Unreality Companion: What I Hope for in the Growing Conjuring Franchise

In which I develop on the content of my weekly Unrealitymag.com article.

For Unreality this week, I reviewed Annabelle: a movie that, despite everything going against it, somehow still managed to be an all-around good horror movie.  As a prequel to The Conjuring, it developed the story of Annabelle - a doll acting as a conduit for a powerful demon - in a surprisingly lucid and pleasing way.  Given that a sequel is also on the way for the 2013 horror film - The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Poltergeist - I thought that this was an opportune moment to reflect on what what I personally would like to see come out of this rapidly expanding franchise from Blumhouse Productions, a company that I've already identified as the only real name in horror these days.

First and foremost, I would like another prequel to The Conjuring.  We just got through with Annabelle, true, but that's not the prequel that I was referring to.  Annabelle was surprisingly good, but it was born from a introduction to the Warrens that, ultimately, nobody really cared about.  As I mentioned in my review of The Conjuring, she was simply a device used to lead into the film's real narrative and to bluntly spice up its third act.

The prequel that I want is an origin story for the Warrens: the first time that they met, leading into their first supernatural case together.  When we are introduced to them in The Conjuring, they are already fully formed: married with children, renowned in the field of demonology, experienced through their many cases together.  I want to see them as they were at the beginning: unknowns just starting out together, learning each others' strengths and weaknesses.  I want to see them stumble out of the gates, fall down from pure inexperience and pick themselves up with nothing but enthusiasm and a driving need to better the world.

Like Sherlock Holmes, The Conjuring feels like the second or third installment to their narrative, not the first.    There's a veritable treasure trove of possessed, haunted and otherwise demonically tainted items in the office at the East Coast home.  I want to see them at their true beginning: raw, inexperienced and ultimately triumphant.

For that matter, I want to see a film made of their failed exorcism: the one where the possessed man died and Lorraine was touched by the spirit inside of him.  Every time she uses her supernatural ability, Ed tells us, it takes a piece of her with it.  And in this case, it took an especially big piece.  Their failure sets up their dramatic victory against Bathsheba in The Conjuring, but why leave it only as a back story?  It certainly has more than enough dramatic potential to carry an entire film on its own, ending on a tragic note so profound that it scars the couple's very souls.

And, finally, we come to its true sequel: The Enfield Poltergeist.  So far, the production seems to have everything that it could want: a return of the original's director, writers and headlining actors.  I would hope that they would additionally bring back John Leonetti, the cinematographer that seems to be as slavishly devoted to James Wan as John Williams is to Steven Spielberg.

The only thing that I would want beyond that it a more tempered, more reserved James Wan.  Although an exceptional talent in the horror genre, he has previously demonstrated an overbearing presence as a director: not trusting his shots and atmosphere to do the job required, instead punctuating his tension with cheap jump scares.  Most notable is the first physical appearance of Bathsheba in The Conjuring, which featured a rapid zoom-in to a dissonant orchestral sting.  It is such a sloppy, schlocky scare that I still can't believe that the film recovered from the absurdity of it all.  If Wan comes to this sequel with confidence in his own abilities, there is absolutely no reason why it should not surpass the quality of the first film.

So what do you all want to see come out of this new horror series?  Do you want to explore the Warrens' past cases, or move forward with newer ones?  Do you want to see the same creative team behind the first film work on future ones?  What about the team that somehow turned Annabelle into a certifiable success?

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Piece of the Puzzle - Gotham S1 E5 - Viper

In which I review the most recent episode of Gotham.

After last week's decision about the fate of Akrham, the Maroni crime family has been hoping to act on their newfound momentum against Falcone, and now they have a weapon perfect for the task: Penguin.  His connections within the Falcone organization gives him access to everything, including the vaults of their casino.  Meanwhile, a new drug, known only as Viper, has begun hitting the streets of Gotham.  It grants its users superhuman strength and the certainty of a gruesome death.  But when Gordan and Bullock find out that the distributor has a political agenda, they realize that everybody - including the young Bruce Wayne - are at risk.

This is easily the best episode of the series thus far, beating out even the incredibly well-rendered Selina Kyle.  Not only is the plot itself incredibly entertaining - watching short-lived metahumans riot in the streets, rob gas stations for milk and cheese and marvel at their own magnificence - but the episode features several loose plot strands coming together in extremely satisfying ways.

