13 Nights of Shocktober: Thanksgiving

by A.J.

Night 12: Holiday Horror Night

“This year there will be no leftovers.”

Thanksgiving

Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving began as one of the fake trailers that played in between features in the Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino double feature spectacular Grindhouse (2007). The Thanksgiving trailer was the best and funniest of the fake trailers (the others were Robert Rodriguez's Machete, Edgar Wright's Don’t, and Rob Zombie's Werewolf Women of the SS, all of which are pretty funny). After Robert Rodriguez made a full feature out of his fake trailer, Machete, it seemed that these comedic trailers only work as fake trailers. However, the feature length version of Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving is a solid movie and is easily Roth’s best film in a long time. The key to the success of the feature length version is the approach taken by Roth and screenwriter Jeff Rendell. Instead of making a parody, like the trailer, they took a serious approach to the material and the result is a great modern slasher movie.

Set in Plymouth, Massachusetts on, you guessed it, Thanksgiving, a prologue shows us a gruesome and deadly riot at Ritemart, a big box store, that happens after the obnoxious teenager friends of Jessica (Nell Verlaque), daughter of the store owner, who got in early, tease and taunt the massive crowd waiting outside. The crowd charges the store and mayhem and carnage ensue. One year later, the greedy store owner has decided to open his store on Thanksgiving night again but this time he will hire more than two security guards. Jessica and her friends are being tagged in cryptic social media posts. Her ex-boyfriend who mysteriously disappeared after his arm was mangled in the riot–ending his hopes of a baseball career–mysteriously returns, embittered loved ones of the people killed in the riot are protesting the store, a restaurant is handing out masks of John Carver, first governor of Plymouth, and the stage is set for a slasher movie.

If you guess who the killer is way ahead of the reveal, and you just might, that doesn’t spoil any of the fun. It makes sense narratively and Roth and Rendell are more concerned with crafting a good story and entertaining the audience instead of outsmarting them. This is a bloody, gruesome horror movie, so if the violence you see in the riot is too much, then find a different Shocktober movie because the violence only gets more graphic and over the top. This movie does not cut away for effect or leave things up to the viewer’s imagination. We see the gruesome elaborate kills start to finish. And the kills get quite elaborate. The killer dunks one victim in a restaurant sink then sticks her face to the door of the walk-in refrigerator and eventually ends up running her over in an alley so that she is bisected by a dumpster. Yet, Thanksgiving definitely does not have the atmosphere of doom and dread that were a major part of Roth’s Hostel movies and the love it or hate it Cabin Fever. This is like a rollercoaster or amusement park dark ride: the goal is to excite and thrill and even scare you and then deliver you back to the ground where you can laugh off the scares and enjoy the experience you just had.

Nell Verlaque as Jessica Wright is a good “final girl", without feeling like she has been constructed as such. Among the other teens, Tomaso Sanelli as the obnoxious jock Evan deserves recognition for playing a character so believably crass and hateable, but still you don’t really want him to die. Gabriel Davenport as Scuba is also another stand out because he is a hothead who even buys an illegal gun, but then doesn’t know what to do with it. Among the adults, Patrick Dempsey is the stand out and pretty much the star of the movie as the town sheriff. Rick Hoffman is great as the greedy store owner and his redemptive turn midway through the movie is believable. You end up not wanting him to die too–which is impressive since it’s clear he is to blame for the entire fiasco that spawned a revenge driven killing spree. There is a lot of death and a lot of blood but the body count is relatively low. Nothing feels like a foregone conclusion so you never feel like you’re just watching a line up of teenagers/victims die elaborately.

Slasher movies are simple and are something of an oddity as a subgenre. If they are done well they are effective and memorable horror cinema. If they are done poorly they can be just as entertaining, maybe even more so. Thanksgiving is not a parody or a copycat. It does not seek to transcend or redefine the genre, and this is a welcome thing. It is effective, thrilling, gory entertainment in its own right while also being an homage to the genre.

