The Stepfather (1987) - (film review); The Stepfather (2009) - (film review)

            When David Harris’ stepson’s girlfriend repeatedly refers to him as Mr. Harris, he insists: “Call me David.”  But, he doesn’t mean it.  The most salient aspect of both the original and remake of The Stepfather is the degree through which patriarchal rule and desire for control is represented and manifested in the central character.  Both Terry O’Quinn and Dylan Walsh’s performances of David Harris/Jerry Blake (respectively) insist on friendly bonding, coinciding with the moral and ethical family values and the hierarchy of such.  So, when Mr. Harris insists, “call me David,” he doesn’t really mean it.  This invitation of familiarity is made out of social obligation, but ultimately comes across as insincere.  It is this insincerity that drives the title character to action.  Everything he does or attempts to accomplish is predicated on exterior illusion and the ability of this illusion to translate to internal reality for David/Jerry.
             I was a minor fan of the original The Stepfather, having thought the film was rather campy, at times silly, and ultimately dated in typical 80s fashion.  This time stamp however is not necessarily a bad thing, for there are many 80s horror films that are more effective simply using the 80s colloquial techniques.  Upon re-watching this film, in anticipation of viewing the quite intriguing looking remake, it dawned on me the exact angle and social fortitude the film attempted to grapple with—and quite effectively at that.  It is the dying breed of neoconservative patriarchy influenced by religion and its familial values of the nuclear family.  Jerry is the incarnate manifestation of these principles forever seeking the ‘perfect’ family—normalized and heterosexualized by indoctrinating socializing family roles and functions.  Unfortunately for Jerry (and most unfortunately for any family he preys upon), he never manages to find this ‘perfect’ family—mainly because this ‘perfect’ (read: average) family doesn’t exist, except in the ideologies of traditional Judeo-Christian republican extremists.
              Stephanie, the stepdaughter in the original film, is this new budding feminist who strives to connect with her mother and ‘platonic’ female companion.  Stephanie’s heterosexuality is questionable in the film, especially if one chooses to interpret the film through a queer theoretical paradigmatic lens.  Stephanie is never heterosexualized, except in the final few moments of the film where audience’s gaze is directed to her nubile 16-year-old naked body.  This scene is in stark contrast to Jerry’s nude scene right at the beginning of the film.  Here we see the opposing forces in the gendered nudity and all of the social implications that are read onto these bodies.  Jerry’s male penetrating body fresh from killing his entire family, to Stephanie’s virginal teenage femininity, ready to be penetrated.  What happens instead is a struggle between the omniscience of patriarchy and the resistance of femininity and matriarchy.  Throughout the film, both mother and daughter put up with the hokey, occasionally silly speeches Jerry ‘performs’ on family and its significance.  This significance is never flushed out, it is never critically examined.  No one questions why family is so important, and what precisely family offers other than the reification of ruling patriarchal/heterosexual gender roles.  The original film is an all-out struggle of ideologies facing off.  Stephanie rises up against her patriarchal figure and his empty promises of familial bliss to redefine her own sense of gender and sexuality.  The unfortunate thing for Stephanie is that this is never entirely possible, so the slaughtering of Jerry (a misstep to place the mother-figure as responsible for this action than the clear heroine, Stephanie), is ultimately done in vain.  Perhaps the singularity of Jerry’s ideals is demolished, but his social influence lives on in many neoconservative extremists.
           In the 2009 version of The Stepfather, the homage is displaced and misses the central saliency of the original—this is not to say that it is without its own merits, just not as strong as the original.  In reading reviews of both the original and remake of The Stepfather on Fangoria and Bloody Disgusting, it becomes clear that many viewers focus on the psychoses of the title character and not the social ideologies he represents, thus inverting the film from a taught social commentary into a personal account of one man’s inner psychotic turmoil.  In doing this the reviewers strip the film from what drives the action.  The initial intention may have inadvertently intended to scare the audience with the creepiness of the central character, however the film(s) has amassed to something more grand than this simple personal account of one man’s struggle to aspire to the American Dream.  Unfortunately (for us), the remake is predicated on this pedantic interpretation.  The film’s intention is to expand upon the personal psychosis of the central character.  This is why Stephanie is turned into Michael, a troubled teen (who is incredibly well-behaved except for a few minor outbursts of personal opinion at the dinner table) who must learn to step in line and fly right. 
           Converting the direct conflicting character to the stepfather from a daughter to a son has some massive social implications, all of which lose the pertinence of feminist thought.  There are many underlying aspects driving this gender change—the need to appeal to young teen girls, and if the emphasis is placed on the central character’s psychosis, then it does not matter the gender or age of the conflicting character.  Instead of being treated to a cathartic uprising of feminist ideals against patriarchal rule, we are subjected to traditional patriarchy’s temporary crumble to new, more ideologically (and dare I say liberal) patriarchy—a patriarchy none the less.  It is more a struggle between men, each fighting to lay control over the household.  I am less drawn to this theme as the nucleus of the film.  However, having said that, I do believe this new remake masters more of the overarching reach of the patriarchal hand and its ability to silence and convince those that do not adhere to its principle values.  The performance of Walsh as the central character is more effective and subtle than the overt campiness of O’Quinn’s memorable 80s portrayal—both men do fine jobs for very different reasons and to very different effect.  What I am drawn to with the remake is the taught and suspenseful direction that the story deserves.  The narrative structure of both films calls for a more psychotic frenetic touch that is more evident in the 2009 version than the 1987 one.  Both films are flawed and both films are quite poignant, both for extremely different reasons—if only a keen director and screenwriter could more astutely adapt the most arrestive aspects of each, we would be left with a social canon.  Instead we have two films lacking in particular areas requiring viewers to draw from sections of each—more so from the 1987 version than 2009.

