Random Hearts

Right off the top, this is a weird one.  You could maybe call this sexy thriller adjacent.  It’s about a DC internal affairs cop named Dutch (Harrison Ford (The Mosquito Coast)) who loses his wife, Peyton (Susanna Thompson (Little Giants)), in a plane crash only to discover afterward that she was cheating on him.  She was meeting up with her lover, Cullen (Peter Coyote (Sphere)), on that flight so he also got killed.  Dutch makes contact with the guy’s wife, Kay (Kristin Scott Thomas (Under the Cherry Moon)), to let her know what was going on.  She badly wants to turn a blind eye to the entire situation but starts to become as intrigued as Dutch about the history of their spouses’ relationship.  After some probing, resistance and conflicting emotions the widows eventually fall in love.

So where does the thriller part come in?  Well the B plot involves Dutch trying to nail a thieving murdering cop but he’s short on evidence.  Not to mention his only witness gets slayed and tossed in a dumpster.  Dutch starts losing his mind resorting to unethical abuse of power type shit to make his case which ultimately gets him suspended.  The contrast between the two main threads is jarring to say the least.

Honestly, I wouldn’t say this is a very good movie.  Too many things about it don’t work.  One of the biggest and strangest is that the dirty cop story overshadows the love story, at least for me.  It’s just so much more exciting than exploring two couples’ infidelities.  Now this is based on a book so the vastly different tones could possibly mesh better in that format.  I wonder what the pitch meeting for the film was like though.  Was the studio like

Studio: “Are you sure you want the unconventional love plot the main narrative of the picture?  Wouldn’t you rather have the killer cop investigation be the focus?” 

Filmmakers: “No, no.  The love story’s the A plot for sure!”

Studio: “I mean I guess we trust you.  It just seems kinda flipped around.”

Filmmakers: “Don’t worry boss, the romantic tension between Dutch and Kay is gonna ooze off that screen so hard.  And we’ll make the bad guy cop extra evil to balance everything out.”

Studio: “Ok!”

I think you get my point.

Another major issue are the characters.  We’re supposed to like Dutch and Kay not only because they recently lost their spouses, who in addition were incidentally carrying out affairs behind their backs, but also because they’re presented as people of integrity.  I don’t buy it though.  Dutch is meant to be a good hard working cop who makes sure his brethren walk the line.  However, he’s a bit of a hothead who ends up doing illegal shit in pursuit of his suspect.  Furthermore he’s obsessed with Peyton’s clandestine tryst so he borderline harasses her friends, family and co-workers about it.  His existence becomes detrimentally defined by it.  We don’t see him grieve over his wife’s death so I guess this is how he’s processing shit.  Unfortunately he turns into this sad and, frankly, annoying figure.  Kay, meanwhile, is running for Congress so she’s very busy focusing on that.  Her whole thing is yea, she’s a politician, but she’s an honest one.  At the same time she can’t be forthright with her own teenage daughter about her cheating father.  And, of course, Kay is constantly concerned with her image and how recent events will affect her chances of winning the race.  So again, like Dutch she doesn’t come off nearly as likeable as intended.

It doesn’t help that Ford and Thomas don’t have any chemistry either.  They bicker in the beginning with Dutch desperately wanting to talk to Kay about the affair and Kay wanting to pretend like it never happened and move on.  They pull that cheesy move where the leads are fighting with each other and then suddenly embracing and kissing passionately.  Part of this relationship stems from finding solace in the wake of tragedy.  That would be fine if it were played in more of a transactional way.  Instead it comes across much more contrived like these two get together because they’re supposed to.  Ford and Thomas don’t shoot out sparks of love or a ton of warmth even.  Their approaches are too detached.

There are a few other quirks that are worth noting.  Kay finds out (minor spoilers in the rest of this paragraph) her husband was actually having multiple affairs during their marriage.  Amazingly Peyton might’ve been doing the same thing!  Dutch confronts one of her male co-workers about it but gets the I-won’t-even-dignify-that-with-a-response rebuff instead of a straight up “no”.  So inconclusive there.  I don’t totally get the point of piling on the betrayal here.  Why make these characters out to be even bigger assholes than they’re already set up to be?  Next, Cullen and Peyton worked overtime on their cheating.  For one thing they kept a secret apartment together near where they lived.  However, if that wasn’t bad enough they also flew all the way to other states under the guise of business trips to bump uglies.  Sheesh, that’s expensive and a lot of work.  And finally, the audience knows what’s going on from the start with the affair so when we follow Dutch around investigating what Peyton’s been up to it ends up being kinda boring.  Ideally we should be discovering the truth along with Dutch but admittedly the payoff of basically an ordinary affair just isn’t all that gripping so the filmmakers were sorta stuck.

Who got excited about this project?  This was a major studio film so several folks had to be pumped to see this story turned into a star studded blockbuster.  It had been kicking around Hollywood for over a decade to boot.  Look, you can turn anything, anything, into a compelling picture but the results of this one are bizarre.  I know I keep coming back to this but the much more enticing dirty cop B plot is way too robust for what was required.  Fine, we need to establish Dutch is distracted by his wife’s death and adultery so his job performance suffers, but they could’ve scaled it back a touch from him failing to capture a psychotic murderer.  Plus the romance between Dutch and Kay is forced and built on extremely odd circumstances.  And the main characters are irritating in their own ways.

With all of that said you might randomly get a kick out of Random Hearts if you enjoy peculiar beasts.

