The Last Exorcism

The horror documentary--a brilliant bit of filmmaking if done right, a curious experiment if not.  Either way, the mocumentary filmmaker is ahead of game because idea itself so novel.  For starters, the documentary format precludes any notions of disbelief--it goes step further than the mere willing suspension of disbelief, and presents itself immediately as "real" and "true".  Following on that, documentaries are, quite often, understood to be authoritarian and decisive and their content is therefore considered to be the "most" real and "most" true.  For these reason, the horror mocumentary is in a unique position compared to other genre entries.  Not only is its audience more ready to believe right away in its story and characters, the audience is more likely to invest itself in the proceedings because there is less of a separation between the real people watching and the "real" people on screen.

The Last Exorcism initially succeeds in recreating the look and feel of a real documentary, but ultimately fails to maintain that verisimilitude.  The film is hampered largely by its ending, which manages to destroy the reality of the documentary format.  We're not talking Last Broadcast-levels of narrative sabotage, but upon termination, The Last Exorcism ceases to be "real".  Additionally, the film also suffers from sloppy writing, though only in parts.  Characters are good, direction is good (with exception of a couple of staged scenes), and plot, for the most part, is good.  The film is worth watching.

The premise is this: Reverend Cotton Marcus, with a documentary crew in tow, heads into the Louisiana backwoods to perform an exorcism on a teen-aged girl called Nell.  It seems like a fairly straight-forward affair, but about ten minutes in, the film faces a bit of a problem.  Namely, its very premise teeters on the brink of total annihilation because Marcus is a showman and doesn't believe in exorcism.  He may not even believe in God.  Marcus reasons that if God exists, then demons exist, but since Marcus doesn't believe in demons, the unspoken conclusion is that he also doesn't believe in God.  Exorcism is a scam, Marcus explains, and this had me worried--what is this documentary about, how and why is it being made?  My fears were laid to rest when Marcus reveals that he hired the documentary crew to film him while he performs one last exorcism in which he intends to prove demon possession is make-believe.

This, of course, is a rather uninspired set-up for demon possession being real.  And, in what may or may not be a twist end, it is.  Pedestrian is too harsh a term to describe The Last Exorcism's plot, but its simplicity lent it a potential that wasn't fully realized.  The film, like all others of its ilk, deals with themes of psychology and sex, and goes one step further to take on sexual abuse.  Although he's a small-town preacher, Marcus is no slouch.  He understands the intersection of religion and psychology and knows that he can and has helped people in the past with his "exorcisms".  In the case of Nell, the initial exorcism doesn't work and Marcus chalks it up to deeper psychological problems, likely brought on by abuse at the hands of her depressed alcoholic father.  All this is good stuff and the film touches on the subject of religious mania in a way not seen since Agnes of God, but it falls short of making any meaningful point about beliefs and reality precisely because demon possession is proved true.

The last twenty minutes or so of the film is a series of revelations, the first being that Nell is pregnant.  Following that, Nell admits to having sex with a local boy, Logan.  It would appear the film is over at this point.  Marcus has proved his point about "demon possession" and Nell's father, who adamantly believed his daughter was at the mercy of the demon Abalam, has accepted the truth about Nell.  Were the film to end here, it still would have been an interesting, if maybe a little anticlimactic essay on religion.  But when Marcus learns that Logan is gay, his returns to Nell's house only to find her tied to an alter in the woods, at the centre of a Satanic mass.  She gives birth to a monster which is promptly sacrificed to the cultists' god.  Marcus, now faced with incontrovertible proof that demons exists, must accept that God, too, is real.  He charges into the midst of the Satanists, cross raised high as the documentary crew flee into the woods.  First the sound recordist is killed, then the camera man.  Roll credits.  This ending is not only predictable, it's expected.  And it has the unfortunate effect of destroying all pretense of the film being real.

The film lacks a framing story.  There is no disclaimer at the start of the movie describing how we're watching found footage.  So when the cameraman dies and the movie ends, the audience is left to wonder how and why this film was released; it would be in the Satanists' best interest to destroy the video. The head Satanist himself knew Marcus was filming a documentary, but the film, through its very existence, gives him no credit.  And this is a community that exists right under the noses of the entire county population.

