13 Slots for the Best Horror I've Seen in the Past Year
[8 of 13]
The TV Terror Slot

Another twofer!

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE

(October 2018)

“How can a house, just a collection of bricks, wood, and glass, have that much power over people?"

Just as he did on ¡Qué horror! 2017 title Ouija: Origin of Evil, Mike Flanagan masterfully navigates the seas of traditional horror cinema in his self-described “remix” of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.

This time out, unlike the original novel’s researchers and investigators, we see the Crain family move into Hill House, with the express aim of flipping it (or, fixing and flipping it, to be more precise).

The house, of course, uninterested in being renovated and then sold on to some other family foolish enough to open its door and walk down its shadowy halls, has other ideas…

“This house… it’s a strange house.

“I’ve worked here a long time, and all I can tell you is that it’s just as stupid and hungry as anything else.

“We don’t stay after dark, Horace and I. And my child is not allowed to step foot in this place. Not once.”

“For me, the most important thing is if you remove the supernatural entirely, the story and the character need to be just as compelling. The supernatural stuff is the easy stuff. But all of that stuff is really boring to me if it’s not grounded in some kind of really relatable honest human experience.”

-- Mike Flanagan

“This house… it’s full of precious, precious things… and they don’t all belong to you…”

Skillfully utilizing the narrative elegance of non-linear storytelling, Flanagan and company track the family’s ordeals and progressive unraveling, both in Hill House, and decades after, in a tale which is by turns chilling and heart-wrenching.

If this were a different kind of story, the Crain siblings would have taken all the lessons learned from their harrowing stay at Hill House, and ended up becoming a group of ghost-busting paranormal investigators.

But in the story this “remix” chooses to tell--a story more grounded in real life and the vagaries of family--what we end up with are a bunch of scarred, f*cked up individuals, all dealing as best they can with the trauma of their childhoods.

And this, quite possibly, is the best aspect of this particular take on the original material: that the dots that connect the children they once were with the adults they eventually become, are so clearly delineated.

The characterizations--the result of a potent combination of the character arcs as mapped out in the narrative, and excellent performances by the cast--are just as solid as the creepy scares.

“You’ve been knocking on that door for years and years and years…

“We could hear you knocking louder all the time, and finally, here you are…”

“If we were going to be doing this as a long format, it had to be about the way every family is a haunted house, and everyone is wrestling with their ghosts from their own childhood and beyond--that echo through decades.”

-- Mike Flanagan

“I was right here. I didn’t go anywhere.

“I was right here… I was right here the whole time.

“None of you could see me.

“Nobody could see me.”

Directing the entire season of 10 episodes, Flanagan brings both an exquisite cinematic eye to the proceedings*, and a fundamental understanding of the full range of his cast’s capabilities.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that amongst an already formidable collection of actors and actresses**, the paired casting of Timothy Hutton and Henry Thomas are the cherry-so-red-it’s-very-nearly-black on top of this ghostly, sinister sundae, a sickly, sweetly rotten treat sprinkled liberally with mold and familial dysfunction.

“There’s nothing wrong with going at night. It’s just a carcass in the woods.

“It’s just a carcass in the woods.

“It’s just a carcass… in the woods.”

* Aided by long-time collaborator, cinematographer Michael Fimognari.

** Shout outs to Annabeth Gish and Dr. Lawrence Jacoby himself, Russ Tamblyn, who may just be overlooked with all the other high-caliber thespianics going on around them.

Parting Shot: Though I have seen Jan de Bont’s The Haunting, I’ve never read the original Shirley Jackson novel (I really should finally get around to it), nor seen the 1963 Robert Wise film adaptation (which Flanagan seems respectfully in awe of).
As it turns out, Tamblyn also appeared in Wise's version, as the "Luke" character. In Flanagan's "remix," Tamblyn plays Dr. Montague, repurposing the name of the lead investigator in Jackson's original novel. (In Wise's adaptation, that character becomes Dr. Markway.)
Remix, indeed.

“Our family is like an unfinished meal to that house…"

And, on a bittersweet note, what, at the moment, seems to be the final ¡Qué horror! appearance of Channel Zero (which nonetheless makes ¡Qué horror! history by breaking Hannibal's record as the only multi-season TV show to have all its seasons make a place for themselves in the ¡Qué horror! main rundowns; Channel Zero did it four times... and wasn't a single serialized narrative).

Congratulations, Channel Zero.
And sniff. R.I.P.

CHANNEL ZERO:
THE DREAM DOOR

(October 2018)

“Roses are... lazy. And dishonest.”

“‘Dishonest’?”

“Mmm! Pretty flower! And then a minute later, you’re bleeding!”

Well, hell-loooooo, Pretzel Jack!

Turning to Cronenberg*** for some conceptual inspiration, Channel Zero does an awesome quasi-slasher impression with the E.L. Katz-helmed The Dream Door, where an imaginary childhood friend and protector becomes something far more sinister in adulthood.