Harefooted Halloween: The Seventh Curse

My usual format won’t work for this one because it’s too rat shit crazy and strange to dissect neatly.  The Seventh Curse is about a Hong Kong doctor/adventurer named Yuan Chen-Hsieh (Siu-Ho Chin (Fist of Legend)) who travels to the jungles of Thailand looking for an herbal treatment for AIDS only to stumble upon a human sacrifice ceremony by a local tribe.  Their leader/God is a rotting skeleton creature that eats the people thrown to it.  The doc decides to save the pretty woman on the chopping block but as a consequence starts a massive battle between his group of explorers and the tribe.  Yuan is captured, made to swallow his own bullets and the things start to fire from inside of him.  Fortunately he’s saved by the woman he rescued from the ceremony through some magic boob shenanigans (you read that right).  He recovers but a year later the bullets start to pop from his insides once again.  So he must travel back to Thailand to find a cure for his curse.

As you can see the story involves a lot of supernatural shit so you kind of just have to go with the flow.  And that goes for all aspects of this thing.  Shit will take a sudden left turn and either you’re on board or you’re not.  For example, Chow Yun-Fat (Once a Thief) makes an appearance as Yuan’s professorial pipe smoking friend/mentor.  You think he’s there simply for support and some guidance but then he abruptly shows up towards the end with a bazooka ready to blow away some demons.  Or the villain transforms from a skeleton into a bizzarro KISS costume version of a xenomorph.  There’s another nod to Alien with a small-ish chest-burster-like monster that munches its way into your throat and then erupts out of your chest.  Shit gets weird.

I’ve seen folks refer to this as an Indiana Jones-esque picture and in a sense I can see that, especially if we’re talking about Temple of Doom.  You have a doctor (MD in this case, not PHD) venturing to an exotic location for one purpose but unexpectedly gets caught up in a local human sacrifice ceremony and becomes cursed.  Yuan is smugger and more serious than Jones though.  He’s also even more casual about murdering people.  This obnoxious reporter (Maggie Cheung (Hero)) tags along and ultimately gets captured who would be a stand in for damsel-in-distress Willie Scott, except, well, she shows up with a huge arsenal of weapons and isn’t afraid to use them.  You have dark creepy caves, ancient ruins, a horde of followers willing to kill for their master, booby traps, exaggerated lighting, etc.  But really this is its own demented mashup of ideas from different sources which I’m sure include Chinese myths and legends.

Truth be told this is more of an action film than horror.  There are certainly horror elements and scenes but most of the time it’s martial arts fighting.  Don’t get me wrong though, it’s great.  And of course, there’s crossover like when our heroes go hand to hand with the xenomorph creature at the finale.

This is also an effects heavy movie that leans to the gorier side.  For example, a scout is walking through the jungle when he sets off a booby trap.  A rope wraps around each one of his legs throwing him into the air and tearing him right in half.  Ouch.  Plus there’s gross out stuff like one explorer gets some mysterious goo poured on him and his face starts to bubble.  He tears off his flesh to reveal hundreds of worms pouring out of him.  Nasty.  The effects are kinda cheap but goddamn charming as hell.  I mean the evil skeleton lord is obviously a large marionette puppet with multiple people pulling on strings to animate him but man do they sell the shit out of it.

When I found out afterward that this is from Ngai Choi Lam, the same director as Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky and The Cat, everything quickly made sense.  He has a dark sense of humor and insane way of crafting a story.  I love how much energy he brings to the production and this film is no exception.  The fights, effects, cinematography, it’s so excitingly executed that it sucks you into a world you didn’t even know you wanted to be sucked into.

Now, admittedly I was sorta lost half the time because they throw so much at you without much explanation.  The general plot I get but the details I have no idea.  This includes the title.  I think it relates to the number of bullets inside of Yuan and the seventh and final one is the deathblow that will eventually kill him?  Not sure but hey, the thing is it’s ok.  I had a blast anyway.  Let it take you for a ride.  If you’re looking for something different then you’ve found it.  This…film…is…fucking…wild.

Harefooted Halloween: Graveyard Shift

What I Liked: I really dig the nasty ass production design (Gary Wissner (Last Man Standing, I Know What You Did Last Summer)) and set decoration (George R. Nelson (Apocalypse Now, Big Trouble in Little China)).  Even though they did a bunch of filming in a real textile mill from the early 1800’s they amped up almost every environment on screen to be filthy as fuck.  Not only is there grime, cobwebs and trash strewn about but there are also puddles of muddy gross water, moisture dripping from the ceilings and pools of blood red water.   As if that wasn’t enough this takes place during the summer so it’s like a hundred degrees in the mill.  All the workers are sweating profusely, have greasy hair and sooty faces.  Lastly, the fantastic decrepit graveyard next door continues the theme by being waterlogged and overgrown with weeds.  A layer of fog in most locations pushes the sinister haunted house vibes over the top.  This is one of the most surface level disgusting goddamn films I’ve ever set eyes on.

Most of the acting isn’t anything to write home about except for two performances.  One is the rat exterminator played by Brad Dourif (Child’s Play 2) who gets pleasure out of his work.  Dourif is always excellent and he brings his usual intensity with a particularly strange scene where he delivers a lengthy monologue about the Viet Cong torturing prisoners of war with live hungry rats.  The other standout is the mill foreman, Warwick, played by Stephen Macht (The Monster Squad).  He’s a mean sonuvabitch who doesn’t give a shit about his workers or the conditions they toil in.  He’ll fire someone on the spot over nothing with a cold delivery.  Naturally he’s a creep as well who tries to get in the pants of the women who work at the mill.  And his Maine accent, man, that accent.  It’s the same exaggerated one that Fred Gwynne sports in Pet Sematary that pop culture loved to make fun of in the 90’s.  I can’t really describe it but it’s unique, instantly recognizable, pretty funny sounding and pretty distracting.  Anyway, Warwick doesn’t totally make sense as a character.  If he were simply a rough boss that would be one thing but when people start dying he just doesn’t care.  It’s beyond being self-centered because towards the end he completely loses his mind and fights off others who try to help him when he gets injured.  Maybe he had a mental break.  I dunno, even though Warwick feels nonsensical Macht chews that scenery right up making him by far the most entertaining character in the piece.

