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Hereditary (2018)
Naysayers might not be "stupid," but they definitely missed the horror
I just read a review of this movie by user "Madzima," in which he or she claims possible stupidity for missing the brilliance of "Hereditary."
My answer to Madzima is this: you might not necessarily be stupid, but you did miss what so many others caught, and no, you cannot blame your missing the emotional, graphic terror on the director, the actors, or anyone other than yourself.
"Hereditary" is about the destruction of a family following the death of the matriarch's mother. It was sold as being seen through the eyes of the mother, Toni Collette, but this is bait-and-switch advertising, for the real heart-rending story in this movie is not about Mom, but about her son, played by Alex Wolff.
I don't want to give away too much in this review. (Really, though, you can Google other reviews and find out what happens.) My goal is to tell you about the movie's tone and worth and--after reading how much Madzima hated it--to prepare you for how you should approach it.
You should watch this movie not as a horror film at first at all. No. Don't do that. But do watch it in a dark room. Turn off all the lights. Unplug the phones. Turn off your cell. Turn up the volume. Then, as the characters unfold in front of you, pretend they are your friends, your neighbors... pretend they are your family. If you are a mom, love the kids. If you are a young adult, consider this is a weird family and go with it: don't be an uptight douche. If you are a father, husband, then try to ask yourself how attached or involved you are with your family.
THIS is where the movie hits people. HERE. It's the connections that "regular" people should have to their familial members. You should love your mom. Your mom should love you. Your dad should be involved with your life. You should feel safe in your own home.
If you watch closely, early on, you might ask yourself where the warmth is in this family. If you don't see the loss of such, then... no, you might not get the movie. It's this disintegration of warmth between all the members -- save for Charlie and her brother -- that hit me early on, and I came from a kind-of dysfunctional family myself.... but we were not... this.
If you miss this point, then, no, you will miss the disintegration. It's important, too, because this loss of bonds is the real horror. A woman's standing outside the area at your school, where you eat lunch, and screaming that you are expelled without context, but no one else seems to hear her? Whatever. Within the context of the movie? Terrifying. Isolating. Beyond reality. THIS is what the movie brings to the table. It brings a slow burn, a spiraling into madness that take time.
The real terror of this movie is familial. It's watching a mother abandon one child in favor of a dead one. It's watching a child realize he's going to die. It's watching a father give up because he never was alive to begin with. But most importantly, it's considering the title... Hereditary. It's considering that no matter what someone does, he or she is simply bound to repeat the past. No choice. No escape. When metered with demonic supernatural, it's an unbeatable concept.
And if it all passed you by, Jesus. I feel badly for you. You missed some absolutely graphic horror.
Dread (2009)
Barker's Original Message Lost
I waited years for this Clive Barker short story to be made into a movie because the premise of it was just too good to be true. As I sat down to watch it I was confident that I would enjoy the ending, because I knew the story. How hard could this be -- to keep to the story's main theme -- I wondered smugly as I hit "Play"? Apparently, too hard.
I loved the acting, and I enjoyed the character development. If you have never read Clive Barker's "Dread," then you will enjoy this movie. It is well-made, I was not aware of budget corners being cut, and the follow-through with production was solid. So what is my issue? My issue is that *SPOILER* the theme of the short story was totally bastardized. Now that we have established that this is a SPOILER review, I will elaborate: Do not read further if you do not want to know about the movie's main issues or do not already know about the story's ending. Stop here, watch the movie, and then read the story afterward. Then I hope you will agree with me.
In "Dread," Barker writes about an experiment that someone is doing on human subjects in which the subjects bare their worst fears. The problem is that the human subjects do not realize that the experiment will take on an illegal and horrific stance: The person conducting the experiment begins to hold the subjects against their wills and expose them to their worst fears. The character from whom we see second person single perspective for much of the story is afraid of being totally isolated, sense-wise, due to a childhood trauma. The experimenter finds a way to do this to him, and the victim breaks. Another victim is a vegan, and she is made to eat meat. In the end, the person hurting these subjects is hacked to bits by one of the subjects, one whom he drove insane. The brilliant catch? The mad scientist guy is terrified of clowns, and the person whom he drove nuts, who comes back to kill him, was found on the streets, placed in a homeless shelter, dressed in clothes that didn't fit him (like a CLOWN), and then returns to hack the man into pieces. Do you see the brilliance in this? It is so simple. Barker writes a story about complete and utter satisfying revenge coupled with the most awesome case of "do unto others" that may have graced the horror world in past years.