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The Stepfather (1987) - grade: 83% (A-)

The Stepfather (2009) - grade: 78% (B+)

Drag Me to Hell - (film review)

            I first saw Drag Me to Hell in theatres, but I purposefully waited to re-watch it on DVD before committing to write this review.  I was never a major fan of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead Trilogy—for me the films felt a little too silly and annoying to be properly enjoyed, but upon reading initial reviews of Drag Me to Hell I became well aware of the kind of relentless, borderline frenetic film I was in store for.  Fortunately, unlike the Evil Dead films, which seem to me to be more of a fun practically nonsensical romp through preternatural realms, Drag Me to Hell is littered with socioeconomic and political significance, especially given these times of capitalist complacency.

            The most significant aspect of this film is that we follow the happenings of the antagonist in the film, Christine Brown, as she struggles against the curse she has been inflicted with due to her callous decision to refuse a third mortgage extension to the aptly disguised ‘hero’ Sylvia.  The film relies on Occidental commonplace stereotypes concerning foreign ‘othered’ relations.  It feeds on how ‘we’ come to see Romani (ie. Gypsy) ‘others’ and the imagined threat they impose on ‘our’ way of living.  The film’s paradigmatic view is the most accessible to its audience—the white, doe-eyed, likeable heterosexual female, who comes from modest rural origins, and (like all of us) yearns to prove herself and get ahead in her job.  It strategically positions Sylvia Ganush as the characteristic foreign threat that imposes herself on our likeable ‘heroine’ audaciously begging for an expansion to her late mortgage payments.

            What the film deftly provides us with is a look into the agential subject position within the overarching bureaucratic, and consequently Capitalist, economic structure, and how this agency relates to the severity of poverty and joblessness.   Up until the last three minutes of the film, the audience is led to believe that there is no other option for Christine but to refuse a third mortgage extension to Ms. Ganush—not unless she wants to upstage that creepy Stuart who is her direct competition for the new promotion.  Her boss, taking advantage of female workplace anxiety around confidence and the inability to keep up with their male counterparts, makes it very clear that Stuart has the ability to make the ‘tough decisions’, implying that she is not.  Christine becomes enraptured by the mass-market fed ‘dream’ of economic expansion to return to Ms. Ganush and refuse her another extension—an extension she so desperately needs to keep her residence of 30 years.

            Drag Me to Hell exposes the individuation of the bureaucratic system and the personal agency of those subjects who comprise it.  The rules of bureaucracy are determined and enforced by people who have every ability to make exceptions and special circumstantial decisions.  Instead, the invisible and omnipresent watchful eye of economic growth lingers over each individual within the bureaucratic system, causing them to self-internalize their own governance—disallowing room for exception or ethical decisions that may slightly inconvenience one for massive benefits to others.  These theories of self-governance are all too familiar to Focault and his work on sexual regulation and economic power.