When we finally get to see the creature that’s been lurking in the basement of the mill it looks damn nice.  I don’t think this is much of a spoiler that it’s a massive ten foot long rat/bat thing.  The puppet/animatronic they built is like if a rat survived a nuclear war with its white eyes, gnarly grotesque skin, barbed hair and enormous claws.  With all the quick cutting we never get a great look at it though which is a shame because I would’ve loved to have soaked this beast in more.  Perhaps the thing didn’t look as good as I think it does so the filmmakers decided to cut around it.  Or it could’ve been they only got a small amount of usable footage and had to make the most of it.  Either way I like this guy.

Kickass title.  And I appreciate that some of the mill workers do in fact work the graveyard shift.  Now, the graveyard situated next door is pure coincidence as far as I can tell, however, what’s underneath it does add an extra layer of meaning.

What I Didn’t Like: Not the best script.  There’s very little story which amounts to a drifter blowing into a small town to work at a textile mill only to discover his boss is a psycho and something’s killing the workers.  Everyone is fairly one dimensional including the protagonist (David Andrews (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines)) who’s incredibly bland and has maybe two pages of dialogue total in the entire movie.  There are head scratching parts too like the scene where Warwick asks the exterminator to set rat traps in the graveyard for some reason (does the mill own the graveyard?).  Through sheer dumb luck the exterminator gets killed totally by accident but it’s setup like Warwick knew this was going to happen somehow?  Some of these shortcomings could be chalked up to this being based on a short story (by Stephen King) so they didn’t have a ton to work with.  At the same time the picture isn’t remarkably well written in general.

Similar to the above the editing is clumsy at times.  A couple of scenes end awkwardly and there are occasional fades to black that make it seem like a TV movie.

Overall Impressions: While this isn’t anything amazing there’s definitely a fun time to be had here.  As long as you don’t expect too much and are down with a giant creature munching on some dudes this can deliver a few gasps and chuckles, especially if you don’t like rats.  Personally, I don’t have that fear (although I wouldn’t love to encounter a thousand of them…or one very large one for that matter), but I do fucking hate spiders (and bugs in general) so in that sense this one is in the same vein as Arachnophobia.  You know, a film that puts a common phobia of a specific animal or insect into overdrive.  And you get a kick out of it because it’s the fear juice that excites.  It might be worth your time if that sounds up your alley.

Harefooted Halloween: Dead & Buried

What I Liked: Really nice atmosphere.  The small coastal New England town of Potter’s Bluff always seems to be overcast with fog around, the buildings are kinda shabby and old and the residents are slightly quirky.  This isn’t a place that appears normal on the surface but if you zoom in there’s a dark side hiding beneath.  The eeriness is on top here and it sets a great mood where you’re thrown a bit from the start.

Solid performances all around.  Jack Albertson (The Poseidon Adventure) plays one of the leads as Dobbs, a confident slightly arrogant mortician.  He loves fixing up corpses to make them look beautiful for their funeral and burial.  He has a penchant for getting absorbed in his work and playing tunes from the 30’s and 40’s.  He aids the town sheriff, Dan (James Farentino (Bulletproof)), in trying to determine why dead bodies keep turning up.  Dan is our protagonist who definitely has a Chief Brody from Jaws thing going on.  He’s a very affable everyman type, wants to do the right thing, is friendly with the townsfolk, not above asking for help, is not a rookie cop but perhaps new the current post and thrown into an impossible situation when strange occurrences and murders start happening.  I dig Farentino’s genuine shock and confusion over everything.  He plays it more grounded than you would normally see in a horror movie.

One thing this film is semi-famous for (in that the film itself is semi-famous) are the Stan Winston effects and yea, they look fantastic.  The two big ones are a needle gets jammed through an eye (totally squirm worthy) and a scene where Dobbs entirely reconstructs a deceased woman’s face.  We start with a mutilated visage and over many dissolves we see him remove the destroyed flesh and build the entire thing back up from skeleton to muscle to skin.  It’s impressive as hell and a touch unsettling because it looks real.  Unfortunately there’s one effect that was added in post-production to punch up the violence where acid is injected into someone’s nose.  Winston was not around so someone else did it and it looks crappy.

Cool score by Joe Renzetti (The Buddy Holly Story, Child’s Play).  The opening uses this melodic lilting piano led track with strings that sounds beautiful.  There’s an undercurrent of sadness to it that fits the picture.  Later we get more of your usual string drones and stabs to build good tension.  Scenes tend to linger maybe a little longer than they need to but the soundtrack almost single handedly keeps the suspense flowing in a couple of spots.

What I Didn’t Like: While the plot is neat it does get sorta muddy.  I won’t go into spoilers but you need to connect your own dots to a degree.  The information they provide doesn’t explain everything so if you take the movie as is it doesn’t exactly make sense.  You might get a kick out of this if you like coming up with theories to fill in plot holes.  I’ll admit I was doing this afterward to try to fit everything together and I think you can make it work.

Overall Impressions: This is a unique and unusual take on a zombie picture.  It’s a very Tales From the Crypt type concept that also invokes another film that I won’t name because that’ll give too much away.  I like how subtly creepy the town and inhabitants are.  You know they’re doing terrible shit but you can’t put your finger on why.  Sheriff Dan’s pursuit of the truth drives the mystery and he seems like such a good guy you wanna see him succeed even though you know nothing good will come of it.  He knows his town is venturing down a dark ass path but he can’t stop it.  The whole thing ends up being more tragic than anything else.  Don’t leave this one in the ground.  Dig it up and check it out.