Fish Mooney's plan to train a white trash wanna-be singer into an assassin against Falcone finally bears fruit: marking the first time one of Fish's plans has substantively gotten off of the ground.  While she still reeks of over-sexualized writing and campy execution, it's hard to argue with her results: transforming trashy eye-candy into a cultured sophisticate in a much darker take on My Fair Lady.  Additionally, Bruce's research into Wayne Enterprise's under-handed dealings - especially how two crime families could become such big players in a city renovation project spear-headed by his parents - pays off in a big way.  As it turns out, Wayne Enterprises is the OsCorp of Gotham - the font from which all manner of super-powered villainy is sure to erupt in episodes to come.

While I am actually excited for what they started to do with Fish Mooney's character, I can't help but think it suffers from taking her two steps forward, one step back.  Viper brings her completely out of her club: pitting her against Falcone's other crime bosses on neutral territory - trading barbs with her peers in his organization, providing the first, tentative look into why she rose to her position in the first place.  The fact that her latest scheme against her boss actually appears to be well planned and executed gave me hope that we'd see her as something other than sexualized scenery with the thin pretense of progressing the over-arching plot.

The step back, of course, occurred when it came out that she was, in fact, only pretending to fend off the misogynist advances of one of Falcone's other mob bosses.  They are lovers, embroiled in the same coup d'etat against their superior.  Still, even some progress with Fish is better than none.  Perhaps in time we will see the same competant Fish Mooney that the writers evidently do.

The poor writing of the episode was actually reserved for Penguin, of all characters.  Although he's been intelligently stalking Gotham's criminal world up until now, he took an insane gamble on Maroni sparing his life when he told them that he had 1) been lying to him since the day that they met and 2) was a fairly high-ranking member of Falcone's organization until recently.  The fact that his scheme paid off in the end actually doesn't matter: he took stupid, obvious risks that immediately backfired on him, leaving him within a hair's bredth of having his face sliced off in Maroni's kitchens.  And, given that his continued existence is owed to going unnoticed in the city, his incredibly visible position as manager in a known hangout of Falcone's main competator - coupled with the use of his previously well-known alias - seems to have all the ear-marks of a terribly thought-out plan that will inevitably fail, sooner rather than later.

While Viper is certainly a step in the right direction for the series, it is not without its aforementioned issues.  Additionally, the show needs to quickly figure out what it wants to do with both Selina Kyle and Barbara Kean, two characters that have shown a lot of promise in past episodes, but have failed to do anything with that.  Overall, I give the episode a high 7.5 out of 10.

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Piece of the Puzzle: American Horror Story: Freakshow S4 E2 - Massacres and Matinees

In which I review the latest episode of American Horror Story: Freakshow.

After Elsa Mars set up camp outside of Jupiter, Flordia in last week's "Monsters Among Us," life amongst her Freaks has only gotten harder.  With the vicious killer stalking the town still on the loose, the police have set up a curfew, meaning that Mars' evening grotesqueries will be performed for empty seats.  Her ill-tempered strongman's new position has head of security has lead him to bullying the freaks and forcing his ideas for the freakshow through despite Elsa's objections.  Meanwhile, the police continue to search for the detective that Jimmy and the other Freaks murdered for trying to take the Tattler sisters away and Dandy Mott discovered a kindred spirit in the equally-demented Twisty the Clown.

Although Massacres and Matinees is tightly packed with increasingly interwoven characters and divergent plotlines, it fails to suffer from the same claustrophobic sense of over-crowding that has plagued Gotham since its premiere.  Despite the number of moving parts in the show, there is room for every character and for every character's narrative.  Jimmy's misguided attempts at reconciling the the townsfolk with the freaks, Dell's strong armed takeover of the freakshow, the Tattler's growing rivalry as performers and Dandy's deranged new friendship with Twisty all feel fully developed and completely unrushed.

In fact, the show's myriad of tangental back stories seem to be rapidly falling into place, creating a more cohesive story rather than a more fractured one.  Dell entering the fold as Ethel's former lover and Jimmy's secret father creates as much tension within Elsa's camp as there is directed toward it from the town.  Jimmy's obvious hatred toward the tyrannical Dell results in arrest and death of Meep the Geek, further driving a wedge between not only the freaks and the town, but the freaks and their overbearing strongman.  Dandy's rejection as a performer by both his mother and the freakshow fuels his sadistic imagination, leading to his ultimate partnership with Twisty - a killer who, until this moment, seemed closer to the isolated and abused Leatherface than the intentionally menacing John Wayne Gacy.

The only head-scratching interaction in the entire episode is between Elsa and the Tattler twins.  When star-struck Bette is forced to sing backup to her more-talented twin sister, she is understandably upset: attempting to run off stage mid-performance from embarrassment, which Dot refused to allow.  More even-headed characters would have left it at that: allowing the conjoined twins to work through their differences privately, give Bette some much-needed singing lessons and let the whole matter come to rest.

