Bone Tomahawk (2015): written and directed by S. Craig Zahler; starring Kurt Russell (Sheriff Hunt), Patrick Wilson (Arthur O'Dwyer), Matthew Fox (Brooder), Richard Jenkins (Chicory), Lili Simmons (Dr. Samantha O'Dwyer), Evan Jonigkeit (Deputy Nick), and David Arquette (The Fugitive): Made for just about $2 million, Bone Tomahawk is a fine movie by first-time director and writer S. Craig Zahler, who had previously made his Hollywood living by selling over 20 screenplays that never got produced.
Which is how the vast majority of writers in Hollywood make their money -- selling screenplays that never become movies. Zehler and his manager finally got fed up and decided to do a movie themselves, selling the project to pros like Kurt Russell and Richard Jenkins with the sharpness of the writing and the chance to be in a Western.
And Bone Tomahawk is a fine Western, and a fine horror-Western, and an interesting blend of the realistic, the grotesque, and the idealistic. It's a movie that has heroes, flawed, and flawed men who try to be heroes, and awful men, and a plot that never becomes formulaic or cliched.
A tribe of... something... kills one citizen of Western town Bright Hope and kidnaps two others. A Native American scholar identifies them as a cave-dwelling, cannibalistic clan to whom normal Native Americans give wide berth -- as he notes, they don't even look Native American, in part because their cave-dwelling has made them really pale. All that cave-dwelling allows Bone Tomahawk to set a record for most uses of the word "troglodyte" in a Western.
In having the Native American distinguish the troglodytes from all other Native Americans, Zahler also defangs the sting of genocide that might accompany the film. Well, with that and the unspeakable cruelty of the cave-dwellers to both outsiders and their own women.They're an American version of the story of Sawney Bean, only worse.
Sheriff Kurt Russell puts together a rescue party comprising town dandy and legendary Indian Killer Matthew Fox, acting deputy Richard Jenkins, husband of the kidnapped doctor Patrick Wilson (on a crutch with a broken leg!), and himself. Their journey to the region of the troglodytes will take nearly a week, covering an hour in film time as they encounter various obstacles and hardships. And then the final confrontation.
The acting is sharp, the dialogue flavourful and pithy, the cinematography top-notch (I especially like the bleached-out night scenes), and the action both realistic and horrifying when it comes. It's not for the squeamish, but the violence isn't exploitative. It's actually hard to look at. And it's a Western! And better than most major releases in any given year! Highly recommended.
The Conjuring: written by Chad and Carey Hayes; directed by James Wan; starring Vera Farmiga (Lorraine warren), Patrick Wilson (Ed Warren), Lili Taylor (Carolyn Perron), and Ron Livingston (Roger Perron) (2013): This haunted-house movie is based on a true story to only a slightly greater extent than Thor: The Dark World is based on my experiences at Kitchener-Waterloo's Oktoberfest in 1990. It kicks off what looks to be a whole series of movies about the adventures of Ed and Lorraine Warren, self-proclaimed ghost-hunters and demonologists who have been part of a number of what turned out to be America's great ghost hoaxes, including The Amityville Horror.
James Wan directs with a certain amount of skill, though much of it has been borrowed from other movies, most notably Poltergeist and The Exorcist. And the narrative lifts so many specific points from The Amityville Horror (book and movie) that it sometimes seems like a remake. Family buys a new house which makes them house-poor, setting off financial difficulties? Check. Little girl has imaginary playmate that turns out to be a supernatural entity? Check. Family dog hates ghost house? Check. Events seem to repeatedly spike at a time just after 3 a.m. in the morning? Check. Secret room? Check. Entire house unnaturally cold? Check.
Unfortunately, there's no invisible marching band, which I think is a goddamned shame.
The secret room caused the first moment of incredulous hilarity for me. See, the secret room they discover behind a false wall isn't just a room -- it's the entire basement. WHERE THE FURNACE IS LOCATED! I mean, they were going to find it at some point, weren't they? Either that or freeze.
Ghostly and/or demoniac shenanigans ensue. The ghost-hunters are brought in. At this point, the movie slides from simply annoying to offensive for two solid reasons, reasons made much more solid by The Conjuring's claims to be "true."
For one, an exorcism occupies at the climax of the movie. And we've had too many real-life incidents involving people killed by enthusiastic exorcists revealed over the past few years for this sort of thing to be at all dramatically compelling. Nauseating and disturbing, yes.
Secondly, at least some of the supernatural happenings end up supporting the idea that the Salem Witch Trials executed actual Satan-worshipping, magic-using, evil witches. Give me a fucking break. Just because those women have been dead for several centuries doesn't make their terrible fate any less horrifying. What a revolting development!
The actors do what they can with the material -- the four main adult characters are decently acted. Another blow to my ability to even remotely suspend disbelief came when I realized that Patrick Wilson's period hair and get-up (the movie is set in 1971) makes him look like Bob Odenkirk. So I thought, geez, what a great movie this would be with Bob Odenkirk and David Cross playing the paranormal investigators!
By the time we get to a scene in which Wilson must act as an "amateur" exorcist (the Roman Catholic "professional" being unavailable), we're perilously close to the hilarious exorcism of Jonah Hill in This is the End. And let me tell you, this movie really could have used Jay Baruchel clutching a crucifix improvised from two spatulas and spouting the lines he remembered from The Exorcist. Not recommended.
Insidious, written by Leigh Whannell, directed by James Wan, starring Patrick Wilson (Josh Lambert), Rose Byrne (Renai Lambert), Ty Simpkins (Dalton Lambert), Barbara Hershey (Lorraine Lambert), Lin Shaye (Elise Rainier), Leigh Whannell (Specs) and Angus Sampson (Tucker) (2011): Surprisingly 'old-school' ghost story given that the writer and director are best known for their work on the hardcore Saw films. If it weren't for the last twenty minutes and the subsequent, exhausted 'twist' ending, this would be a really solid film.
Young Dalton Lambert goes into a medically inexplicable coma. His family searches for answers. Weird things happen. A psychic is consulted. More weird things happen. That's the movie with the major twists and revelations unrevealed.
Wan and Whannel get a lot of productive mileage out of showing little and suggesting a lot, of quick scares and odd things lurking in the outskirts of the frame. The cosmology introduced by the psychic to explain what's going on makes a certain amount of sense, though it's not developed enough to be all that convincing for long. A visual homage to Neil Gaiman's Sandman series is a bit jarring; that one supernatural entity looks an awful lot like Darth Maul undercuts a certain amount of tension.
Rose Byrne is a stand-out as the worried mother. Byrne's face in repose tends to look sad anyway -- I think it's her eyebrows -- and the look suits the material. Patrick Wilson is fine as the father, who has supernatural secrets of his own, though he appears to lose about 50 IQ points in the last twenty minutes. When the psychic tells you not to draw attention to yourself, don't run around yelling at every supernatural entity you encounter, that's all I've got to say.
The movie also joins the horror sub-sub-sub-genre of 'Monsters who love novelty songs,' as one entity really likes Tiny Tim's "Tiptoe Through the Tulips," which was already terrifying enough on its own. Hell's playlist must be really awful. Recommended.
