BLOGTOBER 10/9/2022: THE HIDDEN (1987)

I'm gonna say something contentious about this great movie, to my own detriment, but I think it's the truth: Boys love THE HIDDEN. I mean, I also love THE HIDDEN. Everybody who loves a good movie loves THE HIDDEN! It's a huge party with great performances, cool images, and non-stop action. Bitchin' car chases, sick guitar riffs, sci-fi weapons, fucked up parasites, and gun-toting strippers are not inherently gendered fare; they are for everyone. But I think that the way I watch THE HIDDEN is fundamentally different from the way that, say, my husband watches it. He grew up in the New Jersey suburbs in the '80s and '90s, raised with a sense that his natural, god-given culture was cool cars, hot chicks, shootouts, explosions, secret agents, alien invaders, and all this macho material that blasts out of the screen when you watch THE HIDDEN. When my husband and I watch this movie, we may experience a similar level of pleasure, but not for the same reasons. He sees a great movie, but he also sees the greatest expression of what he was raised to believe is an inherent part of his being. He gets a sense of ownership, a feeling of having his own true nature acknowledged, that I can't really touch as a cis het girl who was raised as such—and I've noticed this every time I watch THE HIDDEN with the dudes in my life. They get a sense of social patriotism from it, a feeling of unity, and an affirmation of the most basic tenants of their cultural identity. And I think that's totally great.

So anyway, THE HIDDEN is the best movie by director Jack Sholder, unless you understand that WISHMASTER 2 is the greatest movie ever made, or unless you are doing contrarian hot takes on the quality of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2 just to point out that it's not as bad as its homophobic haters insist that it is. Without knowing for sure, I'd bet it's also the best movie from Bob Hunt, who also wrote THE BOOGENS. THE HIDDEN is a buddy cop movie in which hardboiled cop Michael Nouri and obvious space alien Kyle MacLachlachlan and hunt an intergalactic parasite with a taste for fast cars, rock'n'roll, and ultraviolence. It resembles ELM STREET 2 in its focus on male bonding and male fears around bodily vulnerability. It resembles WISHMASTER 2 in being an uninhibited, imaginative, balls to the wall good time. THE HIDDEN is fun, funny, and oddly moving, and it's basically only going to put you off if you hate joy.

It's easy to be distracted by the high octane spectacle of this movie, but it is also beautifully cast and performed. Kyle MacLachlan is typically wonderful and he has great chemistry with Michael Nouri, but the parasite also gives us a string of great performances from its hosts. My personal favorite is William Boyett, a lantern-jawed square who usually showed up in movies and shows about cops, cowboys, spies, and other GI Joe types, and his straight-laced appearance is a perfect foil for the extreme antisociality of the parasite, who totes around a boombox blasting shedding rock music on its relentless crime spree. Other standouts include Twin Peaks alum Chris Mulkey, Claudia Christian from MANIAC COP 2, and last but not least, Jake the dog from NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4.

I don't really have anything deep to say about THE HIDDEN besides the sociological observation that I led with. But, even though I maintain that it offers a delightful and, all things considered, not particularly toxic reflection of American masculinity, I should underline that THE HIDDEN is definitely for everyone. Watch it today to turn off your brain and boost your mood.

PS Here is my husband's hilarious photo of us watching THE HIDDEN on my laptop during our recent road trip. It really says how we feel about William Boyett.

Dreamlight and music and love and romance 💕

Autumn means snuggling and snuggling means gaming under the covers and avoiding real life as much as I can. I treated myself this weekend to the new Disney game Dreamlight Valley and colour me obsessed. It’s my favourite kind of game – a life simulator – and I am very into it. I’ve been playing Animal Crossing for ages and I still love it but I needed something new to get my chops around. I…

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Blogmas 2022: Day 19

Blogmas 2022: Day 19

Family Christmas Gifts! This year I decided to something slightly different this year. So, I grabbed some Santa Sacks put and put everyones names on it. Depending on the person there are somme slight modifications but for the most part they are all filled with things that the all enjoy. Adult Santa Sacks: Alcohol Tequila Red or White Wine Shot glass Charcuterie…

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October 2022 TBR Hopefuls

I have so many spooky books I want to read in the month of October, so let's go over a couple October TBR hopefuls!

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#Writober Day 29: #SoCS Surprise Halloween Element

#Writober Day 29: #SoCS Surprise Halloween Element #photography #poetry #OctPoWriMo #Halloween

Happy Jack by Maria L. Berg 2022 I’m so excited to share that I am now a published photographer!! One of my photographs is in the latest issue of Wrongdoing Magazine. You can view it online (pages 98-99). Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS) Today’s prompt for some stream of consciousness writing is “element.” Here’s an excerpt from this morning’s journal pages: These days everything is an…

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JIT Doesn't Work in Daily Life

Blogtober 2022, Day 18

I've come to realize I've been operating on what in logistics is called JIT (just in time) almost my entire life and it doesn't work.

JIT isn't efficient in my personal life it just leaves more room for procrastinating. Always operating at the last minute while giving me a sense of a deadline in practice just means a lot gets done halfway or too late.

It adds stress and deadlines get moved. Who's going to come after me if I don't do the dishes this evening or tidy the living room tomorrow? Nobody, not until one wave of panic because the unexpected guest is coming, it adds clutter though. Clutter is the enemy they seep in slowly and before you know it, it has entered your mind as well -  now you struggle to get things done, it's much easier to give yourself permission to postpone, where's the sense of urgency now?

This realization came as I've been skipping writing for a few days, remember I wanted to post an article every day for blogtober?

I love writing, but I permitted myself to not have anything to write about, then I told myself I had other things to do first, like housework. Did I do it? Nah I decided I needed to do my live streams first.

What did I end up doing? Ended up watching a show on a streaming service (I told myself I needed to do that for my Wednesday show on Twitter, also there was plenty of time still)

Then there wasn't plenty of time left and I told myself well you already messed up skipping today is fine)

Maybe it's not the JIT that's the problem maybe it's the logistics that need work, maybe I need to prioritize what gets shipped first, maybe there's a need to create a sense of accountability rather than just a sense of urgency.

