Dr. Manhattan is my Friend (Spoilers!)

In HBO's WATCHMEN series (really a sequel that should have been named AFTER WATCHMEN, and a sequel disdained by original WATCHMEN writer/co-creator Alan Moore, who refused to have his name attached to the HBO series), it turns out that the god-like master of matter and energy manipulation, Dr. Manhattan, can have his powers stolen, and that he can give them to other people. 

The thing of it is that in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' graphic novel WATCHMEN (1986-87), Dr. Manhattan gains his powers by painstakingly and painfully recreating his body from the quantum level on up after accidentally having his Intrinsic Quantum Field (a fictional idea from Moore) 'removed' in a lab accident. This initial resurrection takes months and features DR. Manhattan occasionally materializing in and around the Gila Flats test facility in various stages of incompleteness. When he finally returns whole, he's blue and he can do just about anything.

So while Dr. Manhattan does indeed have powers, they don't seem to be the same sort of powers as, say, Plastic Man. He didn't wake up after a lab accident able to stretch. Instead, he taught himself how to manipulate matter and energy in the process of rebuilding his body.

As a participant in many discussions about WATCHMEN over the decades, I came to agree with several others that the point of Dr. Manhattan's origin was that ONLY Jon Osterman could have become Dr. Manhattan because he was both a brilliant quantum physicist and the curious, mechanically inclined son of a watchmaker: he was prepared to put things together (in this case his own body) at the quantum level.

WATCHMEN (the comic) seems to confirm that Jon's super-powers aren't easy to acquire. No one, not even super-genius Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias) decides to step into an Intrinsic Field Subtractor in order to turn himself into another Dr. Manhattan. Veidt's genetically modified lynx Bubastis doesn't come back after having its Intrinsic Field subtracted during Veidt's ill-fated attempt to kill Dr. Manhattan by recreating the lab accident that created him.

Though the adventures of Bubastis the Quantum Cat would be more interesting than, say, all of DC Comics' BEFORE WATCHMEN Event, all of it not involving Alan Moore.

So WATCHMEN (the HBO sequel series) posits Jon's powers as something that can be removed, stolen, or even gifted to another. Which would make sense if that other person was a quantum physicist with a keen interest in watch repair. Even then, Jon's powers come from the process of his reconstruction, not simply his exposure to the Subtractor. 

So we move from powers developed by rigorous, time-consuming effort and genius to powers that can be transferred and which apparently work (as most superhero powers do) by the person simply thinking about what he or she wants to do. For all of the HBO series' strengths (and there are many), its creators don't understand the source material.

The Influence (La Influencia) (2019)

The Influence (La Influencia) (2019): adapted from the Ramsey Campbell novel by Michel Gaztambide, Daniel Rissech, and Denis Rovira van Boekholt; directed by Denis Rovira van Boekholt; starring Manuela Velles (Alicia), Alain Hernandez (Mikel), Emma Suarez (Victoria), and Claudia Placer (Nora):

Available on Netflix, The Influence (made in Spain and thus really 'La Influencia') very loosely adapts Ramsey Campbell's superior late 1980's horror novel to decent effect. Some changes make sense either because there's a need for compression in a 100-minute adaptation of a 350-page novel or because certain things in the novel aren't 'cinematic.' Some of those changes may make one view The Influence as being derivative of Hereditary, though Campbell's novel predates that movie by 30 years.

Chief among these later 'cinematic' changes is the decision to have the malign, elderly Victoria on life support for the duration of the film. In the novel, she dies at the beginning. But I can understand the film-makers wanting to leave the door open for a physical battle between 'Good' and 'Evil' at the climax of the film and not simply a spiritual one.

There are other weird lapses that make me wonder about a longer cut of the movie. The disappearance of a major character goes almost unremarked-upon. The coda seems a bit rushed and implausible as one would imagine SOME further police investigation of the events of the movie.

A few moments of implausibility do jar one out of the horror narrative from time to time. I mean, can you really start a massive fire in your urban backyard in Spain and not arouse the attentions of the police and fire department? Because that is one seriously big fire that gets started about halfway through the movie. 

The direction is mostly assured, though, and The Influence has a lot of scares both intellectual and visceral. The actors are all competent, especially the child actor playing Nora. And there's a really nice design for a demonic figure, made more effective by the decision not to linger too long on it. Recommended.