They Live - Movie Review

They Live
1988
Written and Directed by John Carpenter

Surely, living in this internet age, you've heard the classic line:  "I have come here to kick ass and chew bubblegum... and I'm all out of bubblegum."  A line so goofy and loveable it's been recycled and reworked for years; to the point that its origins are beginning to fade into the mists of time.  Well, lemme remind you: that line was penned by John Carpenter, and delivered by a shades-wearing, denim-clad Roddy Piper just prior to shooting up a bank with a shotgun.  In the movie They Live, not real life, of course.

Except.... there are many, many people who find the premise and delivery of They Live so compelling that they kinda believe it's true.  Or at the very least reference it as a pop-culture interpretation of (what they believe to be) the TRUTH.  Whether it's Reptilians or the Illuminati, They Live hits all the right buttons for individuals who believe the world is ruled by a shady, secret organization intent on keeping the masses sedate and obedient.

Why is this so?  Well, I've got a theory!

Not only do I have a good theory for why They Live is so compelling to conspiracists, but my theory also makes sense of how John Carpenter could create such an odd movie.  How on earth was this made by the same individual that gave us two of the finest horror movies of all time: The Thing and Halloween?  Don't worry, all knowledge will be revealed in time.

To catch you up, in case you haven't had the distinct pleasure of viewing They Live: it's the story of a drifter who stumbles onto the TRUTH of how the world is being run by an alien race intent on the permanent dominion of humanity.  These gross aliens are in charge of every level of government, the media, the military, and even circulate in society as wealthy and affluent citizens.  They hide in plain sight because they have a transmitter which reprograms humanity's brains to keep humans deluded into mindless obedience and a life-style of thoughtless consumption.  Our protagonist discovers this when he puts on a special pair of sunglasses that allows him to see life as it REALLY IS.

Our hero then proceeds to go on a shooting rampage, runs from the law, joins a resistance movement, and ultimately blows up a news station that is also a hub for the alien brain-wave transmitter.  There are lots of explosions, my favorite fist-fight in all of film, and Roddy Piper delivering some of the most insane and wonderous lines in cinema, making this a super-fun cult movie if nothing else.

The movie as a whole is an odd-duck.  Its script is very sparse.  Carpenter spends large amounts of time filming Piper wandering around and looking at things.  And while this sounds boring, it isn't really.  The movie is shot competently, and despite its lack of conventional dialogue, conveys information effectively (allowing the audience to be drawn in to the mystery along with the protagonist).  But when the script does come into play, often the lines are incredibly strange, almost surreal.

And mind you, this is not to be blamed on Piper's acting ability.  This strangeness is spread across the whole script.  From the utterly suburban and mundane lines uttered in the background by aliens, to the ranting of a blind priest, it seems to me that Carpenter was working hard at making the whole movie kind of uncanny.  This is how you get things like the bubble-gum line.

Apart from the script, the movie oscillates between a slow-burn anticipation/reveal of mysteries, and all-out popcorn-munching action.  The scenes where Piper is coping with the TRUTH, a greyscale world where billboards shout CONSUME and all signage is bent on subconsciously reprogramming humans, are particularly heavy-handed.  But then Carpenter will treat us to high-paced scenes where Piper runs from the alien cops, then carjacks and kidnaps a woman at gunpoint.

Altogether, this makes They Live seem like a misfire.  A movie that wants to be ambitious in saying something about society (or whatever), but also wants to be a mindless shoot-em-up flick.  This mismatching in tone, the weird script, the looniness of the content, all contribute to this being seen as a 'bad' movie.  Mind you, a bad movie to be enjoyed for all its badness; to revel in its 'cult' status.  But certainly not something to be brought up in serious conversation.  In this way I think it shares a lot in common with Carpenter's other movies like Big Trouble in Little China or John Carpenter's Vampires starring James Woods.  Movies so hokey they can't help but be loved.

To be honest, this is how I considered They Live for a long time.  It's incredibly fun to laugh at the ridiculousness of this movie, and move on to more respectable fare.

However, I got a theory.  And like Piper putting on the sunglasses for the first time, it's CHANGED EVERYTHING FOR ME.

I have a hard time believing that John Carpenter just entirely forgot how to make a good movie in the six years between making The Thing and They Live.  Even if we count the other four movies he made in the interim (Christine, Starman, Big Trouble in Little China, and Prince of Darkness) to be complete floppy failures (which they are not, merely different beasts to be judged on their own merits), it's still hard for me to say that They Live is the same kind of thing.  Big Trouble is clearly not meant to be taken seriously.  They Live is not so clear.  But if you try to take it seriously, it's far too wacky by the end to cope with.  How do I cope?

Then it hit me: They Live is not a movie about an alien conspiracy.  They Live is a depiction of a deeply disturbed individual's paranoid fever dream.  That the character Roddy Piper plays is in fact mentally ill, and that the whole movie is a wish-fulfilling fantasy for a deranged mind.  If you take the movie in this context, a lot of things about it start making a lot of sense.

For example, how is the audience supposed to believe that a man can walk into a bank, deliver the bubble-gum line straight-faced, shoot multiple people in the chest, and then run away into an alley with ZERO CONSEQUENCES?  Because it's not actually happening.  It's just one vignette in a paranoid schizophrenic's power-fantasy*.  That's why the line is so bad, but is so delicious to say.  That's why there's no consequences.

If you watch They Live from this perspective, the perspective of a mad drifter overlaid on reality, the movie suddenly becomes chilling.  All the "aliens" he murders are just normal people, his erratic behavior makes a lot more sense, his cryptic speech patterns fit.  He fantasizes about being powerful, being in-the-know, fighting a massive conspiracy for the good of mankind, becoming the ultimate hero.

If They Live is a delusion in the protagonist's head this explains the abominable writing that afflicts the other characters in the movie, such as the woman that he kidnaps.  This same woman who throws him out a third-story window, the same woman who inexplicably becomes his love-interest by the end of the movie.  Of course he projects imagined relationships onto the people around him, based on even the most minor or toxic contact.  Of course he wins his friend over to his side immediately and completely after a fist-fight and one glance through the 'magic sunglasses'.  Because none of this is actually happening.  Or, at least it isn't happening in the way it's presented.

I think that looking at the movie this way makes sense of a lots of its perceived weaknesses.  The action is schlocky because the protagonist has poor taste, and his delusion follows suit.  The pace and script are uneven and weird because his perception is warped by his slow descent towards a complete break with reality.  The way the world looks through the glasses is informed by the pulp alien movies of the drifter's childhood from the 1950s and 60s, even unto the Ed Wood-sy flying saucers and vacuum tubes.  Characters from the drifter camp in the beginning of the movie recur in unbelievably unlikely spaces (a bum ends up wearing a tuxedo and showing them around at an Illuminati party).