Harefooted Halloween: The Loved Ones

What I Liked: I mean c’mon, Robin McLeavy (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) as Lola is fucking nuts.  She’s a completely deranged high school teen who tortures the boys she fancies.  McLeavy totally commits sure, but she plays it with a bratty spoiled layer that makes the character more believable and more pathetic.  It’s a fine line to walk where sometimes an actor can do the wackiest shit they can think of with the wackiest delivery but there’s nothing behind it.  McLeavy gives Lola life by dialing in the madness just right.  One moment she can be yelling at her victim demanding him to cry, carve her initials in his chest and throw salt on his wounds while quipping “not too much, it’s supposed to be bad for you” and then later she can be gazing lovingly at her partner-in-crime father calling him her prince.  This lady makes you goddamn hate her so fucking much but you also wanna keep going because you wonder what in the hell she has cooked up next.  McLeavy is so intense, cruel, tenacious and even darkly humorous, without being overly theatrical, that you can’t look away.

Everyone delivers a magnificent performance here but I definitely want to highlight the two other mains.  Xavier Samuel (Elvis (2022)) as Brent is Lola’s target and he has a haunted past where he recently got into a car accident that killed his father.  His pain is still immense which helps him clench through all the heinous shit Lola throws at him.  When he’s captured his throat is injected with bleach so he can’t talk or scream.  Samuel has to do almost the entire movie silent using his face and body to convey everything he’s thinking and feeling and it’s incredible.  He’s writhing in pain but can’t yell out which makes the proceedings even more disturbing.  That death stare he gives his captors could pierce steel.  And finally John Brumpton (Romper Stomper) who plays Lola’s father is the most mysterious character of the bunch.  He’s utterly subservient to his daughter doing whatever horrible thing she requests.  While you can tell he gets a kick out of inflicting pain you don’t know if it’s because he’s glad to see his daughter happy and relishes spending time together in a shared activity or if he’s just as fucked up and would be doing this kinda crap on his own anyway.  His meekness doesn’t rule him which is significant for the character to work.  I think he does get pleasure out of hurting others but is also scared of Lola.  Scared of what she’ll do to him if he disobeys and scared of letting her down.  Additionally, there’s a scene or two that possibly hints at an incestuous relationship so who knows what the fuck the deal is with these two.

This is a well made film, especially in the editing.  The filmmakers were smart to intercut the dreadful torture with other events occurring at the same time so we get regular breaks.  Brent is supposed to be at his high school dance when he gets kidnapped so we see how the night was supposed to go down by showing his friend attending with a goth adjacent girl he has a huge crush on.  They’re awkward towards each other at first but then they get to boozing and blazing and blast some metal and they have, well not exactly a magical night, but an eventful evening where they lean on each other for support.  His date’s going through a tough time right now.  Meanwhile Brent’s mother, his girlfriend and a cop are distraught looking for him.  Splitting up Lola’s scenes like this makes the whole thing easier to take in.  Plus music plays a big role and is used constantly throughout to amplify the characters’ emotions.  Lola has her favorite song that’s played several times called “Not Pretty Enough” by Kasey Chambers with the singer fixating over what’s wrong with her that she’s always ignored.  Set design is another superb element with Lola’s house decorated like a high school gym ready for the big dance.  There’s a banner, disco ball, food and everything.  She even dons a paper crown.  This is a very nice looking production.

What I Didn’t Like: Now, this is a torture movie and I’m not really into those generally speaking.  As can be expected they don’t shy away from the gore and dish out some nasty ass punishment.  But I understand the idea is to make the audience feel uncomfortable, make you beg to see Lola and her father get their comeuppance and get a rush of relief when that happens.  I just wish they didn’t go quite so hard with how they treat Brent.  This one’s borderline for me.  If they pushed it any further I probably would’ve disengaged.

Overall Impressions: Fortunately the characters, performances and technical filmmaking are strong enough to make me ok with how damn mean the torture stuff is.  At times this piece gets downright brutal so this picture certainly isn’t for everyone.  But if you give it a chance and stick with it you’ll be rewarded.

Harefooted Halloween: Audrey Rose

What I Liked: It’s all competently shot and the performances are fine and actually, I quite like the soundtrack by Michael Small (The Star Chamber, Marathon Man), blah, blah, blah, moving on…

What I Didn’t Like: Everything else.

Overall Impressions: Man, I got a beef with this movie.  The premise involves a guy named Hoover (Anthony Hopkins (Transformers: The Last Knight)) who thinks his dead daughter, Audrey Rose, has been reincarnated into the body of an eleven year old girl named Ivy (Susan Swift).  When he confronts her parents, Janice (Marsha Mason (Nick of Time)) and Bill (John Beck (Thunder in Paradise)), they think he’s crazy and don’t want anything to do with him.  Hoover is not dissuaded though and keeps calling and showing up at their insanely luxurious NYC apartment.  Ivy suddenly has these intense nightmares that she can’t wake from and the only thing that seems to calm her down is Hoover calling her Audrey Rose and cradling her letting her know her father is here to take care of her.

Audrey Rose was killed in a terrible car accident where she was trapped inside in the overturned vehicle and burned alive when she was five.  So Ivy’s freakouts are her running around screaming and clawing at windows.  Her hands even show burn marks during one particular episode.  Bill thinks she touched the hot radiator in the chaos of the scene.  She also stares into the mirror in a daze and says the name “Audrey Rose” over and over (by this point it’s a name she’s heard countless times from the people around her).  In another incident Ivy is at school where they construct an enormous fifteen foot tall snowman and build a circle of fire to melt him (I’ve never heard or seen this type of thing before, is this common?) only to have a possessed Ivy start to crawl into the fire.  Don’t worry, she’s stopped just in time.  All this stuff is supposed to be proof that something supernatural is occurring and that Audrey Rose and Ivy occupy the same vessel.

