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The weekend went by in its usual blur. I really feel these days as though my time is on constant fast-forward, like my life has become a never-ending dissolve; look up and it's Monday, blink and it's Thursday, wait a second or so and it's Monday again. The good part is that after four or five days of being totally defeated by a new story, everything finally snapped into place and I've got some useful stuff to work with. The bad part is that because there was Yet Another Fucking P.A. Day on Friday (tm), I haven't been able to do much with that except keep scribbling bits and bobs down, which I'm currently trying to input and shoehorn into a file on their own. But I also have a singing lesson at one and it's absolutely pissing rain, so who knows.
Seen over the weekend, meanwhile: Insidious Chapter 3 (written and directed by Leigh Whannell) in theatres, followed by In Fear ("written" and directed by Jeremy Lovering) on DVD. I put scare-quotes around the latter screenplay credit because In Fear actually had no formal script while it was shooting, something which seems amazing in hindsight, especially since I found myself scribbling down sinisterly un-random seeming lines of dialogue throughout. "It's like a slasher movie by Pinter," I told Steve, halfway through, and I stand by that evaluation; the conversations may be improvised, but they have that very Pinteresque quality of circling repetition which questions and comments upon itself so many times in succession that even the most straightforward statements begin to sound like lies, or prophecies, or both.
The plot is similarly deceptively simple: Lucy (Alice Englert) and Tom (Iain de Caestecker) have barely known each other for two weeks when he invites her to a music festival in Ireland, representing it as a non-exclusive camping trip with other people; they end up stuck in a car together instead, following signs through the rainy, rapidly dimming countryside in search of the rural hotel Tom claims to have booked a surprise special overnnight stay at. This initial sequence has a lot of Aickman about it: slow-building dread, gradual breakdown of social niceties, the shaky contract between people rapidly becoming unsure if they should even characterize themselves as friends, let alone a couple. Everything seems like a ritual violation, in hindsight: oh no, you went through the gate and didn't lock it behind you; oh no, you got out of the car; what happened back in the pub? Did you do something? You MUST have done something wrong. Why would any of this be happening, otherwise?
The mounting twilit darkness, the mulched leaves underfoot, the constantly shrinking amount of petrol, the leaning, leering scarecrows, a road cut through the peat too narrow to turn around on...all of it creates a mood that starts out weird and only gets steadily weirder, colder, less morally certain, as though everything's sinking into the mud. Much like most of Irish history, In Fear is all about guilt, sin and betrayal; "bad blood, it goes back years," the sole Irish character remarks, partway through. "Violence is the mother and the daughter." And there's nothing to be done about it--apologies come too little, too late, It all degenerates in a nightmare of ineffectiveness in which everything is a trap, a maze, even though (as Tom remarks) "We're not lost, but even if we were, none of this is either of our faults."
So yeah, quite the keeper, this one--I'd watch it again for the soundscape alone, though I should also note that once the implications of supernatural activity are stripped away, the denouement becomes theatrical to the point of impossibility; I might be able to believe that a whole gang of people could stage-manage what turns out to be going on, but it's rather more difficult to believe it's all the work of one person, unless said person is literally acting as an avatar/archetype for the passive-aggressive revenge every Irish person may or may not yearn to enact against some random clueless British couple. Still, odder things have happened in Pinter, I guess--rituals again, maybe, if only in sketch. Sacrifice to renew a poisoned land, enacted by lottery, by self-election, by the victims' own cooperation in their mutual fate.
The fact that Insidious Chapter 3 is a far more satisfying experience probably has as much to do with the difference between British and American cultural norms as it does with the difference between indie and mainstream horror traditions. For all the stark fear they can create in the moment, the Insidious films are pretty classic restorative tales, strangely warm as their own supersaturated gialloesque colour-schemes; most of the action in this one centres around psychic Elise (Lin Shaye)'s eventual decision to go back to doing exorcism work, even though she knows that every trip into the Further brings her closer to her own death foretold at the hands of the Bride in Black. And we cheer that on, just like we cheer her hooking up with hapless amateur ghost-hunters Tucker and Specs; God knows, the fact that we know they all survive this particular instalment certainly doesn't detract from the shock and awe quotient one bit.
If I had to point to any one thing which distinguishes Whannell's approach to the material from his longtime partner James Wan's, I'd have to say that Insidious Chapter 3 comes off as far more rooted in the mundane. Take the difference between Insidious's primary boogieman, the Lipstick-Face Demon--something that's never been human--and Insidious Chapter 3's main antagonist, the tar-heeled, oxygen mask-toting Man Who Can't Breathe; though the latter is indisputably evil, it's as an understandably soul-deforming result of terrible bodily and mental suffering culminating in suicide, then a not doubt equally awful tenure as a ghost restricted to the vents in his former apartment building, spying on people who have everything he longs for until he starts parasiting on them and pulling them headlong into his own darkness. You don't like it, but you get it. And Whannell also understands that for every jump-scare or (wonderfully practical, for the most part) effects sequence, you'll do well to toss in a creepy frisson that's wholly dependent on audience imagination. (My favourite is the "crazy" old lady with Alzheimer's telling our heroine that TMWCB is "upstairs right now, standing in your room," as they sit together in the lobby. Ugh!)