If my theory is true, this means two things.

One, that this movie instantly becomes more interesting.  It becomes downright creepy, in fact, because it tethers the wackiness of the film down into the real world, down to that guy raving incoherencies on the street-corner.  It also provides plenty of entertainment for those who want to unravel what is happening in reality in the movie, and what is delusion.

Two, it explains the movie's popularity in conspiracy-circles.  Not that everyone in conspiracy circles is mad and dangerous, but rather it shows that Carpenter got something very right.  That something about They Live taps into the drives of people who are attracted to conspiracies in a way that's greater than just the p's and q's of its content.  There are no magic sunglasses, but there are lots of people who believe they can see THE TRUTH.

And, when you think about the more violent scenes in They Live under the context of recent mass shootings, it suddenly becomes a very plausible and very frightening movie indeed.

-Joanna


*Note: I understand that not all paranoid schzophrenics, or the mentally ill at large, are violent or have fantasies of this sort.  They need love and I hope the reader will not take this theory as someone casting yet more shade upon an already stigmatized group as a whole.

Altered -Movie Review

Directed by Eduardo Sanchez/2006/1hr 27min
SPOILERS AHEAD
Originally published November 25, 2013.

Reading the Netflix synopsis of this movie, I was expecting an extraterrestrial sci-fi thriller rooted in revenge and justice.  I was not expecting a backwoods, beer-fueled, mulleted, old-fashioned ass kickin!

Our film begins with three, dare I say, "rednecks" barreling through the woods in a van chasing after an alien.  Otis, Duke, and Cody, armed with harpoons, guns, chains, and traps pursue the alien until finally it falls in a deep hole and they are able to capture it.  This opening scene also contained my favorite dialogue exchange of the whole movie: "Hey moron, you almost harpooned me."  "Suck it up, piss-pants."

I digress.  They load up the alien and bring it back to the home of Wyatt, a paranoid young man with a picture of a presumed dead relative and a claw-like "tracker" in a jar out in his garage.  Otis, Duke, and Cody bring the knocked-out alien into the garage and lay it on the table.  Wyatt checks to make sure the alien is still alive because apparently if you kill one, the rest will come and annihilate you.  Cody is a bit of an antagonist, giving Wyatt a hard time and revealing that the aliens had attacked before, killing Cody's brother, Timmy.  Upon their escape, Wyatt told all their family members and friends that the men were lying about the alien attack and that Cody had killed his own brother.  Cody's dad believed this story and the shame of the lie has been haunting Cody for 15 years.

Suddenly the alien wakes up, lets out a high frequency screech, leaving Wyatt grabbing his head in anguish.  Wyatt snaps and starts cutting the alien's midsection open.  The alien's arms get free and it starts to thrash as Cody jumps in and restrains it, getting bit in the process.  Wyatt is able to extract the tracker from the alien's intestines and steps on it, ensuring the other aliens will not be able to find them.  It is then revealed that Wyatt has a giant torso scar from when he was abducted many years ago and implanted with a tracker himself.


The alien is passed out again, so they glue it back together and duct tape it to the table - so rednecky - I love it!  Wyatt's wife/girlfriend, Hope, comes into the garage and starts freaking out, as anyone would upon seeing this laying on their table.  Otis had put a welder's helmet over the alien's face so they could all avoid eye contact, but in the tussle, the glass part of the helmet had cracked, and Hope and the alien engage in a stare-off.  Entranced, she grabs an exacto knife, turns it on the men, and then puts it to her own throat.  Cody tackles her, Wyatt screams, "LET GO" and the trance is broken.  They tie Hope to the bed to keep her out of the way while Cody realizes that his entire body is becoming infected from the alien bite.  His skin is turning grey and veiny and splotchy and overall gross.

The creature wakes up again and we go through the process again of knocking it out, this time with a shovel, I believe, and we see Cody's condition worsening.  This is what they believe killed Timmy, the contagious bites, eating from the inside out, their flesh peeling off in layers.  Yum!  They lock his ass in the bathroom because he's starting to trip out.  Out of nowhere, the creature is GONE FROM THE TABLE!  Those long fingernails it had came in handy for cutting the duct tape.  The lights magically go out as well and here comes the town sheriff to investigate after a disturbance call.  The sheriff pops a Yuengling as the alien is revealed hiding in a closet and then scrambling behind Hope's bed.  We get our first clear view of the alien at this moment, black, slimy, pointed teeth, wet black eyes, and what my husband thought was a vagina on its forehead.  Anyway.

The alien and Otis tussle, but the alien gets the better of him, stringing his intestines across the room and starting to chow down.  The other men barge in trying to help, somehow the sheriff gets shot, and Wyatt is able to saw off the alien's hand and fling it across the room.  The sheriff dies, thereby being the most useless character of the whole movie.  Thanks, officer.  Hope frees herself from the bed and threatens to kill the alien.  Instead they load it into the van to take it to "town."  Duke stays behind with Cody and Wyatt explains to Hope about how he was altered many years ago by the aliens and now they want him back.

Wyatt screeches to a halt in the road, sensing the aliens are surrounding them.  Hope walks off and Wyatt discovers, surprise, the sheriff's body is in the cage, not the alien!  Duke had done the old switcheroo and is back in the garage torturing the alien.  Duke's about to set it on fire when Cody's rotting ass crawls out of the bathroom, distracting him.  Upon Wyatt's arrival back home, we see Duke nailed up in the utility closet and implanted.  Wyatt finds the alien in the bathtub, fights it, gets bit and then tackled as the alien flies across the room.  BUT! Duke is still alive, though not for long, as he yells for the alien to "Get off him, you f*cker" but then has his throat ripped out.  Sigh, anyway.

Eventually Cody harpoons the alien across the room into the wall and they have an epic staredown.  The alien mind controls Cody making him beat Wyatt's ass even though all his bones are breaking and his flesh is rotting off and finally Hope busts back in and shoots the alien in the head.  Wyatt puts Cody out of his misery, shooting him in the head, but then ALL the aliens start to break in.  It's pandemonium!!  Wyatt and Hope run to the basement in a little bunker Wyatt has created and they blow the whole freakin' house up.  We see an exterior shot of the UFO lingering over the house and then escaping up into the atmosphere.  Oh yeah, the UFO looks like a giant damn frog.  Disappointed.  Wyatt and Hope are alive and although they blew up their entire house, somehow the body of the original alien is still within a couple feet.  Our final scene ends with them leaving the charred alien body on the doorstep of a man named "Towne" (this was never really explained) and they drive off in their van.