Janice and Bill argue about what’s going on with Janice going back and forth on being a believer.  Bill thinks Hoover is a kook.  Meanwhile Hoover is obsessed with the notion that his dead daughter is alive in this other girl and will stop at nothing to be with her.  He even resorts to kidnapping which is how we eventually land in the lengthy courtroom drama portion of the film.

Now, even though the movie tries to be coy it's obvious they’re saying that Audrey Rose is indeed sequestered inside Ivy’s body and she manifests herself during sleep.  But to me this all appears to be mental illness.  Everything shown to us can be explained with that reasoning.  What’s maddening is it’s never brought up.  The closest we come is the family doctor recommends Ivy see a therapist.  In my opinion that isn’t enough to tackle her increasingly bizarre and disturbing behavior.  I mean Ivy is injuring herself when she slips into a manic state by banging against windows, knocking over furniture, falling down stairs and reaching for fire.  This is really fucking serious.

Jesus, I wanted to jump into this thing and tell everyone “STOP!  This girl is sick and needs immediate medical attention!  What’s wrong with all of you?!”  Goddammit I hate every character because no one does the right thing.  They all continue to harm this poor girl who’s suffering with Janice possibly being the most damaging culprit.  At one point she admits in open court that she believes Ivy is Hoover’s reincarnated daughter and then two scenes later she tells Ivy no, that’s not true.  The waffling on that is extremely destructive.  Hell, entertaining the very notion to Ivy that she’s in fact another person is dangerous.

The court case may be the worst part.  Hoover’s attorney’s actual for real defense in the kidnapping of a child is that she’s this guy’s deceased daughter so it’s all ok.  It’s an unprovable theory.  How is the jury supposed to receive that?  Then they bring in a hypnotist to put Ivy under to get to the root of the matter which again, how is this allowed?  As an aside, it’s rich that the judge is fine continuing with Hoover’s ludicrous argument but is wary of hypnotism and only reluctantly goes along with it.  Well guess what?  *Spoilers* During the session the doctor performing the procedure is able to bring out Audrey Rose but the process is too much for the girl and she dies.  Fuck!

Despite what you see elsewhere I wouldn’t classify this as a horror movie.  It’s more of a drama thriller.  The film wants it both ways where it definitely believes the supernatural aspect of Audrey Rose being inside Ivy yet doesn’t provide any unquestionable substantiating evidence to back it up.  In my opinion the film doesn’t present as a mysterious curious case like it thinks it does.  Not enough spooky or inexplicable shit happens.  So the whole thing is a frustrating as hell situation.

It is incredibly sad and awful that every single person in Ivy’s life fails her.  Her parents, her teachers, her doctors, the courts, they all not only drop the ball they blow it to smithereens.  This innocent person who is sick through no fault of her own does not get the treatment she deserves.  Nor does she get the protection or respect from the ones most responsible and closest to her, her parents.  Hoover is a sinister sack of shit who never should’ve been able to worm his way into their lives the way he did.  Fuck all these motherfuckers and fuck this movie.

Side note: from Robert Wise, the director of The Sound of Music, West Side Story and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Harefooted Halloween: The Empty Man

What I Liked: David Prior directed the shit out of this movie.  It looks beautiful, the casting is good, the performances are great, the editing is mostly well done, the atmosphere is unsettling, there are many varied locations, the production design is cool, the pacing is methodical, etc.  Prior’s background involves a lot of behind-the-scenes documentaries including the making of a bunch of David Fincher films.  All that time studying other excellent filmmakers must have given him a unique education on the craft where he could pick up techniques through osmosis.  So with this picture you have this interesting blend of styles like what if David Fincher shot a Wes Craven script?  The technical aspects are far and away the film’s best quality.

They really went for something.  Even though I don’t think this thing comes together I admire its ambitious story.  I don’t think I’ve come across a horror film exactly like it.

What I Didn’t Like: Ok folks this is gonna get dicey so I’ll do my best to explain why this bird doesn’t land for me before going into spoilers.  There are essentially two films happening at once (you could conceivably argue three films with the ending).  One is about an urban legend called the Empty Man where you can summon him by whistling across the top of an empty bottle on a bridge at night and think intensely about him while doing so.  You know, similar to Bloody Mary or Candyman where you stare into a mirror and say their name five times to curse yourself.  Over the course of three days the Empty Man will stalk you and eventually kill you.  Plot two is about a teen girl who goes missing and an ex-cop friend of the family, James (James Badge Dale (Little Woods)), tries to track her down only to discover she was involved with a cult obsessed with the Empty Man.  This story is definitely the more interesting one because it builds wonderful mystery and suspense.  James ventures deeper and deeper into what this dangerous organization is and the weird ass supernatural shit they’re tapping into.  While the two stories are dependent on one another they don’t exactly link up successfully.  The payoff ends up being the worst of both worlds with the movie not committing to being either a full on slasher monster situation or a creepy blood thirsty cult jam.  For some the ending could tie everything together in a mind blowing way but for me it’s this awkward beast of curiosity and disappointment.

