SEVERANCE Season 1 (February 2022)

 

SEVERANCE Season 1

(February 2022)

“The numbers were scary…”

Severance* takes the idea of work/life balance to its chilling extreme, as we bear witness to the denizens of Lumon Industries’ “severed floor,” where the employees have elected to undergo a surgical process that effectively separates the work persona (who only becomes active and awake at work) from who the individual actually is in their home life.
Work memories are not accessible when the person is out of the office, and the work persona has no idea what their home life is like (are they married? Do they have kids?).
It’s the kind of scenario that a corporation will absolutely love (no pesky personal problems to interfere with productivity; industrial espionage… what’s that?) but isn’t necessarily beneficial to the employee.
As we see over Severance’s nine-episode season, hopefully only the first of many more…
 
“I trusted you, and you abused that trust.
“Your inefficiency and free range chicken roaming is ultimately your responsibility.
“Escort him… to the Break Room.”
 
It’s odd, going over the quotes I’ve gathered here.
You read them and some are so patently absurd that the overall effect is whimsy.
And while, yes, the absurdist office humor is indeed off-the-wall, it is also, in practice, disturbing.
There are shades of Twin Peaks here, not just in a visual sense, but in the way that the crackpot, occasionally non sequitur humor serves to mask the cold, inhuman horror that lies beneath the cheery, quirky facades.
 
A worker may suffer injurious pain or ghastly dehumanization, and no workspace is without its perils. But whatever your task, dear worker, see that you perform it with love. Endow in each swing of your axe or swipe of your pen the sum of your affections, that through me they may be purified and returned. No higher purpose may be found than this. Nor any higher love.
 
So join us at Lumon, where no one quite knows what it is they’re actually doing (even in the office!).
Spend the work days with a truly excellent cast that includes Patricia Arquette, John Turturro, and Christopher Walken!
Thrill to passages of The You You Are, by the one and only Dr. Ricken (Michael Chernus)!
And watch out for the MDE!
 
Our job is to taste free air. Your so-called “Boss” may own the clock that taunts you from the wall, but my friends, the hour is yours.
 
Severance: A damning indictment of corporate culture, with all its perks and incentivizations and sudden terminations.
It’s a world where the terms “Break Room” and “overtime” are positively chilling to hear.
 
“Let’s burn this place to the ground.”
 
* Brought to us by an excellent team headed up by creator Dan Erickson, and Ben Stiller (yes, that Ben Stiller), who directed 2/3 of the season.
 
(Severance key art courtesy of impawards.com.)

reVIEW (51) SCREAM 2

reVIEW (51)

SCREAM 2

... and with a brand new Scream just around the corner, here’s the other zombie I wanted to resurrect…

Go, zombie, go!

Shamble across the Interwebz!

“Let’s face it, Sidney. These days, you gotta have a sequel!”

-- Stu (from Scream)

The menacing drone of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Red Right Hand” plays over the opening credits of a film called Stab.

Yes, Stab--the film based on the novel The Hillsboro Murders, written by the Antichrist of tabloid TV, Gale Weathers.

With an audience of howling gorehounds in white masks and black cloaks, the sneak preview of Stab (presented in “Stab-O-Vision,” naturally) serves as the opening sequence of Scream 2, an opening that is both a sobering indictment of how fanatical some gorehounds can get about their horror movies, and a brilliant follow-up to Scream’s taut opening; we even get to see Heather Graham (a long way from Twin Peaks, she is) do Drew Barrymore’s Casey Becker, in a great Psycho homage.

Slamming us with a coda that is a chilling example of what Scream 2’s “freaky Tarantino film student,” Mickey (Timothy Olyphant), terms “life imitating art imitating life,” the sequence drags us bodily into the second chapter in Kevin Williamson’s envisioned trilogy, a stunning continuation of the first film, many of its plot elements and surprises logical ramifications of events that occurred in the original.

“It’s starting again, Randy.”

-- Sidney

Two years after the bloodbath at Stu’s house in Scream’s climax, Sidney (Neve Campbell, back for a second round) and fellow Woodsboro massacre survivor Randy (Jamie Kennedy) have gone on to university, where they are pursuing a “pseudo-quasi-happy existence,” trying to put the past behind them. A past that refuses to go away, as not only has Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) written a book about Woodsboro, but a film has been made from that novel.

Then there’s Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), falsely accused by Sidney for the murder of her mother (as seen in Scream), still trying to clear his reputation by getting on the tube to tell his story.