But Elsa decides to play a more dangerous game - setting the two sisters against one another.  She comes to Bette in the dead of night when Dot is asleep, telling her that she - rather than Dot - is the actual talent between them, that her sister feeds off of her lack of confidence and that Bette should refuse to allow her to do so.  While it might just turn out to be her way of building up Bette's fledgling confidence so that the sisters can perform actual duets, that does not seem to be the case.  Elsa appears to be intentionally driving the two sisters apart, although to what end can only be speculated at at this point.

For the second week in a row, Twisty the Clown turns out to be the most memorable and off-putting character on the show.  Massacres and Matinees continued to explore Twisty's, well, twisted desire to make others happy: a desire for which he obviously has no talent to act on.  He murders a toy store owner and employee in order to get a wind-up toy robot to amuse his captive children with.  When that fails, he tries what can only be described as a game of peek-a-boo with the store owner's severed head.  When his "play time" with Dandy Mott results in the man-child discovering the decapitated head in his bag,

As I watched the episode unfold, I noticed something that had slipped my attention in Monsters Among Us: that Twisty's masked face is only half-flesh.  His maniacal, big-toothed grin is actually a mask, hiding his actual mouth and jaw.  Not to be disappointed, his mask was knocked aside during his captives' failed escape attempt, revealing a horrifically ruined mouth of blackened, broken and rotted teeth.

Given his distinctly freakish appearance and his proximity to Elsa Mars' freakshow, I can't help but wonder what the connection between the two is.  Is he some escaped attraction running amok like a bored child, or was he intentionally set loose to drum up a macabre interest in Mars' show?  Or is it something else entirely?  She has already proven an insatiable, desperate need to be in the spotlight and her last scene with the Tattler twins suggests that she's willing to go to any length to get what she wants.

American Horror Story: Freakshow has kept up with the grisly promise of its first episode.  The series continues to plumb the depths of the depravity of its characters and develop its increasingly morbid narrative: proving the validity of its critical praise with each week's new installment.  I give the episode an 8.5 out of 10 and anxiously await this week's Edward Mordrake Part 1.

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Update: The Big Move

In which I share pending changes for Just a Matter of CineMantics.

As many of you know, I just got a job as a freelance writer at a local Jacksonville, Il newspaper called The Source - and yes, for those of you who are aware, it is, in fact, that Jacksonville - in a town that's about 30 miles West of Springfield.  And because changes in my personal life seem to correspond with equivalent changes in this blog, I thought that I would share what some of those changes are likely to be.

Funds being tight at the present, I will not be getting cable, instead mooching long-distance from my parents through the X-Finity Go ap.  Sadly, this means that I will have to drop reviewing theshows that are not available through the ap - some of which are still perplexingly availble On Demand.  These are the same shows that were absent this last week when I was away from home: Arrow, Flash and South Park.

Since I can still keep up with these when I go home (since they are On Demand), I'll probably end up ddoing a season review, rather than offering extremely late and erratic episode-by-episode reviews.  If anybody knows of a place online that I can find the latest episodes of these shows, I would be incredibly grateful if you can share that information in the comments section below.  I will still be able to keep up with Gotham, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and American Horror Story: Freakshow, but these episodes will come a day later than they used to (since their availability on the ap is staggered from their initial air date).  We'll have to wait to see if the ap will include Constantine, which premieres this week.

So while Piece of the Puzzle instalments will become less frequent, it's pretty safe to say that From the Vaults - and especially Date Nights - will become increasingly more so.  Since I am so conveniently close to Becky now, its only natural that we'll be able to do a lot more together, a large part of which will be watching movies.

Especially since my "busy days" have cleared up, I will also try to start doing daily blog posts - including the previously barren Saturday and Sunday.  This will help accomodate the increasing frequency of Date Nights and From the Vaults, but will also allow for new content possibilities that I have only been able to toy with in the old schedule, including more generally-themed articles.

So that's the way things look at the moment: The Weekend Review on Monday, Piece of the Puzzle on Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday (Gotham / Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. / American Horror Story: Freakshow), Unreality Companion on Friday and probably at least one installmnt of both Date Night and From the Vault on the weekends.  Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with this schedule as well as I was able to keep up with the previous schedule.

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Unreality Companion: Taking Sides - X-Men vs Brotherhood

In which I develop on the content of my weekly Unrealitymag.com article.