I mentioned, too, the ending was expected.  The film heavily foreshadows how each person will die--the presence of demons being a foregone conclusion.  Nell is a bit of an artist, and while in her possessed state, she made a collage that depicts Marcus facing off against a fire, the recordist in pieces on the ground, and a decapitated cameraman.  Discovery of the picture prompts a brief discussion about whether Marcus and co. should just leave the house.  The consensus is to stay.  Later on, when things get weird and dangerous, no mention is made of the pictures, no thought given to their portents.  So, in the same way the film refuses to give credit to the Satanists, it also fails credit the heroes with any cunning.

This total lack of self-awareness is further apparent by Marcus' reference to The Exorcist.  He's seen the movie but he and everyone else fail to recognize their own horror movie-like experience.  This handicapping causes problems later on when the film devolves, spiraling downward into predictable behaviour patterns.  People stay when they should leave, and rationalize when they should freak out. 

The film isn't all sloppy writing, and the writers prove themselves to be entirely capable of creating some complexity through delayed pay-off.  Nell's brother, Caleb, might be the best written character in the movie, although he has a relatively minor role.  At first he antagonizes Marcus and when he finds out Marcus is a fraud, accepts him.  When Caleb asks Marcus to protect Nell from their father, everyone believes this is because Dad might be a child abuser.  But Caleb's motivations are different than what they appear to be.  At the end of the movie, Caleb is revealed to be a Satanist.  Only then do we realize that Caleb wasn't protecting Nell out of brotherly love, he was protecting her fetus out of loyalty and devotion to Satan.  Sadly, Caleb is the only example of deeper planning and forethought in The Last Exorcism as they relate to character.  It is my sincere hope we see more writing like this in the future.

But for the present, we have to contend with half-finished characters and a plot undercut by its premise.  That's not to say The Last Exorcism isn't interesting, it's just not exceptional.  Demons exist, a fact suggested by the film's title, and made clear toward the end of the movie.  But when the end comes, demons seem old hat.  Well, of course it's Satanists.  What else could it be but Satanists?


If the writers knew their Lovecraft, they could have mined that well for a truly creative twist to their story.  Early in the film, the documentarians stop to question some locals.  Here, the idea is planted that cultists exist somewhere in the woods.  This is then quickly downplayed by the suggestion aliens once landed nearby, and the "streeters" scene is meant largely as a friendly ribbing of gullible, unsophisticated country folk.  But still, the notion of cults is lodged in subconscious and it is vindicating to learn there really is a group of evil cultists chanting dark rituals betwixt the trees.  Only it's Satanists when it should, in fact, be the cult of Cthulhu.

In "The Call of Cthulhu", Lovecraft establishes the bayou as a major centre of Cthulhu cultism, and in "The Dunnwich Horror", he details how a person might be impregnated by Yog-Shothoth.  In The Last Exorcism, Nell has been impregnated by a demon, and the cultists hold a ritual in the Louisiana backwoods to birth the baby and bring forth their dark lord.  All the elements necessary to create a Lovecraftian tale of horror are there, but by either accident or design, the movie tragically falls short of the mark.

In spite of these criticisms, the film is, as I said, worth watching.  Where most other recent horror mocumentaries are found-footage type movies, this one is structured as a professionally filmed and edited doc.  Although it suffers a from a self-terminating logic problem, and some bad writing, everyone turns in a good performance and it's always interesting to see how filmmakers develop themes of religion, faith, and belief

From Beyond

I think I might have reached the Lovecraft saturation point.  In fact, I'm sure I have.  I've read so much Lovecraft that I forget what I have and have not yet read.  That's not to say that I've read enough Lovecraft, nor that I'm close to having read all of Lovecraft.  When that happens, I'm sure I'll be in a different place--physically, mentally, and psychically--where I'll no longer need or care for books, movies, or three dimensions.  I'll go out on a limb and say the Lovecraft saturation point is a good thing, but the problem arose when I sat down to watch From Beyond, I wasn't entirely sure if I'd read the story.

I haven't, by the way.

