Dark Skies (Scott Stewart, 2013)

The home invasion thriller, the possession film, the haunted house genre, and alien abductions make up the mix of what Dark Skies is attempting to be. Starring Keri Russell, Josh Hamilton, Dakota Goyo, Kadan Rockett, with J.K. Simmons in a supporting role, it centers around a family experiencing strange phenomenon that turns out to be alien activity. All of this is highlighted in the trailer, so it's not giving anything at all away to describe that much here. Scott Stewart, whose previous directing credits include Legion and Priest, has written a script with a much more condensed cast and a much less epic variety of story here.

Walking into the theater and sitting through the film, I had no idea that Scott Stewart was the director. Had I known that, and had I known that his other directing credits were Legion and Priest, I might have been more well prepared for exactly what Dark Skies is. If you've seen those two films or even one of those, it won't come as a shock to you that Dark Skies ends up being supremely silly. There are a few decent ideas, and one or two good jump scares, but overall, it just comes off as laughably silly. As if that point needed to be driven home, in the moments that most definitely should have been more creepy or frightening, most of the audience in my theater was laughing. It wasn't a nervous laughter either.

Lovely Molly (Eduardo Sanchez, 2011)

Back in 1999, there was this little film that came along and added an entirely new dimension to cinema. It gave film makers a new tool with which to tell whatever story they chose, and it gave audiences a new cinematic touchstone. Eduardo Sanchez was one of the directors and primary creative minds behind what became the most profitable independent film of all time, The Blair Witch Project. For all of the hemming and hawing about the found footage genre in the film press, it can't be argued that the existence of the genre is due to The Blair Witch Project. It was behemoth, with a sly, fun and interesting viral and completely unusual marketing scheme that added to the experience of the film and helped build a buzz that made it a sign of things to come. If you were under 30 when it was released (or just a horror geek, no matter your age), it was the film you were talking about prior to and following it's release. Paranormal Activity learned everything it knew from The Blair Witch Project and then did what Blair Witch failed to do, provide sequels that were financially successful and added successfully added to the series mythology.

At the time, Sanchez and his co-creator/director Daniel Myrick were suddenly the hottest new names in horror. Unfortunately, neither of them have replicated anything like the success of that first feature, and they have more or less fallen off the cultural radar. Marketing departments still rely on the name The Blair Witch Project when either man releases a new film, but they just don't have the power they did previously. No one is clamoring to see the next film from either man, and really, The Blair Witch Project is almost considered a piece of kitsch from a bygone era.

Lovely Molly, the latest film from Sanchez, has helped to start bringing some of that prominence back for the writer/director. It was received relatively well on the festival circuit and the internet horror film press were certainly giving it plenty of copy preceding it's release, something Sanchez films since Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 haven't had the good fortune to receive. Lovely Molly unfortunately slid by with very little notice from the general movie going public, and that may be good or bad depending on your perspective. I was expecting a pretty standard haunted house/possession film, but what I got was completely different.

Paranormal Activity 4 (Henry Joost, Ariel Shulman, 2012)

If there's one thing you need to know about Paranormal Activity 4, it's that there's nothing new in front of the lens, under the moon or anywhere else for that matter. There isn't anything in the latest installment of the Halloween season behemoth franchise that you haven't seen in the previous installments. The question is, did you like what you saw in the first three movies? If you did, the chances are pretty good that you're going to enjoy this as well.

It doesn't succeed in carrying the series mythology forward in a substantial way like the third film, and most of the scares are variations on things the first three films have already succeeded in using to cause a theater full of people to jump, yelp and sometimes scream in fright. At the same time, if you're looking for a fun time in a theater full of people who are anticipating having the crap scared out of them, and they enjoy that idea, you're in luck.

Let's face it, the Paranormal Activity series hasn't reinvented the horror genre with any of it's installments. It has succeeded because it's been like an amusement park ride. A large group of people get together, and agree it's perfectly acceptable to act in a way they would not find it acceptable to be seen acting under any other circumstances, like frightened children. Henry Joost and Ariel Shulman have succeeded in delivering that experience again. There are some seriously great scares peppered throughout the film.

The Last Exorcism (Daniel Stamm, 2010) [Blu-Ray review]

 The Film
The exorcism film has been making a come back recently. In my review for The Rite, the most recent of them, I named a number of others. Luckily for us, there's a rather good exorcism film that has just become available on DVD and Blu Ray. 