*Spoilers* Alright, so we go through all this sleuthing and all this building up of the Empty Man and all this mounting tension to come to the conclusion that basically none of it is real.  Well maybe some of it is real.  Honestly I don’t fucking know.  It turns out the cult manifested James, an actual adult human person, into existence when we met him three days prior.  He’s been kept locked up in a room for that time.  So everything we’ve gone through with him are fabricated memories.  The reason for this is the cult wants to use James to communicate with and worship the Empty Man, which is some sort of supernatural being.  This group has been around for hundreds (or thousands?) of years and uses a human bridge to relay communication between the Empty Man and his followers.  Their current messenger is dying (this is what that twenty minute opening in Bhutan relates to) and sometimes they’ve had to wait a long ass time for someone else to come along so they decided to create one in James.  In essence James was the Empty Man all along.  Truthfully guys, I don’t have a goddamn clue if I got any of this right.  If I did then this is only slightly better than the god awful it-was-all-a-dream or it-was-all-in-your-head trope.  At least this doesn’t dismiss the existence of the Empty Man or any of the supernatural shit.  But at the same time it effectively negates everything you just watched.  Nor does it explain why the Empty Man fucks with and then kills people like in a standard horror picture, or why it takes him three days to attack, or why a cursed person can possess others to kill for them, or why all the deaths are made to look like suicides or accidents or bizarre acts, or ok, you get the idea.  We don’t really learn anything about this creature.  Why it does what it does is never explained.  Or maybe they did and I missed it.  Another question you might be asking is why does the cult wanna get with the Empty Man in the first place?  World domination?  Superpowers?  Great wealth?  Not sure.  Again, they may have said but if they did I missed it.

Overall Impressions: Man, I want to like this.  Prior and co elevated the hell out of a not very good script.  From what I gather the graphic novel it’s based on is pretty different so maybe something got lost in translation.  Or it could be as much of a mess as this.  All the goodwill the filmmakers build up by doling out the mystery at the right pace to keep you interested unfortunately kinda gets flushed down the toilet with the ending.

There’s a real slim chance a re-edit could’ve saved this but that would’ve been very difficult.  Plus I think the finale is fully intended to tie all the pieces together.  It’s not something you can simply toss aside.  So we’re forced to deal with a peculiar hybrid mashup that doesn’t work as is and the separate components probably aren’t strong enough to stand on their own either.

Ironically The Empty Man isn’t empty but it ain’t full either.  I completely understand why it bombed.  When this got dumped out in 2020 the few people that saw it did not care for it.  I mean marketing the film must’ve been a nightmare as well.  It doesn’t fall neatly into a category so I don’t envy the people who had to try to sell this strange complex horror/thriller premise.  And it doesn’t help that the title is so generic with other “Man” movies like Slender Man, The Boogeyman and The Bye Bye Man released around the same time.  I know I confused all of them.

If any of this sounds intriguing then go ahead and check out this fascinating oddity of a picture.  For most folks though I can’t recommend it.

Harefooted Halloween: Wrong Turn

What I Liked: Once the action gets going it doesn’t really let up.  Honestly I thought this was going to be a capturing and torturing type scenario but thankfully that’s not the case.  It’s a chase movie with crazy backwoods killers running after a group of lost young people in the mountains of West Virginia.  The pace is quick because the characters always have to be on the move if they want to survive/catch their prey.

Most of the effects are done practically which is a nice thing to see from an early 2000’s production.  Using crude CGI for almost everything, regardless of how it looked, was very popular then.  But since Stan Winston produced and did the effects it appears they mainly did stuff for real here (except for one showoff-y death with computer help).  So scenes like strangling someone with barbed wire, getting shot in the leg, being set on fire and stabbing someone in the gut with a wrench all look great.  The showpiece is supposed to be the three hillbilly villains who are all deformed with messed up skin, scraggily hair, gnarly teeth and so forth but we never get that good of a look at them.  That leads me to my next point.

Interestingly the filmmakers decided to keep the grotesque appearance of the inbreds mysterious.  We pretty much never get a shot head on held for a decent length.  All the way through to the end we see closeups of their bodies or hands or the backs of their heads or wide shots of them in the distance or glimpses of their faces that only flash for a couple of frames before cutting away.  I don’t know if this was intentional from the start, if they didn’t have faith in the designs during production or if these bastards were so nasty looking the producers or higher ups decided to (or perhaps forced to) cut around their faces as much as possible.  On one hand I dig the mystique this builds where your imagination kind of fills in what you can’t see.  On the other hand it’s just a bizarre decision to stick to for the entire runtime.  In the end I think I might like it?  It’s a little different.

Gotta say the set design is fantastic.  The dilapidated shack of horrors that our leads stumble onto is wonderfully filthy and gross with plenty of body parts in jars and trash everywhere and vehicles strewn about from previous victims.

What I Didn’t Like: This is a very straightforward slasher picture with not much going on story-wise.  You got your standard group of twenty-somethings roaming the backroads, getting stranded and fighting for their lives.  That’s fine.  What’s unfortunate is the mountain men aren’t given any backstory or personality.  They’re simply silent murderous ogres who have little interaction with each other.  We don’t know why they do what they do or what their deal is at all.  That with the shot selection and editing choice to not show them very much makes these guys sorta forgettable.

Overall Impressions: Wrong Turn is a workmanlike slasher.  It’s not bad but it’s not great either.  I mean it’s competently made and everything but a bit flat.  They don’t expand on the obvious influences of Deliverance, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes or subvert expectations by throwing in a left turn twist or anything.  It’s right down the middle.

Maybe the most intriguing thing is that for some reason this spawned five sequels and a reboot.  I only vaguely remember hearing about the original when it came out so to have that kind of legacy is a touch surprising.  And don’t worry, we won’t be taking a detour down that mountain road.

