#and she has this authenticity and ever present undercurrent of vulnerability that I think has broad appeal with Our People

[obstinatecondolement]

I feel like in the universe of the Bridget Jones's Diary movies, Bridget is almost certainly a gay icon.

Her television debut involved sliding down a pole in a fire station and landing arse first on a camera. She was the only journalist who was given an interview after a big human rights case victory right at the start of her career, when she was basically a nobody, because the barrister fancied her. She was arrested abroad and nearly spend 10 years in a Thai prison after being found with massive amounts of cocaine at the airport that her scumbag ex-box ex-boyfriend planted on her. Her scumbag ex-boss ex-boyfriend faked his own death. She very confidently got a question about Madonna wrong at a quiz at a big fancy lawyer party. The woman she thought her boyfriend was cheating on her with was in love with her. She had her first baby in her forties and didn't know who the father was.

Like... in this world, someone did her in the first DRUK Snatch Game and tried to labouriously explain who she was to Ru.

[tlbodine]

1970s: Supernatural Young Folk

Since we did murderous infants last week, I thought that would segue nicely into the next two films on my 1970s horror list: The Omen and Carrie. 

Directed by Richard Donner, The Omen (1976) is the first of a film franchise concerning a family who unknowingly adopts the Antichrist. After his newborn dies shortly after birth, an American ambassador of great wealth and ambitions to the White House is convinced to take another baby, whose mother died giving birth. He agrees to the swap, raising the child as his own and not telling his wife about it. But young Damien is an odd, quiet child, and misfortune follows him. As shadowy figures step into the family’s life, and people around them begin to die in odd circumstances, the father’s suspicions are raised...but not in time to save the family from disaster. 

The Omen is an interesting case. It certainly cashes in on the religious-horror themes that had previously been popularized in earlier films like Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist. There are a number of Omen novels as well, which were in fact written as novelizations and tie-ins for the original screenplay, not the other way around! 

The film unspools at a slow pace and gives essentially no lines to young Damien, who is not so much an agent of evil in his own right as a figure who inspires evil deeds and misfortune. It’s not even entirely clear how much awareness or agency he has in regards to his demonic powers -- although the iconic final scene, where he looks back at the camera during his father’s funeral and smiles, sure hints to a sinister undercurrent. It’s a genuinely chilling visual. Another memorable and chilling scene involves uncovering the graves of Damien’s birth mother (who is inhuman) and the baby (who was clearly murdered after birth). The score is quite effective, too, if a bit overwrought. 

I will say that, in the context of the films we’ve watched so far, the leading couple have probably the healthiest marriage...but it’s a low bar to clear. The husband of course keeps a major secret from his wife re: the identity of their child, and at one point he refuses to allow her to abort their second child because he wants to....prove a prophecy wrong. Neat. What’s striking about The Omen is how, just like in It’s Alive!, a story that should ostensibly be centered on a mother’s struggles and trauma is instead focused on just how hard/inconvenient fatherhood is. 

The hardest thing about watching The Omen in 2020 is that, at this point, it has been copied and satirized so many times that it can’t help but feel hopelessly derivative. It is extremely hard to watch the film without thinking of Good Omens or even the recent horror-comedy Little Evil, which directly satirize the film. The concept is interesting -- what if shadowy forces conspired to place an evil devilspawn in the hands of wealth and power -- but at this point perhaps audiences are too cynical. We expect the devil’s spawn to come from wealth and power, tortured priests notwithstanding. 

* If I were to retell this story, and I might one day, it would be from the perspective of a parent who is convinced of his child’s evilness and uses it to justify his cruelty. The question of “What awful power could cruel belief inspire in someone” is one that I find infinitely more interesting than religious horrors but, well, that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. 

** I really do actually recommend Little Evil, which is very funny and also an oddly wholesome take on the premise. 

Carrie, made in 1976 by director Brian DePalma (yes, the guy who made Scarface and The Untouchables) came out two years after Stephen King’s debut novel and played a big role in rocketing King’s career. It stars Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie and a young John Travolta before he became a punchline. 

I remember watching Carrie for the first time as a young teen -- maybe 14 -- at a sleepover, and it resonated with me then and continues to resonate with me now in a way that is probably all-too-common for young girls. If you have ever been bullied or outcast, this movie is likely to hit close to home. 

The story centers on shy, socially awkward young Carrie, a teen who lives alone with her religious fanatic mother whose idea of parenting involves reading Bible verses, smacking her child with a Bible, and locking her up in a closet. Thanks to her sheltered upbringing, she has a hard time relating to the rest of the world, and her classmates spring on her for it with the cruelty of wild dogs. But what they don’t know is that Carrie has powers of telekinesis...and when she’s pushed too far, the whole town suffers her wrath. 

Carrie is a great, primal story of pain and revenge, and although it’s been remade several times, the remakes feel utterly unnecessary. You get everything you need to out of the original, thanks in part to the authenticity and vulnerability that Spacek brings to the role. 

Something I really appreciate about Carrie is that it has a reasonably light touch. Compared to other types of misery-porn (cough, Joker, cough), Carrie doesn’t present a world where everyone is maliciously cruel. Sure, many of the people in her life are awful, but there are plenty of others -- like her well-meaning but ultimately misguided phys ed teacher -- who try to help but go about it the wrong way, or just don’t know what they’re really getting into, or whose gestures go awry. And that seems more authentic to me. Carrie’s world is painful not because everyone in it tries to cause her pain, but because no one she encounters is able to do anything to solve her existing pain -- and that feels very true-to-life.