I shouldn't pat my own back, but I will at least make this deadline today.

Blogtober Day 9 - Fashion Trends for Fall and Winter 2022/2023 Part 2 Tops, Dresses, and Pants

Blogtober Day 9 – Fashion Trends for Fall and Winter 2022/2023 Part 2 Tops, Dresses, and Pants

So, I’ve already discussed about the colors and textures and patterns that are trending this year. So, let’s get right into the specific styles that are in. For the record, I have affiliate links all through this post. When you buy from those links, I make a commission. But it doesn’t cost you anything. So, thank you. Fashion Trend #1: Button-Up Shirts A simple button-down is always in trend –…

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~Blogtober 2022 Schedule!

Hello everyone and thank you so much for coming back to read the schedule for blogtober 2022. Before I share it with you though, I want to preface this and say that this year will be a little different as I am only doing three weeks and one day, cutting out most of week four and week five (which is only three days worth of content anyway). I know that might be a little bit of a disappointment…

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Ignore me. Gotta brain dump stuff I'm still processing.

Big freaking yikes. I've been looking through journals, planners, reading tracking, etc. of mine over the last 6 years or so (roughly since I started book blogging more seriously, and not just here where it's been mostly reblogs and the rare original post) because I had a theory, and I'm a little freaked out that I was right.

Like, I knew pouring so much time and energy into that was not great for my mental health, but I hadn't realized how much it impacted every aspect of my life. I almost entirely gave up every other hobby and interest to keep up with that blog and reading mostly what was, idk, expected? "Normal" to read? Palatable to the masses?

I gave up insta just about a year ago (I think it was January) and felt immediate relief. Then I backed off book blogging and started feeling more alive. Then I decided to stop altogether (minus Blogtober, because I do actually enjoy that a lot), and had a sort of crisis for a few months, during which my mental health went to absolute shit because I had tied so much of my feelings of self worth to my productivity, and that blog was the only easily measurable way of judging how productive I was.

But now that I have records that support the theory that book blogging took over my life (in a bad way), I'm just pissed. Which is a good thing, because it's helping me reject the ideas that I have to be productive in certain ways for my existence to have meaning, and all that.

It was honestly shocking to see the sudden drop off. Like, within weeks of starting to blog more seriously, everything else just kind of stopped and my entire life basically revolved around blogging for over 5 years.

Anyway...

In 2022, I'm making a conscious effort to read whatever the hell I want and only read when I want to, and I probably won't talk about much of it unless I have to rant or screech about something. No reviews (except maybe a few lines on, like, goodreads or in my reading planner or whatever). No getting swept up in challenges. No prioritizing reading over every other thing I enjoy. No panicking about how "little" I've read. Probably no TBRs (might do short lists in my planner of books I think I'm in the mood for). No guilt for rereading stuff I love. No thoughts like, "ugh I should be reading instead of doing this other thing that's making me happy and reducing my stress."

My "word of the year" for 2022 is "focus," and one goal (of sorts) for that is to focus on things that bring me joy and make life a little less stressful and anxiety filled. I do have goals to read certain kinds of things, but they're the things I've put off reading for years now because they conflicted with my blogging schedule and stuff.

If anyone read or even skimmed this, I'm sorry :/

Happy October! I'm Doing Blogtober! :

Happy October! I’m Doing Blogtober! :

Hey, that rhymes!! Hello ladies and gentlemen. It’s October already! Where did 2021 go?? I mean we are just a few weeks away from 2022. October is the month to wake up cause December is just a few doors away. This is the time to pick up your vision board and rehang it on the wall. It’s the time to remind yourself of your goals. I know time seems to be running out but please don’t panic. You…

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BLOGTOBER 10/30/2022: CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (2022)

I love this movie.

I hate making top 5-type lists, or being forced to name a favorite thing within your favorite field. If you really care about something, wouldn't your feelings about it be deep and wide, and not attached to a single monolithic example of it? So when pressed, I usually answer on instinct, and just say that David Cronenberg is my favorite director. It's more or less the truth. His imperious intelligence, polymorphic perversity, and his embrace of all god's creatures—even the pathological and parasitic—as the heroes of their own narratives, all add up to a form of satisfaction that I just can't get anywhere else. He's simply the best, and too smart, too hip, and too original to be imitated despite his indelible influence on the horror world at large.

Portrait by Jean Ber. Hubba.

But, if I'm being completely honest, when I think about him, I tend to think of the Cronenberg from the before-time. The horror films that he made between SHIVERS and CRASH are what characterize him for me as an artist. These are stories about evolution, whether humans are obliterated or uplifted by it, and the way some of us crave to accelerate evolution through personal and political means when it doesn't come fast enough to keep up with our evolving ambitions. Max Renn's indoctrination into the revolutionary cult of VIDEODROME, Seth Brundle's overhaul of his own genetics in THE FLY, and the underground war waged by post-humans in SCANNERS are probably the boldest and best-remembered representations of the artist's ethos. However, viewers like me may remember 2002's eXistenZ, a spy thriller about viscera-based video games, as the last truly Cronenbergian film—not that he stopped making good, even great movies, but thereafter he leaned into literary adaptations and psychodramas that explore social dysfunctions and deformations of the mind more than they do the possibilities of the flesh. I enjoyed those movies, but I also missed the classic Cronenberg, the experimental one who used the body as an allegorical battlefield for the struggle between old and new ideologies. I figured I wouldn't get him back, either, thinking of William Gibson's retort to readers who wish he still wrote the way he used to when he said (approximately) that Neuromancer is a young man's novel, and if he were still doing exactly what he did decades ago, then something would be seriously wrong.

Ronald Mlodzik as subversive dermatologist Adrian Tripod in CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (1970), about to be set upon by a hot piece of rough trade with webbed toes.

