Sinister

Sinister (2012)
Dir. Scott Derrickson
Written by Scott Derrickson, C. Robert “Massawyrm” Cargill
Starring Ethan Hawke, Juliet Rylance, Fred Thompson, Vincent D’Onofrio

    This ghostly flick from the director of HELLRAISER V: INFERNO and one of the reviewers from Ain’t it Cool News may not have the classiest pedigree in the world, but it does have something. It’s hard to describe what that actual something is, but I think it’s in there. Somewhere. When I take it apart and start thinking about the actual content, it seems very stupid and gimmicky, and not even a very good gimmick. But for some reason while I was watching this film, I was mostly into it. I don’t know that I could really call it a good movie, but somewhere, somehow, this one managed to get to me in spite of everything. I mean, there’s only one thing in this whole mess that I couldn’t straight-up predict, and even that was pretty obviously one possible way it could go. And there’s certainly nothing in here that you haven’t seen before, and a lot of it you’ve seen done before much better. But I dunno, man. Somethin’.

    Oh wait, I just realized I know exactly what. Ethan Hawke. There’s one and only one reason this unimaginative gloom-fest works, and it’s Ethan Hawke acting his scruffily handsome ass off trying to make us care about the gimmicky found-footage conceit here and succeeding handily. Derrickson and Cargill owe Mr. Hawke a minimum of a hundred blowjobs each for taking this movie up about a dozen notches, but maybe he at least owes them the honor of receiving them for providing him an opportunity to play an interesting, nuanced character in a genre movie that takes itself surprisingly seriously and genuinely wants you to leave horrified, not just scared.

    We know Derrickson has the capacity to make shit out of shinola (witness his lifeless and mind-numbing remake of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL) so I’m hesitant to give him too much credit here. But I will say he’s obviously trying, laboring to make something genuinely dark and shocking even if he doesn’t always have the imagination to back it up. He asserts his intent from the very first frame, where we silently watch a super-8 video of a family of four, hung by their necks with bags over their head until the last kick. It’s horrifying and --crucially-- patient, lingering on the images of horror rather than just leaping out at us with them (although he’ll hilariously try the latter approach for the very last frame of the movie). Now, intending to shock is not always the same thing as legitimately shocking us. CHAOS, right? There’s a big difference between conjuring genuinely disturbing psychological unease and X-treme hardcore wannabe nonsense. As much as it grasps for the genuinely depraved, SINISTER is seldom imaginative enough to come up with anything truly upsetting. But fortunately that’s where Hawke takes over and carries the rest of the movie on his back, kicking and screaming, into somewhere in the realm of honest-to-good goodness.

Well, I guess I do owe [the Robot Devil] for this unholy... ACTING ABILITY!!

Hawke plays Ellison Oswalt, (named after Harlan Ellison and Patton Oswalt, the same way that all those awful horror movies in the 90’s had characters named Carpenter and Romero and Ken Russell and so on) a nice guy with a cute cracker-y family who has fallen on hard times as a writer of true-crime type novels (which come to think about it, Patton Oswalt really ought to try that, I bet he’d be great). Unbeknownst to the family, he’s moved them into the house of the murder victims from the opening hanging scene, convinced it’s the inspiration he needs to write another great book. Unfortunately, his wife’s getting sick of their lives being shaken up so he can pursue his career, the local cops (not entirely unreasonably) think he’s a tabloid-chasing lowlife, he’s running out of money, and wouldn’t you know it, the house is haunted. You know, by ghosts.

The only reason any of this is interesting in the slightest is that Hawke plays Oswalt in a very unique way. He’s fundamentally a nice guy who genuinely loves his wife and kids and wants the best for them. But he’s also somewhat selfishly pursuing his own dreams of recaptured literary glory to the detriment of everyone else, rationalizing his own pride as an attempt to provide a better life for his family. Oswalt’s first book was a hugely acclaimed, influential work which helped bring justice to an unsolved case, but since then he’s become a bit of a hack, “making mistakes,” as the local cops put it, and generally pissing away his good name in a desperate effort to reach the kind of glory that mostly only comes as the result of being in the right place at the right time. So when he finds a mysterious box in the attic which includes gruesome super-8 footage of five murders across more than 50 years, he seriously considers turning it over to the police but can’t quite resist the temptation to be a hero again by solving the mystery himself. Which turns out to be kind of a mistake, if you’ll indulge me a moment of editorializing.

Yes, yes, you see dead people. Get to the point.

