Is there a place for friendship in horror movies? (The Exorcist III)

There's a scene in the Exorcist III where Father Dyer and Detective Kinderman are out at the movies to watch It's a Wonderful Life. It's a movie they've both seen dozens of times, but they keep going. After the movie they're standing in the lobby, and Detective Kinderman says,

"Well, I suppose you have all sorts of rosary biz, and the like."

"Nope," Father Dyer says, "Loose as a goose. Maybe you should go home and get some rest."

"I can't go home yet," Kinderman says. 

"Why?"

"The carp."

"You know, I thought you said..." 

Then Kinderman puts his hand on his friend's shoulder, his face deadly serious.

"My wife's mother is visiting, father," he says. "And tuesday night she's cooking us a carp. It's a tasty fish - I have nothing against it. But because it's supposedly filled with impurities, she buys it live. And for three days it's been swimming up and down in my bathtub." He pauses, and Father Dyer is trying to keep from laughing. "Up. And down," Kinderman says, "and I hate it."

The best parts of the Exorcist III are these quiet conversations between Father Dyer and Detective Kinderman. There's so much care put into these scenes, so much understanding of the tangential affection of friendships. They talk about murders and movies and fish and Women's Wear Daily, and every single conversation seems to be an expression of their friendship. You see it in the way they smile at one another's jokes even though they've clearly heard the same joke a dozen times before. I didn't expect this kind of warm banter in a sequel to the Exorcist.

The horror in the movie ranges from the cheesy to the brilliantly surreal. The movie is all over the place, and you can clearly tell where the studio tried to force the director to change the movie so it was more like the original Exorcist. But it wasn't the demon howling serial killer scenes that were the most effective. It was the scene where you realize that Father Dyer has been killed. And it was the scenes following this, where you see Detective Kinderman's pain at losing his friend. 

This is a movie I watch again and again, though I often turn it off before the end. It is one of the best movie friendships I've ever seen, and I wish more horror movies had this kind of understanding of relationships. It's not as easy to come up with characters who work well together as it is to come up with grisly ways to kill them off, but it sure does make a difference when they do. Characters that we care about, and who care about one another can make horror so much more harrowing. I've been trying to think of other horror movies with relationships that have made an impression on me the way this one has.

The two that come to mind are Let the Right One In, and Red Dragon. Let the Right One In is built entirely on the relationship between the two children. Their friendship is largely unspoken and yet it's the heart of the movie. The same is true of Red Dragon, a movie I think has been underrated. Anthony Hopkins is entertaining as Hannibal Lecter, sure, but it is the unexpectedly beautiful relationship between serial killer Ralph Fiennes and his blind girlfriend Emily Watson that provides the emotional impact of the movie. It made Fiennes so much more full and exciting as a villain than the cartoonish Buffalo Bill from the original Silence of the Lambs. 

Villains are scarier if we understand them more. 

The Last Exorcism is an intelligent and ambitious mess.

The Last Exorcism is another handy-cam horror movie, though one that has an interesting premise. 

It takes the form of a documentary about a preacher who has been preaching since he was a boy, and who has performed dozens of exorcisms. They're just an extension of his act, as far as he's concerned. It's undeniably fun watching someone poke fun at the church from inside, but it's not really all that inventive or interesting. The pastor is very charming. He gives a sermon where he throws in a banana bread recipe, and nobody seems to notice, and that's funny. But when the movie starts looking at the danger involved when people with real problems turn to religion for help, that's when it caught my attention.

The pastor admits to the camera that he knows these are troubled people, psychologically, but he justified this to himself by saying that often the exorcisms actually help them, even if it's just the idea of being healed that helps them heal. But he's started to have second thoughts after he reads about a boy being killed in the process of an exorcism. The boy was not possessed, he was autistic, which hits close to home. This preacher's own son has disabilities. That's why he's agreed to this documentary. He wants to expose exorcism as a scam. He doesn't want anyone else hurt.

But what starts as a documentary exposing himself and exorcism as a sham, turns into something else entirely. And I don't just mean that it turns out the victim is really possessed. Because the interesting twists take place while that is still unclear. 

The documentary follows the preacher as he reads his mail and emails and selects someone who claims to need an exorcism. He makes a glib show of skimming the letter he chooses to respond to, "blah blah blah livestock mutilations. blah blah blah demonic possession," and so it isn't until after they arrive at the Louisiana farm where the family lives that he realizes it's a young girl named Nell who is supposedly possessed. "I don't like dealing with children," he confides to the camera.

Nell is very innocent and timid. She's home schooled, and is thrilled just to be around people from the real world. She's also possibly murdering her father's cattle.

When the fake exorcism doesn't work, the movie spirals through a series of revelations, the whole time showing Nell in creepier and creepier situations. She distorts and climbs furniture, and badly slashes her brothers face, but the whole time it only becomes less clear whether she is possessed or not. When they learn that Nell is pregnant, the camera crew falls apart, yelling at each other, unable to agree how to deal with sexual abuse. This isn't what they're here for, but they can't just pretend it isn't their problem now, especially not after they've convinced the alcoholic and possibly violent father that his daughter's soul is in danger.

