Species (1995)

Some years before the start of the movie, SETI actually did get an answer from an alien source. Following some goodwill plans for a clean, inexhaustible energy source (still waiting on that one here), the aliens sent genetic information to be implanted in human egg cells to grow, well, who knows?

The government decided creating a human alien hybrid was worth a crack, so scientists under the leadership of one Fitch (Ben Kingsley) created a girl from the alien DNA plans – because women are more docile, donchaknow. Sil (as a young girl played by Michelle Williams), as they call her, grows up at a rapid tempo and appears to be exceptionally strong and agile. She does seem pleasant enough for someone growing up in a cage, however. Yet when she also develops the disturbing habit of growing H.R. Giger-style mutations under her skin, the decision is made to kill her and end the perhaps ill-advised experiment. Because who could have expected alien DNA to be alien! Obviously, the girl makes a dramatic escape.

On the run, while committing the occasional murder, Sil turns into a rather attractive young woman (Natasha Henstridge), who, as is tradition in certain cultures, goes to Los Angeles to procreate and thereby create who knows how many more aliens.

The government throws together a team consisting of Fitch, assassin style fixer Press (Michael Madsen), molecular biologist Laura (Marg Helgenberger), computer guy Arden (Alfred Molina) and empath Dan (Forest Whitaker) to catch and kill Sil before it is too late for humanity.

Leave it to the 90s to cross the genes of the erotic thriller with gigeresque alien ickiness on a mainstream budget, give it to not always inspired yet highly competent journeyman Roger Donaldson to direct, and make a commercial success out of it.

On the plot level, this is of course pulpy nonsense, but it’s the kind of pulpy nonsense that moves from one hormonal high and one great set piece to the next, has – apart from the badly aged CGI – absolutely great effects and sells every awesome bit of nonsense that comes to its mind with complete seriousness.

Of course, you can read the whole thing as a misogynist tractate about male fear of being seduced into fatherhood but occasionally murderous women (or something of that manner). You can also, if you want to, put a very different reading on the whole thing, and read it as the story of a young woman crushed by forces she has no control over whatsoever – one of them her own biology, the other parents whose only answer to her awakening sexuality and/or difference is to hunt and kill her when she steps out of line.

In any case, on this re-watch, years after I last saw the film, I’ve also realized how good Henstridge’s performance is, quite apart from her willingness to undress. The way she shifts from Sil’s childish naivety into ruthless predator mode, the little notes of regret and desperation – it’s probably more than the film’s script asked of her. Otherwise, the impressive cast doesn’t care they are in a pretty silly kind of science fiction/horror/action exploitation flick, and though there’s little substance to the characters, everyone offers presence, the small actorly notes that bring these kinds of roles to life and a sense of taking their craft seriously.

The older I get – and, perhaps ironically, the less important a generous heaping of nudity becomes to me – the more I’ve learned to appreciate Species. Make of that what you will.

Magi (2016)

Warning: there will be spoilers!

Her sister Marla (Brianne Davis) has invited American journalist Olivia Watkins (Lucie Pohl) for a visit to her home in Turkey. Marla’s freshly divorced, very pregnant, and seems to carry some kind of hidden burden she won’t quite explain to Olivia. She does tell a creepy tale about a dress she owns that apparently once belonged to a pregnant village girl that was murdered, her baby cut from her womb. What she’s trying to say with it, Olivia isn’t sure, and Marla’s not telling. But then, Marla’s life in Turkey seems to be the kind of weird that makes a woman rather blithe about creepy, icky looking occult ritual stuff just turning up on a table.

Marla’s story must have been important, though, for just the very same night, she is killed with the help of CGI flies with half-human faces, her baby also cut from her womb, as in the story. The police very quickly decide Marla’s ex-husband is responsible for the deed, what with him committing suicide and leaving a vague yet creepy letter just shortly after Marla has been killed. Olivia’s not completely convinced, though, for there’s no trace of Marla’s dead baby to be found, and little about the murder makes sense.

So Olivia starts an investigation of her own, assisted by Marla’s colleagues and friends Emir (Kenan Ece) and Suzan (Emine Meyrem), during which she stumbles upon the trail of a cult attempting to produce human/djinn crossbreeds. She is quickly beset by a variety of supernatural occurrences, reaching from nightmares to djinn attacks. On the plus side, she’ll also find help from cameoing guest stars Michael “Exposition Machine” Madsen and Stephen “The Exorcist” Baldwin.