What works about the performance is that Hawke makes this guy’s desperation genuinely palpable. In fact, the tension comes more from how hard it is to watch Oswalt paint himself into a corner than from our fear of ghostly kids running around. As Oswalt (and the audience) work their way through the films (all of which have cutesy titles which relate to the murders, for instance the hanging family is called “Hangin’ Around ‘11”) you can tell he knows in his heart that this is a bad idea, and in fact bad for him both personally and psychologically... but he can’t stop himself. He wants to believe he can make this work. Even as the evidence that this is a terrible idea piles up, he can’t quite let go of his dream that this will be the thing that puts him back on top. We can’t always identify with the idea of being hunted by an ancient Babylonian demon that looks like if the Joker was a member of Insane Clown Posse (unless we saw EXORCIST PART II, and even then only the first part), but we can all identify with being the guy who just so desperately needs this one thing to work out that he at first ignores, and then rationalizes, and finally tries to live with all the horrible consequences that are piling up at the foot of his aspirations.

    The drama works like a charm, but the actual horror stuff can be pretty clunky. There are a whole lot of scenes of Hawke fearfully walking through his darkened house (and never turning on a light) which start off tense but eventually get repetitive, and get even worse when they’re accompanied by a bunch of cheesy looking ghostly kids running around. And the less said about the ultimate reveal of why this is happening, the better. But surprisingly, the central found footage gimmick actually works pretty well. Unlike most found footage clusterfucks these days, I don’t detect any kind of commentary about our society being obsessed with documenting reality or creating meaning through images and so forth. Nor do these found films attempt to “put you in the moment” like way something like V/H/S does -- they’re mostly set in the past, for one thing, and don’t have a lot of that stupid wobbling that most practitioners of this questionable art seem to think is necessary. They’re scary just because they’re showing you something pretty horrible, making you party to whatever sick mind would do these things. It’s silent, deliberate, slow, gruesome (although unfortunately unimaginative), and the grainy super-8 footage and clattering projector remind you that there’s nothing our hero can do, we’re completely helpless to save anyone here. Derrickson actually did some pretty good found footage stuff in his DTV HELLRAISER V as well, so maybe that’s his thing. One rookie error he makes, though, is occasionally putting the film’s (quite good) score over the found footage. Bad call, brother; you can either have fancy Hollywood manipulation tricks or you can have your raw, disturbing found footage. Can’t have both at the same time

Man, how have they not made a Half Life movie with Hawke as Gordon Freeman?

    Still, there’s some signs that some serious thought was put into this movie. Briefly and bafflingly, Vincent D’Onofrio appears as Professor Exposition on Oswalt’s computer, communicating with him via Skype. I assumed that it was another attempt at the raw video footage thing, but it’s awkward and uncinematic and distracting and I thought it was a bad idea. But then I realized there’s actually a good reason for it -- Oswalt never leaves the house for the whole movie. Never goes to a bar, never gets a haircut, never buys groceries. The house is his prison, and without realizing it the movie’s small scope makes it feel claustrophobic and tense. A trip out into the real world, away from all the ghosty hijinks, would defuse this tension, and I admire Derrickson for realizing that. He should have just thought of a reason for D’Onofrio to make a house call, though, because that shit with the computer is a nonstarter.

    Anyway, the combination of a serious tone, a serious actor, and serious ambition (if not always serious imagination) combine for an end result which is, if not seriously good, at least seriously something. There’s a boldness and a commitment to the movie that I respect, and --at least in part-- responded to. When it’s short on ideas, it’s usually got the filmmaking competence to go the distance anyway, and Hawke’s constantly riveting performance takes us the rest of the way there. Easily the better of the two movies about ancient Babylonian demons I saw this Chainsawnukah season, although to be fair this one doesn’t have James Earl Jones wearing a cool locust headdress and sitting on an ornate throne. That may not be saying much, but it’s saying something.

And don't forget to check out Dan P's take in ABBOT AND JASON MEET BEFORE SUNSET.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2012 CHECKLIST!

LOVECRAFT ADAPTATION: No.
BOOBIES: Don't think so.
> or = HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS LEVEL GORE: Hmm, tough one. There's not much out-and-out gore, but some pretty rough murders all the same. When the gore comes, it's usually implied rather than shown, so I guess I'll say no.
SEQUEL: None.
OBSCURITY LEVEL: Low. Well-advertised studio picture.
MONSTERS: Demons?
SATANISTS: Nah.
ZOMBIES: No.
VAMPIRES: No.
SLASHERS: A serial killer, sure.
CURSES: Definitely.
ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: Awake and entertained.

Bread and Tulips

Pane e Tulipani (Bread and Tulips) (2000)
Dir. Silvio Soldini
Starring Licia Maglietta, Bruno Ganz

Bread and Tulips is the kind of movie I don't watch very much. It's a straightforward little Italian drama/comedy about love, responsibility, travel, fulfillment, being a florist, and so on. It's one of those movies that you know is going to be well-made and entertaining, but just can't get too excited about in a world where there exist movies about giant robots, lesbian vampire covens, 3D cave art, etc. There's a certain demographic out there that loves this type of film, but to tell you the truth I bet not a lot of them watched it. Because that demographic is "people persons" who typically can find the company of actual people and hence eliminate the need to drink cheap scotch and watch Z-grade horror movies alone on a Friday night. This is the kind of movie that requires that you're interested in the characters and their feelings, and that's not the easiest sell in the world.