Channel Zero delivers a fourth winning season by giving us yet another “flavor” of horror (to borrow Channel Zero creator Nick Antosca’s term).

Just as Butcher’s Block was different from No-End House, which was, in turn, different from Candle Cove, so is The Dream Door different from any of the previous seasons.

Gorier and slightly more savage than its predecessors, it’s a tale that delves into the potentially brutal pain of complete honesty in a relationship, a story about love and secrets and distrust, and the intersection where all three collide… with a super-creepy contortionist clown…

“You know, it’s funny. In Jungian psychology, doors are kind of a thing.

“This whole deal with your basement, is… it’s fascinating.

*** As well as Lynch, particularly for a brief, yet unsettlingly poignant bit past the halfway mark.

(The Haunting of Hill House OS’ & Channel Zero: The Dream Door OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2019

Candidate #3

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE

(October 2018)

“How can a house, just a collection of bricks, wood, and glass, have that much power over people?"

Just as he did on ¡Qué horror! 2017 title Ouija: Origin of Evil, Mike Flanagan masterfully navigates the seas of traditional horror cinema in his self-described “remix” of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.

This time out, unlike the original novel’s researchers and investigators, we see the Crain family move into Hill House, with the express aim of flipping it (or, fixing and flipping it, to be more precise).

The house, of course, uninterested in being renovated and then sold on to some other family foolish enough to open its door and walk down its shadowy halls, has other ideas…

“This house… it’s a strange house.

“I’ve worked here a long time, and all I can tell you is that it’s just as stupid and hungry as anything else.

“We don’t stay after dark, Horace and I. And my child is not allowed to step foot in this place. Not once.”

“For me, the most important thing is if you remove the supernatural entirely, the story and the character need to be just as compelling. The supernatural stuff is the easy stuff. But all of that stuff is really boring to me if it’s not grounded in some kind of really relatable honest human experience.”

-- Mike Flanagan

“This house… it’s full of precious, precious things… and they don’t all belong to you…”

Skillfully utilizing the narrative elegance of non-linear storytelling, Flanagan and company track the family’s ordeals and progressive unraveling, both in Hill House, and decades after, in a tale which is by turns chilling and heart-wrenching.

If this were a different kind of story, the Crain siblings would have taken all the lessons learned from their harrowing stay at Hill House, and ended up becoming a group of ghost-busting paranormal investigators.

But in the story this “remix” chooses to tell--a story more grounded in real life and the vagaries of family--what we end up with are a bunch of scarred, f*cked up individuals, all dealing as best they can with the trauma of their childhoods.

And this, quite possibly, is the best aspect of this particular take on the original material: that the dots that connect the children they once were with the adults they eventually become, are so clearly delineated.

The characterizations--the result of a potent combination of the character arcs as mapped out in the narrative, and excellent performances by the cast--are just as solid as the creepy scares.

“You’ve been knocking on that door for years and years and years…

“We could hear you knocking louder all the time, and finally, here you are…”

“If we were going to be doing this as a long format, it had to be about the way every family is a haunted house, and everyone is wrestling with their ghosts from their own childhood and beyond--that echo through decades.”

-- Mike Flanagan

“I was right here. I didn’t go anywhere.

“I was right here… I was right here the whole time.

“None of you could see me.

“Nobody could see me.”

Directing the entire season of 10 episodes, Flanagan brings both an exquisite cinematic eye to the proceedings*, and a fundamental understanding of the full range of his cast’s capabilities.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that amongst an already formidable collection of actors and actresses**, the paired casting of Timothy Hutton and Henry Thomas are the cherry-so-red-it’s-very-nearly-black on top of this ghostly, sinister sundae, a sickly, sweetly rotten treat sprinkled liberally with mold and familial dysfunction.

“There’s nothing wrong with going at night. It’s just a carcass in the woods.

“It’s just a carcass in the woods.

“It’s just a carcass… in the woods.”

(The Haunting of Hill House OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

* Aided by long-time collaborator, cinematographer Michael Fimognari.

** Shout outs to Annabeth Gish and Dr. Lawrence Jacoby himself, Russ Tamblyn, who may just be overlooked with all the other high-caliber thespianics going on around them.

Parting Shot: Though I have seen Jan de Bont’s The Haunting, I’ve never read the original Shirley Jackson novel (I really should finally get around to it), nor seen the 1963 Robert Wise film adaptation (which Flanagan seems respectfully in awe of).
As it turns out, Tamblyn also appeared in Wise's version, as the "Luke" character. In Flanagan's "remix," Tamblyn plays Dr. Montague, repurposing the name of the lead investigator in Jackson's original novel. (In Wise's adaptation, that character becomes Dr. Markway.)
Remix, indeed.