Alright, so this movie was utterly ridiculous, perhaps only remotely scary due to Cody's flesh rotting off, but overall hilariously entertaining, whether intentional or not.  My husband even sat down halfway through to watch it and didn't leave til the end, even though he has Assassins Creed 4 to play downstairs, so that's got to tell you something.  Anyway, on sheer terror factor alone, I have to give it a thumbs down, but being from Virginia and having spent my fair share of time around guys just like those in this movie, it almost reminds you of home in an odd...way...

Anyway, if you have an hour and a half to kill and a beer or two to drink, I'd definitely suggest watching this movie with a group of friends.  It's got just enough suspense to keep you interested and enough humor that you'll be quoting for the next few days.  Thumbs up from me!

-Amanda

I Saw the Devil - Movie Review

I Saw the Devil
Original Title: Ang-ma-reul bo-at-da
2010
Dir. Jee-woon Kim

Spoiler Free!

Imagine a world in which Craven's Last House on the Left was subtly-made, compelling, beautiful, and ends up actually meaning something... Well, guess what: minus the famous 'biting' scene, you're in luck!  I Saw the Devil is your ticket.

This Korean horror-drama by Jee-woon Kim takes the cliche secret-agent revenge flick to a new level.  After only 53 minutes, this movie had the main characters in 'the final showdown', and I was baffled at what it was going to do with itself for the remaining hour and a half.  Well, it does plenty, weaving a plot so satisfying it had me clapping with sick glee.

A psychotic killer by the name of Kyung-chul (played by Min-sik Choi), kidnaps, rapes, and murders women.  One of those women was the fiancee of secret agent Soo-hyeon (played by the handsome Byung-hun Lee).  Taking two weeks off work, Soo-hyeon begins to track down her killer in the most badass way possible.  He doesn't faff around with investigating his suspects, he just sneaks up, assaults them, and gets them to confess about whether they're the killer.  Just so you know how serious he is, he smashes one rapist's junk with a hammer - just for good measure.  After two dead ends, he tracks down Kyung-chul and the real story begins.

There's a magnificent fight scene in a greenhouse that establishes Kyung-chul as physically intimidating and ruthless, but also establishes that Soo-hyeon is an unmitigated bad-ass.  Soo-hyeon WRECKS Kyung-chul.  But then, Kyung-chul wakes up with bruises, a broken wrist, and an envelope full of cash on his chest.  And this is where the movie takes off.

See, just killing Kyung-chul would be too easy, to simple for Soo-hyeon.  He wants that monster to suffer in pain and fear, just like Soo-hyeon's fiancee did in her final moments.  Thus I Saw the Devil takes us on a twisting ride that I can genuinely call cat-and-mouse without hating myself.  Kyung-chul goes about his serial-killing psychopathic business, stalked and repeatedly beaten by Soo-hyeon.  Along the way we meet all manner of strange low-lifes, cannibals, innocents, and diligent cops trying to tag along in Soo-hyeon's wake.

But do not mistake I Saw the Devil as a mere action-thriller.  There is no emotional triumph at the end for Soo-hyeon.  Justice is not served.  When all is said and done there is only blood and cold and despair.  And despite the fact that I Saw the Devil wallows heartily in all the great things about the horror movie psychopath (placing it squarely in the horror genre, I think), it maintains a steady, fundamental undercurrent of existential darkness.  It's the same theme that plenty of artsy movies try to get at, just without the wham-bang fight scenes and outstandingly rendered gore.  Sort of like if The Bicycle Thief were re-written by a Nebraskan teenager in a Cannibal Corpse t-shirt.  But then somebody with taste took it away and made sure it was good.

One of the best things about this movie is that, as it progresses, one isn't sure exactly who the Devil in it is.  At the mid-point, the perspective of the movie tilts toward Kyung-chul, the killer's, almost making him the protagonist as he bullies doctors and rapes a nurse.  This part, in particular, was where I felt the Last House on the Left resonance the most.  I was always put off by how LHotL seemed more concerned, even sympathetic, with the raping, murdering hooligans than the totally dorky, lame-o parents.  Perhaps it's the cynical part of me that knows there's countless douche-bags out there that agree.  Likewise, Kyung-chul runs around like an MRA's comic-book hero, not taking shit from old people, telling it like it is, complaining about how "the bitches are always out to get him", and generally being a huge prick.  But, a prick than has no compunctions about slitting your throat with a broken piece of glass.  This said, when Soo-hyeon begins to haunt him like a relentless spectre, I Saw the Devil almost seems to say that Soo-hyeon is the devil, and that's AWESOME.

But of course, nothing is so clear cut.  Later, as we see Soo-hyeon's broken condition, it is clearly Kyung-chul that was the devil.  Kyung-chul destroyed everything about Soo-hyeon's life, including his ability to be himself.

However, I don't mean to oversell the complexity of this movie.  What I'm trying to explain is that this movie deftly examines the most rudimentary blocks of morality and how our actions influence our identity.  It doesn't go very deep, so don't expect it to.  However, it goes deeper than I ever expected a movie like this to go.  Gory revenge flicks almost seem hard-coded to be mindless, pointless, and pornographic in the most boring of ways.  I Saw the Devil is not.  It's fun, exciting, scary, gruesome, but also puts the effort in to be good at all.

The reason why I react with such enthusiasm to this movie is that it's a bit of a rare bird.  It's an example of a horror movie that is splashy and satisfying enough to please the most plebeian audience, but is well-made enough to make stern critics shrug and admit it's not ALL BAD.  And this isn't just in the plotting or the excellence of the acting.  The editing (and subsequently, the pacing) is magnificent.  I Saw the Devil takes its time to show character development, while seamlessly advancing through the engrossing plot.  It's shot beautifully, in stern, wintry greys that are exploded apart by bright blood sprays.  Further the manner in which the camera conveys its action (even outside its color palate), is masterfully conducted.  If this convinces you: it's the first time I've ever seen the Michael-Bay-360 happen in a movie and actually BE GOOD.  Mindblowingly good.  Good because it makes the onscreen action claustrophobic, yet entirely visible in necessary ways.

In conclusion, I would recommend I Saw the Devil to anybody who likes a horror movie.  Because even if you don't go in for the splatter of serial killers, you can at least enjoy it for being a well-made film.  You can enjoy it for how it (might) make you cry, and (might) make you cheer or laugh.  You can enjoy it for how it doesn't turn away from its moral implications and inevitable personal repercussions.  But really, when you get down to it, it's just one of the hands-down best showings in the revenge-flick category you're likely to see.

-Joanna

The Babadook - Movie Review

The Babadook
2014
Directed by Jennifer Kent
Spoiler-Free!

This is probably self-destructive for a blogger to say but: STOP READING THIS BLOG RIGHT NOW AND GO WATCH THE BABADOOK.  IT IS ON NETFLIX INSTANTVIEW, and if you don't have Netflix, I'm sure you can pay some exorbitant one-time price on some other website.