Crawford Tillinghast is assistant to Dr. Edward Pretorius.  Together they build a device that stimulates the pineal gland and allows the operator to see that which exists around us, invisible, at all times.  Afraid of the things he sees, Tillinghast destroys the machine, but not before Pretorius merges with the invisible dimension.  Tillinghast is committed and soon becomes the charge of eminent psychiatrist Dr. Katherine McMichaels.  Eager to recreate the experiment that resulted in Pretorius' death, McMichaels forces Tillinghast to rebuild the device.  Once turned on, a mutated Pretorius appears to the unfortunate scientists and attempts to murder his way back into visible reality.

To be perfectly honest, I can't decide whether I like this movie.  I feel like I probably should because it's Stuart Gordon's follow-up to Re-Animator and it stars Jeffery Combs, but for some reason, I just can't commit. I think it's because From Beyond, for all its creative grossness, isn't very good.

When Lovecraft is adapted, more often than not the stories are given a contemporary setting.  If you've got an eye for atmosphere, this isn't a problem.  Much of Lovecraft's appeal is in the creeping dread that permeates his tales.  New England is a lovely part of the United States with its rolling hills, quaint towns, and liberalism.  Lovecraft casts a dark, otherworldly shadow over all that fresh pastoralism.  Stuart Gordon, competent filmmaker though he is, simply cannot recreate that same atmosphere of intense, ineffable fear.

Gordon has made five Lovecraft adaptions to date, and the four that I've seen have all featured some great special effects.  The Pretorius-creature is particularly disgusting, as is Tillinghast's "third eye" which protrudes from his forehead like a bloody angler fish.  Not gonna lie, the movie kind of grossed me out, but that's about all it managed to do.  Additionally, the story has this weird sexual angle that seems wholly out of place, and which manages to gain narrative control over the characters and events.

From Beyond, the story, is not hailed among Lovecraft's greater accomplishments, despite its interesting plot.  The same can be said of the film adaptation.  What could have been an impressively gross movie about our delicate grasp on sensual reality is instead a tawdry film about the evils of sexual awakening.  I'll stick to Hellraiser for that.

Do You Read Sutter Cane?

In the Mouth of Madness

I think this poster sums up the movie better than I ever could.

I didn't understand this movie the first time I saw it and it scared me. I still don't understand this movie, but it doesn't scare me anymore. Not really...

Sam Neill is an insurance investigator asked by a publishing house to locate a missing author and his manuscript. The author in question is one Sutter Cane, a man who writes Lovecraftian-style horror but with the wide market appeal of Stephen King (weirdly, I identified him as more a Peter Straub or Dean Koontz type though I have never actually read or know anything about either one). Sam Neill is joined by Cane's editor and the two of them head to New Hampshire to find Hobb's End, the town where Cane is shaked up. Problem is, Hobb's End is not a real town. But they find it anyway. Things get really weird when Syles, the editor, starts telling Sam Neill that Cane is creating reality, which is backed up by the townsfolk who claim to be characters in a book. Weird turns to downwright fucked up when Cane himself explains that he's writting the end of the world, that he's opening a portal through which evil Lovecraft-inspired monsters will arrive on Earth and destroy humanity. Sam Neill escapes Hobb's End and destroys Cane's final and deadly book. Sort of. He also travels back in time, or maybe forward, and delivers the book to Charleton Heston. The book is published, turned into a movie, and the story ends with Sam Neill watching the film you just saw.

So very Lovecraft and yet so very not.

It kind of reminds me of that scene in Spaceballs where Lord Helmet and Colonel Sanders are watching Spaceballs. Only that was funny and this is very hard to understand. In the Mouth of Madness doesn't just play with the concept of reality and turn the film medium in on itself, it uses film to first deconstruct the notion of reality, and then to alter the reality of the story. And it is impossible to know where the break happens, where the movie becomes the story in the story.

That's not to say the movie isn't any good or doesn't make any sense. The move is pretty good and it does make a kind of sense. It feels more like a Carpenter movie should, with a slow build-up to an inconcievable or unstoppable horror. Desperation, perseverence, and monsters are all present and accounted for. This is the third film to deal with otherworldly evil, and the second to address isssues of religion and creation. It is the first to manifest alternate realities as human mutation. In the Mouth of Madness isn't nearly as creepy as some of his other films, but it is, by far, the craziest yet.

It also has one of the best disclaimers ever: "Human interaction was monitored by the Inter Planetary Psychiatric Association. The body count was high, the casualties are heavy."

craze-o-meter: 4.5, wtf?