Thanksgiving is streaming on Netflix.

13 Nights of Shocktober: The Witch Who Came From the Sea

by A.J.

Night 5: Serial Killer Night II

“Why did she come out of the sea?”

The Witch Who Came From the Sea

I must admit that I was completely unaware of The Witch Who Came From the Sea before coming across it randomly on the streaming site Tubi and was only interested because of the outrageous title. I was more than surprised by what I saw. This low budget proto-slasher film from 1976 qualifies as a horror movie because of its bloody violence and cerebral imagery. However, two more things separate and even elevate this movie from other serial killer and slasher movies. The first and most obvious: it flips the gender of the killer, so the psychologically damaged killer is a woman. The second: the screenplay focuses on the troubled emotional and psychological state of the killer, turning this would be exploitation movie into a compelling character study, even though the psychology is fairly basic. 

Millie Perkins stars as Molly, an average working class woman who lives by the sea. She adores her two nephews and despises how few “heroes” there are for young boys. She idolizes her deceased father, but remarks from her sister hint at a less than ideal father. Disturbing flashbacks reveal his true abusive relationship with Molly.

By 1976 there had already been many films, especially Italian giallos (mystery films) that, inspired by Hitchcock’s Psycho, were about a killer who was driven to kill their intense and conflicted feelings of attraction and repulsion to women stemming from abuse suffered as a child. Molly is driven by the same conflict but from the perspective of a female character it feels fresh and revealing. The screenplay by Robert Thom provides a great showcase for the talents and skills of Millie Perkins, Thom’s wife at the time, by making Molly a multifaceted character who draws our sympathy or at least our understanding as she murders. 

To be sure, this was created as an exploitation movie. There is a lot of sex and nudity and violence; though not all of the sex and nudity is sexy and not all of the violence is sensational or fun. Molly seduces two very muscular football players and drugs them. One passes out. She ties down the other and he realizes too late this is not a sexual game and he is in trouble. She grabs at his Achilles tendon and fretting over having only a small safety razor and complains, “this is going to take forever.” There is some squirting blood but most of the violence is off screen and we are thankful for it. 

There is also humor too: intentional, unintentional, and awkward. The oddball tattoo artist Jack Dracula reveals that people call him that because that’s his real name. The opening sequence has Molly with her nephews at the beach but she is distracted by ultra muscular men exercising nearby. The camera cuts to close ups of their speedo clad bulges then back to Molly in the throws of desire and disgust. This movie isn’t afraid to turn on a dime from humor to horror. 

The stylistic choices by director Matt Climber pay great attention to Molly’s complex emotional and psychological state. In one scene, a handsome mostly nude man in a TV commercial talks directly to her. There are flashes shown in psychedelic colors of a woman tied to a stake on a raft adrift at sea with dismembered body parts all around her. These surreal touches are captivating and put you in the same bewildered headspace as Molly.

The psychology is simple, perhaps even too simple by even a common understanding today, but unlike slasher movies before or since, this movie cares about its antihero/killer protagonist. Her backstory and past abuse and trauma are more than just an excuse for murder. This movie cares more about Molly’s peace of mind than sensational kills. The ending, like the rest of the movie , is unconventional for the genre, but it is fitting for this story and character.

The Witch Who Came From the Sea is available to stream for free on Tubi.

Review: MaXXXine

 by A.J.

MaXXXine

Writer-director Ti West’s X, set in 1979 and starring Mia Goth, was an adequate slasher genre exercise. The prequel, Pearl, set in 1918 and starring Mia Goth, was an excellent character study, and, in a very welcome surprise, one of the best horror movies of recent years. Now MaXXXine, set in 1985 and starring Mia Goth, is an 80’s horror pastiche, driven more by aesthetic and style than character or even genre. There are touches of 80’s horror, slashers, thrillers, and sleazy low budget movies in general. Everything coalesces fairly well though the ending becomes unwieldy and disappointingly anticlimactic despite an 80’s inspired poolside shootout. If an exploding head is a letdown, then you have made some mistakes with your movie.

