Lord, have mercy, horror has found Eggers

THE WITCH (2015)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

There is something forbidden and otherworldly about the woods. You can never see far enough beyond the tall trees or the sunlight that peers through the leaves, or especially the moonlight. During the day, it seems like the woods rest on some eternal path with no end, past any clearing that the eye cannot see. At night, well, better not to travel at night unless you have flashlights. Robert Eggers' astonishing directorial debut, "The Witch," hints at something subversive about the forest and something more deeply troubling within a family unit that can't survive the harvest during the incoming winter months. Oh, and there's also some witch to make matters worse.

Set in the early 17th century in New England, a deep-voiced religious settler William (a magnificent Ralph Ineson) and his religiously devoted wife Katherine (Kate Dickie) move to a remote forest area and build a farm where they harvest corn. They also have in tow a blossoming, dutiful teenage daughter, Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy); the inquisitive younger son, Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), and two young twins Mercy and Jonas (winningly played by Ellie Grainger and Lucas Dawson). Their farm has goats and all the traditional trappings yet they are not able to grow much corn. The skies become more overcast, the inclement weather is steadily approaching, and Katherine is nursing a fifth child named Samuel who disappears from Thomasin's care. Did a witch snatch the child or a wolf? When William and Caleb examine the woodsy area, a hare appears and it's not a beguiling presence. Later on, Caleb decides to investigate the woods along with his trusty dog and a variation on the witch from "Snow White" makes its appearance. Suffice to say, a beautiful, busty woman is not all it is cracked up to be.

"The Witch" brings forth religious fervor with its close-knit family, yet suspicions abound without much discourse on whether Thomasin is a witch - it makes the living quarters a hellish experience. William tries to defend Thomasin to a very suspicious Katherine yet when Caleb's life is taken away after arriving naked at the farm, the father turns his suspicious eye to Thomasin (the twins become motionless after forgetting their prayers). Who needs a witch when evil makes its own appearance in the form of a family slowly becoming deviant with the mother harboring an occasional hallucination. 

Robert Eggers brings forth a sustained dread throughout much of "The Witch" and it becomes almost unbearable at times to watch (he also maintains a historical accuracy to the times that adds enormous credibility). The animal killings (watch out PETA lovers), the black goat (a Satanic symbol), the deeply unsettling sounds of the forest, the supple moves of the witch (seen fleetingly), the screams and agonies of Katharine and the twins not to mention Thomasin's ambiguous nature lead to a finale that is so blazingly intense, it might leave you gasping for air. What holds the movie together is the focus on the Puritan family and their religious ways - the horror comes second. If Eggers keeps focusing on the humanity within the horror, he might end up on the same modern list of horror directors such as John Carpenter and Wes Craven. Lord, have mercy, horror has found a new home.  

Recreating 1922 with green screens

 NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR (2023)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

There are so few versions of the original 1922 masterpiece in its wake, and yet so many "Dracula" versions that it is easy to lose count (billions and billions served since the beginning of the 20th century). David Lee Fisher's largely black-and-white recreation with the occasional solarized colors is not a farce but not exactly anything more than a devoted shot-by-shot remake delivering the barest of shudders.

Thomas Hutter (Emrhys Cooper) is the real-estate bloke who wants to be wealthy at the expense of his blonde, beautiful if unresponsive and unloved wife, Ellen (Sarah Carter). Hutter can't bring himself to say, "I love you," and is anxious to head to the Carpathian mountains for his inevitable meeting with Count Orlok (a menacing Doug Jones). Everything here is clockwork and obligatory with the slightest changes such as Hutter having sex with a gypsy and feeling guilty, and a blind man warning of the Count's blood lust. Otherwise, same old, same old. 

The movie is suitably watchable yet it has also been green-screened to death with everything clearly shot on a soundstage - the green screen is representative of the same locations from the 1922 original. It just seems like lazy filmmaking despite some probable sets of the inside of Orlok's castle. Nothing looks lived in and all the visuals look cramped and claustrophobic (not unlike Coppola's "Twixt" which also uses color and black-and-white with great abandon). 