The Last Exorcism does a great job of avoiding more of the clichés common to the genre than any of the other films released in at least a decade. When it was released, most of the less than favorable opinions about the film were related to it being a story told with in the cinema verité style. Since The Blair Witch Project, American cinema has gotten more faux-documentaries than we'd had in the the entire history of cinema. Many movie goers are still considering it a gimmick or a cheap attempt to trick audiences. This film doesn't take the concept to the extreme of Paranormal Activity or Paranormal Activity 2 (you can find my reviews for the first of those films here, and for the sequel here).

It manages not to stretch the bounds of acceptability in it's style, specifically by putting a documentary at the middle of it's narrative. Cotton Marcus is a preacher of the fire and brim stone, devil's coming to take your soul, demons are at your door step, backwoods exorcism variety. The thing is, for Reverend Marcus, it's become a sham. It's a show, and Cotton Marcus has been making a decent living because he is an exceptional showman. But, for a few very understandable reasons which are perfectly plausible and sympathetic, his conscience makes it unable for him to continue this line of work. More than that, he's decided he wants to expose exorcism for the sham it is, so that no one else is taken in by the same kind of manipulation. That's where the documentary comes in. Reverend Marcus picks one of the many requests he receives to perform an exorcism, and takes two documentary film makers with him. The film is really about the good Reverend, and the original title of the script was actually Cotton.

This film is taken to a level just beyond fun B film by both it's screenplay and it's casting. The screenplay gives the film and the audience enough respect to spend a good deal of time with it's characters and to make them a bit more than archetypes. The screenplay can also be credited for the film straying away from many of the clichés of exorcism films, and even when it is presenting something that could be a cliché, it does it in an interesting and innovative enough way that it doesn't jump out saying, "you've seen this a million times before." And because the characters are well enough established and real enough, when the story starts to take it's big turn, the viewer is sympathetic enough that we're more interested in what they're going through and how they're reacting that we're no longer objective in our perspective of the events we're being presented with. Considering the nature of the material an exorcism film is concerned with, being able to pull that off is important, and this film deserves credit for the degree of success it achieves in doing so, much because of the screenplay. The commentaries and extra features suggest that a lot of the dialogue is improvised, but the narrative structure of the screenplay is exceptional.

The other part of making a film like this believable, is the cast. Of course, the ability of the actors in any film is one of the keys to it's success, but especially in a film dealing with subjects like exorcism, demons, gods, angels, etc., if the cast isn't up to the job, it's obvious, and it hurts the film more severely than one dealing with less fantastic material. Patrick Fabian plays Cotton Marcus, the film's central character. He seems to have done quite a bit of television work. He absolutely kills it. Fabian plays Cotton Marcus as someone who is a showman, and a con artist, but in part because of what he's doing, but even more due to Fabian's acting, we completely believe that he is also a good man who is trying to figure out the right thing to do. The beginning involves a few scenes of Cotton giving sermons that absolutely sell the character and sell the idea that he is willing to make this documentary and why. It also tells the audience exactly how this man has been able to continue to go around doing exorcisms, giving sermons and make a living doing it. There are just small things he does along the way that make the character, who could have been thoroughly disgusting, into a guy who is really likable and that you really feel for as the film progresses. He absolutely blows this film out of the water. I can't say enough about how good he is.

Ashley Bell plays Nell Sweetzer, and when the film begins, her character is an earnestly sweet, good hearted and absolutely lovable girl, and if anyone watching this film doesn't fall in love with her, they are empty, hard people. As the film progresses, the change that comes over her is completely believable, with no make-up and only one very small special effects piece. She pulls off a more effective and believable version of a girl who is either completely insane or possessed than so many other actors who had the benefit of special effects, and a more traditional narrative format which could use photographic composition and lighting to help create tension. Some of the stuff she does in this film is pretty spectacular. Ashley Bell is is an extremely talented young actor.