Mia Goth stars as Maxine Minx, sole survivor of the “Texas Porn Star Massacre” depicted in X, who is now an adult film star living in L.A. and trying to break into mainstream movies. Her big chance comes when she is cast in the low budget but highly anticipated horror sequel, The Puritan II. Then she begins receiving cryptic notes about her past, her co-workers begin turning up dead after saying they are going to a party in the Hollywood hills, and she is being followed by a sleazy private detective working for a mysterious figure.

Unfortunately most of the great cast is underserved by the material. Bobby Cannavale has some fun moments but still feels underused as an L.A. detective who originally wanted to be an actor. His partner, played by Michelle Monaghan, has decidedly less to do. Giancarlo Esposito and his fabulous wig have too few scenes as Maxine’s agent. However, it’s clear that Kevin Bacon is having a good time as the sleazy private detective with a super heavy New Orleans accent. The performer with the stand out role is Elizabeth Debicki as the director of the horror movie. She is a non-threatening but steely and intimidating presence. Her tall figure looms over Goth in the few scenes where Goth gets to hint at being vulnerable and out of her element. That was the key to Pearl’s success: Mia Goth was able to show a vulnerable side as well as a psycho side. Here we have Maxine, determined and ambitious, with bursts of violent rage that hint at more beneath the surface; but we never get more. An early scene of Maxine delivering a violent comeuppance to a menacing male and another scene of her punching someone in the head while “St. Elmo's Fire” plays in the background–the highlight of the movie which has forever changed what I'll think about when I hear that song–promise a more volatile character and a more exciting movie. Even the action packed climax makes the inexplicable choice to mostly sideline Maxine both physically and dramatically. Ultimately, and most unfortunately, the person most underserved by the script and approach is Mia Goth. This is nowhere near the showcase for her great talent that Pearl provided (it's worth noting that Goth co-wrote the screenplay for Pearl ).

Setting the story against the real-life Night Stalker killings in Los Angeles is unnecessary as it seems to be more for ambiance than anything else since the murders of Maxine's friends are clearly not by the Night Stalker. The production design, costumes, and soundtrack do such a great job of establishing the era that no extra atmosphere is needed. This is not the sleek, dazzling New Wave version of the 1980's that we see so often in 21st century movies and TV shows. This is the dingy, lived in 1980's that would give way to the grunge era of the early 90's. The cars are square and look ugly, the characters drink New Coke from a beat up vending machine, and there is more brown and beige than anyone who lived in the 80’s cares to remember. When it comes, the violence is shown in close up and is gory and stylish but also empty and lacking visceral shock; it is just more ambiance.

MaXXXine is by no means a bad movie, but its best scenes are moments that promise a better movie. There is enough going on that MaXXXine feels like it is doing its own thing, more than a paint by numbers exercise like X. Mia Goth still shines but not as bright as in Pearl, far and away the best of Ti West’s “I’m a star” trilogy.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Pearl (2022)

 by A.J. 

Night 9: Psycho-Killer Night II (Qu'est-ce que c'est)

“One day the whole world’s gonna know my name.”

Pearl (2022)

In 2022 writer-director Ti West released not one but two horror films starring Mia Goth, X and a prequel, Pearl. X is a slasher film set in 1979 about a group of people making an independent porno film on a farm owned by an elderly but homicidal woman, Pearl. Mia Goth played one of the would be adult film stars and also, under heavy makeup, Pearl. X is a well made but standard genre exercise; not exceptional but not bad either. On the other side of the coin, Pearl, a prequel showing the elderly woman in her youth, is an exceptional film. While X was genre driven, following the well established formula of a slasher film, Pearl is character driven, the result of conversations West had with Goth about the background of her character. Here, as Pearl, Mia Goth gives one of the best performances of any movie from last year in one of the best films of 2022 (and one of the best horror films of the last few years). Best of all, it truly stands on its own, so you do not need to have seen or even know about X to get the full effect of Pearl.