Doug Jones gives the best performance in the film, and I found some sliver of originality and presence with Joely Fisher as a spinster who has possible romantic inclinations with Ellen. The ending rushes by with Ellen waiting for the Count to drain of her blood, though any psychic connection with the vampire is minimal. There is supposed to be a plague in this town but we see no rats unlike the previous versions. Hutter comes across as unsympathetic and the portrayal of Ellen is wanting. Worthwhile for Nosferatu completists - everyone else would be better off watching the 1922 original.  

Why did you kill those lovely flowers?

 NOSFERATU (2024)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Providence!," yells Herr Knock, owner of a brokerage firm where a certain Thomas Hutter is employed who has to deliver realty papers to be signed by a Transylvanian Count who is "infirmed." And so it begins in the newest remake of "Nosferatu," the original of which had the one and only Count Orlok as iconically played by Max Schreck in 1922 and later by Klaus Kinski in the truly masterful 1979 flick. How does director Robert Eggers' new version stand? It is powerful and illuminating in its own right and it can stand on its own two feet, though it is hardly the great film that the earlier incarnations were. 

The story of Count Orlok and Thomas Hutter is liberally borrowed from Bram Stoker's own "Dracula" so the plot is no different than any other Dracula retelling from the last century. Stiff and proper Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) travels by horse from Wisborg, Germany to the castle, stops by a gypsy village who warn him not to enter that nefarious castle, and then ventures forth to meet the old, decrepit Orlok (Bill Skarsgard). The set-up and the inevitable encounter is often frightening and what makes it doubly so is that we never quite get a good look at Orlok's face - he is mostly obscured by shadow though the prominent mustache is quite evident. 

Hutter's wife, Ellen (an incredibly transformative performance by Lily-Rose Depp), is mesmerized and terrified by the Count - they had some rendezvous years earlier (a noticeable addition to the Nosferatu film legacy) that resulted in a violent throat-grabbing by the vampire. Ellen seems to have been affected by this, often convulsing and having seizures. Is she possessed? She keeps saying "he's coming," and nobody knows what she means. Hutter's visit to the Count is a nightmare and he manages to escape Orlok's clutches. Only Ellen is the one who is anxious - she somehow wants the Count to come to her. Transfixed by him, she also sexually desires him yet pushes him away while also inviting him closer to her bosom (another new angle from previous versions). 

Bill Skarsgard's Count Orlok is menacing, threatening and ominous. This Count doesn't dread being a vampire like Kinski's version, nor is he rat-like in appearance like Schreck's version. He is a sexually carnivorous, ravenous animal who simply desires Ellen. Thomas Hutter is stiff competition (almost too stiff) next to a vampire that seems to liberate Ellen - these 1838 characters are all repressed and he brings out their sexual and violent impulses. It takes an ex-professor and Occult expert, Professor van Franz (Willem Dafoe), to seek out the Count and possibly destroy him and the rat-infested plague he has brought to Wisborg. If you hate seeing rats on screen, well, then you are no Nosferatu fan.

This version of "Nosferatu" is hypnotic, often scary and downright Gothic in every sense of the word. Every shot is frightful and shocking, and those lonely roads to the castle evoke a true sense of inevitable macabre. Still, Eggers' version is also a little too long and some supporting characters, the Harding family who are close to the Hutters, don't quite enrich the narrative. Dafoe's Franz can make the film come to a screeching halt, albeit in brief strokes. Still, the bleached-out, almost monochromatic look of it brings forth sublime memories of the 1979 version, which often felt like a Wagnerian riff on the original. A potent, unsettling, high-pitched vampire movie, using sexual innuendos and graphic sexuality as its main themes not unlike Coppola's "Dracula." And watch out for those rats.  

Age before your time

 OLD (2021)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

A strangely beautiful and mystical beach area surrounded by huge cliffs where one ages considerably faster than norm is a good idea for any film, especially for M. Night Shyamalan. Let's not repeat what might be said with such a tentatively exciting movie idea, but you know the drill. It is an original idea (based on a French graphic novel) that leads nowhere, for a while, and then picks up only in the last fifteen minutes. 