However, the people who made this film decided to lose the brilliance and go nuts on the vegan girl. Yes, let's lose the main plot in favor of torturing a vegetarian, because we all like to hate those green pinko hippies.
The ending sucked so hard I can swear that I was being pulled toward the TV when its final minutes played out. As I clung to the arm of our sofa and my legs reached horizontal status due to the black hole-like suction of the ending's worthless let-down, I felt this overwhelming sense of sadness. Clive Barker works so hard to make us do what Stephen King and Lovecraft do, which is to jump from two feet out when we go to bed. We can't just walk to the bed and lie down, because something is under the bed, waiting to grab our legs, and it likes to eat the heads last. (King says the head probably tastes the best.) Because Barker is continuing with this tradition of making us do late-night, last-minute, spastic aerobics, Barker should be rewarded with talented filmmakers preserving the main theme of his story. He wasn't in this instance, though, and it ticked me off.
My advice to you? Watch this film first, and then read the short story. Save the best for last.
Spike (2008)
Little Mistakes Cost Lots of Stars
I was rather excited to see this movie, because some of the reviews here were positive and the back of the CD case interested me. Part of it read as follows: "As they are each picked off one by one by a bizarre beast it becomes clear that none of them will make it out of the forest alive; unless the one the monster so desires is left behind." I should have taken a cue from this. If the back of the case isn't even written properly (sentence fragments should not follow a semi colon), then the chances that the movie might not be worth watching are higher than average.
The plot revolves around four friends who, while on some sort of road trip, blow a tire and plunge into the surrounding forest. When the one male in the group steps outside to see what the damage is, he is attacked by something and ends up with a possibly life-threatening injury.
After this incident the group becomes separated and the movie's title subject comes into play. Throughout the movie, it's clear that someone put a great deal of thought into the different scenes, situations, and dialog, but that person failed to put it together cohesively.
The scenes are fragmented, and the characters act in a way that would simply not be logical in the situation, were it to really occur. The female lead knows that her male friend is seriously injured, and yet she walks around calmly for much of the time afterward.
There are also small items that lower the movie's attempted believability. (For example, when human beings, who are endothermic, reach for jackets due to the temperature of the woods, it is not possible for a rattlesnake, an exothermic animal, to be active. It would be too sluggish to move.) Even considering all the little mistakes in filming and poorly-developed characters (with the exception of Spike, who is something else), I still might have enjoyed the movie had it not been for the music. The music was just terrible. It was not appropriate for many of the scenes and even went so far as to ruin the mood much of the time. I began to wonder if the director had driven to the nearest church to find an organ player, and the one he found had suffered from a stroke years earlier and was half tuned on Balwinnie at the time.
The concept of the movie was interesting, and the creature's costume was well-designed. But this wasn't enough to save the entire film from a horrible music score and unbelievable dialog and character behavior (not to mention obviously staged reviews). And seemingly endothermic snakes.
What Happened to Bobby Earl? (1997)
Just Can't Believe That Anyone Could Screw This Horrible Tragedy Up Worse
I knew one of the persons involved in the real-life case from which this movie's plot evolved. I remember sitting, stunned, when I found out what had happened. As it appears, I cannot tell you about the case, because it would be a spoiler; yet, I don't think actually spelling out the entire movie in case could spoil it any worse than the company did by shooting it.
Kate Jackson plays a mother whose son has disappeared. She does an OK job, I guess, but she isn't given much support in either the plot additions or the making of the movie. The acting was flat; and the plot was muddied far beyond necessary by extra commentaries that really had nothing to do with the storyline. Maybe it was worse for me to finally view this movie, after years of looking for it, because I've been following the real cases and the shocking developments for almost 20 years now and know that there was more drama than imaginable from which to pull a gripping crime movie. There was so much heartache that followed the actual events that I did indeed lay awake some nights wondering about my friend. How could any movie so poorly relegate the actual tone that enveloped the actual crime? For anyone who really wants to be saddened and shocked, I suggest reading about Edward Swiger. Check him out on Google and do some research for yourself. You will understand my disappointment of this movie.