but his choice of score is noticeably weak. I'm intrigued by his choice (unless it's some sort of strange physical defect, but same difference) of having characters who aren't in the family speak like they were recorded over the phone or intercom, even if she's face to face with them. Feels thematic, though it is necessarily off-putting.
While the strict plot of Mike de Leon's Kisapmata (In the Wink of an Eye) belongs to melodrama - a young woman finds herself unable to escape her controlling and abusive father even through marriage and pregnancy - there's such a sense of understated menace coming off this Filipino classic that it almost belongs to the horror genre. Certainly, the musical stings and the religious imagery belong to the genre's vocabulary. Just what has happened in this house? Why is everyone so afraid of its patriarch? And can the girl escape from her parents' manipulations? Even if you only consider it a thriller, it's disturbing enough to raise hackles. A lot of things go unsaid, but the audience knows what's up, perhaps hopes it's wrong (confirmations do come, fleetingly). We're headed for disaster and pray for a reprieve. Do we get one? All I'll say is that Kisapmata avoids melodrama by eschewing sentimentalism. It's all played as real, give or take directorial atmosphere.
Having current-day elements in black and white, and the past in color is a subversion of what we normally expect, but the legend at the center of Black Cat Mansion speaks to a more vibrant, emotional time that deserves the treatment. In the now of the 1950s, a man brings his ailing wife to an old family home in the country to recuperate, but the place is haunted. Thanks to an old priest, we're told how the ghosts - and a nasty family curse - came to be. I am frankly more interested in the Go-st (the trickle of stones is a great image) than the cat demon (whose make-up effects are a little silly), but it seems ghosts beget ghosts in this one. The film shines more brightly (or glowers more darkly) in terms of camera movement and lighting effects, leaving a lot to the imagination by panning away from the horror, or showing violence through projected shadows. Ultimately, where it fails is in its tacked on ending (or indeed, its unnecessary bookends), which seems dictated by the suits and not the artists. Had it ended less than a minute earlier, it would have left us on a sustained chill. There was an opportunity for a final twist, but they don't take it, so the epilogue really is surplus to requirements.
The more you analyze the Irish horror short Childer (available on YouTube), the more interesting it gets. It's obviously quite arty from the jump, with pretty time stamp cards (as we approach Halloween) that are laced with secret meaning, and veiled allusions to what might really be going on in both images and dialogue. One need only ponder the floating apples at the end of the film to realize a lot of thought has been put into every moment of the film. And it justifies the odd performance by Dorothy Duffy as an over-protecting mother who doesn't want her son to play with the "childer" (children-like woodland spirits) that surround the house. I don't know that these are scary, not even in a "creepy kids" kind of way, but Duffy's anxious mom is. There's perhaps an intimation there of growing up in a household with a parent of ill mental health, a kind of prolonged postpartum psychosis. On first watch, the oddness feels like we're looking at a spoof, a sketch, something rather silly, and it might leave us cold. By the end, I was revising that opinion.
Gaming: Am I done with Mafia II? Well, might as well be, so let's talk about it. I've played the game and its expansion packs, and collected all collectibles, even went out and got a good chunk of the achievements, leaving things that require point grinding which I might tool around with before switching games. Though like my copy of Mafia, it's been remastered, it wasn't redone like the original was. The textures are more modern, but the figures are still noticeably polygonal (and that's fine). Though set in the same "universe", it's a different city (more like New York than Chicago) and between 1945 and 1951 (a time jump is motivated by your character going to prison for a while). You play Vito, a WWII veteran returning home and strapped for opportunities. He's kind of a cipher, honestly, with his cousin Joe a bigger, broader and more entertaining character. Though the ending was a little elliptical for me, I liked the story well enough - plenty of variety in mission types and locations, and I love that the initial 40s setting is snowed in, we don't see that enough - the prison stuff is kind of abrupt, and the fistfight mechanic it necessarily hinges on isn't particularly interesting, but otherwise, I had fun. The collectibles are a bit of a problem because Mafia II isn't a true sandbox game and there's no free roam option. There's one chapter where you have resources AND more time to snatch the wanted posters for example, but the Playboys are often mission-specific (chapter replay resets your mission progress so be careful). As for the DLCs, they introduce arcade scoring (you see the points lift off kills and car stunts) and are fairly repetitive. The best of these is Joe's Adventures, which gives you control over Joe during Vito's prison sentence. It has some more involved missions with cut scenes and opens up several new environments (and new collectibles). Too much driving to and fro, however. I don't think it entirely fulfills the promise of Joe's character. The Betrayal of Jimmy and Jimmy's Vendetta, however, introduce a new character who looks like the guy from Hitman and seems like an implant from another setting. Very few cut scenes, repetitive missions, and absolutely insane police aggro even on Easy makes these an often frustrating grind. Strictly for the arcade experience, not very much in the way of story. Achievements on these are all about more grinding and that's probably what I'll leave undone. Heading south for Mafia III soon...
Improv:
Well, I spent the week in Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon - a French-controlled archipelago off the coast of Newfoundland - to conduct improvisation workshops wtih the local troupe (several of which I had met during Lockdown when we started an online improv league), and to make it worth my while, with school kids as well, during the day. But for the adults, a gruelling nightly experience leading to their goal/graduation from the course - a fully improvised play presented before a local audience. From their choices, we built a show based on the Hero's Journey (Campbell's more than Vogel's), a generic structure on which we ended up hanging a seasonal tale for upcoming Halloween, of a new hospital director who discovers a Wicker Man-type cult doing weird operations on people and stealing their souls with the Necronomicon to call their Master. I spent the night at my computer doing music and sound effects, but I suppose the creepy demonic doll DID have my surname, so I was "in it". Very proud of my Saint-Pierrians, and their final exercise drew a good crowd of all ages (the 9-11 year-olds I gave classes to all week dragged their parents in, and they tittered throughout, great reactions). Home tomorrow!
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