¡QUÉ HORROR! 2019

Candidate #25

MARIANNE Season 1

(September 2019)

“[Marianne is] a witch.

“Deprived of a body, she wanders. She enters your soul, warps your body. She takes you over. She possesses you.

“The only thing Marianne cannot do is lie about her name. She can avoid the question, change the subject. But she cannot lie about her name.

“She is the wife of a demon.”

Opening with a Nathaniel Hawthorne quote* from The Scarlet Letter about “the Black Man,” the 8-episode Marianne sees writer Emma Larsimon (Victoire Du Bois) suddenly end her apparently successful 10 year run of Lizzie Larck books--with titles like Lizzie Larck in Chains and Marianne Bites, Emma herself describes the books as “teen girl literature”--in what an interviewer characterizes as “a rash move”.

That may very well be the case, because supernatural events straight out of her work start to happen around her, as the titular witch, Marianne, comes calling…

“It’s not fair… It’s your nightmare, not mine!”

Now, while I do feel that Marianne is ultimately recommendable, I think I need to point out some aspects of the show where viewers’ mileages may vary…

“Do you want a key? You want to see inside? There’s nothing. Only my cats and my teeth.”

Despite being a relatively brief (for Netflix, at least) 8 episodes, somehow the show still has time to allow some scenes to stretch into uncomfortable tedium whilst presumably aiming for tension.

There are also strange tonal shifts into brief (and sometimes painfully awkward) comedic moments, presumably to offset the largely gloomy, sinister proceedings, but which only serve to rudely remind the viewer that this is a show that’s trying to scare you out of your wits, but also reluctant to lose the broader, not necessarily hardcore horror audience.

There are also numerous nods to past horror classics. Numerous.

In the opening episode alone, there are scenes pointedly reminiscent of The Omen and The Exorcist, not to mention some Exorcist-style subliminal quick cuts (an editing style that recurs throughout the subsequent episodes).

Other horror films are likewise nodded to over the season’s course, the particularly blatant lifts distracting more than anything else.

My point here being, if you’re already doing something original (in that it isn’t an adaptation or a sequel or a prequel or a remake or a reboot or a re-whatever), then you may as well rely on fresh, original scares and not painfully obvious lifts that detract from the proceedings.

In the end, while there are macabre goings-on, sinister atmospherics, and stylistic flourishes aplenty, it’ll be up to each individual viewer whether those are enough to offset some of the show’s more problematic issues.**

“God will not forgive me, I know it. I’ve taken the worst possible path. I’ve walked by the sea. I saw the city. I am cursed.”

And, full disclosure, one particular reason why this show’s stuck with me is because I’ve written a comic that’s meant to be released within the year. (Pages are being inked--and subsequently lettered by yours truly--even as I write this.)

As with Silver Like Dust (available at mervstore.com), it's another Dakila crossover/team-up. Further details will, of course, be found here at the Iguana the closer we get to release date.

Right now, what’s pertinent to this post is that the comic just so happens to feature the same demon who’s first mentioned prominently somewhere before Marianne’s midpoint. The same demon and his 85 legions…

So, yeah, the instant he gets mentioned in the show, I’m like, “Hey!”

I gotta say, guy’s pretty popular, or at least, having some kind of Moment.

He’s also appeared recently in Vertigo’s*** The Dreaming, and even has a Marvel incarnation…

Oh, and the Sharon Van Etten needle drop during the extended flashback section was much appreciated as well…

“They will all be mine. We will lick and eat them all, my husband and I. You get crow, toad and cat.

“And you, little whore, I never leave empty-handed.”

* Each episode opens with a quote. Among the other writers represented: Arthur Machen, Henry James, J.M. Barrie, Edgar Allan Poe, and H.P. Lovecraft.

** Including the kind of main character Emma is, the type of personality that leaves wreckage and ruin in her wake.

Is there a reason for this beyond “Oh, well, that’s just the sort of person she is”?