            Christine in this instance has let herself get swept up in personal perseverance within the Capitalist system (in which we all reside) in such a way as to overlook the immediate needs of someone else—it’s a “dog-eat-dog” world out there and if you don’t look after yourself, no one will.  We all side with her because she’s right…right?  Her rich boyfriend’s parents disapprove of her rural farm upbringing and her menial bank position, deeming her unworthy of their son’s love and affection; her slimy co-worker is actively attempting to weasel his way into her well-deserved promotion; her boss is constantly on alert of her unworthiness to fill the assistant manager position she so desperately wants.  What else was she to do?  The old-woman’s living situation and potential homelessness would not immediately (if at all) affect her, so there is no danger in refusing a third mortgage extension, so why grant her one and risk further economic stasis?  This reasoning becomes incredibly logical to Christine (as I’m sure it does to much of the audience of this film) that she begins to lie to herself throughout the film—“my boss made me do it”, a line which very much echoes “the devil made me do it.”

            The only character in this film who is suspect of Christine’s innocence is Sylvia Ganush’s granddaughter, who calls Christine out on her attempted lies.  The audience is, once again, directed to dislike the granddaughter, because she speaks with a foreign Romani accent, is shadowed upon reveal, and is not kind to our troubled doe-eyed ‘heroine’.

            As the film continues, Christine struggles to undo what Ms. Ganush has done, upon her instigation—séance, exorcism, animal sacrifice (from a vegetarian no-less).  The animal sacrifice is of some saliency here, for Christine attempts to prove her niceness and innocence throughout the course of the film, explaining that she’s a vegetarian and volunteers at the puppy shelter (for Christ’s sake!).  However, these ethical principles become obsolete once she is faced with the responsibility of her actions.  Responsibility she so desperately wishes to be free.
            Ms. Ganush becomes our struggle against callous inhuman bureaucracies that would rather kick us out of our homes then inconvenience themselves.  She is the struggling ‘other’ who audaciously fights against spineless administrative pawns and their complacency to work within the system so long as they benefit from it.  In the last three minutes of the film the audience becomes aware of Christine’s decision and the personal agency involved in sending Sylvia from her home.  She apologizes for her actions spurring her boyfriend to call attention to her big heart—but is this the case?  Her apology only comes once the reality of threat is extricated—extricated into the soul of the harbinger of such devilish mayhem.  Prior to this extrication, she actively sought to fight against her own agency and responsibility in the decision she made.  She wanted forgiveness early on in the film, but not forgiveness for her selfishness—she was not willing to divulge that just yet.  Instead, she fought, only relenting to accept her responsibility for the actions that have taken place once she believed that she had won.  It is in this instance where Christine gets precisely what she deserves—in the metaphorical and cathartic dialectic world of horror.

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Grade: 89% (A)

Pandorum - (film review)

            The cross-genre Horror/Sci-Fi is met with varying degrees of success.  Films such as Alien, Aliens, and Sunshine have all managed to successfully transfer the most potent elements of each separate genre creating an aggregate of superior filmmaking.  Pandorum however, cannot be added to this list.

            I wanted to enjoy this film.  The foreboding omniscient overtones in the atmosphere of the space ship made for a wonderfully interesting backdrop through which the themes of repopulation and the survival of life could play out.  The actualization of capitalist struggles to eliminate nature in favour of metallic man-made technology seen at its most extreme is quite the powerful statement.  However, Pandorum has its safety net in Tanis, the equally life-sustaining planet to which the ship’s mission is to find.  The most interesting themes this film raises are quickly snowballed into utter clichéd oblivion once the archetypal (read: racist stereotypes) characters are introduced, one by one: a) the white lieutenant/leader; b) the female mother, who’s natural instincts are to actively protect the last shreds of nature that are being exported from Earth; c) the aboriginal warrior, who does not speak a word of English, thus relegating the substance of his character to a few inaudible words and many grunts and shrieks; d) the black (southern-style) fry-cook, who also turns out to be ‘in-it-for-himself’, thus justifying (supposedly) his criminal behvaiours; e) the heterosexual couple who’s purpose it is to re-populate Tanis and preserve the human race.  It seems in space, and consequently in the future, people are still racist/sexist/heterosexist.