Daniel Stamm has managed to take a film that should have been much more provincial and much more silly and stupid and kept it focused on the characters and making the scares and the action anchored in what's going on with the characters. In doing so, he's taken the kind of silly B movie so many exorcism films become and made it a very solid thriller and character drama that happens to have some extremely creepy and scary at moments. And, he's managed to make a PG-13 horror film that is largely successful in it's aims. There's a raging debate in the horror community between one side that claims a decent horror film would never qualify for a PG-13 rating, and the other side that claims the rating doesn't matter as much as the quality of the actual film. Watering a film down in a way that hurts it's original intent isn't something I'd endorse. At the same time, this film is an example of the fact that a horror film can be well made, get some good creepy scares in and still qualify for PG-13.

The ending of the film caused quite a bit of controversy with the movie going public. There is very little middle ground among movie goers when it comes to their opinions about the ending of the film. Personally, I enjoyed the ending of the film, and unlike those who feel the ending isn't consistent with the rest of the film, to my mind, it's a great ending that is more consistent with the rest of the film than any other that has been suggested.

Transfer and Special Features:

The transfer quality on the Blu Ray is excellent. There's an argument to be made that having a picture with deep blacks and a richness of color isn't as important for a faux-documentary style film, but I'd suggest it's as least as important, if not more so since the narrative style is all about trying to convince the audience that what they are watching is real, and happening in front of the camera as they watch it. Either way, it's a good transfer that looks great in hi-def, and is often the case these days, it's probably closer to what the film makers actually had in mind than the way it's presented in theaters.

There are oodles of extra content on the disc as well. There's a producers commentary with Eli Roth, Eric Newmann and Thomas A. Bliss. I haven't listened to this one yet, but I'm expecting it to be at least entertaining, if not all that informative. No matter what your opinion about Eli Roth, it can't be said that the guy isn't enthusiastic about movies and doesn't love talking about them. I've enjoyed all of his previous commentary tracks.

There's also a commentary track with the director Daniel Stamm, and the three actors central to the films story. Patrick Fabian, Ashley Bell and Louis Herthem. Although it borders on a little too sticky sweet, it's clear the actors and director enjoyed working on the film and that Stamm had put a considerable amount of thought into things before the filming started. It was also interesting to hear how much of the film was derived from improvisation and the actors contributions.

The rest of the extras strike me as being directly out of the Eli Roth playbook for keeping the William Castle legacy alive. There's a commentary track with a haunting victim and "deliverance" minister and a clinical psychologist. I honestly don't know what to make of it. Is this a straightforward marketing ploy, with actors having been hired to record this commentary or are these actually people who believe this as fully as they seem to? And if they are hired or they are sincere, I'm not sure what I make of the questions that follow that either. It's an inspired piece of marketing though, no matter what else is or isn't true of it.

The other example of the William Castle-esque maneuvers on Eli Roth's part is a documentary about possession and demonology. The option directly preceding it is a "protection prayer" which the documentary suggests be said before watching the documentary, because the doc contains "real demonic voices," and the playing of these voices can invite demonic forces to attempt to make contact with the viewer. I think the participants in the documentary are the same as the participants in the "haunting" commentary. Interesting and fun stuff, from a variety of perspectives.

Then there's a very typical, straightforward "making of" documentary that isn't all that informative or entertaining because of just how typical it is for a somewhat atypical movie and on a disc with a few atypical extras. There are also trailers for this film and a few other Lionsgate releases. 

Final Verdict

I enjoyed the film a great deal. Seeing it a second time has given me a different perspective on it, and it didn't take anything away from the film at all. It may in fact have made it even more interesting and given me more respect for it because it becomes clear how much discipline went into creating it. Because of the subject matter and the way the film plays out generally, it's definitely not for everyone. If you're the unfortunate kind of person who can't watch a film based on it's own narrative and it's own reality, this might not be for you. In other words, the devout believer may not be comfortable with this film, and the devout atheist may not be comfortable with it either. But, if you can just enjoy a film for it's own merits and enjoy a good horror film, this is a very good one that is worth checking out.

The Blu Ray is put together very well. There are a couple of interesting and entertaining extras, the picture and audio are great, and there is a version available that comes with the Blu Ray, a DVD and a digital copy. I can't sneeze at a three commentary disc, especially when one of them is as unusual as the "formerly haunted" version. My only suggestion to Lionsgate and/or Eli Roth and company would be to put a few more extras that treat the subject matter as real on the disc. With the two it has now, it's just kind of unusual and there's no real sense of committal to trying to play with the audience this way. All in all, good stuff.

