Eli (2019)

Warning: I’m going to spoil the devil out of the final act twist!

Rose (Kelly Reilly) and Paul (Max Martini) have clearly grown desperate about the rather peculiar auto-immune disease of their little son Eli (Charlie Shotwell). That at least seems to be the only rational explanation for their decision to pack him, his little bubble boy tent and his little hazmat suit, and take him to the very special clinic of what we can only assume (because the film certainly isn’t saying) to be rogue immunologist Dr Horn (Lili Taylor). “Rogue”, because what proper clinic would be an old creepy mansion out in the boons, staffed only by the doctor and two nurses and only ever keeping one patient at a time. Once the treatments start and Eli looks increasingly worse for wear, one also can’t help but ask oneself if one shouldn’t replace the “rogue immunologist” simply with “mad scientist”.

When he’s not getting tortured by the good doctor, Eli does encounter various strangenesses. For one there’s the sarcastic girl (Sadie Sink overacting for all she is worth) outside he has regular chats with through a closed terrace door, and who seems to hint at something not being quite right at the clinic. Worse than mockery, however, are the ghosts. At first, Eli believes these entities want to do him harm, but as he will eventually discover, they are the spirits of Horn’s former patients, all deceased thanks to her treatments, attempting to warn him and help him escape.

The problem is that his parents are more or less in on the dangers of the whole affair – his dad more so than his mum – but then, and here comes the plot twist, Eli is  not actually there to be treated for an auto-immune disease, but because he’s a son of the devil. I’m not speaking metaphorically here, mumsy really banged the devil. Of course, “Doctor” Horn and her nurses aren’t medical people either, but what I can only assume to be renegade nuns – child murder not generally being a terribly accepted part of Christian doctrine – pumping him full of Holy Water in the hopes that it cures him or kills him and saves his soul.

When Eli figures this nonsense out, he gets a bit angry, so I hope you like the idea of a hilarious/dramatic confrontation between mother and son that’s surrounded by a little circle of floating, upside-down (because SATAN) crucified nuns who will of course eventually catch fire.

Now, if you’re asking yourself if Ciaran Foy’s Made-for-Netflix horror movie really is quite as stupid as all of this sounds, I can assure you that yes, it indeed is. On a technical level, Foy is a perfectly capable director, but he is not able (or not willing) to turn the film into the sort of dream-like phantasmagoria needed to make a plot quite this dumb and contrived work. Instead, much of the film is spent on the usual contemporary mainstream horror business of jump scares and people creeping through badly lit corridors.

The film’s structure doesn’t help make up for its dubious big idea either, for the reliance on the one big twist does mean that everything that comes before looks and feels terribly implausible. Neither Eli’s illness, nor the way his parents treat him, nor Horn’s therapy make sense as anything but either a writerly inability to understand the basics of reality or the long, long wind-up to a Big Twist. Alas not in any way that might intrigue a viewer; it’s rather like having to listen to a storyteller who never comes to the frigging point, instead dragging things out endlessly.


Of course, once the point came, I did find myself surprised by its extravagant stupidity as well as by the filmmakers’ apparent conviction that this nonsense somehow makes up for their film feeling patently ridiculous throughout. Foy, despite a soundtrack that becomes increasingly (one might say desperately) dramatic and actors giving their all melodramatically pulling their hair out, simply can’t sell any of it, playing as highly shocking and horrifying what actually comes out schlocky and intensely hilarious.

In short: Sinister 2 (2015)

I’m not exactly surprised the sequel to one of the good mainstream horror films of the last few years isn’t any good itself, though I am still somewhat disappointed by it. Why, you might think not every narrative lends itself to become a franchise, and some stories are better told in a single film and don’t actually ask for a sequel!

What I didn’t expect, given that the sequel was again written by director of the first film Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, is quite how mechanical and lifeless the thing would be going to feel, with so many inserts of “creepy home videos” they absolutely stop being creepy, character beats the film fails to exploit thematically even when the connection should be obvious and would make the film so much more resonant. There is an overall feel of the writers going through a checklist of parts from the first film they need to repeat, but in a less effective way, instead of writing an actual movie. Despite a decent cast, the characters aren’t actual characters either, but walking, talking plot functions whose destinies never become much interesting or relevant because there’s so little substance to them, as much as James Ransone tries to pretend he’s awkward yet quietly heroic and Shannyn Sossamon raises her chin.

Director Ciarán Foy goes through the whole rigmarole with basic competence (he’s not going to nail the camera down or forget how to prepare functional blocking and so on) but with little flair or style. In fact, I found myself giggling through too many of the film’s (many, many, many, many) jump scares and most of its ghostly and demonic apparitions, thanks to the often unconvincing way they are staged and Foy’s emphasis on their mechanics. It’s all very much a professional looking 2015 mainstream horror film, but there’s such a lack of vision, heart or even just a little bit of passion here, I’d rather prefer a technically incompetent one that wants to say something or does make an honest attempt at making me uncomfortable instead of just going through the motions. Sinister 2 might as well just not exist for all the movie itself seems to care.

Three Films Make A Post: WHITE WOMAN VERSUS DEADLY PYTHON!

El Gringo (2012): I really wish people would stop making these pseudo-Tarantino movies - or perhaps pseudo-Robert-Rodriguez movies in this case - if they don't have the talent or the intelligence to make them work (of course, if they had, they'd do more than just try to ape other directors). El Gringo wastes a perfectly able Scott Adkins, and two or three decent ideas on an execution that suggests the production being dominated by a couple of twelve year old boys with never a moment that doesn't look as if the actors were playing dress-up, which fits a movie that tries and fails to sell Bulgaria as Mexico without doing more than putting some rickety sets up and turning the colours to "bleached and yellowish".

Plus, it just isn't funny at all.

The Man From Nowhere (2010): As far as films in the "depressed former government killers go on a killing rampage to free someone kidnapped"/save the babies movies go, I'm not too impressed with Lee Jeong-beom's effort. An at its core simple tale is bloated by much unneeded exposition, and long careful scenes that spend way more time with cops and bad guys than the film's actual plot would need turn the film's pace to a crawl. Worse, these additions never actually add much of substance to the film beyond taking up time, for the characters here are exactly who you expect them to be and will do exactly what you expect of them anyway. As it stands, the movie lacks either depth or speed, either of which would have been enough to make it interesting.

Citadel (2012): This one, I expected to enjoy quite a bit more than I actually did. A clever little low budget film about urban decay with a male lead that is as ineffectual as possible should be right up my alley, after all. And really, director/writer Ciaran Foy does have a hand for the staging of threatening situations and knows how to use a handful of locations for the best. However, I never really warmed to to the movie thanks to my annoyance at various basics of the script: every mistake protagonist Tommy (played by Aneurin Barnard with lots of wide-eyed gasping) makes seems to be attributed to his agoraphobia, which is portrayed in a way that puts the emphasis on plot convenience, as if his anxiety disorder (and believe me, I know about those) weren't so much the aftereffect of heavy trauma but the only way the script could work. Obviously, it's not a good thing when the audience realizes this. I'm also quite unhappy with the absence of any form of authority beyond a priest in the movie. I know, thematically this makes a lot of sense, and cops don't visit the poor part of town all that often but once a horde of hooded demon children regularly runs amok somewhere, you'd expect a certain degree of interest even from them.

In the big picture, these things shouldn't be enough to ruin a horror film for me (I have enjoyed films with much less internal logic) but watching Citadel, I found myself rolling my eyes at the movie more often than not. Perhaps being halfway to a poverty porn horror movie and halfway to something more interesting is not far enough in either direction.

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