Harefooted Halloween: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

What I Liked: This film is famous for two things and one is the makeup effects.  To transition from Jekyll to Hyde makeup effects artist Wally Westmore (Double Indemnity) and director Rouben Mamoulian (The Mark of Zorro) applied layers of different colors to Fredric March’s face that were revealed in real time through various colored filters in front of the camera.  The end result is arresting.  The shift is so smooth and quick that it looks impossible.  On top of this March is gagging and writhing in agony accentuating his now ghastly discolored face.  Just incredible.  The other transformation scenes are very well done too with the camera panning down to March’s hands to show them turning a darker color and then quick panning up to his face that is either in the midst of transforming or has already fully converted over.  I think a key element to selling these scenes is how fast the changeover is.  It’s not instantaneous but it isn’t dwelled upon either as if to nudge you in the ribs while saying “hey check this out!”  All convincing and marvelous decisions.  I had to rewind these scenes a couple of times to soak them all up including one showing Jekyll only from the back when he suddenly starts to eerily grow taller.

If you came for the effects then you’ll stay for the other famous aspect, Fredric March’s (The Best Years of Our Lives) performance.  He pulls off the genial and amorous Dr. Jekyll and the barbarous and hateful Mr. Hyde perfectly.  We see that as Jekyll he cares for his patients, has a good rapport with his colleagues and friends and dearly loves his fiancé, Muriel (Rose Hobart (Wolf of New York)).  But we also glean that he’s impatient and impulsive.  For example, he hates that his future father-in-law won’t move up the wedding date or when Muriel goes out of town for a month that’s when he decides to take the potion to turn himself into Hyde because he doesn’t know what to do with himself.  As Mr. Hyde March successfully pivots to an entirely different persona.  Aside from outwardly appearing more ape-like (inspiration was a Neanderthal) with a helmet of matted hair on his head, more hair in general, a forward brow, a larger wider nose, buck teeth with top and bottom fangs and a darker complexion, March alters his voice to be gravellier, moves sharply and speedily like a squirrel, has facial ticks where he can’t stop moving his mouth, creepily smiles most of the time and acts like a total piece of shit to everyone he comes in contact with.  It’s one thing for Hyde to look beastly but boy, he definitely acts like a goddamn monster (more on that in a minute).  Part of what makes March so good here is he gives you the sense that Jekyll has some unsettling shit bubbling beneath the surface so the leap to Hyde isn’t insurmountable.  His portrayal is truly sad where you feel for Jekyll’s inability to get a handle on his circumstance.  He feels horrible about the choices he’s made and attempts to make good but Hyde’s devastation is inescapable.

Miriam Hopkins (The Heiress) as prostitute Ivy Pierson is just as compelling.  Jekyll shows her kindness when she needed help so she sorta falls for him.  He can’t seem to forget about her either and as Hyde he chases after her.  The moment Ivy lays eyes on Hyde she’s appalled by his appearance but tries to keep it together.  She’s able to entertain him for a moment but soon after runs for the exit.  Tragically she’s held prisoner and, well, uh, oh jeez, I’m pretty sure the implication is that she’s repeatedly raped by him over the course of a month.  I don’t think you can interpret the situation any other way.  Hyde’s torture extends to psychological abuse as well with him constantly questioning her devotion and remaining physically close to her whenever they’re in the room together.  It’s suffocating to watch.  And man, Hopkins gives a masterful and completely heartbreaking performance.  She’s absolutely terrified but doesn’t know what to do.  She’s too scared to run away or fight back.  She pleads with Jekyll to help her but of course, she’s unknowingly tipping off Hyde that she’s looking for a way out.  It’s unbelievable how awful this character is treated.  Hopkins makes you wanna leap in there and save her.

A third, and lesser talked about element, is the camerawork.  From the very start cinematographer Karl Struss (The Great Dictator, Some Like it Hot) uses a POV shot of Jekyll playing the organ, checking himself in the mirror, riding a buggy to the lecture hall and greeting his colleagues.  It’s weird and different.  Struss employs this POV technique several times with the mirror work being the most impressive where he has to sync March’s movements in the mirror with what’s happening directly in front of the camera.  And I’m no expert but a bunch of other angles and camera moves used throughout I think are unique for the early 30’s.  He gets shots that are more like what you would see decades later in the 50’s or 60’s.  I never knew this type of camerawork existed at that time.  Stunning and remarkable.

Finally, the set design is beautiful.  Jekyll’s mad scientist laboratory has all the wonderful hallmarks like a million glass tubes of various solutions bubbling away, smoke, fire, paperwork scattered about, dramatic lighting, the works.  Dance halls and sex worker quarters are filthy, the streets are foggy, the lecture hall is grand, Jekyll’s and Muriel’s homes are enormous and opulent.  Additionally, the world the characters live in has a labyrinthine quality that’s slightly disorientating.

What I Didn’t Like: Sure, I could bring up some nitpicks like Hyde’s teeth are so bulky March clearly has some difficulty speaking in them, there are these counter-clockwise scene transition wipes that tend to awkwardly start before the current scene is finished, everyone pronounces Jekyll’s name “Jeek-all” instead of “Jeck-all” which I’m sure is more accurate if a touch distracting, but I mean everything else is so expertly crafted none of this shit matters that much.

Overall Impressions: A classic for sure.  This is by far the best version of Jekyll and Hyde I’ve seen (haven’t checked out the infamous 1920 silent version yet though).  Not only is it captivating, devastating, thrilling, moving and disturbing but it’s also scandalous.  This was made pre-Hays Code so there’s suggestive stuff like bare leg, side boob, implied rape and brutal head bashing with a cane.  Damn.

If you thought the Jekyll and Hyde concept was dumb or hokey or a metaphor for human nature that’s too on the nose then try this one out.  I can’t recommend it enough.

Final Destination Wrap Up

We made it guys!  At least I hope we did.  Death could still be stalking us so let’s wrap this sonuvabitch up.