This man will fuck up your shit.

The Mist

When I was 14 I went through a Stephen King phase. It was all I read. The first one I picked up was Eyes of the Dragon. A strange introduction to the man's oeuvre, considering it's more fantasy than horror. But I was hooked and for the next year or so, I read my way through his catalog. I came across The Mist early in my reading and I liked it very much. At the time, I wasn't too familiar with the idea of an other-worldly horror as it would be years before I finally picked up Lovecraft. Supernatural, sure, but an actual physical horror that was unlike anything in our real world? So although tentacles snaking out of a dense fog was somewhat preposterous, I gave over to the possibility and immersed myself in the The Mist.

When news reached my ears of a movie version of the story, I was excited/curious/skeptical/and hungry all at once. Almost all the action takes place within the confines of a supermarket. The sense of claustrophobia and isolation that pervades the novella, could that transfer to the screen? The answer, it seems, is yes. Rue Morgue claimed The Mist as the best feature film in its year-end review for 2007 (just beating out Planet Terror). Described as being "the thinking man's creature feature", this under-appreciated movie is about a group of people holed up in a grocery store after their small town is drowned in a thick white mist. There are things, unnamed things in the mist that will eat you up so you daren't go outside.

Thomas Jane plays David Drayton, just a regular guy with a regular wife and kid, who lives in a regular small town. Not terribly important to the plot, David is an artist who paints movie posters. However, in the first few moments of the film, the audience is treated to a glimpse of David's work and a foreshadowing of the themes that are to be explored over the next 120 minutes. The artwork on display in David's studio are posters for The Thing (paranoia and isolation), Pan's Labyrinth (subversion and innocence), The Shawshank Redemption (redemption and truth), and The Dark Tower (self-serving motives perhaps? I only read the first book of the series and don't remember much about it except that I didn't like it a whole lot).

A bad storm one night knocks out the power and the phones in Castle Rock, and the following morning a mist rolls down from the mountains. David takes his son, Billy, into to town to stock up on groceries. With them comes their neighbour Brent, a big city lawyer and a bit of a jerk. The supermarket is crowded and the lines are moving slowly as there is no power to run the cash registers, but everyone is on their very best behaviour, brought together through their shared suffering. Then Dan comes running into the store, bleeding from the nose and screaming. He says there are things in the mist that took his friend. All too soon the mist engulfs the store and everyone is trapped inside.

I remember in the story the people in the store are divided into two camps: the believers and what David calls the Flat Earth Society. Frustratingly, I can't remember whether the Flat Earthers are represented by Brent, the disbelieving jerk, or Mrs. Carmody, the local religious fanatic who claims the mist and its monsters were sent by God to punish the wicked. Either way, the power struggle between reason, logic, and religion that underscore the story in the book are what drive the action in the film.

What I'm sure isn't in the novella is the military presence that permeates the movie. Though The Mist is in no way a propagandist film, the filmmakers still felt a need to muse on war. Partway through the movie, in a scene which completely breaks the suspension of disbelief, the situation in Castle Rock is compared to the situation in Iraq. This kind of thing pisses me off; in a film that has nothing to do with Iraq, why do the filmmakers feel it's necessary to bring it up? Is it to make the story more present, to give the audience a frame of reference? But then why, in a fictional movie about fictional events taking place in a fictional town, is such a grounding in reality needed in the first place? The mere mention of the war only lessens the horrors taking place in the world of the film because tentacled man-eating things from Dimension X can't possibly compare to the horrors that await Private Jessup in Iraq.

The ending, too, is different although no less depressing. I'll agree with Dan who suggests ending the movie a minute before the credits roll. I might even go so far as to suggest ending the movie five minutes earlier. In the book David and Billy drive off into the unknown clinging to a faint and dwindling hope that humanity still has a foothold in this world. Though over the course of the film we come to learn what's living in the mist, we still have no idea how much of the world has been swallowed up. Then comes the end, and all the mystery and uncertainty that gave the story its edge is, quite literally, burned away.

But The Mist isn't the kind of movie you watch for its end. Though hardly a character study, it does present a cynical and pessimistic view of humanity. The skepticism I felt when I first heard about the adaptation has now been replaced with a happy acceptance; The Mist is a good movie. But I'm not convinced it's better than Planet Terror.