With Stab’s opening just around the corner, all these media prods set the stage for the renewed mayhem; as an Omega Beta Zeta sister puts it so succinctly, “It’s that movie, Stab. It’s bringing out the crazies.”

“If there is some freaked-out psycho trying to follow in Billy Loomis’ footsteps, you probably already know him. Or her. Or them. They’re probably already in your life. They get off on that.”

-- Dewey

The sly intelligence and self-referential wit evidenced in Scream is still here in the sequel, proving that Williamson’s skill at writing a nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat horror film that is also a statement on the genre and the medium, was not a one-off fluke.

From the broad thematic (and cinematographic) nods to Psycho (and, to a certain extent, Psycho II) to the particular--and peculiar--workings of the Scream universe (what could just have very well been a throw-away line from the first film crystallizes into “reality” as we see Tori Spelling essay Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott in Stab; it’s just too bad we don’t get to see David Schwimmer’s Dewey), Williamson displays firm control of plot and character, taking the survivors from the original and bringing them two years forward, each of them displaying scars--both physical and psychological--from the events in Woodsboro.

And given the strong sense of continuity between the first two chapters of the Scream trilogy, my mentioning Psycho may be very appropriate, since, the way I see it, after all the trauma the survivors of Scream 2 go through, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Scream 3 opens with said survivors running a motel just off the highway, dressing up in masks and cloaks and murdering unsuspecting secretaries on the lam.

“So it’s our job to observe the rules of the sequel. Number one: the body count is always bigger. Number two: the death scenes are always much more elaborate. More blood. More gore. Carnage candy. Your core audience just expects it.”

-- Randy

Though the death scenes here are not necessarily any gorier than those in the original, what are certainly more elaborate this time around are the set pieces leading up to those deaths; the chases, the thrills, the suspense. In an astoundingly nerve-wracking sequence, Williamson actually outdoes the “potential slasher victim trapped in the back of a cop car” scenario in I Know What You Did Last Summer with the one in Scream 2.

Williamson and director Wes Craven also utilize the Windsor College setting to its utmost, wringing all they can out of the “college campus as stalking ground” milieu.

Just as Scream played with the slasher setting archetype of the small town terrorized by the mad killer (as established in Halloween and done to death in many a subsequent film, such as The Prowler and My Bloody Valentine), Scream 2 trods the well-worn footpaths of such slasher fare as Graduation Day and Final Exam.

True to form though, Williamson takes it that one, smart step further. The script is so cognizant of its setting that the environment is exploited for all its thrill-worthy potential.

At one point, Kennedy, David Arquette, and Cox share a particularly intense scene set on the sprawling campus lawn in broad daylight, and in another (in what I like to think of as the film’s T.S. Eliot “Who is the third” moment), Campbell does a great turn in a slightly surreal dress rehearsal where Sidney plays the doomed prophetess Cassandra amidst a masked Greek chorus.

Even Sidney’s identification with Cassandra--who is doomed to live out a future she is intimately familiar with, because she can convince no one of its impending reality--is a stroke of genius on Williamson’s part. At one point in the film, Sidney laments, “I knew this was going to happen”; the police stations and reporters are now a painfully familiar sight for poor Ms. Prescott.

“Wow. That was intense.”

-- Cotton

Crackling with an air of tense expectancy and boasting a climax that has some last-minute mind screws and plot curveballs, Scream 2 is an expertly executed film that highlights not only the fascination of the movie-going masses with violence, but also the omnipresence of the media in our lives.

It is a film that once again proves that, 1) Wes Craven is alive and well and still quite capable of eliciting the scares, 2) it doesn’t hurt for horror to have a brain, and 3) Kevin Williamson is a brilliant writer with a deep respect for the genre and a great sense of humour.

Described by one critic as “a fascinating piece of work for a post-media society,” Scream 2 is a film that holds a mirror up to itself, the horror genre, and the audience, all in one graceful, knowing gesture (the audience being a microcosm of society at large); a film that gives you pause for reflection, as you’re running scared silly for your life.

“You do realize that if we were in a Scream movie, you'd be the prime suspect...”

-- Mark Gatela to me

[The above review existed in a former published life, and in slightly altered form, in the year 1997, under the identity of “Scream and Scream Again.”]

(Scream 2 OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

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…"

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2017

The Preliminaries

"It is happening again."
The time of year for another ¡Qué horror! rundown.