So I don't watch this sort of deal that much. It's not particularly alluring to my usual filmatic inclinations, nor is it artistically or historically interesting enough to pique my interests. Just a simple little story about a nice lady who comes to a crossroads in her life with the help of a few likeable quirky characters.

If it was an American film, it would be one of those obnoxious rom-coms with the shrill comic relief and the gorgeous big-name stars barely even pretending to be older and burnt out. But being a foreign film, it doesn't seem quite as desperate and gaudy. Its a little slow, a little sad, a little quiet, a little surreal. It's not about young people or beautiful people, there's no twist, not much at stake. Its got some laughs but its not desperate to get a laugh every few minutes. It's even OK with a little moral ambiguity.

Basically the story is this: Rosalba (Licia Maglietta), A housewife with two teenage kids and a husband in the plumbing supply industry gets mistakenly left behind on vacation, HOME ALONE 2-style. It's an honest mistake and she's not super mad about it, but its just irritating and insulting enough that she decides to leave the family hanging and hitchhike home. This one small act of independence and selfishness sparks something in her. Something small and quiet and unfocused, but rebellious enough to take control of her and send her to Venice (motto: "Non preoccupatevi il nano nel cappotto rosso" ["don't bother the dwarf in the red coat"]), where she's never been before, without much money and without a clear plan except to not go back home quite yet.

She ends up staying with this lonesome handsome mysterious gentleman with a charmingly formal way of speaking, so we can all see where this is going. But in some ways, its kinda fun to see a basic romantic comedy plot which is set in something like the real world and takes its characters seriously. There's a scene early on where our heroine unknowing disrupts her housemate's attempt at suicide by hanging. Bet you won't see that in the American remake.

The remake would also insist on making the family she's leaving behind a bunch of nasty ingrates who learn to appreciate her only when she's gone. I like that this version (I'm preempting the inevitable remake by just calling it the “original” version) doesn't really play up that angle. It's true that her family doesn't really appreciate her, but then again she doesn't much appreciate herself either-- or have much going on-- so its easy to see why. When she's gone, they're perplexed and a little annoyed, but not more than is reasonable. They're inconvenienced but they get on with their lives about as well as you could expect them to. The husband's kind of a blowhard but not cartoonishly so; he's pretty much got his life set up the way he wants it, and is mostly confused that suddenly his wife has other ideas about what she needs for herself.

This shifts the blame, slightly; the problem isn't that Rosalba is under appreciated, it's that she doesn't appreciate the life she's living. Not that she has any reason to, but it's not like that life was forced on her. She's been drifting through her life going through the motions and never asking herself if it was good for her or not. Now, she wants a chance to figure out who she really is and what she really wants, but things are complicated by the fact that she's got a whole life of responsibilities already. It's kind of the other side of KRAMER VS. KRAMER. Actress Maglietta tells most of the story with her face, which has the odd look of someone who could be interesting but hasn't been interested in anything in a long time. It's the look of someone waking up from a dream and gradually becoming aware of the world again, and it gives the movie a solid foundation of quiet excitement instead of bitterness at time wasted.

The film's ace, though, is Giuseppe Battiston as a nebbish plumber who the husband hires based on the “hobbies” section of his resume. He's an avid reader of detective fiction, and hubby figures he'll work cheaper than an actual detective to find out what the heck his wife is up to in Venice. Battiston plays it a little broader than the rest of the film, but he's a hoot as he takes to his new detective role by chain-smoking cigarettes in a trench coat, hat, and dark glasses (even the cinematography subtly changes to emphasize his noirish aspirations). It's a funny concept which plays out pretty perfectly and adds some levity to things.

Anyway, there's not a lot here; she has some small but meaningful experiences, learns a little about herself, meets some quirky characters. That plot could and does describe plenty of terrible movies. But this happens to be one which does that plot thoughtfully and with some careful but not flashy craftsmanship. It may not be the easiest sell to a guy like me, but I gotta admit I enjoyed it. Probably worth watching this kind of thing from time to time, if only to be reminded that sometimes all you need is a person with an interesting face and a little time to figure herself out.

PS: Nicholas Roeg was right, though, off-season Venice is creepy as fuck. Luckily the film doesn't try to play it up as some romantic icon, but I don't know if it's intended to come off quite as much like a post-apocalyptic ghost town populated by delusional psychotics. It does give the film a kind of surreal quality, though, which keeps it from getting too cloying.