Them (2006)

     Horror filmmaking, a visualization of things no one wants to happen to them, can be morbidly fascinating, or even lyrical. Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In, particularly, told its story brilliantly and in some ways transcended the vampire genre. Them, a slight trip into depravity  advertised as "the movie that terrified the French," is not. It is tripe. The film doesn't stand as much as a worthy story with characters as a gaudy set-designed ego trip, with meticulously designed dark corners, piercing screams, and convenient pitfalls.

     When the heroine, schoolteacher Clementine, chose a place in the attic of her sprawling isolated home to escape from the home invaders of the film, of course it is an otherwise empty section with cellophane hanging in clumps from the ceiling, each one vaguely looking like a cloaked face. Of course Clementine and her boyfriend Lucas live in an isolated manor. And finally ,of course the isolation is broken by a "annoying" dog, who barks to warn them too late.

    I was warned. When a teenage girl feuding with her mother gets run off the road by a unknown being, I heard her, just as it began to rain, segueing from a irate calls to screams, more and more desperate "Maman! Maman! Maman!!!" The car? It doesn't start. The rain obscures anyone from view, as does the trunk her mother ignorantly poked around in. The cell phone shakes in her hand, and she can barely release a squeak, much less a "help."

      After the inevitable death, the film focuses on Lucas, a writer who does his best work playing arcade games, and Clementine, a frustrated primary school teacher. For a period of about fifteen minutes, the two exchange a stream of smooth and natural dialogue, in such a way I mistakenly started hoping that I would care what happened to them. After that, the script runs out of such dialogue, and settles on standard horror talk. I started laughing out loud at the banality of it, a bad sign with a film that wants to be taken this seriously.

"______!" (insert name, repeat 20-30 times.)
"I'll go check."
"What was that sound?"
"Don't leave!"

     The acting in the film is decent, the performers pounding on the one note the director brings to the table, mostly comprised of frightened shrieks and tear stained faces. The plot is a series of grotesque occurrences, putting the characters through horror and trauma. It's plotlessness is "compensated" for with a couple of jumps (it barely succeeds). The slashers are barely frightening and completely nonsensical.

Simply put, it is a series of close escapes and killings, too premeditated and shallow to provoke much reaction.  I learned something, though. Nothing about safety, nothing about human nature. I learned that a film's cool cover art, cinematic pedigree (foreign), and being spoken in a pretty language (French), does not make it very much superior to American money mongerers. Nor does it classify it as high film-making. That is all. (Rated R.)
  **
  

Requiem

     When it comes to rating movies, how should a film like Requiem be treated? Taken as entertainment, it is horrible. The viewer waits, sickened by the inevitable conclusion, but when it comes it is still like a poke in the gut. It is horrific, yet not horror, and shouldn't be advertised as "scary" in any conventional sense.

     But it strikes me as brave how directer Hans-Christian Schmid delivers his story -- sharp and gimmickless. His viewpoint is clear -- the girl was mentally sick. Nothing other than ignorance and her own mind conspired against her. Whether this notion would have helped anything remains distant.

     But the film doesn't need vomit or swiveling heads, shocks or hallucinations. It has Sandra Huller. Fully absorbed in her role, Sandra furiously portrays Michaela Klinglar, a character based, apparently, on a real German girl named Annalise Michaels, who lived in 1970's Germany.

    Michaela, as many young people would, hopes to leave her parents for college, and eventually, a career in teaching. She announces she will be leaving for university. She seems healthy and capable enough, but her mother speaks quietly and archaically of her illness and its eventual effect on her future.

     Michaela lives with three people, her parents and a younger sibling. Her mother coldly talks of her daughter's limitations in way that radiates cruelty, not care.  New clothes that show Michaela's figure are promptly thrown away in the night for being trampy. Even when her mother presents a gift, tension lies in the air.