A vacationing couple, Guy (Gael Garcia Bernal), who dabbles in insurance, and his wife Prisca (a memorable Vicky Krieps), who has an unfortunate ovarian tumor, are on the verge of divorce. They bring their two kids, 11-year old Maddox (Alexa Swinton) and 6-year-old Trent (Nolan River), and the parents try to appear normal despite constant shouting arguments. They are accompanied to the aforementioned beach area with a schizophrenic doctor (Rufus Sewell) and his very young wife who has a calcium deficiency, not to mention the doctor's mother who has a heart condition. There is already a rapper on the beach named Mid-Sized Sedan (Aaron Pierre), who is hemophiliac, and they all find his girlfriend show up dead from a presumed drowning. The doctor immediately thinks the rapper killed her and and tries to slash him with a knife only to find the cuts heal themselves! Suddenly the kids start aging rapidly within the hour and the adults start getting wrinkles. Guy has wrinkles and his vision gets blurry. Prisca starts getting deaf. You get the idea - everybody is aging but why is this happening? That questions remains elusive.

"Old" just made me laugh hysterically at times because the situations build around this concept are more absurd than horrific. When Trent becomes a teenager just after the first reel, he has sex with one girl named Kara (Eliza Scanlen) and she is pregnant and delivers a baby who dies before the second reel has truly begun. Situations become chaotic but they are more funny than scary. The doctor keeps asking what movie Marlon Brando starred in with Jack Nicholson ("Missouri Breaks," of course) and begins waving that knife at everyone. Kara has the idea of climbing the cliffs to escape but she falls to her death. One other woman stops getting seizures but then they violently start again. One other guy decides to swim past the cliffs but drowns. M. Night Shyamalan has a roving camera with long takes showing these people suffering but it is all too much, too soon, too insanely hyperactive. Rather than aging every half-hour, what if it was every 2 hours? This would allow time for character development, to get to know these people beyond just their rapid aging process. 

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

"Old" then proceeds to leave us only with Guy and Prisca on the island beach after everyone else dies, once again aging and seeking forgiveness from each other. It is these scenes that strike a true emotional chord and shows that maybe fewer beachgoers would have made this film more effective. When their kids, still living who become adults, discover a coral reef and swim past it, it leads to an unexpected finish involving a pharmaceutical company! I was floored by how watchable and emotional the scenes were between Guy and Prisca and Maddox and Trent. Unfortunately, that is too little and too late. "Old" is just too unintentionally funny and ridiculous to warrant such a strong finish.  

On Golden Pond for horror fans

 THE VISIT (2015)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Just when you thought it was unsafe to see an M. Night Shyamalan film (at least after "The Happening"), his true colors burst and delivered a well-made chiller that will keep you twisting and squirming in your chair while watching it. "The Visit" is a terrific, sickening horror flick, dependent on that nauseating feeling of impending doom that could seal the fate of the two young siblings in this movie. You want them to survive the unknowing horror that awaits them, and that is a lot easier said than done when you are in a house in the Pennsylvania countryside with eccentric grandparents. 

The movie did not start off well for me, with one older sibling, Becca (Olivia DeJonge), recording and narrating everything with a camera. Becca's younger brother, Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), also records everything and raps, eh, not so wonderfully. Cheery and Divorced Mom (Kathryn Hahn) is sending her kids to spend a week with their grandparents, Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie), both of whom have not spoken to their daughter in over 15 years. Once the siblings arrive at a Pennsylvania country home, things start to spiral out of control and the movie picks up steam. Nana scratches walls in the middle of the night while being naked! When Pop Pop is at the shed, he doesn't respond at all when Tyler calls him - it turns out there is something stinky in there. Nana goes nuts, hitting herself, when interviewed by Becca particularly when questioned about her daughter - geez, how bad was it that Mom decided to run away from home at an early age? Lights must be out by 9:30 at night, and another rule is to stay away from the basement due to increasing mold. Yes, you guessed it, something unspeakable must be in there.

"The Visit" has moments of alarming terror, and of course there are those "jump scares" though they are not preceded by those cliched string sounds. Scenes where grandma is all on fours as she scurries like a rat under the house's foundation, or when grandma discovers their hidden video camera or, the most alarming moment, when she screams "Yahtzee!" are enough to make your spine tingle and possibly dislocate your shoulder from covering your mouth one too many times. Shyamalan's direction is pointed and assured and makes great visual use of the wintry countryside. I never felt that I was watching rambling hand-held camera viewpoints from kids who believe in shaking a camera, giving audience members reason to reach for the Dramamine. 