 The Last Exorcism at The Bleed For It store:


    













Other Possession Films Mentioned:

The Rite (Mikael Håfström, 2011)

In recent years, there's been a spate of new possession films. A few have been fun, entertaining films with some seriously chilling moments (The Last Exorcism, being an example), other have been well made enough, though lacking in any good scares (The Exorcism of Emily Rose, which at least took a new approach) and the rest of them have been downright terrible (Blackwater Valley Exorcism, The Possession of David O'Reilly, Exorcism: The Possession of Gail Bowers).

The Rite doesn't really fit any of those descriptions. It was relatively entertaining while I was watching it, so I can't say it was terrible. I wasn't sitting there counting the minutes until it was over, and clocking in just short of two hours. At the same time, the minute it was over, the flaws in the film were jumping to mind like a possessed virgin getting splashed with holy water. Granted, there are a few sequences in this film that actually work well. The problem is those sequences aren't connected by the kind of character development it would have taken to make the film work, and there are some narrative elements that just don't make any sense when you consider them.

The best thing this movie has going for it is Anthony Hopkins. The man can be a towering example of what is great and majestic about acting as an art form and a profession, which is nothing to thumb one's nose at. If we're going to be honest with each other though, he's made some horrible movies. He's made a few classics as well, which is why he is Sir Anthony Hopkins, and one of the most recognizable names in the world. In this film, he's unfortunately saddled with a character the script doesn't really tell the audience enough about for them to get a full sense of who he is or why he is who he is, which in a film dealing with possession and the fate of the immortal soul, is pretty important. Sir Anthony makes the best of things though, and there are definitely a few scenes where the brilliance he can summon are glimpsed. The effect of putting this caliber of actor in this role is that the small, quiet important moments outshine the scenes that should be the equivalent of gate crashing your consciousness. It's essentially emotionally backwards. There a moments in the film where I really wanted to love and respect this character, but they are immediately thrown under the proverbial narrative bus, because the film is hurrying along to it's next plot point so the audience doesn't consider the fact that some of what's being presented to them doesn't make sense in any world, even the world the film is trying to create. This film does give me hope that Anthony Hopkins has a few incredible performances left in him if he's given or takes scripts that are interesting and well written enough to allow him to be the more relaxed and extremely warm actor that he can be.

The sad thing is that it has a really strong opening. The first twenty minutes to half hour had me. It's not shocking to reflect that ninety-five percent of the films character development takes place in that time. The problem is that it's all one character, and the other characters who become central to the narrative don't show up until the film is already in a hurry to slap you with it's next plot point. There's a surprise scene in the beginning of the film that gave me some real hope that we might be about to take the kind of bumpy, uncomfortable ride I hope to get from horror films, especially supernatural horror films. Unfortunately, my good will was wasted on what more or less devolves into non-sense. There are central plot elements that either aren't explained enough to make sense in the world the film is trying to immerse us in, or worse, they're just thrown in there to keep things moving because they somehow tangentially relate to the other events in the narrative.

When the super natural is central to a film's narrative, there is a relatively fine line to walk. The writer and the film makers have to be able to develop the "rules" or the reality of the world they're creating without over explaining and getting into the kind of horrid exposition that completely kills narrative pacing. At the same time, they can't be so lazy as to just say, "it's the super natural, so of course it doesn't make sense." A writer or film maker might be able to get away with that if they specifically choose to never even allude to something resembling "rules" or a reality for the narrative that is somehow different from the one in which the audience lives in on a daily basis. Find me that film, where the writer and film makers pull it off, and I bet you've found something that is in the least interesting in it's ambition. This film seems to be completely lacking in any ambition, except possibly to get Anthony Hopkins on screen trying to out Hannibal Lecter himself for twenty minutes.

The other thing that succeeds in making this film unsuccessful, and pretty unsatisfying when reconsidered, is the lead actor. I'm not familiar with Colin O'Donoghue from anything else. That's usually not a problem for me, but in this case I didn't even have familiarity to fall back on. A million things can go wrong in the production of a film, which is why we get so many really bad movies every year. This seems to have been either a horrible case of miscasting or a director who just wasn't able to get a good performance out of his lead. Don't get me wrong, he's not terrible. There was never a point at which I sat back and marveled at the horrendous nature of the performance I was watching. But an hour into the film, I didn't really care about his character very much at all, and I wasn't really interested in what he was doing, why he was doing it or anything. Again, this could be a failure in the writing (which, I find a distinct possibility) or any number of other things, but it doesn't change the final result. The film makers spent the first twenty minutes of the movie on developing this guys character, and twenty minutes after that, I just didn't care anymore.