     The girl's father secretly resents serving as his daughter's shield. But her mother relents, and she is given a chance to try a life of classes and socialization. The family is religious, as is Michaela, but at her school, belief in a higher power has gone out of style. Her mention of God is met by snickers. An at first aloof old classmate hangs around with her, as long as religion and self-help are not brought up, even with earnest intentions.

     When Michaela first begins to suffer seizures, black-outs, and hallucinations, she manages to cover up the incidents.  Her requests for help from a priest invoke less-than-helpful response. She begins going out with a boy who promises, when asked, to stand by her, foolishly ignoring the conditions.

     When her parents do discover her degeneration, they make the tragic decision to involve the church in her rehabilitation. While her stretches of coherency become rarer, she becomes a spiritual guinea pig for exorcisms and is denied the psychiatric care she so desperately needs.

     Two films have been made involving the case of Anneliese Michels, the other being a Hollywood courtroom thriller titled The Exorcism of Emily Rose, which concentrates on the supernatural aspects of the case.

      Schmid has no use for the superstition of the latter, but at times his stance becomes all-too-clear, involving overwrought scenes with a harsh priest and an earnest member of the church whose cure for insanity is a good round of bible study.

     Even as Requiem falters, Sandra Huller's intense performance, conveying the hope for normalcy and pain of rejection and illness, almost single-handedly keeps the viewer's interest. Some say the docu-style filming is boring, but I say it is a courageous attempt to strip Annalise's story to the basics, dropping the shocks and visualized nightmares that distract from the reality of the situation.

For more information on Anneliese Michels, check out this link (Spoilers!) here

The Living & the Dead

  Not your first pick for Mother's Day, The Living and the Dead is morbid and horrifying, and I mean that, strangely, as a compliment. It is a family drama, a psychological thriller, a tragedy, an art film, all these things at once, and and despite it's flaws, it doesn't overextend.

   The film opens with Lord Donald Brocklebank (Roger Lloyd-Pack), a worn-down, silent shell of an old man, pushing an empty wheelchair through a quiet room. The image delivers the same feeling as a dark grey painting, lonely and despondent. He watches, lip quivering, as an ambulance pulls into his massive estate. Cut back an undetermined amount of time. Donald stands straighter. He maintains a kind of pride that must come with being one of the British elite, but he is grieving. He has a lot to grieve about.

    His wife, Lady Nancy Brocklebank, is terribly sick and probably won't be with him much longer. The bills are piling up, and they will soon lose their mansion. His son James (Leo Bill, in an over-the-top performance that works), dashes around the house with little clear purpose.

    James is in his mid-to-late twenties. He is stuck in a kind of permanent childhood, the kind of childhood that is made up of nightmares, not whimsy. Although Simon Rumley, the director, describes him as "mentally challenged," I suspect paranoid schizophrenia.

    James is by far my favorite character in the film. He is a complicated movie creation, and his emotional limitations do not hold back his complexity or ambiguity as a person. Donald treats James with the casual cruelty that is most likely inflicted on the mentally ill more often than we think, condescending to him, forbidding him to use the phone or answer the door. James is desperate to prove to his father that he is an independent adult and plans to do so by taking care of his mother.

   His father understandably rejects the idea. In an matter of days, James will have locked the door, shut out the nurse, skipped his pills, and may have destroyed the lives of those closest to him. Soon, as his lucidity deteriorates, the viewer begins to wonder if the past events were only in James' head. This is a film for a patient audience -- it's a while before anything happens and the reality of the events is questionable.

    The atmosphere is palpable, and the characters are well developed. There are many plot holes and unanswered questions throughout the film, as the story itself seems on the edge of reality, with its Gothic features and abstract images.

    People have had different opinions on whether James is "good" or "bad." He is a disturbing character, to be sure. He is not a sex maniac, mad slasher, or stony-faced killer, but an exceptionally childlike and deeply disturbed man. This movie might make you feel differently about a crime, in the paper, in which mental illness was a factor. Despite naysayers, The Living and the Dead is an emotional bombshell and thought-provoking film.