Since reviewing the exceptional X-Men: Days of Future Past for Unreality this week, I've had some time to think over the central conflict of the X-Men franchise.  I'm not talking about the martial conflict between Homo Sapien and Homo Superior, but the geo-political conflict between Charles Xavier's X-Men and Erik Lehnsherr's Brotherhood of Mutants.  Should mutants peacefully assimilate into human society, associating with and defending the very people and unjust institutions that continue to persecute them?  Or should they strike down their oppressors, using violence as a necessary and justifiable means of obtaining independence from their tormentors?

The X-Men franchise has always been a metaphor for the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.  Charles Xavier - choosing the path of assimilation through non-violent means - represents Martin Luther King Jr.'s stance of racial integration while Erik Lehnsherr - choosing a path of violent resistance to combat intolerance - represents Malcolm X.  While history is on the side of Xavier's course of action, I can't help but side with Magneto's path of violence and vindication.

Yes, you heard me: Magneto was right.  I most certainly have neither the patience nor the peaceful disposition to turn the other cheek to those calling for my head.  I cannot help but take the moral low-ground against those abominable inividuals who torment those without the social and legal courses to allay their suffering.  And while might most certainly does not make right, it is ultimately the lesser of two evils; I would rather further a just cause through unjust means than stand aside while people continue to suffer from simply being born differently.

"You were right.  I was less right."

The most illustrative instance of this in the seven X-Men films was in Days of Future Past, when Charles - after retreating into self-pity and drug use when his mounting personal losses became too much for him to bear - confronts Erik for stealing Raven away from him and abandoning him in Cuba.  Rather than pointing out that Charles not only told Raven to go with him, but told Erik to leave him there, Erik calming starts listing off names:

Angel, Azazel, Emma, Banshee. Mutant brothers and sisters, all dead!  Countless others, experimented on! Butchered! Where were you, Charles? We were supposed to protect them! Where were you when your own people needed you? Hiding! You and Hank, pretending to be something you're not! You abandoned us all!

While others fought and died for the good of all mutantkind, Charles hid from the world, failing to live up to even his own creed of education and peaceful action through the existing legal and social channels that were available to them.  He grew distant and misanthropic, wallowing in self-pity and choosing to sacrifice his birthright so that he didn't have to face the world as what he really was: a mutant - a genetic aberration that inherently sets him apart from the very people that he was fighting to protect.  Meanwhile, Erik rotted in an underground prison for the better part of a decade for attempting to prevent the Kennedy assassination: for trying to save one of his own.

And I am not alone in thinking this, either.  Why else would superheroic vigilantism be as immeasurably popular as it is?  Why would people buy into Batman's nocturnal heroics - and going on eight live-action films - when it's obvious that he is just as violent and deranged as those he puts behind bars in Arkham?  What else explains the continued popularity of the two Boondock Saints, five Dirty Harry and five Death Wish films?  People want somebody to stand up and fight against the injustices of the world, not simply rely on the altruistic natures of those in power.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not calling for violence in the streets, nor condoning terrorism.  I whole-heartedly hope that peaceful protests will win out over violent uprising every time.  But in the context of the franchise - the context of mutant rights and mutant persecution - I unreservedly endorse Magneto's savage course of action.

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Piece of the Puzzle: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S2 E4 - Face My Enemy

In which I review the latest episode of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Since Coulson's last Fugue state, a painting has been discovered in a burned down church that bears the same symbols that Coulson has been obsessively carving at an increasingly frequent rate: some kind of text written in the same, unknown alien language.  The plan is simple: infiltrate the charity ball where it's being held, steal it, then decipher it.  Brigadier General Talbot's presence at the party complicates matters however, especially when it turns out to be a Hydra agent in disguise.  But when Agent May is similarly replaced by a Hydra agent, can Director Coulson discover the deception before it's too late?

Agent May vs Agent May.  Fight!

It's easy to forget after seeing "The Cavalry" punch, kick and generally smash her way to victory for going on two seasons that Agent May is more than just a fighter; she's a covert agent who specializes in under-cover missions.  Face My Enemy reminds us of that fact by showing her under cover for the first time in the series.  Watching her tango, laugh and monopolize a conversation with sophisticated ease is even more unnerving than Ward's defection to Hydra.  That's not to say that she was unconvincing in the role.  In fact, her transformation into a chittering, bubbly socialite was perfect.  It is simply so blatantly out of character for her that it's impossible not to respect her even more as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The plot of the episode was well enough: nothing particularly good nor memorable, but nothing that didn't work on its own.  May's scenes were certainly highlights of the episode, from her schooled grace at the party and her climactic fight with her doppelganger.  Fitz's decision to try to bond with the rest of the team, despite his recent mental deficiencies, was a powerful step forward for his character.  Everything else, though, pretty stock for an action TV series: the heist, the sabotaged plane nearly exploding, Coulson's last-minute deduction that he was with an impostor rather than the real May - nothing that we haven't seen countless times before.