Anyway. I'm thrilled to be able to report that the old Cronenberg is alive and well in this sensational update of his 1970 short film CRIMES OF THE FUTURE. Many have been careful to note that the 2022 release is not a remake of that early project, but I would refute the assertion that the two movies have nothing in common beyond their sharing one of the greatest movie titles ever written. In CRIMES '70, a rogue dermatologist seeks a way to preserve humanity in the face of a gynocidal plague caused by toxic cosmetics. In that world, traditional heteronormative, masculine pageantry has all but evaporated, leaving the surviving males with increasingly androgynous forms of self-expression, contributing to the creation of rival factions with their own sociopolitical agendas. In order to protect the human race from extinction, the protagonist is faced with the decision to do something appalling to a small child. In CRIMES '22, the human race as we know it is threatened by Accelerated Evolution Syndrome, in which certain bodies rapidly produce new organs and new abilities that are incompatible with the old way of life. The government is taking oppressive steps to preserve the standard qualifications for human taxonomy, but the mercurial state of biological affairs is changing everything, including the expression of sexuality and desire. Ultimately, the ability of the new people to retain their human status will hinge on the protagonists' willingness to do something radical with the body of a child. With all that said, it is clear that the early short film planted the seeds of this late vintage masterpiece that is among the finest and most distinctive works of David Cronenberg's entire career.

CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (2022) focuses on Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen, who is the new Rutger Hauer) and Caprice (Léa Seydoux), a pair of performance artists making the most out of Saul's acute case of Accelerated Evolution Syndrome. Saul's condition makes him dependent on a variety of high tech, Gigeresque orthotic devices, including a bed that shifts his body to ameliorate its painful inner workings, a chair that rearranges him in effort to support his waning ability to eat, and a special sarcophagus originally designed for autopsies that is now the chief tool of Saul and Caprice's artmaking. For their fevered fans, Caprice vivisects her partner, who experiences a post-sadomasochistic ecstasy at being penetrated and fondled from within. For many ordinary people, pain and infection are things of the past, so self-mutilation and body modification are now popular pastimes—or, as twitchy government spook Timlin (Kristen Stewart) puts it, "Surgery is the new sex." Embedded in this ever-expanding subculture are dissidents who seek to defend their status as human beings from the state's attempt to track and constrain the anatomical changes cropping up everywhere, which places Saul and Caprice in a moral quandary when they meet Lang Dotrice (Scott Speedman). The rebel leader requests that the couple make a political statement by publicly performing the autopsy of his mutant son, who was slain by the child's phobic mother. This lands the artists in a world of espionage and identity politics with no lesser stakes than the fate of the human race, and the rules for who is allowed to partake in it.

CRIMES OF THE FUTURE really has it all. It's beautifully designed, atmospheric, blackly funny, sexually subversive, profoundly disturbing, and most of all, timely. It takes place at the end of the world as we know it—a place many of us feel we already inhabit—but it holds out hope for a future in which being who you truly are, both privately and on the record, is a radical action in and of itself. Mutation and adaptation are the way forward, not conformity and foolish sentimentality, and these things are as good for the world as they are for the individual. But of course, Cronenberg doesn't apply this balm in the pat, corny way that I just did; the path to his ambiguous yet oddly optimistic ending is fraught and full of ambivalence as it orbits around one of the most shocking images that anyone has ever filmed. Somehow, in his late 70s and in our decadent age when explicit sex and violence dominate popular prestige television, David Cronenberg is still pushing buttons and violating our remaining boundaries with the skill and deliberation of a surgeon, and like a surgeon, he can change you if you let him. Surgery is the new sex. Long live the new flesh.

BLOGTOBER 10/1/2022: YOU WON'T BE ALONE

Not all folk horror movies are horror movies.

I don't usually like to wade into the mire of arguing about what is and is not included in the horror genre, because there is rarely a sound motivation for the argument; the not-horror accusation is usually levied by either gorehounds who expect a narrowly predictable set of thrills, or snobs sneakily trying to acquit themselves of having liked a horror movie by proving that said movie "isn't really horror". As per a recent Miskatonic Institute lecture by Tony Burgess on holocaust narratives within the horror genre: "If you have to say it's not a horror movie, it's because you know it is." But all that said, things are a little more slippery with folk horror. I'm thinking of the Australian coming of age story CELIA, which I couldn't recommend as a horror movie, but whose particular use of magic realism earns its place in the indispensable All Haunts Be Ours collection. Similarly, the grim Italian drama IL DEMONIO is more a study of time and place than anything legitimately demonic, but its setting and focus on occult traditions make it fine folk horror fodder. Last year's heartbreaking Icelandic fantasy LAMB also isn't likely to satisfy someone asking for horror recommendations, but if you've seen it, you know why I'm bringing it up in this conversation. With his feature film debut (!) YOU WON'T BE ALONE, writer-director Goran Stolevski provides us with another exercise in dividing horror from folk horror, although there is a little more of something for everyone in this outing.

The denizens of a 19th century Macedonian village are haunted by rumors of Old Maid Maria, a shape-shifting, blood-drinking "Wolf-Eateress" with a hankering for babies. This rumor becomes a sad reality for Nevena (Sarah Klimoska), whose mother is forced to donate her to the the terrifying old hag (Annamaria Marinca as sort of a fabulous cross between Grýla and Freddy Krueger). Feral and mute, Nevena roams the woods with her adoptive mother, but never quite gets the hang of their spartan and solitary existence, and Maria eventually spurns the young woman when she won't stop making pets out of their food. Luckily, Nevena learned Maria's shapeshifting talent—a spectacular trick that involves tearing a hole in one's chest with one's long black witch talons, and inserting the entrails of whatever one wishes to become, in what I'm going to call an exciting new form of cannibalism. This way, Nevena adopts the form of a series of villagers, and learns about life from a variety of perspectives.

Þrándur Þórarinsson's Grýla, just for fun.