Prior to this run I had seen parts 3 and 4 when they came out and pieces of the rest over the years.  I knew what I was in for and I gotta say the series delivered.  From the very start these insane complex deaths are what got people interested in the concept and they kept rolling them out every few years.  The premonition part of the ordeal isn’t focused on too much and that’s for the best.  It doesn’t matter how or why a character has a vision of doom because there’s no time, the devastation is right around the corner.  Your attention needs to be on the next event if you hope to stop it.  So there’s an immediacy to the series that keeps the train right on rolling without distractions.  Even though we know from part 2 or 3 on that death is inescapable it’s still mesmerizing to see how the events unfold.  We can’t wait to see what the filmmakers will come up with next and are engaged despite basically knowing where it’s going.  That’s a quirky viewing relationship to have.

A key component to keeping the audience tuned in, and part of what makes these breeze by so quickly, are all the red herrings.  Each sequence has a dozen moving parts with the potential for all or none of them to be involved in the final deathblow.  The construction of every deathtrap is mind boggling but your brain tries to figure it out anyway.  Equal attention is paid to the pieces that ultimately will and will not have an impact on the end result.  Therefore the outcome becomes impossible to predict.  This is unique to the series.

Another distinct aspect is that the villain is a never seen Death.  Yea he’s some sorta transparent blob in the first film but they do away with that in the sequels.  The only form he takes consistently is the wind.  That’s smart.  There’s no need to put a face on the threat since everything is supposed to look like an accident.

And that leads to yet another special quality the franchise possesses.  There’s an it-could-happen-to-you tilt to them.  You could call it Freak Accident: The Movie but of course they’re not really accidents, the Reaper is orchestrating everything.  Despite that I still think people view at least some of the incidents as plausible real life events.  In a lot of other horror pictures you’re presented with scenarios that are extremely unlikely to occur, like being attacked by a maniac killer with a chainsaw or being eaten by zombies.  I think most folks can understand and compartmentalize that along with things that carry some kind of inherent risk like driving a car or working in a factory.  However, these movies propose that simply going to the salon to get your hair done or getting a massage or ordering takeout at a drive thru, stuff that’s not innately dangerous, could also end in tremendous disaster.  That’s a big part of what makes the premise of the series so ingenious and captivating.  As bonkers as the setups are there’s a strange relatability to the whole affair.  Mundane people carrying out mundane tasks could result in a horrific demise, your horrific demise.  So you better watch out the next time you cook dinner.

I need to mention the legendary Tony Todd (Candyman, The Crow) makes an appearance in all the pictures except part 4.  He hams it up in parts 1 and 2 as a coroner/autopsy guy where he has dramatic entrances, corpses he fiddles with and a sinister aura.  Cool.  At first I thought he might be the stand in for Death but apparently that’s not the case.  He’s the sage that somehow has knowledge of what’s going on, although he’s never very helpful to our protagonists.

These movies fall into two categories, the serious ones (parts 1, 3 and 5) and the silly ones (parts 2 and 4).  And I much prefer the silly ones.  Part 5 is the most serious where nearly all the traps are treated with an almost Saw-like solemnness.  They do throw in a handful of bad (and even disgustingly racist) jokes but it’s straight faced.  Part 4 is the silliest which has a couple of the wackiest setups (ex: getting your head stuck in the car’s sunroof while rolling through a carwash).  Overall I think part 2 just edges out part 4 as my favorite because it balances the humor with the nastiness of the killings better.  They also minimize the narrative between the “accidents” making them more streamlined.  I fully admit that should be a gigantic strike against them however, it works somehow.  I do wanna give a shoutout to the original as my third favorite.  It’s definitely a solid movie that laid the groundwork for everything that came after it.  All things considered it’s maybe technically the best of the bunch.  From what I gather most fans prefer the serious ones so I’m probably alone on my rankings.  But to be clear, even though I have a preference for the lighter toned entries I don’t hate any of them.  None are miserable to sit through or anything.  They’re all enjoyable which is not an easy feat for any franchise.

What’s even more amazing is that each installment is the same goddamn movie.  Sure, a lot of horror sequels tend to stick to a formula and repeat stuff but I mean these are EXACTLY the same.  Every time we’re starting over from scratch (give or take part 2) so a new set of characters go through the same trauma, have the same questions about what’s going on, make the same discoveries, try the same methods to invalidate Death’s list, someone’s turn to die gets skipped, the survivors think they’ve finally cheated Death but eventually realize they’re wrong and everyone dies anyway.  At least the Saws have a soap opera woven into the narrative but this is purely deathtraps.  Yet they still satisfy.  I guess the main gimmick is strong enough that all other elements can be reduced to their lowest state and miraculously the thing still flies.  Wow.

If a different type of Destination were made, a sober or perhaps philosophical version, you would need to flip the focus of the main sections.  The story would need to be driven by strong characters who approach their predicament in varying ways.  Their background, social standing and economic status would inform how they take the news and what they might do to alter their destiny.  Most of the focus should be on these areas.  The deaths would need to be reduced to simple acts like a fall down the stairs or a mix-up in medications or something to avert suspicion.  No bizarre intricate concoctions.  Fake outs may be ok.  And this picture might already exist for all I know.  It could be compelling.  But look, if we’re not gonna do that then I want the comical zaniness of parts 2 and 4.

So yea, these are fun.  I totally get why there are five of them (with more on the way).  That’s pretty wild considering there’s no real continuing narrative to speak of.  If anything I would put them in the anthology category although that doesn’t feel entirely accurate either.  Doesn’t really matter.  The point is they’re a good time.  Not only are they impressively creative but they’re so damn easy to watch.  It’s a bunch of crazy ideas for deaths strung together with a bare minimum plot all in ninety mins or less.  I’ve already compared them to the Saw pictures a couple of times and that’s because they’re sorta similar.  You have a chain of elaborate deathtraps involving victims that share a connection to one another.  The big difference is instead of some asshole coordinating everything it’s Death/God/Nature.  Spooky.