It's becoming increasingly obvious with every episode just how far the balance of power is tipped into Hydra's favor.  While Coulson's team barely has the resources to get by, Hydra's global intelligence network has been largely unaffected after the battle over the Triskelion.  They have perfected camouflage so absolutely that they can convincingly transform a waify, white woman into a solidly built asian one and the only thing that gives her away is that she likes coffee and talks too much.  They can even brainwash high-value assets into betraying their every core value and work for Nazis.

Face My Enemy proves that there is plenty of room left to explore the agents of Coulson's new S.H.I.E.L.D. if even a relatively blank slate like May can headline an entire episode with such entertaining ease.  Even if the episode fails to be a particularly memorable one, it is none-the-less a perfectly necessary one: progressing the overarching narrative forward and meaningfully developing its characters.  I continue to love the direction that Fitz is being taken and Simmons is just as convincing of a character whether she's a hallucination or a double agent.  Overall, I give the episode a 7 out of 10.

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Date Night: The Sacrament

In which I review a randomly-selected movie on Netflix with Becky.

Becky apparently picks out what movies to watch the same way that a child does: never mind the plot synopsis nor the creative talent involved, you'll learn everything you need to know from its cover photo and title.  That's how we ended up watching The Sacrament - a 2013 horror film from the same visionary writer-director that produced Cabin Fever 2, the V/H/S segment "Second Honeymoon" and The ABC's of Death segment "M Is for Miscarriage."

When his sister, along with the commune that she became a member of, disappears, independent journalists Patrick, Sam and Jake travel to the seemingly Utopian Eden Parish: where the desperate and destitute have come together under Father's leadership to show the world a better way to live.  But everything is not what it appears to be at Eden Parish.  For every rapturous member of Father's congregation affirming that they would rather die than return to the United States, there's another who skittishly says that they're not allowed to talk to outsiders.  And when they are confronted by a mob of terrified parishioners begging to be taken away from the commune when the three men leave, they realize that they are all in danger.

Despite its lackluster pedigree of creative talent, The Sacrament is every inch the movie that Red State wanted to be.  Both films depict radical Christian sects with frighteningly charismatic leaders commit abhorrent acts of evil in the name of God.   Unlike Red State, however - which was riddled with false starts, rapid tonal shifts and a garbled mess of a script - The Sacrament knew exactly what it wanted to say and spent its entire run-time developing that message.  Its narrative didn't lose focus by trying to introduce First Amendment rights, Second Amendment rights, homosexually-driven hate crimes, ineffective bureaucracies, post-9/11 politics and a corrupt government all too eager to cover up its own misdeeds.  With journalistic sparsity, it concentrated on how religious fervor can entrap and enslave a group of desperate people who find themselves on the outside of mainstream society.

Father, the patriarch of Eden Parish.

Like Red State, the film's greatest strength is in its charismatic antagonist: Father.  Watching the normally bit-player Gene Jones preach about the evils of the world is like watching a revelation on screen.  His dark Southern drawl is absolutely intoxicating, spoken with a sweeping momentum that commands the focus and passions of everyone caught in his presence.  Like Sam, you lose focus on the obvious objections to his compound - which at even a cursory glance includes sleep deprivation, surrender of your passport, donation of your life savings to buy into the parish, drug use and rampant sexual fornication as a means of recruitment - and surrender yourself to the calming embrace of his voice.

Unlike most post-millennial horror films that share its aesthetic, The Sacrament makes intelligent use of its found footage framework.  While most found footage films use it to gloss over budgetary constraints and continue to use it when it no longer makes narrative sense that the cameras would be rolling at that particular point of time, The Sacrament uses it as an organic framework - born of the inherent needs and goals of the film.  We never question why three reporters would be documenting their trip to an isolated religious commune, nor why they would continue to film when the mass suicide and execution of the unfaithful began.  We likewise never question Father when he orders his followers to record the mass suicide, given that it is intended to be a message of faith directed towards a faithless world.  The reporters even have the foresight to abandon their camera when they realize that it's impeding their escape from armed assailants - a decision which uniquely records the whole of the chase scene without breaking the illusion of found footage.

Despite a number of pacing issues and an entire cast of under-developed characters, The Sacrament is a surprisingly well-constructed and entertaining horror film.  Ultimately, the strength of its antagonist, framework and story are enough to carry the film through its ninety-five minute run-time.  I give the film a 7 out of 10 and Becky gives it a 6.

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