The film begins with him explaining to a friend (we're led to assume it's his best friend) that he's decided to join the seminary to get away from the family business. His father is a mortician, and he's old enough to be helping out these days. I can't blame him for trying to get away. The only explanation given for choosing seminary as that escape route is "In my family, you're either a priest or a mortician, and that's it." He further explains to his friend that he'll at least be able to get a four year degree, and then he can always choose not to take the vows to become a priest. Fast forward four years, and our boy is done with his undergraduate degree, and writing a letter to the equivalent of college headmaster to explain that he's not taking his vows, he lacks faith etc. Our intrepid young hero is then told there's a new program at The Vatican which is supposed to be training a new generation of exorcists, and Mr. Head Priest has always thought he'd be perfect for it, not to mention that the seminary can legally call his four year scholarship a student loan if he doesn't take his vows. And off he goes to Rome.

I think there could be some really good material in those class rooms and that training. Exactly what does The Vatican do to train an exorcist? How do they handle questions of modern psychology in relation to possession etc.? A few of these ideas get grazed, but none of them really land on the bulls eye. There could also be an entire movie of some value in understanding how Anthony Hopkins character comes to be the "unorthodox" priest our young skeptic is sent to, basically in order to cure his skepticism. "Unorthodox" in Hopkins case seems to mean "has many cats living in the courtyard outside of his living quarters, because nothing else here seems all that unorthodox as it relates to either Church teachings on exorcism and possession or films dealing with exorcism and possession. Then Alice Braga gets introduced as a third character in the film, and really, that's all there is to her. They may as well have decided to forgo giving her character a name at all and called her either "third major character" or "pretty female character meant to slightly suggest sexual tension." Then there's all the possession, exorcism, faith versus doubt stuff. It's thin. It's really, really thin. And really, this is more a religiously toned drama than a horror film. Yes, there are some of the requisite scenes of demonic possession etc, but they're not very scary and the sense of threat to the characters isn't great enough to create the sense of ever present dread the subject matter should suggest.

When it's all said and done, I can't really recommend seeing this film in theaters. If I'd have found myself with an afternoon free, and nothing to do, I'd be looking at this as a harmless distraction that filled a few hours of time. I wouldn't have been bothered by seeing this on Netflix or some other variety of rental, because at that price, it would have been worth it. It's not worth full ticket price at a theater though. This is one of those that I'm kicking myself for because I know there are a number of good films out I could have devoted that time and money to. I still haven't seen 127 Hours or The King's Speech and I can basically rely on them being well made, even if they don't quite live up to the Oscar hype. The Rite is the kind of completely vanilla film that results from either a complete lack of ambition to make something of real quality or too many cooks spoiling the broth (as so many studio films suffer from). I can see the skeleton of a good film in there, but it would have to have been thirty to forty minutes longer in order to flesh out the characters and the reality of this presentation of the super natural and it probably would have had to have a different lead.

If for some reason you feel you have to see this in theaters or you've found that if I dislike something you are almost guaranteed to enjoy it (there are reviewers out there whom I feel that way about) you can find the showings near you on Fandango. If you completely disagree with my review or you just want to be swell you can pre-order The Rite [Blu-ray] or The Rite on DVD at my Amazon store. Maybe the book from which the movie is "suggested" (and yes, the credits actually said suggested) is more interesting, The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist, and you can grab that from the Amazon Store as well.

If you're one of those crazy kids who doesn't like to have you're time wasted, but can still enjoy possession/exorcism films, snag a copy of any of the following:
The Last Exorcism [Blu-ray]
The Last Exorcism
The Exorcism of Emily Rose - Unrated (Special Edition),
The Exorcism of Emily Rose (+ BD Live) [Blu-ray].

There's also a film based on the same case that Emily Rose was, that takes an extremely different tact on the material, but is still very good: Requiem. And of course, there's the mother of all exorcism films, the one, the only, the classic: The Exorcist (Extended Director's Cut & Original Theatrical Edition) [Blu-ray], The Exorcist