Set in 1918 as The Great War is drawing to a close and the Spanish Flu pandemic has people fearing disease and wearing masks, we meet young and sweet Pearl, who lives on an isolated farm with her strict German immigrant mother and invalid father but dreams of leaving and becoming a movie star. The impending return of her husband Howard from the army seems to be more of a source of anxiety than joy. Her chance at stardom comes when her blonde, all-American looking sister in law Mitzy (Emma Jenkins-Purro) tells her about an audition for a touring church dance group. In the days leading up to the audition, she will reach her deadly breaking point. 

What makes Pearl a special film is Mia Goth’s performance. She has turned in great supporting performances in films like Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac Vol. II, The Cure for Wellness, Suspiria (2018) and Emma.(2020), but here she really gets to shine a starring role (Yes, she is the star of X, but that script offers little for any of the performers). As a performer, Goth brings a sly, unexpected physicality to the role, from her dancing to her sudden, extreme shifts in mood and temper. Long before Pearl deals her first death blow, we know what she is capable of because of the flashes of intensity Goth shows us. She is believably sweet and naïve and innocent and also repressed and angry and maniacal and murderous. 

Ti West is a very stylish director, but every flourish in Pearl, meaning every use of technique or aesthetic highlight, enhances the story instead of drawing your attention to the style itself. The most important thing about the single take close up of Pearl’s confession is Goth’s performance, not the unbroken length of the shot. There is some incongruity however between the period setting (1918 during the sepia toned silent era) and the look and sound of the film (the lavish technicolor look of the 1950’s). The score is evocative of classic Max Steiner scores (his most famous being for Gone With the Wind) and the colors are rich and bright and vivid. The grass of the farm is bright green, the red of the barn is a vivid red, and Pearl’s overalls are a striking shade of blue. It is as though the movie draws from everything someone in the 21st century might deem classic, meaning everything from before 1960. The farm girl wishing for escape story evokes The Wizard of Oz (1939), the rich colors evoke 1950’s technicolor movies of Douglas Sirk or a Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie, the story of a girl with with a sinister side evokes Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve or Mervyn LeRoy’s The Bad Seed. In not having a specific film or genre to emulate Ti West has made a picture that feels unique. 

The set pieces are not the kills but the scenes that showcase Goth’s performance (which, yes, include the kills). Her dance with a scarecrow in a cornfield shows us her light, dreamy side. Her tongue kissing the scarecrow then realizing what she’s doing and screaming at, “I’M MARRIED!” at the scarecrow and bearing her teeth in a growl, shows us a quite different side. Her extended confessional scene, an excellently written and deeply affecting monologue delivered almost entirely in one take, is the key scene to the whole movie. A great performance really can elevate an entire movie and that is just what happens here. Pearl does indeed have that “x factor” and it is Mia Goth. 

Pearl is available to stream on Showtime, Paramount+ with Showtime, and is available on DVD/Blu-ray.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Peeping Tom

 by A.J. 

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, for the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 9: Psychological Horror

“Taking my picture?”

Peeping Tom

Whether you are interested in horror movies, classic movies, or film history in general, eventually you find Peeping Tom. It is a peculiar film: made in a classic style, shot in bold technicolor, and made at a time when horror, like other genres, was beginning to touch on darker subjects and themes. Too dark for many in 1960. Peeping Tom was so reviled by critics and audiences that it was pulled from theaters and essentially ended the career of Michael Powell, the renowned British director of many revered classics such as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, and The Thief of Bagdad. Powell and Peeping Tom were ahead of their time; a cliché but true. Only eight years later Rosemary’s Baby, a much much darker film, would achieve mainstream success with critics and audiences. In the decades since it’s disastrous release, Peeping Tom has been recognized as a classic, and you’ll find it on many underrated, overlooked, or “best movies you’ve never seen” lists. Of course the standards of what is shocking and vile change so much that the visuals and set pieces in Peeping Tom would be considered tame by the next decade. The real horror in Peeping Tom is in what you don’t see, in what it implies, and in its themes which retain their disturbing and dreadful shock value. 