It may not surprise you to hear that YOU WON'T BE ALONE is all about responses to loneliness. The title refers to Nevena's mother bargaining for her child's youth: She promises to give Nevena away as a companion if the witch doesn't eat the baby, but returns on her sixteenth birthday. The reprieve is not so pleasant for Nevena, who is stowed away in a barren cave for the next 15 years by her terrified mother, who so fears her inevitable loss that she doesn't even enjoy the time she has bought. The peaceful and lonely Nevena makes lousy company for the Maria, but the witch haunts the girl as she shapeshifts her way through the village, insisting that she will never find happiness in human society. Admittedly, the humans aren't often impressive: Nevena learns the hard way that life as a poor farmer's wife (Noomi Rapace) is often brutal, and as a handsome young stud (Carloto Cotta of the extremely fun DIAMANTINO) life is more fun (and sex more consensual), but he doesn't enjoy greater fellowship from the other men, who disdain his simplicity and pretty face. Nevena finally finds some semblance of happiness when she starts life over as a young girl, discovering that idyllic childhood is a real possibility, as is a happy marriage later on (to Félix Maritaud, late of KNIFE+HEART). Of course, Maria is never far behind, and in the meantime, Nevena learns her origin story, which is predictably appalling. The young woman may have found her own way to hold on to hope in the face of deprivation, but to be totally fair, she didn't get the same rough start as Maria.

So, back to my argument about folk horror: YOU WON'T BE ALONE is probably going to be too horrific for those who Don't Like Horror Movies, with its grisly series of disembowelments and reembowelments, but it still eschews feelings of fear and revulsion in favor of an innocent questing for one's own humanity. In a sense, the folk horror label does the film a great service by admitting to its darkness, while allowing it to pursue purposes other than terror and doom. Nevena's shapeshifting technique may require her to become a sort of serial murderer, but the film forgives her that, focusing instead on her journey through a lovely bucolic setting where humans are often treacherous, but not beyond salvation. It's a funny moral trick to play, but it works, offering an uplifting viewing experience—as long as you can handle all the rape, cannibalism, and violence against babies, of course.

PS I love that the witches have dewclaws in this.

BLOGTOBER 10/20/2022: SMILEY FACE KILLERS

I'm doing this project on movies that claim to be "based on a true story", and SMILEY FACE KILLERS is a really interesting example for multiple reasons. The first is that, while its opening on-screen text declares that it is "inspired by true events", it is actually based very loosely on a rather fantastical theory that attempts to weave mundane, unrelated tragedies into a vast conspiracy. Many movies make the "true story" claim vaguely or spuriously: THE STRANGERS comes to mind as something that leveraged the notion of factuality in order to amplify the terror of its home invasion scenario, but its marketing materials provided no further details that could leave the claim vulnerable to closer analysis. (It seems likely that the writers were thinking of the Keddie murders, but I remember coming up empty when I tried to find out what "true story" was being referenced when the movie was being advertised) But when SMILEY FACE KILLERS talks about "true events", it's really talking about something people think, and not something that concretely happened.

The other point of interest in this "true story" here is that the smiley face murder theory offers an explanation where none is required. When we hear about something like the Dyatlov Pass incident, in which a group of people met bizarre and horrific fates through no obvious means and for no obvious reason, it's completely understandable that conspiracy theories form in order to help us grasp at the comfort of an explanation. If we think we know what happened, then maybe we don't have to worry that it will happen to us. The smiley face murder theory seems to just do the opposite, creating dread and fear where logical explanations already exist. The opening text continues:

"Since 1997, more than 150 young men across US college campuses have drowned under suspicious circumstances. Symbols spray-painted at the scenes have led some to propose these accidents are in fact serial murders. Though many dispute this as nothing more than urban myth, there are many who do not."

The film completes the masquerade of authenticity by dating its events to March 14, 2017 in Santa Clarita, and using a mosaic of yearbook-like headshots to make up its title card. The smiley face murder theory is actually the concoction of authorities who you'd like to be able to trust: retired NYPD detectives Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte, and gang expert Dr. Lee Gilbertson. Their concept takes the sadly ordinary drowning deaths of intoxicated, careless, self-destructive, or simply unlucky male college students, and uses their proximity to graffiti of smiley faces to suggest that their deaths were deliberately orchestrated, despite the extreme generality of this "pattern". Last year, WHO identified drowning as the third-leading cause of accidental death worldwide, "accounting for 7% of all injury-related deaths." and it's fair to say that the smiley face, which has been in commercial use since at least the early 1960s, is probably one of the most ubiquitous images in American vandalism, if not across the globe. There is no special need to form a relationship between these two items; you have to really insist. One might further ask why the smiley face murder theory focuses on young men specifically, but the CDC may provide an explanation there, as its website notes: "Nearly 80% of people who die from drowning are male. Many factors might contribute to higher rates of drowning among males, including increased exposure to water, risk-taking behaviors, and alcohol use." The smiley face murder theory faces a further challenge beyond the commonness of its key elements, which is the national dispersal of the deceased. In order to resolve the geographic disparity between the alleged dump sites, the smiley face murder theory proposes a nationwide network of perpetrators. To my knowledge, the theory does not include a motivation for such a thing to exist.

With the movie SMILEY FACE KILLERS, Bret Easton Ellis offers a motivation that, considering the state of this conspiracy theory, is as reasonable as anything else one might think of. It describes the final days of (fictional) college student Jake Graham (Ronen Rubenstein), whose personal life is imploding as his tragic fate closes in on him. The film is directed by Tim Hunter who, perhaps ironically, is most famous for the cult drama RIVER'S EDGE, whose title refers to the watery scene of a murder that transpires within a circle of teenage friends. Where that film describes the need for young people to responsibly accept their harsh reality, the reality of SMILEY FACE KILLERS is elusive, haunted, and unpredictable. When its hero experiences a lapse of responsibility, he is done in not by the direct consequences of his actions, but by a more fantastical form of doom whose true nature is unknowable.