Point is: this is hands-down one of the best horror movies I've ever seen.  I have a deep, deep love for early German Expressionism and magic realism.  The Babadook scratches both of these itches in a most potent and brilliantly powerful way.  Further, I'm currently preggo, and am terrified of postpartum depression, so The Babadook hits home hard.  These two things, style and heart, are what set The Babadook apart from other scary movies (despite the fact that we're in the giddy throes of a horror renaissance).

Warning: This is not so much a review, as it is a long essay about the two things I loved the most about The Babadook.  There are far better reviews out there, and I don't think I can add to them.  Check them out if you'd like something more concise and review-y.

Synopsis: The Babadook is about a mother whose husband died in a car-wreck on the way to give birth to her son.  Seven-ish years later, the mother and son discover a children's book titled Mister Babadook, and soon the babadook is an all-too-real entity ruining their lives.  As the mother spirals into madness, both her life and her son's are in danger.

Part I:  Why the ending confuses people 

Or, Americans can't grok Magic Realism.

Let's start with the style.  The Babadook is impeccably made.  It's not merely put together well.  It doesn't just have excellent lighting and set-direction.  It isn't simply acted with a potency that reaches into your guts and rips out all your fears.  It is all these things and more.  The most thrilling thing about The Babadook (stylistically) is that it dwells deep in the land of expressionistic magic realism.  This is what leads to some of the more far-out sequences and what makes certain passages of The Babadook so unfathomably terrifying.  This is why the visual-effects are not "polished" (something Jennifer Kent did intentionally).  This is also why the ending confused so many hapless movie-goers.

I promise, I'm not about to spoil this.

Hi, Count Orlok!  I've missed you...

So what do I mean when I say expressionistic magic realism?  I'm probably going to botch this definition because I'm not a film or literary scholar, but bear with me.  In this movie, the babadook is absolutely real, but that is not what the movie is trying to say.  Kent's story is told using something magical (the babadook) to talk about something perfectly true and real in real life.  This is not the same as riding along on a premise about something supernatural that then has an undertone or subtext that is supposed to connect up to real life.  Kent is talking about mundane reality, using magic.  The point is not to walk away thinking babadooks are real, but to walk away thinking about the thing the babadook represents in an extremely real manner.

To get my point across, it might help for me to talk about the current state of horror movies and then explain how The Babadook deviates.  This movie does not come down on one side or the other in what I call "The Literalist Dilemma".  That is to say, 99% of American horror cinema falls into one category or the other in this dilemma.

One category is that GHOSTS ARE REAL.  This includes movies like Oculus that are very serious about the audience buying into the premise that supernatural stuff is real and that's just how this movie is gonna be.  Other examples are The Ring, The Exorcist, and, to reach for an uncommon example, the Friday the 13th movies.  These movies say "This is a supernatural train that will never happen in real life, so if you're not down with that- then get off now."

The other category is GHOSTS ARE NOT REAL.  These movies often end with a "twist" where the camera pans out to see the main character has been talking to themselves in an empty room the whole time.  There are no ghosts or monsters, it's all in their heads!  It has been the whole time!  Examples include Session 9, The House on Haunted Hill, and The Village  A friend of mine helpfully pointed out I could call this The Scooby-Doo, so that's its official name now.

Just wanted to share some of the best Scooby-Doo fanart by Dijonay with you. Never has Fred looked so good...

These two categories comprise the horns of The Literalist Dilemma.  In other words, the premise and the leverage of the twist of these movies are based on the audience taking the events depicted in the film literally.  There are literally ghosts or there are literally no ghosts, only madness and assholes. Put another way, these movies are CLEAR about whether they posit supernatural things or not.  By the end, the audience can be comfortable knowing which side of the dilemma the movie falls on, and process it accordingly.

Magic realism, however, throat-punches this dilemma right in its reductivist... throat.  This is why I've watched countless people tie themselves up in knots trying to "decipher" movies like Pan's Labyrinth.  The deciphering is an attempt to figure out which horn to stick the movie on, and magic realist movies staunchly resist this.  They blur the line between the reality and fantasy in such a way that it is unclear whether we are supposed to 'believe' magic actually happens in the movie.  Thus, getting obsessed with whether or not the babadook is a real monster is missing the point.

To highlight a finer point, there's a part of me that is tempted to refer to the babadook as 'metaphorical', but this leads into an easy trap laid by the Literalist Dilemma.  Oculus, for example, is ultimately about childhood trauma.  It tells a story where there are literally ghosts, but the ghosts are 'metaphorical' for traumatic memories.  The childhood trauma is a subtext that we ought to 'get' while the movie goes about its supernatural business.  This is often how value is found in horror movies at all.  We use bogeymen to address our real problems.  However, there is something distinct in magical realism that puts that metaphor up front.  The babadook is a tool, a symbol, for talking about postpartum depression, but is also real.  There are no 'two-levels' of thinking about the movie, because the babadook and the PPD exist on the same plane of reality here.

Or, the babadook is immediately representational, instead of subtextual.

This leads to confusion for people who don't have a way of processing film outside of the Literalist Binary.  Even my favorite reviewer, David Edelstein, seems to succumb to this in one of his few, tiny bits of criticism of the movie: stating that some viewers might think its metaphor too "obvious".  To rate metaphor in terms of obviousness isn't going to work for a movie like this...  It's like talking about the obviousness of an animal.  "Sorry, your cat was too obvious.  Obvious cats are just so crass."  What is that even supposed to mean?

Let's pretend with script-writing:

Is the babadook real?  Yes.  So then this is a supernatural movie?  No.  Wait... but you just said the babadook was real.  It is.  So then how is this NOT a supernatural movie?  Because there's nothing supernatural about it.  The babadook is real, and her depression is real.  In fact, they're the same thing.  Yeah... but what you mean is the babadook is a metaphor for the depression?  That depends on how you're using the word 'metaphor.'  If you're using it to mean that this is a movie about a monster that doesn't exist, that is separate from the depression but can be read metaphorically, then no- because the monster does exist, every day, in the real world we are living in right now.  But that's impossible!  I don't understand, waaaaaaaah.... I'm gonna go complain on imdb. :(

The Babadook requires the audience to be capable of parsing a reality that is NOT fantasy (i.e. realism), but that includes magical elements.  The babadook is no less real than the dog, or Mrs. Roach, but don't make the mistake of thinking that means this movie is supernatural.

I won't stop screaming until I know if it's real or not!!!!!!!!!!!

Part II: You are not your depression

Or, sometimes kids ARE terrible and that doesn't make you a bad mom...

The other glorious thing about The Babadook is how it treats the complex relationship between a parent and child.  There are so many, many movies that tell an overly simplified version of this struggle: usually where the child is sweet and only occasionally annoying, and the mom Just Goes Crazy because that's Just What Moms Do.  Because Mothering Is Hard.  I cannot even begin to express how stupid, lazy, and harmful this is to women coping with motherhood, mustless PPD.  