            Unfortunately, the handling of such delicate socio-environmental issues as they are integrated into the plotline are continuously collapsing under the thinness of the overt and convoluted dialogue and action sequences.  I am a big fan of both science fiction and horror films and I believe that the most wonderous of these genre pieces can effectively illuminate some interesting social potentials not always fully considered in the discourse of socio-environmental issues.  So, in experiencing Pandorum I kept trying to suspend my disconcert for such blatant offences as I have listed above.  Perhaps if the raw material in which the director had to work was better written, all would be forgiven?  Alas, I found myself uninterested more than three-quarters of the way in, watching a film that attempted to superficially adopt film tropes from other successful genre films in hopes to capture some of the effectiveness here.

            It seems to me like Christian Alvart and Travis Milloy are the kind of filmmakers that suppose substance can be read into or onto their pretty scenes of beautiful leads, disconcerting supporting stars, and eerily-lit settings.  Unfortunately for them, the success of films such as Alien and The Descent (of which this film is a blatant cross between) is not reliant on these shallow Hollywood-esque predictions on what makes a substantial well-made film.  In other words, Pandorum is fluff disguised as a significant allegorical cautionary tale of environmental and social catastrophe.
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Grade: 69% (C+)

The Children - (film review); Grace - (film review)

            When I was a wee lad I got spanked for misbehaving—never hard enough to really hurt, but enough to sting, and never more than three times at once.  My acts of misbehaving ranged anywhere from throwing a fit in public or in front of company, to talking back and disrespecting my elders.  In recent years this form of child discipline has been greatly frowned upon and slowly pushed out of practice—anyone now who practices spanking is shamed into believing that they are committing a form of child abuse.  In many cases, this spanking as child abuse may be true.  However, I have grown to maintain a constant love for my parents, while learning to respect and consider the rights of those around me.

            Not being a parent myself, but an uncle of four nephews and one niece (and counting) and an avid observer of family dynamics, I’ve noticed a rather disturbing trend in the approach of child rearing and their lack of discipline (not to say this is entirely the case with my niece and nephews).  I regard this as the ‘my-child-is-the-most-important-thing-in-my-world-and-yours’ syndrome.  It implies rather obviously that parents excuse child behaviours as being acceptable at all times, in all contexts, no matter what the repercussions or ramifications.  Children are granted free range of everything, and everyone else is expected to adjust their actions to accommodate the standards parents have set (“Won’t someone please think of the children?”). 

The protection of ‘innocent’ and easily impressionable child minds is the justification for right wing (and many liberalist) organizations to argue against the exposure or representation of queers in media, educational institutions, and families, or the backbone of the censorship movement.

            These themes are all too prevalent in both films The Children and Grace.  Years ago I watched Isaac Webb’s First Born (starring Elizabeth Shue), a zealous film that turned the dissonance and disconnect of a mother and her child (which is expected to occur from the moment of conception) into a taught terror film.  Although the movie had it’s problems I was fascinated at how it represented the diverse relationship of parent and child in a manner that works against the social gender roles that have been indoctrinated by patriarchal regulations.  This belief that there is a natural connection to nurture their child in women is a socially constructed fallacy.  This connection generally only exists if there is proper social support to help nourish this fabrication.  As good as I think First Born is, I admit that both Tom Shankland’s The Children and Paul Solet’s Grace are far superior (the former more so than the latter).

            In Grace, a mother/child relationship sees the desire to provide the child with absolutely everything it needs for nourishment and sustenance, at the cost of devouring the very life-blood of the mother.  Madeline insists on carrying her stillborn child to term and shortly thereafter manages to resuscitate it back to life through feeding it her blood.  It takes some time for Madeline to realize precisely what is happening here, but once it is clear, she becomes eerily disturbed at what she is required to do to provide her child with the means to live.  This disturbance however does not stop Madeline from actually following through with murder in order to obtain blood for her child to feed on.  The symbolic strength of the need for blood is a potent device that Solet uses to startling effect here.  Grace not only requires her mother to provide her own life for hers, but at times necessitates the need for others to offer their lives.  Grace is the monster in this film and an interesting monster at that.  Instead of tormenting her victims and killing them by force, she remains perfectly still and by the sheer fact of being a child and the social implications that surround how a child is to be loved and cared for, manages to reek havoc and mayhem through the actions of those who love her most.  Grace is easily defeatable, however the socially ingrained desire to conceive of and raise children in order to obtain the picture-perfect family dynamic is so potent and strong that Grace becomes the most dangerous and effective monster to date.  Everyone around her dies in effort to vie for who will take care of her most (even at the expense of their lives), while she remains perfectly still.