Before we get to the main list, a number of titles (film and television) that, for one reason or another, did not quite cross the line into “horror,” but were nonetheless noteworthy pieces that I felt needed to be acknowledged here.

SPLIT

(September 2016)

“Rejoice!

“The broken are the more evolved.

“Rejoice.”

This one straddled the thriller/horror line, and was ultimately a slam bang run-up to the already on-its-way Glass.

(Though don’t get me started on how this, coupled with Unbreakable, seems to point to Shyamalan echoing Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol run just a bit too closely.)

BATES MOTEL

(February 2017)

While Bates Motel’s final season initially seemed to indicate that it was finally going to crack into the main rundown, at long last firmly crossing the thriller/horror line, shortly after the sly and gutsy inversion of episode 6, “Marion,” the show settled into tragic, dysfunctional family drama mode.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved this final season (which is why it’s getting a mention here), but, once again and for the final time, Bates Motel stared knowingly at the thriller/horror line, and pointedly declined to cross it.

TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN

(May 2017)

Now this was something I’d never really imagined happening, but I’m so, so glad it did.

And, as with most of David Lynch’s oeuvre, while there are streaks and dollops of horror running through it, it’s a piece that really can’t be classified as “horror” (and I’m almost certain Mr. Lynch wouldn’t think of it as that, either).

And just as he did on Twin Peaks’ original ABC run, Lynch not only pushes the television envelope here, he tears it to shreds.

The a tad over 40 minute journey we take in episode 8, in which we meet the “Woodsman” (AKA Mr. “Got-a-Light?”) is the most harrowing 40 minutes of television I have ever seen.

After over a quarter of a century, Twin Peaks still remains the Best Television Show I have been blessed to have experienced, and The Return is a blistering and thoroughly welcome third season addition to it.

Oh, and good on the Roadhouse, for upping their game with the musicians they’ve invited onto their stage…

“… I don’t even know what to call it… this piece of art or… ‘cause I feel like calling it a television show… it aired on television, but it doesn’t feel like a television show for all the best possible reasons…”

--Damon Lindelof, on Twin Peaks: The Return

(Split & Twin Peaks: The Return OS’ courtesy of bloody-disguting.com; Bates Motel OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2017

Candidate #2

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.”

(Channel Zero OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡Qué horror! 2014

The Wrap-Up

So there we are.

Another October and another ¡Qué horror! rundown.
And the twelve months leading up to ¡Qué horror! 2015 have already begun…

But before we bring this year’s festivities to a close, I have to mention this:

TWIN PEAKS: THE MISSING PIECES

[Contained in TWIN PEAKS: THE ENTIRE MYSTERY]

(July 2014)

Since this isn’t a film or a television show episode (it’s a series of deleted and alternate scenes from Fire Walk With Me), this really couldn’t rightfully qualify as a Candidate.

Nevertheless, this deserves a ¡Qué horror! mention for a couple of scenes that, even if taken just as they are, and out of any sort of context, still pack a potent wallop on the unwary, regardless of whether you’ve seen Twin Peaks or not.

These brief snippets are more unnerving and unsettling than many of Hollywood’s recent feature length “horror” offerings.

A master of combining sight and sound and producing compact little audio-visual nightmares, David Lynch has secreted a number of bizarre little gems in “Missing Pieces,” including more of David Bowie’s Agent Phillip Jeffries.

If you’re a TP fan, then this is, as they say, a “must-see,” if only so you can be your own final arbiter on whether the inclusion of these scenes would have made any significant difference to Fire Walk With Me.

And if you’ve never seen TP or its feature film prequel, then get a taste of Lynch’s television masterpiece here.

(Nearly a quarter of a century after it premiered, it’s still at the top of my Best TV Shows Ever list. 24 years and change and no other show has managed to steal that crown…)

Plus, given the recent simultaneous tweets from David Lynch and Mark Frost (at 11:30 AM apparently, the same time Special Agent Dale Cooper entered the lovely town of Twin Peaks way back in the Pilot), this could serve as a brief taste of all the strange and wonderful things that may yet come…

Yes, please, could I have some more?

“I’ve always said, ‘I love a continuing story.’

“To love a world and be able to go deeper and deeper into that world.

“So, there’s always a possibility, and you just have to wait and see.”

--David Lynch, when asked about a possible continuation of Twin Peaks, September 2014

(Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery Blu-ray cover art courtesy of bluray.com.)