Amusingly, the audience Steve and I got was the most vocally engaged I've been in since Annabelle, another film that made me genuinely yell out loud, in between announcing: "oh, THAT's not good." One chick down the front had a mini-breakdown during a particular scene, screaming: "OH NO, I CAN'T WATCH THIS, JESUS NO!!!" That's good entertainment value, even for today's punitive theatrical prices.
Okay, back to it.
Seen over the weekend, meanwhile: Insidious Chapter 3 (written and directed by Leigh Whannell) in theatres, followed by In Fear ("written" and directed by Jeremy Lovering) on DVD. I put scare-quotes around the latter screenplay credit because In Fear actually had no formal script while it was shooting, something which seems amazing in hindsight, especially since I found myself scribbling down sinisterly un-random seeming lines of dialogue throughout. "It's like a slasher movie by Pinter," I told Steve, halfway through, and I stand by that evaluation; the conversations may be improvised, but they have that very Pinteresque quality of circling repetition which questions and comments upon itself so many times in succession that even the most straightforward statements begin to sound like lies, or prophecies, or both.
The plot is similarly deceptively simple: Lucy (Alice Englert) and Tom (Iain de Caestecker) have barely known each other for two weeks when he invites her to a music festival in Ireland, representing it as a non-exclusive camping trip with other people; they end up stuck in a car together instead, following signs through the rainy, rapidly dimming countryside in search of the rural hotel Tom claims to have booked a surprise special overnnight stay at. This initial sequence has a lot of Aickman about it: slow-building dread, gradual breakdown of social niceties, the shaky contract between people rapidly becoming unsure if they should even characterize themselves as friends, let alone a couple. Everything seems like a ritual violation, in hindsight: oh no, you went through the gate and didn't lock it behind you; oh no, you got out of the car; what happened back in the pub? Did you do something? You MUST have done something wrong. Why would any of this be happening, otherwise?
The mounting twilit darkness, the mulched leaves underfoot, the constantly shrinking amount of petrol, the leaning, leering scarecrows, a road cut through the peat too narrow to turn around on...all of it creates a mood that starts out weird and only gets steadily weirder, colder, less morally certain, as though everything's sinking into the mud. Much like most of Irish history, In Fear is all about guilt, sin and betrayal; "bad blood, it goes back years," the sole Irish character remarks, partway through. "Violence is the mother and the daughter." And there's nothing to be done about it--apologies come too little, too late, It all degenerates in a nightmare of ineffectiveness in which everything is a trap, a maze, even though (as Tom remarks) "We're not lost, but even if we were, none of this is either of our faults."
So yeah, quite the keeper, this one--I'd watch it again for the soundscape alone, though I should also note that once the implications of supernatural activity are stripped away, the denouement becomes theatrical to the point of impossibility; I might be able to believe that a whole gang of people could stage-manage what turns out to be going on, but it's rather more difficult to believe it's all the work of one person, unless said person is literally acting as an avatar/archetype for the passive-aggressive revenge every Irish person may or may not yearn to enact against some random clueless British couple. Still, odder things have happened in Pinter, I guess--rituals again, maybe, if only in sketch. Sacrifice to renew a poisoned land, enacted by lottery, by self-election, by the victims' own cooperation in their mutual fate.
The fact that Insidious Chapter 3 is a far more satisfying experience probably has as much to do with the difference between British and American cultural norms as it does with the difference between indie and mainstream horror traditions. For all the stark fear they can create in the moment, the Insidious films are pretty classic restorative tales, strangely warm as their own supersaturated gialloesque colour-schemes; most of the action in this one centres around psychic Elise (Lin Shaye)'s eventual decision to go back to doing exorcism work, even though she knows that every trip into the Further brings her closer to her own death foretold at the hands of the Bride in Black. And we cheer that on, just like we cheer her hooking up with hapless amateur ghost-hunters Tucker and Specs; God knows, the fact that we know they all survive this particular instalment certainly doesn't detract from the shock and awe quotient one bit.
If I had to point to any one thing which distinguishes Whannell's approach to the material from his longtime partner James Wan's, I'd have to say that Insidious Chapter 3 comes off as far more rooted in the mundane. Take the difference between Insidious's primary boogieman, the Lipstick-Face Demon--something that's never been human--and Insidious Chapter 3's main antagonist, the tar-heeled, oxygen mask-toting Man Who Can't Breathe; though the latter is indisputably evil, it's as an understandably soul-deforming result of terrible bodily and mental suffering culminating in suicide, then a not doubt equally awful tenure as a ghost restricted to the vents in his former apartment building, spying on people who have everything he longs for until he starts parasiting on them and pulling them headlong into his own darkness. You don't like it, but you get it. And Whannell also understands that for every jump-scare or (wonderfully practical, for the most part) effects sequence, you'll do well to toss in a creepy frisson that's wholly dependent on audience imagination. (My favourite is the "crazy" old lady with Alzheimer's telling our heroine that TMWCB is "upstairs right now, standing in your room," as they sit together in the lobby. Ugh!)
Amusingly, the audience Steve and I got was the most vocally engaged I've been in since Annabelle, another film that made me genuinely yell out loud, in between announcing: "oh, THAT's not good." One chick down the front had a mini-breakdown during a particular scene, screaming: "OH NO, I CAN'T WATCH THIS, JESUS NO!!!" That's good entertainment value, even for today's punitive theatrical prices.
Okay, back to it.