Jake is a haunted young man, alone among friends, and missing a full understanding of his own behavior and circumstances. We, the audience, understand immediately that foul play will become a part of his story, but Jake is already on the verge of a personal apocalypse. Like Mary Henry in CARNIVAL OF SOULS, he fails to connect to the world of the living, and seems to sense that the walls are closing in on him. To some degree, his friends are aware of the spiral he's in, including his girlfriend Keren (Mia Serafino), who discovers that he has stopped taking his mood stabilizers. He acts depressed and paranoid, experiences memory loss, loses track of time, and fails to perform in bed. Meanwhile, he begins to receive threatening text messages from an unknown sender, including graphic images of slaughtered animals and the cryptic phrase "THE WATER WANTS YOU". This feeds right into Jake's existing unease, encouraging him to accuse Keren's lingering ex-boyfriend Rob (Cody Simpson) of messing with his head. As Jake continues to spiral, a worse fate than youthful alienation draws near in the form of a sadistic murder cult that is already responsible for a string of local disappearances.

The other disappearances are never acknowledged by the cast of SMILEY FACE KILLERS, which is consistent with the social disconnect found in Bret Easton Ellis' stories. To my mind, this movie is the single best representation of what Ellis offers as a writer, succeeding with the one element that is missing from most adaptations of his work: a sense of irresolvable mystery, an entrapment in one's flawed subjectivity, and an inability to know the details of your own life. Contrarily, Mary Harron's endlessly lauded AMERICAN PSYCHO is flatly literal; Patrick Bateman's murder spree escapes notice because of the blind narcissism rampant in his time and place. In Ellis' novels, AMERICAN PSYCHO included, things are rarely so simple or consistent, as characters are prone to delusions and hallucinations that are not comfortably identifiable as such, creating an unshakable feeling of isolation and mistrust. The ambitious (and unpleasant, but underrated) RULES OF ATTRACTION makes the mistake of literalizing characters and plot elements that the book leaves as uncomfortable question marks—things that are possibly imagined or dreamed by the main characters, that add up to the sensation that reality is never quite graspable, that one can be pushed to the margins of one's own life, haunting it like a ghost instead of fully living it. These adaptations, along with LESS THAN ZERO, tend to be satisfied with the pat conclusion that their characters are self-centered and shallow, and there is little more to do with them than demonstrate their character flaws repetitively. SMILEY FACE KILLERS succeeds at evoking Ellis' sense of cognitive dissonance and the loneliness that ensues when a person can't fully participate in consensus reality.

The people in Jake's life all seem to be hiding something, and even his best efforts to face situations head on only result in greater ambiguity. He finds evidence that Rob is still pursuing Keren, but no evidence that Keren is responsive; however, when Jake confronts her about Rob's persistence, she refuses to address Jake's material causes for concern, instead reminding him of a frightening blackout during which he wrote her a four-page email that he can't remember. Worse still, when Jake shows Keren the disturbing text messages that he believes Rob has sent him, she accuses him of sending them to himself, urging him to go back on his meds. His only other source of comfort is his best friend Adam (Garrett Coffey), who also has a frustrating reaction to the harassment Jake experiences; he suggests that Jake has a secret admirer, and jokes uneasily that maybe it's Adam himself. "Maybe it's me… Do you ever think about my feelings? How I feel about you?" he teases, awkwardly groping Jake who wants no part of it. It seems highly likely that Adam is in love with Jake, but this is never acknowledged, leaving Jake with the nagging feeling that, like Keren and Rob, Adam has undesirable intentions toward him. We also understand that Jake's mother has been calling Keren behind his back to try to get information on what is happening to him. Despite his mother's concern, her sneaky behavior contributes to a sense of conspiracy surrounding Jake, who suffers from the suspicions and accusations of all of the people who are supposed to care for him.

The astute reader may have guessed by now that most of the movie is made up of this interpersonal intrigue. However, it remains tense and unsettling, not only because of its atmosphere of uncertainty and discord, but because only the audience perceives the very real and mortal threat stalking the edges of Jake's life. The film begins with a shocking act of animal mutilation that is well outside the bounds of what an audience expects from an essentially mainstream movie. These explicit images of what one can assume are real animal remains let you know that you are never quite safe with this movie, even though the disfigured, hammer-wielding cult leader (RIVER'S EDGE alum Crispin Glover) doesn't really make his debut until almost an hour into the 96-minute running time. However limited it is in duration, the violence in SMILEY FACE KILLERS is profoundly shocking by any standards, leaving the viewer with a feeling of despair as much as revulsion.

Because of its somewhat fractured narrative structure—Jake's life implodes while, on a completely separate and unrelated track, a gang of vicious psychopaths have marked him for death—SMILEY FACE KILLERS tends to represent a worldview rather than a traditional story. Jake's fate is not the result of his actions, yet what happens to him makes sense in a world where parents do not relate directly with children, lovers are stubbornly ambiguous in their commitments, and friends plot to get more than what they have offered one another. A feeling of abandonment and unfairness dogs this film as it uses the smiley face murder theory not to make sense of life, but to hyperbolize its senselessness.

This twisting of the logic of conspiracy theories is especially cruel, as people seem to turn to such theorizing to create order out of chaos, which is comforting even if the order in question is a daunting one. With conspiracy theories, urban legends, and other forms of folklore that challenge our normal understanding of how life works, there must be some personal motivation to invest faith in them; some emotional or spiritual reward for the perilous rejection of conventional thinking. In the case of the smiley face theory, we see a painful need on the part of the bereaved to find meaning in the shatteringly meaningless fate that has befallen their loved ones. The aforementioned architects of this theory—Kevin Gannon, Anthony Duarte, and Dr. Lee Gilbertson—participated in a true crime series on the Oxygen Network that I'm a little ashamed to admit I watched. It's hard to tell if these men truly believe in what they are proposing, or if this has all been a greedy grab for attention and/or cash, but it is abundantly clear that the bereaved parents who appear on the show are grateful for any explanation for the deaths of their children that does not impugn their children's upbringing or good character. The drowning victims that the investigators have chosen to focus on tend to be white, athletic, popular, and academically promising; that is, people who their communities think can do no wrong. It is simply too difficult for the parents of these young men to accept that their deaths, which often involved alcohol, were their own faults, or that they were simply random. Which is worse: not being able to trust your loved ones, or not being able to trust the basic structure of reality? Sometimes it appears that any orderly explanation, however outrageous, is easier than accepting that your concept of how the world works is incomplete, or that you yourself have been irresponsible somehow. When the locus of blame for your loss runs contrary to your personal beliefs, you can simply blame another party. Blame video games. Blame horror movies. Blame heavy metal music. Blame the smiley face killers.

