Temple

Temple (2017)

Dir. Michael Barrett

Written by Simon Barrett, Story by Neal Edelstein, Shinya Egawa, Mike Macari

Starring Logan Huffman, Natalia Warner, Brandon Tyler Sklenar

TEMPLE (no "the") begins in the most tiresome possible way, with the lone survivor of a mysterious fatal incident being interviewed in police custody by a skeptical Japanese official (Naoto Takenaka, AZUMI, MANHUNT). The survivor’s face is bandaged to obscure his identity, which is not a good sign for viewers who don’t like to have their intelligence insulted. And that impression is reinforced as any lingering hope that this might still turn out to be the beginning of a story rather than a tedious framing narrative quickly fades with the inevitably segue into “five days earlier.” The events which would presumably be of official interests actually began the previous evening, but we’ll be getting a full five day lead-in because these particular police inspectors definitely want to hear about how this guy’s vacation went before tragedy struck. And otherwise, ahem, there probably would not be enough material here to get the film to feature length. This flashback structure will turn out to be, incidentally, both a horrible cliche and utter narrative nonsense, because the protagonists all split up for the climax, so it’s not even the survivor’s point of view we’re flashing back to. Apparently his testimony is so vivid and transporting that the listeners are able to visualize the entire story, even the parts that the teller was not present for. But thankfully they also have some found-footage to throw in there as well, just to complete the triumvirate of insufferable framing devices. What is this, an H. P. Lovecraft story?

Anyway, in the part of the movie which is not an unbearable framing narrative, a terrifyingly chipper young woman (Natalia Warner, THE DOUBLE) invites her totally platonic wink-wink male best friend (Logan Huffman, FINAL GIRL) to come to Japan and lurk just behind her and her Boyfriend (Brandon Sklenar, VICE), obsessively shooting video of them making out. As far as I can tell, this is the entire purpose of their Japanese expedition; certainly, it seems to occupy virtually all their time. Boyfriend is threatened and openly uninterested in hanging out with this random guy he’s never met before who has an intense, very touchy emotional relationship with his girlfriend. Which is, if hardly commendable, at least understandable, because Third Wheel Dude is intensely awkward and clearly interested in banging her. This is pretty much the most uncomfortable situation imaginable, which both men tactfully point out to zero acknowledgement from her, probably because she’s really more interested in having them videotape her while she gives unconvincing expository dialogue while staring into the camera with a huge fake smile and empty, terrifying eyes.

Recognizing that this is an delicate social situation, they immediately agree to all stay in the same hotel room, and of course Boyfriend and Camgirl are gonna need a better excuse than that not to have hot naked sex above the covers, which suits Third Wheelie just fine, since he can silently but not exactly subtly videotape them doing that, too. I’d say this behavior is creepy beyond belief, but guys, you fuck naked on the floor of an empty room three feet away from a pervy Jake Gyllenhaal lookin’ dude, you had to know this is what would happen. I have no idea how any of them ultimately feel about any of this, because in addition to being the three most unpleasant characters on earth, they’re also the three most placid actors on earth, spending a lot of time basically just staring vaguely into space.

I have now described by far the most terrifying section of the film, which is the part where the world’s three most intolerable white people not named ‘Trump’ vacation together. But this must eventually become some sort of horror movie, so in keeping with tradition they also take some time to establish that in addition to being profoundly socially uncomfortable, they’re all also dolts of the highest order. Third Wheel speaks Japanese, but he seems genuinely startled when a guy in a bar points out that Japanese books go from right to left, a little detail one would have assumed had come up already. He also “translates” English dialogue spoken by Japanese people to his colleagues, a habit so asinine that I've seen it played for comedy before, but which here is presented in complete earnestness. This would be infuriating enough all by itself, but when you add that he also translates basically every fucking sentence he hears into English even though we can see the subtitles --making every conversation at least twice the length it needs to be-- we’re pretty much rooting for this guy to get Temple’d to death with maximum speed. Also at one point he nods to blind guy. What a jackass.