So many reviews on the internet harp on about how annoying the kid in this movie is.  Every time I see one, I turn into Grumpycat and go "GOOD. :(" because the kid not being a darling angel is important to understanding the cycle this movie is all about.  Sometimes kids aren't good and sometimes mom's aren't good.  The events in The Babadook are grueling, both for the mother and child.  They are both dealing with immensely heavy emotional shit, and it makes them drive each other crazy.  The mother makes the kid crazy, and the kid makes the mom crazy, until everything is just covered over in the darkness of the babadook, and they are actually trying to murder each other. 

This level of emotional complexity is not only refreshing, but makes the terror of The Babadook so much more severe.  It would be easier to dismiss a movie that worked in broad strokes.  It would be easy to say: well, that woman is deeply disturbed; I'm not deeply disturbed; therefore I'm safe from being this woman and this movie couldn't possibly happen to me.  Instead, The Babadook shows just how feasible it is to slide down that slope of grief, sleep-deprivation, and bitterness into becoming a monster yourself.  The Babadook does not turn away from the horribleness of PPD.  It doesn't give the easy out of the babadook just being a fantastical, fictional bogeyman that lives in a movie, tormenting the innocent (GHOSTS ARE REAL).  Rather, it shows how the babadook can be an all-too-real darkness festering on the inside of lonely, desperate parents.  

And yet!  The babadook is separate from the mother, Amelia.  If this were a movie that flopped over onto the GHOSTS ARE NOT REAL horn, it would quickly fall into the pathetically sexist trap of "Well, she's just a crazy, bad mother."  Think Carrie or Mommy Dearest.  Considering the monumental amount of pressure and guilt moms labor under in our society, this trap is particularly insidious.  The last thing moms need is another story telling us that when we are at our worst: weak, damaged, and struggling, that it just means we are bad.  Because if we were 'good moms' we wouldn't be having these problems, and we especially would never, ever, EVER take any of it out on our darling angel children.  Oh, you did take it out on your kids that one time?  Well, guess they're gonna need therapy later and you are a BAD MOM.  And that narrative just feeds the evil cycle of depression, further isolating hurting women and hurting families.

By making the babadook a thing that is separate from the mother's identity, it (strangely) gives a positive, hopeful, and empowering view on mental illness.  You Are Not Your Depression, The Babadook says.  Even better, it says: You Can Fight It and Be Happy Someday.  

Now, you're probably going to have to keep your babadook locked away and feed it worms for the rest of your life because you 'can't get rid of the babadook', but you know what?  That's pretty okay.

But don't get uppity and think The Babadook condones abuse.  If it's clear about one thing: it is how horrible all this is.  But it doesn't leave it there, down at the bottom of that pit.  It concludes with a message far stronger and more powerful: 

You Can Beat The Babadook.

-Joanna

Oh, and aside from all this lengthy rambling: The Babadook is FUCKING TERRIFYING.  So go watch it already...

We Are What We Are - Movie Review

We Are What We Are
2013
Directed by Jim Mickle

Spoilers Ahead

In the history of the Hand of Jessee blog, I've reviewed slashers, thrillers, paranormal, found footage, '80s films, and B movies.  I felt it was only appropriate to review a film topic I'd never touched on before: cannibalism.  So, there's that.

We Are What We Are could've gone one of two ways.  It could've been an all out nasty, bloody, meaty, chunky, gorefest from start to finish or it could've been what it actually was, a slow burner, leaving more to the imagination than the eye. Until the end, that is.

Our film centers around the Parker family, Frank, Emma, Iris, Rose, and Rory.  The film begins with Emma Parker staring solemnly out the door on the last day of her life.  Upon walking home from the store, Emma sees a sign posting of a missing girl and immediately starts bleeding from the mouth, faints and dings her head on a pipe, falling in a shallow fountain and drowning.

We are then introduced to the rest of the Parker family, your typical portrait of a down-home, southern, conservative, plaited-hair, ruffled dress, and suspender wearing family.  We are made aware that the Parker family is on a very strict fast imposed by Frank, leaving his two daughters, Iris and Rose, and young son, Rory, starving.  We are treated to a pretty gross autopsy scene of the mother, Emma, where we learn that she had early onset Parkinson's.

As the film progresses, we learn that there has been a string of missing girls around town and bones have been turning up in the creek and nearby forests and trails.  Frank eerily spends a lot of time out in his shed, the sounds of whimpering and crying muffled underground.  Rory makes the mistake one day of going down in the basement and we get our sole jump scare of the movie when a hand shoots out from under a crack in a door, grasping at Rory.  He is caught by Frank and sternly reprimanded.

We later see Rose reading their family history from a diary that has been passed down generation to generation.  Apparently in previous eras, to survive their family had to rely on "eating meat."  We're not talking about cows or pigs here, people.  Iris frequently expresses that she wishes her family wasn't the way they were but Frank is sure to let them know that God chose them to be that way and if they are not, they get sick from "the poision" and die one by one.  Clearly, this dude is not firing on all cylinders.  Oh yeah and Frank has started to suffer from frequent nosebleeds and hand tremors.

The biggest point of tension in the movie comes when Iris, as the eldest daughter, is forced to replace her mother's role in preparing dinner.  She must go down to the basement with a scythe and after uttering, "It is with love that I do this.  God's will be done", kills one of the chained up women and then traces the meaty parts of her body with lipstick and drains her of blood.  Meanwhile, the nosy neighbor, Marge, hears the screams coming from below the Parker house.

We see the Parker family having a super meaty stew and are forced to endure close-ups of Frank's slurping and chewing and stew-stained beard for much longer than necessary.  All this time, the town sheriffs have been investigating the disappearances and start to put two and two together and suspect the Parkers.  The town doctor also sheds some light on the subject as we learn that Emma had not Parkinson's but Kuru Disease.  The main cause of Kuru Disease is dun, dun, dun cannibalism.  After catching Iris having sex with the youngest sheriff out in the woods, Frank decides it's time to punish his evil smite-worthy daughter and bring down the whole family by poisoning their stew with arsenic.  Well, let's just say the girls do not go down without a fight.

After an epic chase scene, a shoot-out with the doctor, Marge getting her throat slit, Frank convinces all the children to reconvene at the dinner table and finish their meal.  He lets them know, "All is forgiven in the eyes of the lord" and kisses them on the mouth.  Well, Rose decides to break bad and legit chomps into Frank's neck while Iris stabs him in the hand and starts eating his hand and arm.  We then basically have a five to ten minute scene of the girls eating their father to death and then driving out of town with their little brother and the family diary to live happily ever after (?) 

We Are What We Are had its fair share of pros and cons for me. 