BLOGTOBER 10/23/2022: V/H/S/99

Sorry if this is barely a review of the actual movie, but it's what I have to say.

My father is a retired art critic whose name you'd probably know if you were into art critics. One day when I was a kid and trying to give him a hard time about his profession, I asked him some pointed question about how he approaches bad reviews. He said that he only printed things that he thought the artist might find it useful to hear, and that shut me up. I don't know if that was strictly true all the time, but it stuck in my mind, even though it may not have sunk in right away.

I used to write about movies in a pretty aggressive way. There are various reasons for that. The most innocent one is that my earliest experience was writing coverage of submissions to what was meant to be an all-horror cable network; I had to watch and write about around ten movies a week, and a lot of them were pretty brutal, made by people who either couldn't make a decent movie or, much worse, who thought you didn't even have to try as long as you were making a horror movie. I felt really attacked by the latter type, and I retaliated in stronger and stronger terms until figuring out the meanest thing I could possibly say had become sort of a hobby. I never thought very much about writing publicly, so I never considered my audience. When I started blogging later, I remained pretty obscure, so it still felt reasonable to use writing as a rage valve. Inevitably, though, I grew up a little more, and had to think about what the point of writing really was for me—and the answer was not that I just wanted to be a dick. I wanted to express abstract feelings that art gave me in a way that other people could access if they wanted to. There were things I wanted to explore, discoveries I could only make by trying to verbalize something about a movie, theories I could only prove if the words I chose seemed to work. Plus, I realized, there are people in the world besides myself. Making movies, even bad ones, is really hard, and I'm increasingly meeting people who try it. I became more circumspect about when I wrote out of anger, regardless of who I thought would ever read it.

I have noticed that it's extremely common for people to mistakenly equate intelligence with just being insulting. They think the word "criticism" is inherently negative, and they assume "critical thought" must always result in tearing something down. I once dated a guy like that, and as you might imagine, it was a nightmare. He was always bragging about his class rank and his SAT score, even though those things were far in the past and he never pursued more than a bachelor's degree. His whole manner of displaying intelligence was to as elaborately hostile as possible, about whatever he was discussing; almost the only time he ever had anything nice to say was when he'd stolen a positive opinion from a Rolling Stone article or something. When he was trying to sound smart (which was most of the time), he'd just string together as many malicious adjectives as possible in front of whatever his subject was. I know how that feels, to malign something at full strength; it feels powerful. But if you hear somebody else do it enough times, you start to realize how limited and pathetic it is.

All that said, I wasn't crazy about V/H/S/99. If I had taken the time to watch another movie yesterday, I would have included that in my Blogtober program instead. It's hard to know what to say about this movie that's at all useful. The V/H/S series is often a mixed bag, which is maybe more forgivable for an anthology than a one-story feature, and I try to watch them with an eye toward whatever part I enjoy the most. This time out, it's harder than usual for me to pick.

In Maggie Levin's aggressively '90s-flavored "Shredding", a wannabe band explores the ruins of a destroyed music venue where legendary riot grrls Bitch Cat played their final show. Naturally, Bitch Cat is still in there, but now they're a bunch of freaky ghouls. There are some superfluous details about why this is, but like, they're really superfluous, much like the imitation '90s rock music that turns up a bit too often. The ghouls look pretty good though, if you squint hard enough through all the stylized digital glitching.

Johannes Roberts' "Suicide Bid" is my favorite segment, although I still find myself picking around my least favorite parts. In this very Tales from the Crypt-y short, Ally Ioannides is so desperate to belong to her sorority of choice that she doesn't even notice they're obviously about to haze her. It is genuinely horrifying to watch her come to terms with the fact that she has been buried alive and abandoned in a grave that is slowly filling with rainwater. I found the ending a little dashed off, but some of it definitely got my attention.

Edgy, arty hip hop star Flying Lotus made a movie in 2017 called KUSO that is as hard to watch as it is to forget: a delirious, paranoid, blackly comic fantasy with touches of ERASERHEAD and SPACE IS THE PLACE, featuring moments of genius dog-paddling in a mire of scatological drek. It's a movie you can smell, expressing a hysterical fear and loathing of bodies in general, and of women specifically, and it's hard to enjoy even if it is occasionally inspired and hilarious. Anyway, I almost could have guessed that the V/H/S/99 segment "Ozzy's Dungeon" was made by Flying Lotus. It's a nightmare vision of the Nickolodeon game show Double Dare in which two kid competitors struggle through a dangerous obstacle course styled after the human digestive system, in order to have their "favorite wish" granted. I enjoyed the actual mechanism of wish-granting, but you have to wade through a lot of shit—literally!—in order to get there.

Tyler McIntyre's "The Gawkers" is the source of the movie's confusing wrap material, which is an extremely crude stopmotion movie involving toy soldiers and a lot of ketchup or whatever. This actually bothered me the most out of everything in V/H/S/99, because it so poorly represents homemade productions like this; there are zillions of non-professionals of all ages out there making cheap, charming, fun little hobbyist productions like this with way more creativity and ability, why didn't they just hire one of those guys? But anyway, it turns out the toy soldier stuff is made by a group of unusually obnoxious teenage boys who dupe their weakest link into installing spyware on the computer of the hot chick next door. Spoiler alert: the hot chick turns out to be Medusa! This is a great idea for a movie about voyeurism, and with a longer running time one could explore the important role of the video camera in this misadventure, but unfortunately the vast majority of this short is just shitty teenagers loudly talking over each other. Indoor voices guys, please, for the luva mike!