In a way, Peeping Tom is about making movies. It is certainly about watching movies. Our main character is Mark (Carl Boehm) , a young, handsome Austrian man, who works as a focus puller at a British movie studio. He also moonlights as a smut photographer for pornographic magazines. Also, he is a serial killer who films his victims at the moment of their death. As memorable as Freddy Kruger’s glove with knives or Leatherface’s chainsaw is Mark’s weapon of choice: a knife hidden in the leg of his camera’s tripod. As he moves in for a close up, so does the blade. 

Mark owns the building where he lives, inherited from his father, but he cannot afford the upkeep so he rents the other rooms. His apartment is unassuming, but there is, as you might imagine, a back room where he develops and screens the films of his murders. In the apartment below him live Helen (Anne Massey) and her mother (Maxine Audley). In the excitement of her 21st birthday, Helen invites Mark to her apartment. When he hesitates, she goes to his apartment where she, and we, learn his backstory. We learn that Mark’s father, a famous psychologist, conducted and filmed experiments on Mark as a child to learn about children’s reactions to fear. We see “home movies” of him harshly waking up Mark in the middle of the night by shining a light in his face or dropping  lizards on him. Mark’s killings are part of of own his own documentary on fear and death. It is not until the climax that we realize the full scope of Mark’s documentary of death.

Helen is shy, like Mark, but also full of life. She is a strong enough force on him that she convinces him to go on their date without bringing along his beloved camera. However, after Helen kisses Mark, he responds by kissing the lens of his camera as though he is compelled to do this. Perhaps this is because Mark was not able to film their kiss, or perhaps because experiences are only real for him if is his camera “sees” them, or perhaps because Mark sees himself as a camera. That Peeping Tom allows for multiple pathways to explore its themes and subtexts is what makes it a great film and explains why it has endured through the decades despite its initial unwelcome reception. 

Perhaps the film’s signature sequence involves Mark and Viv (Moira Shearer), an extra in the film currently shooting at the studio, sneaking on set at night. Viv believes they are there so Mark can film her dance. Mark, and we, know the real reason she is there. Shearer, who starred in Powell’s The Red Shoes, dances as Mark rearranges the set and adjusts the lights, making sure everything is just right for the camera. Shearer is so full of life that we feel the full weight of the impending tragedy yet we accept it as a fulfillment. 

It is worth noting that Peeping Tom was released in not only in the same year, but mere months before Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. The reaction to the two films could not have been more different. Roger Ebert speculated in his Great Movies essay on Peeping Tom that this was “because audiences expected the macabre from Hitchcock” while Powell was known for “elegant and stylized films.” It’s hard not to compare and contrast the films once they are linked. Both films feature psychologically damaged young men but while Psycho only flirts with voyeurism, Peeping Tom is expressly about voyeurism. Powell employs the POV (point of view) shot that not only shows us exactly what Mark sees when he commits the murders, but implicates the audience in the crime. Countless slasher films from the 1980’s onward would use the POV shot to either not reveal the identity of the killer or for pure sensation. Powell uses the POV shot not only for sensation but as part of an attempt to explore the life and mind of a person who would commit such crimes. However, unlike Psycho, shot in black and white, Peeping Tom is shot in bold and vivid technicolor. I believe that this is major reason why audiences had such an intense negative reaction. 

The saturated technicolor look which Powell had mastered through the 1940’s and 50’s implied a warm, uplifting picture. It was generally used by musicals and comedies while noir films and prestige dramas where shot in black and white. Even dramas shot in technicolor tended to be broad melodramas, well done soap operas on the big screen, like the films of Douglas Sirk (Imitation of Life, Magnificent Obsession, Written on the Wind). Peeping Tom showed people in full technicolor something they would rather leave in the shadows.