Both Deanna Dunagan and reliable pro character actor Peter McRobbie give riveting, intensifying performances - they represent a sort of unnerving twist on the "American Gothic" painting without much irony. I was wary of Ed Oxenbould as the annoying brat but I grew to like him - aren't all young, wannabe rappin' brothers annoying brats? Olivia DeJonge brings a lucid simplicity to Becca - she tries to remain strong amidst this chaotic weeklong stay. When her brother reveals the truth about Becca and how never looks at herself in the mirror when combing her hair, it is honest and heartbreaking at the same time.

"The Visit" is a vintage Shyamalan effort and he succeeds in telling the tale simply without any overwrought music or extraneous shock value. I can forgive the sight of stinky diapers and one too many Tyler raps because the movie envelops you with a certain dread and horrifying moments are accompanied by  silence and no music score. Think of this movie as "On Golden Pond" for horror fans. 

Hector 1, 2, 3

 TIMECRIMES (2007)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Time travel is a sheer impossibility because it is, and always has been, complicated by its illogical pretzel logic. If you go back in time, aren't you already creating a paradox by visiting and trampling on events that have already happened? Is it similar to the novel that suggests stepping on an insect will create a chain reaction of events that ultimately change the past and the future? What is fundamental about "Timecrimes" is that it assumes the internal time logic will persist no matter what you do to change it - it can't be undone. 

Somewhere in a remote, isolated rural part of Spain, a middle-aged man with a slight pot belly named Hector (Karra Elejalde) returns to his new home that is undergoing renovations. He lives with his wife, Clara (Candela Fernández), and they have a very romantic marriage. One cloudy afternoon, Hector sits outside his home on a lounge chair and looks out at the nearby woods with his binoculars. He sees a young nubile woman (Barbara Goenaga) who is seemingly getting undressed. Hector's eyes remain wide open though he never lets on to his wife on what he's seeing. We assume, like Hector, that this woman is with someone for an afternoon sexual rendezvous. As he approaches the area, the woman is naked and laying motionless. Has she been violated? Is she dead? Before one can answer those questions, Hector is stabbed in the arm with a pair of scissors and a man whose head is covered in bandages, the Pink Mummy as it were, leaves the area. Pretty soon Hector seeks refuge in an uninhabited facility where Blondie's "Picture This" is playing in the background. A walkie-talkie conversation with some young scientist (Nacho Vigalondo, the film's writer-director) leads to a silo where Hector discovers that the Pink Mummy is on his tail. A time machine is in this silo and Hector gets in it, goes back a few hours earlier, and finds out that the Pink Mummy is, oh, I would not even disclose that information. 

Watching "Timecrimes" is unnerving, intense and has a moral quandary that will leave you with more questions than answers. The surprises build up and are part of a clockwork design where the filmmakers do not cheat and stick to the unbreakable narrative structure. Suffice to say that Hector, who uses the time machine more than once, creates multiples of himself and just about runs into himself a little too often. They are not face-to-face encounters but they do result in terrifically and unsettling violent encounters involving numerous vehicles. Hector suffers multiple concussions yet keeps getting back up, trying to restore the chain of events and some semblance of normalcy. The Girl he finds in the woods is always there to help our protagonist, unsure of what is happening and yet she suffers the most. Some will criticize the film as being misogynist and somewhat cruel in nature, but the story needs said actions to propel the story forward. Let's say that Hector goes from hero to antihero halfway through the story development, and you might feel less sympathy for our troubled protagonist as the plot unravels. 

"Timecrimes" is Nacho Vigalondo's debut and it is stunning in more ways than one. The cinematography has a dank, claustrophobic and desaturated look, stripped of any color (other than a red vehicle and the Girl's colorful logo on her T-shirt). This makes "Timecrimes" less than inviting and lends it a sense of the forbidden. The finale might give you pause yet it is a fitting reminder that time marches on, unchanged, and our destiny is predetermined by choices we make - you just can't renege on what has already transpired. Think of it as an anti-time travel movie.