Pros
- The cinematography was beautiful.  The film was awash with shades of blue, gray, beige, and other neutral colors.  There was not a single bright color in the film.  Everything was muted, pale, and rainy.  The nature shots of the town were fabulous, especially the shots of the forest and streams during rainstorms.
- In conjunction, the sounds are great as well.  We hear trickling water, crickets chirping, ticking clocks, but never jump scare shrieks, tension-building drums or violins, or harsh noises of any kind.
- The acting is done very well.  The girls, Iris and Rose, are very convincing in their roles as young intelligent girls wanting to break free but restrained under the harsh rule of their father.  Frank is a convincingly creepy and intimidating, soft-spoken, slow-moving dictator.

Cons
- I appreciate a good slow burn and build-up but We Are What We Are was almost a bit TOO slow-moving at certain points.  With about 45 minutes left to go in the movie, I started to lose interest and had to pause and come back to it.
- I would've liked them to explore a little more of the family history of how they became cannibals and why the tradition was so strongly upheld over time and also more about the Kuru Disease and its effects on the body.
- It's always a little gross to watch someone get eaten, but I guess that's a subjective con.

 

Anyway, overall I give We Are What We Are a positive rating for its unique take on the horror genre and its risk-taking.  This film serves as proof that you don't need to see every grimy gory detail in order to be left with an unnerved and unsettling feeling as you complete a film, impressed with its execution but never really wanting to watch it again.

-Amanda

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (2014)

The Town That Dreaded Sundown
Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
Produced by Ryan Murphy
Released 2014
NO killer reveal spoilers ahead

The Town That Dreaded Sundown is loosely based upon the original film of the same name released in 1976 which is loosely based around actual events.  This updated version actually puts a new spin on remakes, which I quite enjoyed.  Rather than just rehashing the same characters, plot, and scenes of the original film, Gomez-Rejon's modern day version weaves the existence of the original film into the 2014 version as a catalyst for a new string of murders.  I was slightly hesitant about this film, seeing as it's produced by Ryan Murphy, better known for Glee and American Horror Story fame.  Murphy's work is questionable - Glee started off great and went downhill very quickly and American Horror Story is teetering on the edge, especially after the disaster that was the most recent season "Freak Show."

I digress.  'Sundown' is based in a town on the border of Texas and Arkansas, aptly named Texarkana.  In 1946, there was a string of horrific murders over the course of three months committed by someone known only as the 'Phantom Killer', who would follow young couples into isolated areas to murder them.  In reality, the killer's identity was never discovered, but the movie has a slightly different take on it.  I also have to disclose that I have not seen the original 1976 version of the film, so I cannot give a comprehensive view of how both films bounce off of each other, but I will do my best based solely on the 2014 version.  Every year in Texarkana, the original film is screened at the drive-in on Halloween night (this actually happens in real life) and this is where our 2014 movie begins.

 

Our main couple in the film is introduced at the drive-in, Jami and Corey.  They leave the showing to sneak off and make out in the woods in their car.  They are quickly approached by a creeper with what looks like an ace bandage on his head who bashes in their car window, chases them for a bit, then kills Corey.  He tackles Jami as she tries to run and tells her, "This is for Mary.  Make them remember" and then lets her live, as she crawls back to safety under the drive-in movie screen, causing the crowd to scream and run to aide her.  As a funny side note, Gary Cole and Anthony Anderson play the deputy and ranger in the town, which is pretty hilarious to me.  Jami's grandma gives her some history of the Phantom Killer from the '70s and we learn that the aforementioned Mary was one of the original victims.

The movie then progresses through a series of murders of different couples, one being a veteran coming home and reuniting with his girlfriend in a hotel room, another being a gay high school couple.  The murders are definitely unique, I will say.  The vet gets his head cut off and smashed through a window and one of the high school boys gets a knife to the back of the head attached to a trombone.  Why, I don't know, but it was kind of funny in a WTF type of way.  I feel like I might've had to have seen the original to fully grasp that one.

Anyway, Jami does some research in the archives and makes a little boyfriend out of one of the workers there and receives a creepy Zodiac-esque manifesto but through email rather than news bulletins, since this is 2014 and all.  The police aren't very receptive to her concerns, so Jami decides to take matters into her own hands.  She and her boyfriend, Nick, go visit the son of the director of the original film, Chuck Pierce Jr. and he tells them the story of a man, Hank McCreedy, a victim of the Phantom Killer whose body was found on the train tracks cut up into pieces.  We discover Mary was Hank's pregnant wife and Pierce thinks the new Phantom Killer may be the grandson of the McCreedys, angry that his grandfather's death is not remembered and honored by the town of Texarkana.  After a few more deaths in the town, Jami's grandma freaks out and says she and Jami are going to move to California to get away from it all.

But of course, before they can make it to California, there's a good old fashioned shoot-out and chase scene at the town gas station at the conclusion of the movie.  Jami is chased by the Phantom Killer and quite literally takes an arrow to the knee (a Skyrim nod, I'm presuming) and an arrow to the chest before finding out the TWIST identity of the killer.  I will tell you though, it's somewhat of a letdown.

The remake of The Town that Dreaded Sundown received overall favorable reviews on Netflix and Rotten Tomatoes, but here I come to be a Debbie Downer.  I didn't really like it.  I didn't really hate it.  I'm basically indifferent about it for a few main reasons.  The movie, excluding credits, was only an hour and twenty minutes long and although it seemed to go by fast, it also felt like the entire storyline just dragged on with rare spurts of excitement that were here and gone far too soon.  The murder scenes were unique and gory but extremely quick and over in a flash before you could truly feel any build of anticipation.  There were no surprise death scenes - every one was lined up and predictable.  Essentially anytime you saw two people together that were in any various stage of undress or intimacy, you immediately knew they were going to die, the man first followed by the woman.

The thing I will say about this film is I enjoyed the incorporation of the original film and the nods given to it throughout the film.  There was even footage of the original movie spliced into certain scenes and the cops were able to trace where the deaths would be taking place based on the killer following the trajectory of the deaths in the original movie.  I liked that they incorporated the character of the director of the original film, weaving fiction and reality together quite seamlessly.  Overall, I would definitely say give this film a shot if you want something to do on a weeknight, but don't expect too much excitement or any actual fear to be gained from it.  It's a modern day twist on a vintage slasher that seems to hold the test of time and wasn't f'ed up too badly by Ryan Murphy but wasn't truly given the glory it maybe could have had.

But it does get ten points for killing someone with a knife attached to a trombone.  Really, that's pretty epic.

-Amanda

Oculus - Movie Review

Oculus
2013
Directed by Mike Flanagan
Spoiler Free!

Whoa, wait, what?  A deeply-moving examination of childhood abuse and trauma masquerading as a half-wit Death Bed remake?  Not what I expected.