Anyway, they end up at a bookstore and try to buy a mysterious off-inventory evil book which happens to be sitting around there, a move that distresses the bookseller enough that she immediately refuses and closes her shop, but not quite enough for her to actually say aloud “No, don’t buy that, it’s an evil book.” Fortunately, Third Wheelie returns in the dead of night, when the evil ghost child (Yamato Tazawa, Honto ni Atta Kowai Hanashi Summer Special 2016) working the midnight shift at the bookshop will happily hand him the book he wants for no payment, which he seems to think is a real validation of his clever negotiating technique. Are we sure this guy’s not a Trump?

The book in question at first seems like complete gibberish, and then some guy in a bar tells him to try reading it from right to left because it’s written in Japanese, and after that it makes perfect sense. Turns out it’s a book of hidden arcane knowledge about a secret TEMPLE that can only be entered using special knowledge of… oh wait, it’s actually right down the road, there's a bus stop and everything. The ghosts or whatever could have just handed them a tourism pamphlet. But oh well, the book does its job, because now Camgirl is absolutely fucking desperate to go to this temple, despite everyone they meet along the way politely but firmly warning them it’s evil and haunted and almost inevitably fatal and it would be a bad idea to go there, especially when there are basically more fucking temples than Starbucks in Japan and the vast majority are conveniently unhaunted. A representative incident: while they’re walking to their demise (because no one will ferry them there, you know, for fear of the evil) they meet an old guy who tells Wheelie the story of some jackass who, back in the day, went to the temple like an idiot even though everyone told him not to, and “came back holding his eyes.” When Wheelie translates this to his companions in his typical excruciating way, he puts his fingers to his eyes as though he’s covering them. ‘No, no,” says the guy, grabbing two convenient oranges and holding them face up in the palms of his hands. “Like this.” “OK, I don’t understand,” our boy says, and fucks off. “Mucho Arigato” says the Boyfriend. Guys, guys, I already wanted these fuck-os dead, you don’t have to keep doing more to convince me.

The closer they get to the Haunted Temple Of Evil, the more obviously concerning supernatural shit starts to happen, starting with the fact that the evil ghost child bookstore employee who sold them the book in the first place suddenly turns up again, and seems suspiciously focused on facilitating their little day trip of evil. They’re Americans, though, so it never dawns on them to consider that this little tyke is a little too eager to cater to their caprices. And that’s not the only red flag; they encounter a weird old lady with (growths? ears?) under her hair, marching monks with baskets over their heads, and I’m pretty sure I saw that one-legged umbrella guy from the YOKAI MONSTERS movies.* Granted, because it’s Japan, it’s hard to tell what are supernatural horrors and what are just really committed perverts, but still, guys, come on. They breeze through every warning sign and you’ll be very surprised to hear that when they finally do get to the temple in question, they discover it is indeed evil and haunted just like literally everyone they met told them. By this point we’re glad enough just to see them killed off for being such dipshits, and wouldn’t be fussy about the details. Pleasantly, though, in a rare concession to people who would want to see something entertaining happen in a movie, towards the very, very, very end we do get a few seconds of some kinda nifty multi-headed wolf monster and a couple sharp-toothed children. But not much. And certainly not nearly enough to justify watching a whole movie.

Even if there's rarely anything interesting on-screen, though, at least it's visually legible most of the time, which was by no means a given. Considering how much they threaten it, there’s less found footage in here than I initially feared, which my lawyer informs me is sufficient to keep the movie from being technically classified as a crime against humanity. Still, one would hope for slightly more visual ambition here, considering director Michael Barnett is usually cinematographer Michael Barnett (KISS KISS BANG BANG, YOU DON’T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN, TED, GOTTI) and this is his first film as a director (his cinematographer here is Cory Geryak, a longtime gaffer/camera tech [PUMPKINHEAD2: BLOOD WINGS, THE DARK KNIGHT[!]]). Sadly that does not appear to be the case; the characters say they need to get home before dark, but it’s hard to tell when that is since everything is constantly tinted fucking blue like a goddamn UNDERWORLD movie. It’s possible that it's not the movie's fault because the country of Japan is covered by an enormous cerulean lampshade and other movies just balance it out with artificial yellow lighting. I can’t rule that out, but I think it’s more likely some kind of color-correction horseshit.