Finally, Vanessa and Joseph Winters' "To Hell and Back" was convoluted enough that I had to look up what exactly happened in it to write about it the next day, and I found that I wasn't sure I'd actually seen all of what's described in online synopses. This just means that, as I did recall properly, the segment is really dark and hard to parse visually. This is a problem that dogs the V/H/S series because there's pressure to add realism by layering on all kinds of distortion on top of footage that is forcibly non-professional looking. Basically, I didn't hate this story about a camera crew who are accidentally sent to hell during the filming of a magic ritual, but I also couldn't get a lot out of it.

Thus I hope have managed to review V/H/S/99 without being a total dick, but it's still pretty clear what I thought of it. There's no #hailraatma moment in here for me to cling to, and at almost every moment I was just hoping for the inevitable murders to be expedited so I could spend less time with the many loud, awful characters in this movie. Don't get me wrong, I'll watch V/H/S/85 too, when it comes out next year, but I'm on my guard.

BLOGTOBER 10/15/2022: A personal essay on THE BEYOND (1981)

There is a lot to say about THE BEYOND as a work of art, and it's been said by smarter people than me—including Tenebrous Kate, a writer and critic who handily kicked off the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival's Fulci retrospective with a compact, insightful introduction to the prolific director's genre-spanning career. Besides situating his work historically, and breaking down his key themes, Kate also reflected on what it was like to discover someone like Fulci in a pre-internet world where you really had to care and network and sleuth out movies like his, and you could often be surprised—traumatized, even!—by stumbling upon films you never saw coming. THE BEYOND was like that for me, and Kate's observations sent me spiraling into old lady reverie and musing about whether that kind of mentally revolutionary discovery can still happen in this day and age. So, this piece is more about that, than it is about THE BEYOND specifically.

Just to be clear, I was never some sort of tape-trading hero. I made most of my discoveries in mom & pop video stores, and then later in more esoteric rental places where there was an escalated risk of experiencing something that I was in no way prepared for. When I was 14 and had my first personal membership at our local shop, I picked up something that looked for all the world like an old F.W. Murnau movie. When I took it home and pressed play, I realized how wrong I was; it was DER TODESKING, an explicit essay on suicide by Jörg Buttgereit, the director most famous for the still-shocking NEKROMANTIC. About 20 minutes later, after a segment that suggests a hardcore version of ILSA: SHE-WOLF OF THE SS including graphic castration, I took the tape out, returned it, and spent the rest of the afternoon crying. Many years later I found a love for Buttgereit, who makes intelligent, satirical art that tends to target past and contemporary German culture—but at the time, I was REALLY not ready for it. I didn't even know anything like that existed. And actually, I wouldn't trade that experience for anything in the world. It made watching movies an adventure, with a real sense of peril, and it encouraged me to take them very, very seriously.

When I was a little older but not necessarily wiser, I took a semester off college in Portland, Maine, where there was once the greatest video store I've ever been in to this day. I would beeline for that place every day or three and grab a handful of movies—typically, anything that I couldn't sort out just by looking at the box, or even anything that seemed potentially threatening. This is how I first encountered CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. It was the first movie of its kind that I had ever seen. I didn't even know that it was a whole category of thing, let alone the most challenging and feared version of the type. So, with absolutely zero context, I met with a movie around which probably the most people have drawn lines in the sand. It completely blew my brains out of my mind. I returned it the next day in a daze and sheepishly asked the clerk, "What……..is this?" The guy rolled his eyes and gently assured me, "It's just one of those Italian endurance tests." I still like to use this phrase, and I still like to maintain my initial, naive impression that what I had seen was, in fact, a snuff film. Not that I think it's cool to, like, kill people, or that I like the idea of filmmakers having their work literally put on trial like Ruggero Deodato's was. I just love that I had that folkloric kind of experience where I really didn't know what had happened to me. Years later, I came to really like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST—which feels weird to say, it definitely doesn't strive to be liked! But I do think it has a certain kind of editorial intelligence that becomes clear if and when you can get passed the visceral shock of the images.

Anyway, in between DER TODESKING and CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, I was enduringly shocked by THE BEYOND. It was the end of high school, and Quentin Tarantino's distro Rolling Thunder Pictures was circulating a print of the movie that turned up at our nearest theater with a midnight program. I had seen ERASERHEAD and PINK FLAMINGOS there, and as challenging as those can, they came with a certain reassuring reputation establishing their position in the art world, and those screenings were joyful experiences. Still, my friends and I didn't know a thing about Fulci. We had no idea what we were in for. The whole audience seemed to anticipate that we were in for a fun time, as it was the late '90s, and our collective ears had pricked up when we heard the name Tarantino. We thought THE BEYOND was probably going to be a charming thrill ride like EVIL DEAD 2 or something…and we quickly found out we were dead wrong.

As soon as the movie began and the warlock Schweick was being chain whipped to death in a swampy basement by a sweaty mob, a very, very bad vibe descended on the theater. It was grim, and grimy, and unforgiving, and it just got worse by the second. Fabio Frizzi's perverse, spidery score was also something the most of us had never heard anything like before, and we were experiencing the evil, perverted potency of italo disco in the best/worst possible context for the first time. As the movie unspooled, a thick pheromonal fog of fear and misery gathered in the air around us, and no one made a sound. We were trapped with this film, unable to escape it, compelled to see how much worse it could possibly get. Finally in the middle of the movie, as someone was being protractedly pulled apart like so much monkey bread by a swarm of tarantulas, my most sensitive friend simply couldn't take it anymore, and screamed out loud: "OH MY GOD THEY'RE RIPPING OUT HIS EYEBALL!" It was exactly the icebreaker the audience so badly needed. Everyone laughed, and that midpoint catharsis helped us survive the rest of the movie. But still, we all walked out marked by an experience we would not soon forget, whether we all liked it or not. (Of course, I really, really liked it)

I definitely don't mean to complain about the availability of movies and information that we enjoy in today's computerized environment. To me, nothing beats the pleasure of movies and the stories about how they came to be. But I wonder how often people still get to experience the thrill of seeing something that they are truly, completely unprepared for. If you have a story like this, past or present, please feel free to ad it to this post.