Keeping Eyes Wide Open for Kubrick's swan song

 SK13: KUBRICK'S ENDGAME (2024)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Tony Zierra's meticulously constructed and thoroughly researched documentary on Stanley Kubrick's last film, "Eyes Wide Shut," deserves praise to the high heavens. It is not just an average documentary or puff piece, this is an entertaining and thoroughly captivating account of Kubrick's controversial swan song that was reviled by most and praised by a select few. In the last 25 years, it is difficult to know if "Eyes Wide Shut" is something of a cult film or if it has gained a new life as a forgotten masterpiece. Perhaps it will suffer the same fate that befell "Barry Lyndon," a beautiful picture to look at and admire and not much else. That would be a shame and hopefully "SK13" will warrant a revisit from its detractors. I am not one of its detractors, I always loved "Eyes Wide Shut" as a trance-like meditation on marriage and sex but, after seeing this powerhouse of a doco, I want to see Kubrick's film yet again. High praise, indeed. 

"SK13" begins with the criticisms surrounding Kubrick's film and the speculation months prior to its release and following the grand master's death (who knew that Jeffrey Lyons, former film critic for "At the Movies" found it pretentious and tedious). After all the hoopla, Zierra starts to objectively examine dozens of continuity errors, intentional or not (and I would definitely say intentional), throughout "Eyes Wide Shut." Still, the assumption is that members of the film crew thought that Kubrick was getting older and was not as demanding in his perfectionism - during a 2 year film shoot, did he just slip one too many times in filming the same locations and dressing them up as different areas of NYC without noticing the finer details? Why was the Somerton sign for the mansion behind the chain link fence when in fact the previous shot showed at as closer to the front gates? Why do paintings and lamps keep changing positions through different angles in the same rooms? My favorite is when Cruise's character, Dr. Bill Harford, leaves in a cab from the Sonata Cafe that is next door to Gillespie's and travels to the Rainbow costume shop yet it is obvious that Gillespie's is right across the street, thanks to a reverse shot of Harford trying to enter the shop. Or how the same yellow NY cab is seen time and again with the same license plate - was all this part of the effect to accentuate the dream-like state? Is "Eyes Wide Shut" all just a dream?

There is also mention of the exhaustive production details such as the numerous kinds of specific underwear the topless masked women wear in the seemingly Satanic ritual at Somerton. Most telling is Marie Richardson's comments on Kubrick telling her take after take to emote more, to really let it all out as her character makes a pass at Dr. Bill. Rade Šerbedžija, who plays the Rainbow costume shop owner, discusses how Kubrick pooh-poohed Rade's acting skills, claiming that Rade's audition tape shows a better actor. Sydney Pollack, a seasoned director in his own right who played the role of Ziegler, went through 70 takes of just walking across the room. The film's production went on for too long with steadicam operators quitting and being replaced, with Harvey Keitel getting fired for his role as Ziegler (replaced by Pollack) due to being disrespected by Kubrick and standing up to the director, and Jennifer Jason Leigh's role also replaced by the aforementioned Richardson. Clearly, for a 2-year continuous movie shoot, the exhaustion and exasperation set in. Sometimes Kubrick was just waiting for something special to happen while the cameras were rolling. After the film was completed, Zierra tells us that Warner executives and shareholders were not in fact happy with the completed final cut - they were furious with it and thought it was a bad, bad, bad thing. Then there's the revelation, new to me, that Pat Kingsley (Tom and Nicole's publicist) also saw an advanced screening of the film at Kubrick's home in Childwickbury two days before Stanley died. 

"Eyes Wide Shut" was seemingly taken from his hands after Kubrick's death, and allegedly completed by Sydney Pollack and Steven Spielberg. At least we do know with assurance that ILM did step in, inserting those absurd cloaked figures in front of sexual acts at the orgy to prevent it from getting the dreaded NC-17 rating. But was the film more or less complete before Kubrick died? We will never know for sure, though we do know Kubrick tinkered with his films often after a premiere date or even years after completing them. 

Nevertheless, "SK13" makes the case for a reevaluation of "Eyes Wide Shut," to look deeper into its overall meaning and subliminal themes and shot compositions. I am not sure if "Eyes Wide Shut" will ever get the "Room 237" treatment but it just might. "SK13" is exquisitely made and told with complete conviction with some very telling interviews (the late Julian Senior, former Warner Bros. Marketing Executive, at one point tells Zierra to cut the scene where he may have something revealing to say) and Zierra's commanding voice-over narration. It would be a bad, bad thing to ignore this powerful and illuminating documentary.