Yes.

But that doesn’t really make her any more likeable in some instances…

*** Sniff. R.I.P.

Parting Shot:

All 8 episodes of Marianne are directed by Samuel Bodin, and co-written by Bodin and Quoc Dang Tran.

Among the short films Bodin has previously worked on is the odd and highly stylized fan film Batman: Ashes to Ashes, co-directed with Julien Mokrani (mind the NSFW section)…

(Marianne OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I've Seen in the Past Year
[9 of 13]
The TV Horror Slot

The second tie of the year...

THE EXORCIST Season 1
(September 2016)

After the terribly disappointing Damien--the A&E TV take on The Omen--I honestly didn’t have high hopes for Fox’s The Exorcist.

Let’s face it, The Exorcist is a much more towering presence in horror cinema than The Omen, so it stood to reason that a television version of it would have a much higher degree of difficulty.

But wouldn’t you know it, Jeremy Slater (who developed The Exorcist for the small screen) actually pulled an infernally feisty rabbit out of this particular hat, and gave us another notable reason to celebrate TV horror.

Not much more I can say without getting all spoiler-y, except maybe this: there are a whole bunch of callbacks to the original film peppered throughout the first season’s 10 episodes (you’ll know them when you see them), and there’s one apparently incredulous Mulder Moment courtesy of Geena Davis’ Angela Rance in the Pilot, my suggestion for which is, “Just roll with it.”

So, yeah.

If you’re in the mood for some excellent TV horror, then the power of Christ compels you to check this out!

CHANNEL ZERO: CANDLE COVE

(October 2016)

"Do 'ya sense it?

"Something is coming.
"A strange vessel headed for the cove…”

What do you get when you take alumni from Twin Peaks (Harley Peyton) and Hannibal (Nick Antosca), and the son of noted director John Landis (Max), toss them into a wild, creatively horrific blender, then sprinkle the goo that’s left onto a heap of steaming Creepypasta?

You get the highly unsettling Channel Zero: Candle Cove.

This is the kind of TV horror we desperately need, the kind that never forgets that horror isn’t just about jump scares and on-screen gore; that it’s also about tone and atmosphere.

Craig William Macneill (who directed all six episodes) certainly understands this, and now, based on what I saw on Candle Cove, I feel the need to check out his feature, The Boy (the one with David Morse and Rainn Wilson).

This is the first time the post-BSG SyFy has come up with a winner of this caliber. (The fact that Channel Zero isn’t even science fiction, but a horror anthology,  is another conversation entirely.)

So looking forward to Season 2, based on “The No-End House.”

“A fire needs fuel.

“Power demands sacrifice.

“I made mine a long time ago.”

Parting Shot:
Both series have kicked off their sophomore seasons very promisingly.
With any luck, we'll see those seasons in next year's rundown...

(The Exorcist OS’ courtesy of impawards.com and dreadcentral.com; Channel Zero OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2017

Candidate #7

THE EXORCIST Season 1
(September 2016)

After the terribly disappointing Damien--the A&E TV take on The Omen--I honestly didn’t have high hopes for Fox’s The Exorcist.

Let’s face it, The Exorcist is a much more towering presence in horror cinema than The Omen, so it stood to reason that a television version of it would have a much higher degree of difficulty.

But wouldn’t you know it, Jeremy Slater (who developed The Exorcist for the small screen) actually pulled an infernally feisty rabbit out of this particular hat, and gave us another notable reason to celebrate TV horror.

Not much more I can say without getting all spoiler-y, except maybe this: there are a whole bunch of callbacks to the original film peppered throughout the first season’s 10 episodes (you’ll know them when you see them), and there’s one apparently incredulous Mulder Moment courtesy of Geena Davis’ Angela Rance in the Pilot, my suggestion for which is, “Just roll with it.”

So, yeah.

If you’re in the mood for some excellent TV horror, then the power of Christ compels you to check this out!