Peeping Tom airs on TCM on Sunday, October 30th at 7PM CT and is streaming free on Tubi and the Roku Channel. 

13 Nights of Shocktober: Freaky

 by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 11: Meta Horror Night

"Great. We're gonna be killed by Murder Barbie."

Freaky

Freaky is not a scary movie but it is a very entertaining one. There is enough here to satisfy any horror fan and the comedy angle is likely to bring in some viewers wouldn’t typically watch a horror movie. The premise is so simple you wonder why it hasn’t been done before and the result is so fun you’re glad it was finally done. A big, hulking serial killer and his intended teenage victim switch bodies by way of a plot devise in the form of a mystical dagger. A body switch movie needs excellent leads and Freaky certainly delivers on that front with Vince Vaughn as the killer known as The Butcher and Kathryn Newton as Millie, the unfortunate teen.

A title card with a familiar font informs us that the date is Wednesday the 11^th. A group of teenagers talk about murders that supposedly happened but also comment that those urban legends are invented to scare teenagers out of having premarital sex. These teens meet with gruesome and overly elaborate deaths: a wine bottle down the throat, a broken tennis racket slammed back together with someone’s head in the middle (this teen was on a tennis court so what else could they expect to happen). The killer wears a mostly featureless mask reminiscent of Jason from the Friday the 13^th Part 2 (before Jason donned the famous hockey mask in part 3) and Michael Myers from the Halloween movies.

The teenage actors overall are pretty convincing as teens, especially Millie and her friends. Kathryn Newton plays both of her roles very well. Millie has the standard traits of a horror movie protagonist: dealing with grief and trauma (the death of her father and her mother’s new dependence on her company), struggling at home and at school, shy, and bullied, but with a few loyal friends. Newton is able is bring some spark and real sympathy to what would be a cliched character. After the switch, Newton as the Butcher projects the right amount of menace and glee at his newfound situation. The Butcher’s menace is mistaken for Millie's newfound confidence and leads some to amusing moments. There’s nice and subtle dark humor in watching the Butcher (as Millie) scan a room for the best way to kill someone. It’s also refreshing to see that the Butcher’s strength did not transfer, so he becomes frustrated with Millie’s petite body and lack of strength. This forces the Butcher (as Millie) to be more creative with his kills.

The casting Vince Vaughn was a very shrewd and wise choice. Vaughn is an all-around solid actor, has well proven comedic talents, and has a very imposing 6’5” figure. Vaughn is excellent as Millie, humorous but believable. Millie in the Butcher’s body has what ends up being an emotional conversation with her mom and Vaughn is believable in this moment too, which never really sheds its comedic setup. As Millie gets used to her new oversize body there are some funny moments and Vaughn plays a gentle, clumsy giant well. A scene of Millie in Butcher’s body getting to know her crush is what you’d expect but it works: the humor leads to tenderness which leads to humor which makes the characters more sympathetic and relatable.

Freaky is a self-aware horror movie that thankfully never stoops to pandering in place of cleverness. There are visual references to other horror movies like Halloween, the Friday the 13^th movies, Hellraiser, The Shining, but aside from the font of the dates resembling the Friday the 13^th font, the movie doesn’t make a big deal about them. The characters are aware of horror movie tropes and Freaky is better for it. When Millie’s friends are being chased by the Butcher (unaware of the body swap) Josh (Misha Osherovich) shouts to Nyla (Celeste O'Connor), “You’re black, I’m gay. We are so dead!” Her friends don’t exactly have inner lives but they feel like full fledged characters thanks to the young performers.

Freaky has plenty of bloody violence. The kills are graphic and over the top, another nod to the slasher genre (the later Friday the 13^th movies in particular), but doesn’t revel in them. Freaky is something pretty rare, a character driven horror movie more concerned with its characters than kills. Director Christopher Landon, who co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Kennedy, blends comedy and horror in just the right way. There’s a definite love for the genre running through every scene. Freaky understands that horror movies can be fun and puts that front and center.