Oculus is a feature-length adaptation of a award-winning short released in 2005.  Sadly, I haven't seen the short, so cannot compare it in this review, but suffice to say it was compelling enough that studios tried for years to pick it up as a "found-footage" picture.  Flanagan refused these attempts, and finally agreed to make Oculus on the express condition that it NOT be found-footage.  During the scripting process, they expanded the original premise of the short by intertwining storylines of the past with the present.

But this isn't just a mish-mash of flashbacks.  Oculus tells the tale of a supernatural, EVIL mirror that has the power to warp reality around it.  It kills houseplants, absorbs dogs, and causes intensely realistic hallucinations, driving its human victims to their deaths!  As the movie unwinds, the boundaries between memory and illusion become increasingly blurred until they rip apart altogether.

The story goes that a brother and sister have finally returned to their childhood home: a house of horrors where both their parents died.  Tim has recently been released from a mental institution.  Kaylie has made her way past the trauma on her own, landing a job as an antiques dealer.  Kaylie convinces Tim back to the house because she's located the EVIL mirror that she blames for her parents' descent into insanity and their deaths.  Kaylie intends to document the mirror's powers, and then destroy it.

Tim is skeptical, until strange things begin to happen.  And as we are led down the twisting path of the last innocent days of Kaylie and Tim's childhood, we begin to see why Tim needed to be in an institution, and why Kaylie is so very... intense.

Of course there are ghosts.  Booooooo.  But I'll explain why this is a boo in a bit.

Full disclosure.

Firstly, I'd like to talk about my personal bias.  For example, how much did Joanna relate to Kaylie on a scale of 1-5?  Oh...about AN 8.  I sometimes tell my friends that my husband has done a lot to mellow me out, but they always giggle.  If only they knew how close I might have come to setting up an elaborate system of timers and a death contraption to kill the objects of my obsessions....

Further, as an individual who suffers frequently from severe nightmares, hallucinations, and hideous intrusive thoughts, it was really awesome to have a movie I could point at and exclaim "Look!  See when she bites that lightbulb!  It's not real, but it might as well be.  That's what it's like!  That's why X bothers me so much..."

Anyways, I really liked and identified with Kaylie.  She's a great character because her intelligence, resourcefulness, and determination are not undercut by her mental frailty.  Rather, her unbalanced mind renders her complex and flawed in a way that is empathy-inducing.  A way that would only make her look foolish to the most callous and under-developed adolescent.

Tim is the same way.  His skepticism is level-headed yet born out of a deep sense of self-preservation.  As such, Oculus accomplishes something to be pleased about: characters that are flawed and fearful for a good reason, not some loaded-in stupidity that's requisite for the genre tropes and cliches to go off.  Their childhood was deeply traumatic, and that's bound to make people messed up.  Thus, by actually giving us characters instead of cardboard dolls, the audience is able to empathize and relate to them.  Then, the trouble they get into is believable.  And then, Boom:  Horror that works.  Crazy, huh?

Watch out: we're about to dive deep.

This gets us to the heart of Oculus: how to cope with trauma.  Frequently in the beginning of the movie, Tim admonishes Kaylie for believing that the mirror is EVIL.  He claims that this is just an elaborate delusion she's constructed to cope with the inconceivable horrors of their past.  Memories are unreliable and fluid, and mysteries muddied by time can be easily explained.  The dog had Parvo, dad was just having an affair, etc. etc.

We see how stubborn Kaylie is in response.  How doggedly she chases an explanation that will make her mom and dad and brother Good People, people who were Not Responsible.  She's nestled deep into her obsessive insanity because believing in an EVIL MIRROR is easier and better than believing in the mental illness and abusiveness of her parents.  It's easier than facing the fact that her brother became a killer at 10 years old.

These threads: the unreliability of memory and the rationalizations we weave to cope with the unspeakable, are then mixed into an even nastier snarl with PTSD-type flashbacks and triggerings.  Time may have allowed Kaylie the ability to function in the world, but as the movie goes on, a very true thing becomes patently clear: somewhere on the inside there is still a terrified, frustrated, overwhelmed young girl.  There's a part of Kaylie that will always be that girl, fighting not to be afraid of the people she ought to trust most.  The mirror merely brings that piece to the surface.  And then when we consider how identity over time is not so linear and solid as we like to believe, and how our conceptions about our memories shape who we are, and you get quite the tangled web.

Speaking of tangled webs, Oculus accomplishes a somewhat impressive feat by keeping its shit straight.  I'm sure there are plenty of loopholes and details that people might point out as being flaws (while missing the point that flaws in recollection are exactly what the movie is ABOUT), but all things considered, this movie does an amazing job of minding its p's and q's.  Transitioning cleanly between the present, the actual past, hallucinations in the present, memories, and hallucinations designed to look like memories, Flanagan and his team pulled off a plot-line circuitous enough to make Christopher Nolan proud.

My gum disease is sooooooo spooooooopy!  Be Spooped!

On to the Bad Parts: those useless spoopy ghosts.

No doubt about it, Oculus was made for a general audience.  It pays its dues very diligently to the teenage cash crowd who love nothing more than to decry a horror movie for "Not being a real horror movie, just a psychological drama!  Not spoopy enough. 1 of 10, would not spoop. Super laaaame."  By bending over backwards to establish bullshit "rules" of how the mirror behaves and shoving ghosts down our throats, Oculus makes damn sure that 19-year-olds can't complain on Amazon that it's "totz not real horror".

Sadly, though, because it works so hard to make the EVIL MIRROR real, and the SPOOPY GHOSTS real, it completely undermines what is truly horrifying and resonant about the film.  What is more disturbing than not being able to trust your own mind?  Ladies with cataracts and bad teeth?  I mean, if we have a movie with two deeply scarred young people, returning to the location where all their horrors happen, it's bound to trigger all sorts of things inside them, resulting in a mind-breaking descent into madness.  To insist on the device of a haunted mirror is tiresome and juvenile.

And... I'm not even going to go into how predictable and useless the ending is.  Ugh.

However, I don't particularly blame the film-makers for this as much as I blame the market.  A lot of horror is unbelievably terrible these days because it's what sells.  Honestly, I'm impressed that Oculus even got made, and was popular enough to get, what, two sequels picked up?  So, I understand why they shoe-horned stupid ghosts in, I just whole-heartedly believe it would have been a magnificent movie without them.  The kind of movie that could be like a little baby sister to The Shining.