Why are these people blue?

Which raises the question: do cinematographers really like that, or did the director, having spent his previous career as a cinematographer, seize this opportunity to fuck up some other cinematographer's work just as other directors had done to him, continuing the cycle of misery? It makes everything look like it has an Instagram filter on it. I mean, it’s not a complete disaster, and some of it looks nice enough; there’s a portion at the end which takes place in a cave illuminated only by a single flashlight, and the camera does a nice job of giving us a sense of the claustrophobic, alien world down there, effectively using hard light and pitch dark to play with our anxieties. It’s not really an eyesore, just drab. But what’s up with all the color tinting? Why would hardworking professionals who care about image allow the final product to look like someone spilled a bottle of ink on the film? I know Steven Soderbergh did it once, but guys, he’s done everything once. You weren’t supposed to make this a thing. 

(the cave sequence is much better)

I’ve seen uglier, of course, and I’ve seen much more incompetent, and even more pointless. But being kicked in the head by a human is definitely better than being kicked in the head by a horse, and I still I wouldn’t recommend either one. There might be a germ of a good idea in cribbing details from Japanese folklore for a modern-set horror movie (the script is by frequent Adam Wingard scribe Simon Barrett** [DEAD BIRDS, YOU’RE NEXT]) but they just barely register here, while the intolerable and interminable non-relationship drama between these three bland anti-actors takes up virtually the entire runtime. The listless direction doesn’t help matters, but this really is just a dysfunctional script. For one thing, I can’t imagine why it makes sense to have this story be about visiting Americans rather than native Japanese people, a conceit that serves only to clutter the plot with needless exposition and to impart upon the whole scenario a simmering low-key xenophobic cast that sours any hope for goofy fun. But that’s only the beginning of the structural problems here; you’ve also got the useless vestigial framing narrative, a hopelessly confused lack of clear point-of-view, and a complete absence of narrative conflict, or, hell, narrative in general. There’s maybe five relevant minutes of plot before the 50 minute mark, and even then, it’s only in the last 15 minutes that anything really happens. Not an acceptable return on investment, even at at merciful 78 minutes. Other than a few fleeting glimpses of local Japanese color, there’s just no content here. I’ve seen films which are technically much worse, but few which make as feeble a case for their own existence.

* Warning: I may have imagined this last detail as my brain instinctively worked to protect me from having to rip my eyes out and hold them in the palms of my hands out of boredom.

** I suspect that Simon and Michael Barrett are related in some way, but I cannot find any information which directly confirms that.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2018 CHECKLIST!

Searching For Bloody Pictures

TAGLINE	None, which is pretty representative of the level of effort on display here.
TITLE ACCURACY	Can’t deny that a temple does end up being pretty relevant to this wisp of a story. Interesting that it’s just called TEMPLE and not THE TEMPLE.
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	No
SEQUEL?	None
REMAKE?	No
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	USA / Japan
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Haunted Houses, Demons
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	None
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	None, though Simon Barrett has enough horror scripts under his belt to earn me recognizing his name.
NUDITY?	Yes
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	No
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	No
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	Yes
POSSESSION?	Yes, probably
CREEPY DOLLS?	Some creepy statuary
EVIL CULT?	None, as far as I can tell religion isn’t the source of the problem with the titular temple
MADNESS?	Possibly?
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	None
VOYEURISM?	Yes
MORAL OF THE STORY	You’d think it would be “don’t invite a creepy third wheel openly lusting after you to follow you and your boyfriend and videotape you making out” but actually all that works out fine, really the only lesson here is “don’t go to that temple that everyone says not to go to because it is haunted and evil and inevitably fatal.”