Female sexuality is always treated in horror movies as a part of the horrifying possession, as is the sexuality of the young, so it is creepy, for instance, when Linda Blair (in the movie The Exorcist) is saying filthy sexual things. There's a demon saying these things through a little kid. But it's different here. When the possession isn't certain, this explicit vulgarity and sexual agression could just as easily be a frustrated and confused girl who has no idea how to deal with or understand the abuse and repression she's suffered. It becomes terrifying in a different way.

This is a movie that built slowly and subtly, and got more and more difficult to peg as it progressed. But it ends on a simplistic, unsatisfying note. I was so frustrated by the end of this movie. But I think it would be a mistake to dismiss the movie because of that. Everything up til the end is more than worth your time. The actress who plays Nell is amazing, as is her brother. And the preacher is every bit as charming as he thinks he is. This is a movie that will satisfy and engage right up until the end. 

The end itself is dog garbage.

Valentine's Day gift ideas you probably won't find at Hallmark.

The Holiday Gift guide you were hoping never to see?

1. Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill. A cheerful, festive title! Happy Valentine's Day! Tell them that you bought the book on eBay and that it comes with a ghost! How come nobody ever gave me a vengeful ghost for Valentine's Day?

2. Let the Right One In. A vampire film that is really a love story between a boy and a girl who is "not really a girl." Romantic! Also it is a secret test to see if they realize how oh my god depressing the happy ending is.

3. The End of Alice by A. M. Holmes. The first story I ever read by A. M. Holmes was about a boy who was secretly dating his sister's Barbie doll. The story had weird overtones of the sister abusing Barbie, and it ended with the boy using Ken as a sex toy. Now imagine that writer writing a book about murderous pedophiles. This is the perfect gift.

4. Little tales of Misogyny by Patricia Highsmith. Patricia Highsmith is one of my absolute favourite writers, and this book is not why. It is almost entirely hateful, to women in particular but also just to everyone. If Valentine's day is rolling around, and you haven't been able to break things off, give them this book and tell them it really speaks to you.

5. If, on the other hand, Valentine's day is rolling around and you are starting to think they might be the one, you could get them Highsmith's far superior The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder. A book of animals killing the people who mistreat them. It is just as nasty as the Misogyny book, but this is the kind of nasty anyone can get behind. And true love loves to hate together.

More screaming: The Others (2001)

The Others opens with a scream. Nicole Kidman screams herself awake. She sits up in bed, confused and off balance and we watch as she realizes where she is. We watch her come to the conclusion that it must have been a nightmare that woke her up. Without any other information, the audience is left believing it was a nightmare, too. It feels cheap at first, to open with a scream that doesn't mean anything, but as the movie goes on it becomes clear that this isn't a movie built on cheap scares. The scream is a clue, and it's the good kind of clue, where you don't realize what it is until you're looking back on the movie trying to make sense of things.

Later in the film there's another scream. One of the children is screaming, and Nicole Kidman has to unlock a series of doors in the house to get to them, scrambling and panicking as we hear the voice screaming for its mother. It's tense, sure, but it isn't scary until she opens that final door and the boy is just sitting there calmly. It wasn't him that screamed. The screaming starts again, and this time it sounds more like the girl, and so Nicole Kidman starts running again, and again her child is just sitting there with her homework. It takes the tense panic of a horror movie scream and at the last second it twists it into an unsettling quiet moment instead.

The Others is such a great ghost story. I'm going to give away the twist ending here, but this movie came out a decade ago, and there is a scene at the end that I have to mention. And, I think it should be said that the twist in this movie is anything but a gimmick. Watching it again, knowing the twist, only made the movie more satisfying.

At the end, when you learn that Nicole Kidman and her children are dead, there is an unexpectedly touching moment where they are leaning against the wall, hugging, and she tells them about their murders and her suicide. She tells them about how she put the gun to her forehead and pulled the trigger and then... nothing. And how suddenly she could hear their laughter in the next room! God had given her another chance! And then one of the children says, "are we in limbo?" and she says she doesn't know. She doesn't even know if limbo exists. It's a moment of honesty that is very satisfying from a character who has been trying to deny what she knows for the whole movie. This whole scene is such a satisfying conclusion to the relationship arcs between the characters that you almost forget this is a ghost story, but then she holds them tighter and says, "I do know one thing, though. This house is ours. Say it with me, children. This house is ours."

And their three voices repeat again and again, while the camera shows the empty rooms of the house, "This house is ours. This house is ours. This house is ours."

a couple short reviews for a couple bad movies

Jennifer's Body (2009) has dialogue that is sometimes painfully stupid and sometimes fun and clever. The characters talk in stylized slang that makes it clear the creators want us to see Jennifer's Body as the spiritual successor to Heathers, but slick visuals, one liners, pretty stars and a lack of any memorable substance establish this as the spiritual successor to I Know what you did last Summer. 