BLOGTOBER 10/2/2022: THE VVITCH/THE WITCH/WHATEVER (2015)

I might admit up front that I chose this movie just to be contrary. It's a great piece of work, don't get me wrong, but people talk about Robert Eggers' feature film debut THE WITCH like it will scare you so badly you'll never come back from it, and I'm just not sure where that comes from. It is beautiful, intelligent, and finely stylized, but as far as delivering primal fear, it's in a category with Jack Clayton's THE INNOCENTS of films whose towering reputation for terror I'm somewhat baffled by. Maybe there is a question to ask here, not about how well things are done, but about what in a movie is meant to scare you.

Eggers' meticulously constructed period fable concerns a family of early American Puritans who have been spurned from their community for what one senses is too much dogma. This already frightening proposition is compounded by their new environs, an impossibly remote clearing in a shadowy, primeval forest into which the children are forbidden to venture. No sooner have they established themselves, than their baby inexplicably vanishes while in the hands of eldest child Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy). This blow to the family's unity plucks at further loose threads, as innocent secrets and lies within the group are mistaken for devilry, and naturally the lion's share of suspicion falls on the teenage daughter. The situation is a familiar one, and it's easy to imagine the family tearing themselves to pieces over this mutual mistrust that is buttressed by religious conviction and superstition; however, it is simultaneously true that there really is a witch in the woods, perhaps many, orchestrating the dissolution of the family. It's just apparent that they didn't have to work so hard to wreck these people's lives; they're ready to do that on their own.

THE WITCH is largely a showcase for the exemplary performances of the ensemble—I'd say particularly that of 13 year old Harvey Scrimshaw, who was roundly snubbed for awards by everyone other than a couple of regional film critics' associations, and I think that's bullshit. But ahem anyway, it's important that Eggers doesn't rest on the hoary old laurels of human folly, prejudice, and paranoia: a recipe often done well, but to death. THE WITCH wouldn't be what it is without the literal witches, not just to spice things up aesthetically, but to introduce genuine moral confusion. Thomasin is trapped in a joyless world where her father (Ralph Ineson) hides personal weakness under religious bluster, her mother (Kate Dickie) channels her jealousy of her ripening teenage daughter into all manner of suspicion, and her nearest suitor is her lonely, confused little brother. The religion that is supposed to focus and fortify them does just the opposite, adding to the pain of the loosing the baby the agonizing belief that the unbaptized child's soul now suffers eternally in Hell. Things like humor and actual child's play are easily mistaken for blasphemy and demonic interference, and even the father's devotion to what he believes is the one true gospel is something that separates the family from society, and from direly needed material resources, leaving them stranded and starving. Christianity has done nothing but deprive and alienate these people, which tends to make the way of the witch seem like a liberating, protofeminist option. However, these witches are unambiguously evil, baby-eating slaves to Satan, and their rites so closely resemble what you would find in the Malleus Maleficarum that they are unmistakably the damned, and not enviably empowered avatars of grrl power. So, Thomasin's choice isn't much of a choice; it seems that the high ground is only reached by allowing her family to martyr her, which the compassionate viewer would understand is not an option for a child who isn't hellbent on sainthood. So, THE WITCH is special in that it isn't a parable of human moral failure like THE CRUCIBLE, and it isn't a women's lib allegory either; it's a film in which the Puritan point of view is a legitimate reality, in which one lives a hellish earthly existence, or is delivered to Hell thereafter. In spite of what I said at the top, that's a pretty frightening scenario.

It's apparent that Ellie Granger and Lucas Dawson, playing the young twins, think they're in a really fun movie. This is patently hilarious.

I do find THE WITCH more frightening in theory than in practice, though. It has wonderful scenes of monstrous mayhem, mostly courtesy the fabulously nude Bathsheba Garnett, and I don't deny their special thrill, but I think that in order to find them really soul-shaking, you might have to have an onboard fear of old ladies—and especially old ladies who are the opposite of maternal. Horror is as often dependent on social mores as it is on primal psychological content; for instance, it may be that the aforementioned THE INNOCENTS doesn't frighten me, in part, because I am not particularly affected by morally ambiguous moppets; that is, I don't have a strong personal investment in the alleged innocence of children. Similarly, using Mme Garnett's naked body as a horrific spectacle (even aided as it is by cinematographer Jarin Blaschke's richly developed atmosphere) suggests that there is something inherently horrifying about aged (and therefore barren, perhaps) women. The Witch's alternate form, Sarah Stephens, is young and vivacious, but her sensuality overflows to the transgressive excess of child rape, in an especially twisted expression of the societal fear of female sexuality. What I mean to say is that THE WITCH works best if you, personally, find it threatening when women take their own desires in hand, or if you, personally, worry about women whose lives are not ruled by a self-sacrificing devotion to the care of children. These are enduring themes in horror; I can point to the recent example of Ti West's X, which expresses such fears in a villainess who is geriatric, violently horny, childless, and dangerous to the young. The same cultural anxiety is at the heart of the notoriety of women like Casey Anthony, Lori Vallow, and Jodi Arias; they aren't simply criminals, but bad mothers, and bad wives and girlfriends whose taboo-smashing behavior seems to disturb the public more than their violence on its own. Not to risk uplifting such women as feminist icons, but I believe the public reaction to their specific crimes stems from the same collective fears that are hyperbolized in THE WITCH as radically anti-social forms of monstrosity. And to folks who have trained themselves to judge every movie through the lens of social justice—say, by labeling everything either feminist or misogynist—I might offer this film as a useful exercise in using art to interrogate different sociopolitical attitudes. You don't have to simply condone or condemn a work based on whether it offers a vision of the civilization in which you'd like to live.