(The Exorcist OS’ courtesy of impawards.com and dreadcentral.com.)

reVIEW (2)
THE RING TWO

The Ring Two, the English-language debut of noted Japanese director Hideo Nakata (Ringu, Kaosu), is, just to establish the verdict up front, an excellent horror movie. It isn’t perfect (there is a contrivance here, a convenience there), nor is it Nakata’s best—that honor still belongs to Honogurai mizu no soko kara (Dark Water). Nevertheless, it’s a well-crafted, atmospheric piece that serves to validate and fortify some of the lamer aspects of Gore Verbinski’s unimpressive remake of Ringu, The Ring.
And, lest you may worry that The Ring Two is merely Nakata revisiting his own Ringu 2, rest assured he doesn’t do that here; though the climactic set piece is ostensibly similar to that of Ringu 2, the films’ stories aren’t the same. (Actually, if there’s a film Nakata revisits in The Ring Two, it’s quite possibly Dark Water; but more on that later.)
Returning from The Ring are mother and son protagonists, Rachel (Naomi Watts) and Aidan Keller (David Dorfman), and evil video ghost-child Samara, who’s now interested in more than just scaring young, photogenic, pimple-free American adolescents to death. She’s more ambitious this time around, our Samara.

What Nakata achieves in The Ring Two is a creepy and effective follow-through on Verbinski’s slick though terribly flawed The Ring. This is to be expected though, given that Nakata originated the entire filmic Ringu cycle, and his presence on this production not only assures masterful horror film artistry and craftsmanship, but also apparently supplies Ehren Kruger with enough inspiration (or perhaps input) to deliver a script that is far better and more substantial than the one he slapped together for The Ring.
Here, not only is the theme of maternal love and responsibility—how far would you be willing to go for love of your child?—explored more deeply than the surface-scratching lip service we witnessed in The Ring, but the ideas of the original are studied in much closer detail, allowing the audience an increased level of scrutiny, as well as a clearer understanding of why Anna Morgan (Shannon Cochran) murdered Samara in the first place (a reason more complex than the “we-must-kill-the-bad-seed” motivation provided in The Ring). Issues of abuse, neglect, and abandonment within a mother-child relationship are also considered here.
Additionally, the larger Hollywood budget allows Nakata to push the visual elements of the tale, gracing the screen with some of the most eerie and impressive paranormal effects scenes in a movie of domestic horror since Poltergeist, incidentally, also one of the earlier proponents of the television-as-an-appliance-of-doom idea.

Naturally, Nakata’s leitmotif of water, found throughout his body of work, continues here, where we are made privy to what water means to Samara, again forming mental connections to some of the elements in The Ring, almost as if part of Nakata’s agenda was to make Verbinski’s film make more sense in retrospect.
There’s also a scene here, recalling a similar sequence in Richard Donner’s The Omen, which serves to bolster the entire equine epidemic subplot in The Ring, which, in the sole context of Verbinski’s film, was digressive and rather pointless.
If anything, The Ring Two ends up making The Ring look like an interesting prelude to the real, substantial story, as if all this time, Verbinski’s effort had actually been a prologue disguised as a feature-length film.
The Ring Two can also be seen on a certain level, to be a further explication and elaboration of some of the themes and ideas found in Nakata’s Dark Water. Which is not to say that this is a rehash; The Ring Two is still very much its own animal, a slick horror film with atmosphere and depth, a rare breed in Hollywood.

So, while we await Nakata’s next English-language project, we have the director’s successful first dip into the raging waters of American moviemaking. Here’s hoping Nakata’s Inhuman (apparently his next Hollywood project; see The Director’s Chair (1): Archive June 2007) will be another specimen of that rare breed of Hollywood horror film The Ring Two belongs to.

(The Ring Two review began life under the title “Round and Round We Go Again.”)

(The Ring Two OS courtesy of impawards.com.)