“Our family is like an unfinished meal to that house…"

reVIEW (3)
HONOGURAI MIZU NO SOKO KARA (DARK WATER)
[1 of 2]

Hideo Nakata's Ringu opens with an image of the sea, waves moving in its ceaseless, eternal rhythm. His Hitchcockian psychosexual thriller Kaosu (Chaos) has its title card set against a shot of rain. Even his first Hollywood film, The Ring Two, opens with images of water. If opening images are anything to go by, Nakata seems to have a yen for water.
If there is any credence to this notion, then actually having the word in a film's title, and having it as a central image, might just have been inevitable.
Once again adapting material by Koji Suzuki, as he did with Ringu—this time out, the short story “Floating Water”—Nakata opens Honogurai mizu no soko kara with a credit sequence whose backdrop is filthy water, immediately submerging the audience in the medium used by the tale's supernatural menace to spread its sinister influence.

Appropriating as its English-language title the name of the Suzuki collection where “Floating Water” is contained, Dark Water revolves around Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki), a separated single parent raising a child on her own (as was the scenario in Ringu). This time around, the child is a little girl, Ikuko (Rio Kanno), who finds herself in the middle of a custody battle. And while this domestic crisis is on-going, mother and daughter move into a new apartment, where strange incidents immediately begin to occur, as a ghostly force seems to have found a target in little Ikuko.
What follows is a film with more ambitious aims than Ringu, and one of its triumphs is that Nakata succeeds in hitting the bull's eye dead-on.

Though Yoshimi is just as harried a single mother as Reiko Asakawa was in Ringu, Yoshimi has abandonment issues from her childhood, that she is anxious she not repeat in Ikuko's case. Ultimately, this is a bitter irony, given what Yoshimi is forced to do to resolve the central dilemma of Dark Water. Also, Ikuko is a far more normal child than Ringu's Yoichi, who emanated an unsettling, other-worldly maturity in his demeanor.
With these telling differences, it is clear that Nakata strives to people the story with individuals, to steep the tale in as much reality as possible, before the supernatural slowly seeps into its fabric.
Structure-wise, he even does away with the gambit of the creepy opening set piece, as seen in Ringu. In fact, Dark Water could have been played with the tantalizing possibility that all the strangeness was taking place in Yoshimi's head, a ploy perhaps of her scheming husband to gain custody of Ikuko. This isn't Nakata's tack, however. But given that the story could have been told from this angle, pitting the tension of a natural, rational explanation against a supernatural, irrational one, becomes a testament to the authenticity of the scenario; of its reality.

While in Ringu there was already a strong feminine presence, with Reiko and Sadako (and, to a limited extent, Yamamura), in Dark Water, the masculine presence is nearly non-existent, with only Yoshimi's ex-husband, a helpful lawyer, and a couple of other males playing very minimal roles. As far as Dark Water goes, the feminine is near-ubiquitous, which seems only natural, considering the film's central image of water.
In the Chinese belief system, yin ("shaded") energies are feminine, as opposed to the masculine yang ("sunlit"). Yin is also water and darkness, while yang is fire and light. Thus, yin is the negative part of the equation, while yang is the positive, sadly reinforcing the sexist belief of women being the weaker gender. A proper balance between these two forces is believed to be a prerequisite for the perfect life.
So perhaps it is this imbalance in Yoshimi's life that brings down the misfortune in the first place, but what Nakata ultimately does in Dark Water, consciously or otherwise, is to short-circuit the whole yin/yang balance, proving that a problem can be faced and addressed without the need of a male presence. Yoshimi is able to protect her child, her maternal love giving her the strength to pay the hefty price for Ikuko's safety.

Nakata is also able to present us with one of the hoariest scenarios in horror, the haunted house, and still make the goosebumps rise. And he doesn't even need to rely on outlandish production design, as in Jan De Bont's terrible misfire, The Haunting, to make the setting a character in its own right. All we have here is an apartment building, run-down and gloomy. A cramped, creaky elevator here, a water stain on the ceiling there, a grotty water tank on the rooftop, and presto, instant creepy haunted house.

Another nice touch in Dark Water is that, ultimately, the ghostly presence isn't truly a malignant one: it is only because of its loneliness that it reaches out to the living, unknowing (or perhaps, unmindful) of the harm it is causing in its wake. This isn't some raging spirit who sets off a spiteful curse that claims lives indiscriminately, by pure chance. This is a wraith with very specific needs and desires, paradoxically making it that much more malevolent, even if its motives aren't.
In the process of telling his story, Nakata is able to raise the issue of just how damaging to a child's psyche abandonment can be. Again, ironic given the story's resolution; as in Ringu, the mother is forced to do all she can to protect her child, though safety in Dark Water comes at a far greater cost. Here is an ending that could quite possibly be a far more cruel thorn than Ringu's cold-blooded climax, due to the element of self-sacrifice involved.

It is evident that Nakata intended Dark Water to be a horror movie with substance, and that it is, an urban ghost story whose ultimate influence is far more subtle than the obvious effects of the Ringu Cycle, though no less potent and crucial to the evolution of modern horror cinema.

(The above review began life under the title “... And Not A Drop To Drink (Diving Back into Dark Water).”)

(Honogurai mizu no soko kara DVD cover art courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com; Dark Water collection cover art courtesy of clouded-moon.blogspot.com.)