Anyway, by this point in history you surely don’t need me to tell you what happens in the story: She’s invited to prom, voted prom queen as a joke, and then “pranked” by having a bucket of pig’s blood dropped on her, humiliating her in front of the school and triggering her murderous telekinesis before going home and dispatching of her mother. The thing is that even though the revenge does not end well -- she literally brings the house down upon herself -- it is incredibly satisfying to watch. In real life, hurting the people who tormented you probably doesn’t help, but boy is it cathartic to watch on the screen. 

Bonus: Try the Carrie drinking game where you take a shot every time someone in the movie gets slapped. You’ll be properly fucked up by the end of the film. 

Double Bonus: After Psycho, I think Carrie has more screeching violins than I’ve ever heard in a film. It works, though, as a nice auditory signal of her power. 

[aion-rsa]

Lovecraft Country Review (Spoiler-Free)

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Imagine yourself and some friends traveling on a road miles outside of a major city, passing fields of green, the car cutting a line between the blue sky and the gray asphalt. There are few other cars around and you are some distance away from the nearest town that you’re sure is a safe place to rest. The sun is slowly descending on the horizon, and the trees that lined the road are suddenly looming and ominous.

Now a monster has caught your scent. You speed down the road, careful not to spook your pursuer, and just barely make it to safety. Or so you think. The horror has only just begun.

Based on the book of the same name by author Matt Ruff,  Lovecraft Country is a gripping period horror set against the backdrop of the Jim Crow south. Atticus Freeman (Jonathan Majors), Tic to friends, is a Korean War vet who returns to his home in Chicago, following the disappearance of his estranged father, Montrose (Michael Kenneth Williams). With only a location, Ardham, in an area he calls “Lovecraft Country”—the New England region where most of Lovecraft’s work is set—Tic sets off with his Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance) and childhood friend Letitia Lewis, Leti (Jurnee Smollett), to find his father. What begins as a normal trip through the American south, rife with its own dangers, turns into a fight for survival from monsters of multiple natures. The trio, no strangers to fantasy and science fiction, find themselves in a horror story—except, for them, it’s real life.

Incorporating elements of fantasy, science fiction, magic, and religion, Lovecraft Country delivers an enthralling tale about legacy, fear, and power. Often in fiction, being a magical Other —an alien, mutant, witch, etc—is analogous to being Black, but anti-Blackness is rarely explored as a function unto itself. In this diegesis, racism is a horror that exists independently of, but parallel to the dark and fantastical. Monsters aren’t just metaphors, they exist and take many forms. Some wear badges, others have tentacles, but one does not negate or stand-in for the other. In Lovecraft Country racism is not allegorical.

Deliciously dark and wonderfully twisted, Lovecraft Country is a smorgasbord of horror tropes. Each episode progresses the overarching narrative while still offering a monster-of-the-week-type feel. This allows for different horror mechanics to be put into play, which keeps the audience from ever being able to expect what’s next, let alone prepare for it.

Each scare is played to great effect. Directors masterfully create an undercurrent of discomfort for the audience, a palpable tension crafted with fantastic aesthetic and audio design, that carries throughout every episode. This is perhaps the closest a show comes to synthesizing what it feels like to be constantly vigilant and hyper aware as a Black person moving through everyday life. That fraught tone is regularly rewarded with satisfying scenes of genuine horror, which deepen the feelings of unease.

What keeps the series grounded amidst the monsters and magic are incredible, layered performances by a stellar cast. Every character is imbued with a strength and vulnerability unique to them, and the actors bring those dichotomies to life with authenticity and nuance. 

Tic is book and street smart, and physically strong, but maybe not adept at managing his emotions, something he seems to have gotten from his pops. Montrose is volatile, and lashes out at those around him, a remnant of the treatment he received from his father. Uncle George is perhaps the most settled: a family man, a good man, content with life but maybe a bit unsatisfied. Tic, Montrose, and George present three different versions of Black masculinity. Majors, Williams, and Vance bring a softness to their portrayals, creating characters that challenge assumptions.

Similarly, the women on this show challenge assumptions of femininity. They are neither passive nor witless. Leti may blow through her sibling’s lives like a tornado, destroying everything she touches, but she is a force to be reckoned with. She holds her own alongside her travelling companions. In distress but never a damsel, she saves them all on more than one occasion. Jurnee Smollet shows the fuck out, and is fascinating to watch. Equally commanding is Letitia’s sister Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku), a woman determined to break through the limitations set for her by a racist and sexist society.

Christina Braithwhite (Abbey Lee), like Ruby, aspires to power she’s been traditionally excluded from because she is a woman. She has Whiteness and wealth on her side, but her struggle to make headway into a structure that rebukes her inclusion, makes her relatable even as she uses her privileges to antagonize. Hippolyta (Aunjanue Ellis) wants to travel the country and write of her own experiences in the Negro Motorist Guidebook she and her husband publish. 

The women and men on this show are erudite. In Lovecraft Country, intelligence isn’t treated like a rare skill that sets our Black protagonists apart, but rather the default, a foundation which everything else is built atop. The story works because everybody involved has the ability to understand it, and no time is spent making sure they—and we—“get” it. The characters, and the audience, are trusted with the material, and expected to follow. That makes for an exhilarating viewing experience.

I could tell you what to expect from Lovecraft Country and you still wouldn’t be prepared. It is that wild, and it is that good.

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