In most every aspect, Hasan Karacadag’s (who is also the director of the long-running – and long - Dabbe series of horror films) Magi is a messy movie. It’s longer than it needs to be, shifts protagonists at the strangest moments, changes horror sub-genres repeatedly, and throws a somewhat insane amount of worldbuilding and backstory at its viewers. It is, however, exactly this messiness that makes Magi a worthwhile and often surprisingly fun movie, its messiness also making it unpredictable and giving it a whiff of creative madness. So while it is too long from a standpoint of effective and efficient dramaturgy, it certainly never is boring.

A part of the film’s considerable charm is Karacadag’s willingness to add extraneous detail to everyone and everything, climaxing in a scene in which Madsen exposits via a slide show about the cult that includes the occult roots of Nazism, elements of Eastern and Western occult traditions, various religions, the question of who gave birth to Satan, djinns, and conspiracy elements, the film clearly having understood that adding more occult weirdness makes everything in a horror movie better. The film also – surprisingly, really – makes an honest attempt at using all these elements afterwards (and before) the big exposition sequence, never shying away from making things needlessly yet awesomely complicated. There are even nods towards The X-Files.

On a stylistic level, Karacadag is alas a friend of that desaturated colour scheme most filmmakers right now have left behind for trying to make their stuff look like it was shut by Dean Cundey (in other words awesome), but he is loading so much stuff into his grey and beige frames, I nearly didn’t notice. For when it comes to horror sequences, Magi likes to copy other films’ and filmmakers’ approaches rather obviously, but again Karacadag seems to like, quote and borrow from so many different films and stylistic approaches, the film doesn’t feel like a series of stolen bits and pieces from other films so much as it does like a series of awesome, excited and exciting moments. There are set-ups clearly made with J-horror in mind, with the The Conjuring movies, with The Exorcist, there’s a use of bad CGI like in cheap contemporary Indonesian fare or certain Bollywood horror films from half a decade ago, a couple shots basically directly out of Paranormal Activity, a short trip into a parallel dimension made out of even more bad yet imaginative CGI, scenes shot in the style of Industrial Rock videos from the early 00s, a short trip into folk horror. There’s clearly nothing Karacadag doesn’t have in his trick bag; and certainly nothing he isn’t willing to use.


In theory, all this borrowing from obvious, successful sources could, perhaps should, lead to a tepid, copyist kind of horror film, but in practice, Magi feels much too excited and excitable, throwing all kinds of tricks at its audience in a way that feels generous much more than it feels derivative. The whole thing left me with the feeling of having watched a movie just terribly excited by being all other horror movies at once, and for most of its running time I found myself sharing in its excitement pretty enthusiastically.

In short: Blueberry (2004)

aka Renegade

Mike Blueberry (Vincent Cassel) and his buddy Jimmy McClure (Colm Meaney) are marshals in an Old West town bordering on the holy mountains of the Chiricahua. Despite carrying some personal demons around with him, Blueberry is friends with the Chiricahua shaman Runi (Temuera Morrison), and is doing his best to keep the peace between everyone in the area.

That job is rather more difficult because some of the local whites believe the holy mountains to be home to a treasure hoard, and men like local rich guy Greg Sullivan (Geoffrey Lewis) – who just happens to be the father of Blueberry’s spunky and intense love interest Maria (Juliette Lewis) - or the crazy German prospector Prosit (Eddie Izzard) – whose name by the way translates into “cheers!” - are willing to do some quite shitty things to get at that gold.

However, there’s an even greater threat to the Chiricahuas, the peace, and perhaps even Blueberry’s soul around, in form of Blueberry’s oldest enemy, one Wallace Sebastian Blount (Michael Madsen), who is looking for something in the holy mountains, too. Blount isn’t looking for gold, though, but wants to learn a way to kill with his spirit. Which makes him the sort of enemy who can only be conquered in a giant peyote trip/healing spirit journey.

As you can see, Jan Kounen’s (loose, the titles tell us, and given my lack of knowledge with the source material, I’m just going to believe that) adaptation of venerable French leftist Western comic series Blueberry isn’t exactly a straightforward Western. Rather, it’s the kind of film that doesn’t end in a climactic shootout but in a climactic, CGI heavy drug trip.