Final Destination (2000) looked so complicated and awesome in the trailer, and I remember having enjoyed it when it first came out. It's a fun premise - death coming for a group of teens who had avoided a plane crash. Like a gory game of mousetrap, with Rube Goldbergesque grisly deaths. But, like the actual game of mousetrap, it was cool on the commercial, but turned out to be kind of boring and stupid. I suspect this is a movie where the sequels might actually be more fun. There's a lot of potential in the premise.

Problematic and awesome: Piranha (2010)

The final half hour of Alexandre Aja's Piranha is the most entertaining thirty minute stretch of film I have seen in a long time. It took me completely by surprise. Piranha is so stupid and so over the top that it's impossible to tell whether this is meant to be a satire of excess or just an exercise in it. It ramps the nudity and gore up to ludicrous levels, but is that just because it genuinely loves tits and gore? Or is it holding those breasts up like a mirror so that we can see how ridiculous we ourselves are, as the consumers of these films? Probably not that second one, to be honest.



I don't understand the sexual politics of this movie at all. It has a maniacal embrace of the grindhouse philosophy that more naked breasts make a better movie, and it objectifies the college girls from beginning to end. But then it throws in a character for the express purpose of mocking the creator of those Girls Gone Wild videos. He's a complete slimeball who we're clearly meant to hate. And, more confusingly, we're clearly meant to hate him because he objectifies women. When one of his porn actresses is trying to pull him out of the water and to safety, he yells, "Help me you bitch." And then they give us Elizabeth Shue as the Sheriff, a no-nonsense 47 year old mom who isn't objectified but who hasn't been desexualized either, which is refreshing. But there are so many lingering wet t-shirt shots. So many ass shots. There is a naked underwater lesbian make out that is set to new age earth goddess style music and that goes on for so long that you start to worry the director forgot he wasn't actually making a porn movie himself. An insane mermaid slow motion porn movie.

And it's such a crazy aesthetic. The last half hour of this movie mixes gore with T&A so indiscriminately that it hurts to think about it too hard. A woman in a bikini gets sliced from her shoulder down diagonally to her opposite hip. She has that stunned, "I just got cut in half" look on her face, and then the bra falls open, showing off her breasts. After a moment of breast exposure, the two halves of her body slide apart with a sick wet sound, and then the top half falls lifeless toward the camera. Tit first. In slow motion 3D. A woman is para-sailing topless, and they keep her in the water too long, only to speed the boat up so that she hangs bloody and naked from the parachute. Another character is eaten from the waist down and then the Piranhas fight over his penis. Then one of them throws it up.

It's like an emotionally stunted imaginative twelve year old boy directed huge chunks of the movie. I couldn't figure it out, but I think I loved it.

is there a place for rape in horror? The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

In 2006 Alexandre Aja remade Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes, and I hated it. It consistently shows up on "Best Horror Remakes" lists, and so it is pretty safe to say that the film has its fans, but I cannot understand why. It is torture porn, through and through. There are no genuine scares - instead there are cheap shocks. There's no tension - instead there are long scenes of intense onscreen violence and mutilation. That's nothing new. The same things could be said for the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I simply disliked. It was the rape scene that made me hate The Hills Have Eyes.

Rape is a difficult topic for discussion, because there are people for whom it is never acceptable in a film. On horror message boards you often come across arguments about whether a rape scene was gratuitous or unnecessary. And one of the defences for inclusion is that, "murder is worse than rape, and murder is shown all the time." Which is a bit of a cop-out answer. While there may not be many people who have lived through an attack by nuclear waste mutated hill mutants, there are millions of survivors of rape.

There is an equally graphic rape scene in the original version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. When I saw it in theatres, two women got up and walked out, stopping at the exit to yell, "Enjoy your rape porn," at the audience. At the time my response was anger and indignation. This was my second time seeing the film, and I thought the scene was anything but gratuitous. It was graphic and painful to watch, but the focus was on the victim, and the effects the attack had on the character. It is a horrible depiction of a horrible act, but it was trying to say something and show something rather than just horrify and titillate. But while it is possible that the two women who yelled the accusation at the audience were being judgemental and harsh, it is just as possible that the rape scene took them by surprise and shocked and hurt them.

So when I say that the scene in Hills Have Eyes is gratuitous and over the line, I am not saying that there is no place in movies for uncomfortable depictions of rape. But in Hills Have Eyes, the rape is just as shallow as the murders. The murders are brutal and protracted because being brutal is easier than being imaginative - because showing torture is an easier way to put a knot in people's stomachs than building tension or suspense. The difference is that the murders are lazy and stupid and cruel to the characters while the rape is lazy and stupid and cruel to the characters and the huge chunk of the audience that has had sexual violence in their lives.

I think there is a place for all kinds of violence in good horror. It doesn't even have to be trying to make a broad societal point. And I don't think horror has an obligation to be more than a scary movie. But if rape is going to be involved, it should be for the real reasons that rape is horrifying - because the woman is a human being and she is not being treated like one.