Speaking of The Shining, though, I'd also like to point out that the way Oculus is made leaves a little to be desired.  While the film-making was clean and the editing very polished (as stated above), I would have liked a bit more in the way of directorial and aesthetic flair.  The movie is very competently shot, and a portion of me wants to argue that any more visual stylization would distract from the plot, but... there's a but.  Atmosphere is frequently built via literal darkness more than shot-framing, and the palette of color and texture could have been more vivid for my tastes (this is a movie about insanity, afterall- we can use shades other than white, bright red, dusty ochre, and black).  As a result, I often felt like Oculus was an extremely well-planned film shot by someone fresh out of school, who hasn't yet had a chance to develop their personal visual style.  I would love to see this redone, sans the conceit of the mirror being actually EVIL, and with a bit more verve.  I think what I want is The Shining.

In short, Oculus definitely has its problems.  It's not a movie that knocks it out of the park.  But, it's got a lot of good stuff hidden away inside its shell.  In other words, Oculus understands the jungle it's in, and has spent a lot of time camouflaging itself as a SuperSpoopyGhostMovie, so that it can continue to feed and lay its eggs in peace.  This makes me happy in a strange way.  Instead of disappointment, I see something hopeful.  That there are people out there capable of making good, compelling, useful horror, even if they have to frost it with dumbness for now.

-Joanna

Come Back to Me - Movie Review

Come Back to Me

Released 2014

Directed by Paul Leyden

Slight plot spoilers but NO ENDING SPOILERS

Hold the phone, alert the presses, a pig has grown wings and just flew past my head, I found a recent horror movie that I LIKE, I really like!! In fact - I watched Come Back to Me on a Friday night while my husband was out and when he got back I told him about it and we watched it together Saturday morning and HE liked it as well! (Normally we rip movies to shreds when we watch them together, haha.)  This means, I watched this movie twice within a 24 hour time period and perhaps I have a fever but I'd actually watch it a third time.

Now granted, before I get too carried away, this isn't an Academy Award worthy picture, folks.  In fact, there's nothing too special or over the top about it.  It isn't exorbitantly freaky or disturbing or groundbreaking.  It's a good 'ol fashioned tale of a lead female with anxiety stalked by the creeper next door with requisite long hair and smelly house.  But it gets deeper and there's a twist at the end that is epic and I'm not gonna tell you what it is for once!  However, all I will say is this, if you're a fan of happy endings, well, you're SOL on this one.

Our story opens with a teenage boy, Dale, sitting on the couch holding his pet rabbit and hearing his mom get murdered by his stepfather.  Or so we are led to believe...

 

Flash forward about ten years and we meet our main character, Sarah, a late 20-something blonde generic cute girl, married to Josh, wanting to have a baby, writing her thesis on the effects of porn on relationships.  Josh and Sarah notice Dale moving in across the street and bring him a plate of Rainbridge Farm cookies, which Dale creepily asks if they're homemade and then seems pissed off that they're not but accepts them anyway.  We later see Dale working in the grocery store and helping Sarah load her groceries in her car, being as friendly as he possibly can while still looking and acting like a major creepo.  

[Oh yeah and there are about five different scenarios in this movie where Dale eats cookies like a creep, all fast and maniacal, and that alone is worth the price of admission for the sheer WTF level of it all.]

We learn that Sarah had recently been in a bad car accident and had head trauma, resulting in insane night terrors where she sees Josh get killed, finds blood on her sweatshirt, wakes up in different rooms in the house, wakes up naked and smelling cleaning products, and all other varieties of strange scenarios.  Her very pregnant friend and therapist, Leslie, tries to help Sarah through all of her issues while Dale lurks around every corner saying hi to Sarah every chance he can get.

 

Eventually, Sarah starts to get suspicious of Dale and sneaks into his house one day after he leaves for work.  She finds an entire cabinet full of cookies and a box upstairs of keys.  Turns out, Dale made an impression of Sarah's key the same day he loaded the groceries into her car and has been sneaking into her house every night.  But what has he been doing?  Suddenly maybe the night terrors aren't nightmares at all, but reality.  We also learn that Sarah becomes pregnant but Josh shoots blanks, thus causing a giant rift in their marraige as he thinks she has been cheating on him and moves out to his buddy's house.

After months of frustration and fear she is losing her mind, Sarah sets up a smoke detector camera in her bedroom to get to the bottom of what exactly is happening during these night terrors/blackouts.  What she finds is alarming.  Dale has been sneaking into her house every night, tying her up, dancing with her in his arms, eating cookies, raping her, then slitting her throat.  Yes, you read that right.  Dale has been killing Sarah every night, BUT after cleaning up all the blood, before he leaves the room he breathes life back into her and all her wounds are healed yet she remembers nothing.

Turns out all those years ago, Dale's mom didn't actually die because that night Dale discovered his power and brought his mom back to life.  He then went out of control with it and began killing girls and animals all around his neighborhood and bringing them back to life, slowly driving his mother to insanity.  She hung herself, slit her wrists, and tried all other methods to die, but Dale would keep bringing her back to life.  Finally, Dale's mother set herself on fire in front of the police and was sent off to the insane asylum in order to get away from Dale.  Sarah goes to visit her and we learn Dale's back story and why he is the way he is today, including the fact that he is forever stuck in a preteen's mentality and when he first discovered his power, before he would bring people back to life, he would demand his mother make him homemade cookies with milk.

 

Our story comes to a grand conclusion when Sarah returns home prepared to shoot Dale, but finds he has tied up Josh and now their lives are in danger.  Sarah must come up with a plan to get Dale out of their lives for good and let's just say it begins with a cookie date over a wine glass full of milk and ends with, well...I want so badly to spoil the last ten minutes of the movie because it gets EPIC but I will not because I feel this one is much more fun when you don't know what's coming.  I'm also leaving out a couple of key scenes for brevity's sake, but let's just say they involve bunnies and babies.

 

Now, I learned after watching this that Come Back to Me is based on a novel, "The Ressurectionist" by Wrath James White, this BAMF right here:

White is a former World Class Heavyweight Kickboxer, distance runner, performance arist, and former street brawler.  Proof that you can't judge a book by its cover or an author by his snazzy suit and tie.

Once again, I would definitely give Come Back to Me a high approval rating.  Of course it has its cheesy moments and the lead actress is sometimes slightly insufferable with her over the top gasps and facial expressions and shrieking, but I can overlook this because of how well the other actors fit their roles and embody their characters and how this is one of those films where you know something is not quite right but you can't exactly figure out what's happening until it all just smacks you in the face.  Dale is a complex character who does heinous things but you realize deep down inside he's an emotionally-stunted momma's boy with a power he didn't ask for and really has no idea what to do with and, man, he just really likes cookies and milk.

Come Back to Me will make you think twice about whether some of your nightmares are a little more real than you'd like to believe and also make you side-eye that one neighbor who always seems a little too interested in where you're going or what you're doing.  And, hey, who doesn't love a horror movie that leaves you with a lingering sense of paranoia, am I right?  Anyone...? 

- Amanda