Unlike myself Blueberry takes the whole shamanism thing very seriously, attempting to turn what could be a relatively straightforward tale of revenge and redemption into one of spiritual enlightenment, seeming to mean every strange thing it does quite intensely, which really left me as a watcher who doesn’t share its convictions in the position of either pointing and laughing at the crazy people (and I’m not that kind of atheist), or just rolling with it and trying to get into the spirit (sorry) of things.

The latter approach is made rather more easy by the simple fact that Kounen is really, really good at making the whole film feel like a drug trip full of symbols you might or might not understand, or where understanding them might not even be the point, with every camera angle seemingly chosen for maximum confusion; and that’s before the really rather effective (or silly, or both, depending on your position) religious tripping even starts.

Consequently, the film’s plot – such as it is – meanders through various Western clichés seen from a sideways angle, stops, starts, and stops again, making circles and turns that don’t really lead anywhere only to get back to the beginning of things. For a viewer who likes her films plot heavy, Kounen’s approach will probably be infuriating, but if you’re willing to let things just flow over you, you might get a lot out of the film.

At the very least, Blueberry is pretty much a one of a kind film (I don’t think comparing it with Jodorowsky would be fair, despite the shared interest in shamanistic practices and utter weirdness); if it’s successful for any given viewer will depend on him as much as on the film, I think.

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In short: The Tomb (2009)

Rich Professor of literature Jonathan (Wes Bentley) falls under the spell (and you can take that phrase literally) of the student of metaphysics and sometimes killer (for magickal science!) and stealer of souls Ligeia Romanova (Sofya Skya). A bit of flirting, some absinth and a wee bit of mind-(penis-?)control magic later, Jonathan has ruined his engagement with musical singer Rowena (Kaitlin Doubleday), and marries Ligeia instead.

Then, Ligeia makes him buy back her family home somewhere in Russia so she can continue her experiments in immortality through soul-stealing in peace. Ligeia has a very personal interest in these experiments too, because she is is suffering from a strange illness that should see her dead shortly if she doesn't find a cure against death soon. Except for her illness, Jonathan knows nothing about his wife's plans (which makes me ask myself why she didn't just magick him into writing her a check), and will be quite shocked when he finds out.

And find out he will, because Ligeia's grip on his mind is beginning to slip the more ill she gets.

The Tomb (which was initially - and much more fittingly - titled Ligeia after the Poe story it is based on) must be the goth-est horror film I've seen in a long time. Not surprisingly, as that is too often the mainstream interpretation of the goth way, it suffers from a total lack of self-consciousness and humour, which would be less of a problem if the film's ideas of decadence weren't so darn square. Decadence: it's Russian women who like to dress in black, drinking absinth and going into movie goth clubs, at least if you ask scriptwriter John Shirley, whose ideas of evil have become quite trite since the last novel of his I read. This vibe of harmlessness surrounding the film's concept of evil grates with its determination to take it capital-e EVIL seriously, leading to a terrible case of po-facedness that also finds its way into the at times leaden dialogue.

I can't believe I'm arguing for more (self-)irony in a movie, but the film would need either that or a firmer grip on the emotional abysses it pretends to feature yet actually goes out of its way to avoid; revelling in the dark side of human nature only works when that "dark side" actually feels dark, and not, like here, just like a bourgeois imitation of darkness that lends itself only too well to be giggled at.

From time to time, director Michael Staininger manages to stage an effective scene or two in an old-fashioned Gothic horror mood, but for every good if clichéd scene there are two that seem to be directed by a robot who knows all the right techniques yet doesn't have a clue how to apply them in the right way. Turns out making a Gothic horror movie is hard.

The acting's all over the place: Bentley and Doubleday are just kind of there, while Skya chews the scenery quite admirably. If you like to see male actors who have seen better days look embarrassed, don't miss out on the appearances by Michael Madsen (who randomly starts to ACT!) and Eric Roberts (who is a nice Russian caretaker - no, really).

At least everyone connected with the film seems to be trying, which is more than I'd say about most torture porn films of the last few years. There seems to be at least the potential of Staininger one day making a film that comes together on screen.

 

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