            Shankland’s The Children, is similar in ways, but imagines a scenario where a newborn like Grace is three or four years older and is capable of her/his own violence.  The perceived happiness that comes along with raising a family is the main focus of the first act of this film, until young Pauly becomes weirdly unsettled.  Needless to say, this plot device is hinted at but never expressly explained—it is some type of viral disease that affects the children in disturbing ways.  Subsequent reviews of this film hinge on the surface of its core.  Brad Miska (http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/film/2197/review) of Bloody Disgusting, and Michael Gingold (http://fangoria.com/reviews/2-film/3412-fantasia-09-the-children-film-review.html) of Fangoria, both discuss the difficulty of the parents’ decision to harm their children for their own perseverance.  For Miska and Gingold, the most complicated aspect of the film is how those who are the life and joy of these parents soon becomes their worst nightmares.  What is lacking in this (albeit correct, but ultimately pedantic) interpretation is the actions of the parents once the hardcore violence becomes evident.  The children are sensed to be nearby the violent acts but cerebrally intuited to have no part in the macabre at hand.  The parents know who is responsible for these acts and yet they refuse to believe it, instead prefer to point fingers at the less ‘innocent’ teenager, or suspect adult—for there could be no possibility of the involvement of the children in these violent actions, could there?  This denial becomes so strong that a husband prefers to believe the accusation that his wife (with help from her teenaged daughter) maliciously intended to kill their own four-year-old son without any prior precedence to lend plausibility to this scenario—even though they both appear visibly hurt (the daughter with blood dripping down her face, and the mother with her knee protruding from her leg).  Why would his wife kill her own child without some kind of provocation?  Would he really believe that she harmed Pauly for some fleeting reason, unless it was absolutely necessary?  Does he think so little of her? Ironically, it is the husband who would be suspected of harming his child as he is seen moments earlier spanking him—of course this is met with communal disapproval, spurring one parent to superiorly utter: “We don’t hit kids here.”

            They sure don’t hit kids—even if they’ve become menacing terrors bent on manipulative terror and torture.  It seems to me that Shankland decided to pen a scenario whereby the “my-child-is-the-most-important-thing-in-my-world-and-yours” syndrome is tested and exploited.  The only character willing to believe the violent manipulation and severity of the children’s behaviours is the teenage daughter.  She does not have children of her own and she has matured enough to comprehend the internalizing manipulation of children in ways that objectively discerns proper bratty behaviour—and so, she becomes the film’s heroine.  Although it may be difficult for the mother Elaine, to harm a child and give them much needed discipline (as Miska argues in his review), she later manages to decipher the difference between ill-intended violent childlike behaviour over the life and consideration of her teenage daughter, Casey (who may not be as socially ‘innocent’ but still deserving of respect).  She drives over her younger daughter to save Casey—so ultimately Elaine has learned to step outside of the socially accepted role of ‘child-comes-first’ to manage the situation properly, giving every party involved consideration and respect.

            These two films, The Children more so than Grace, manage to forcefully address common social misconceptions over the rearing and care for children in ways that require us to examine our own implications in this disturbing, albeit well-intentioned, trend.  I’m not trying to argue that nurturing or caring for children is an innately wrong thing to desire, only the need to place this care above and beyond the consideration and respect for others and yourself.  I argue that these films are less about the difficulty in raising children, and more about commenting on the social trends of over-protected and overly privileged child rearing.  These ideas are even more interesting if you consider that Tom Shankland, Paul Solet, and Isaac Webb, are all men.
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The Children grade: 86% (A)
Grace grade: 80% (A-)

Trick 'r Treat - (film review)

            Tonight I finally got to experience the film Trick ‘r Treat.  In 2005 (or 2006, I can’t remember), the trailer piqued my interest as I watched it flash by my television screen.  For years afterwards I anticipated this film in the back of my mind, every so often remembering that it was out there…lurking…waiting.  Keeping in spirit with this blog I will attempt to tackle this film in a way that may be a retreading of reviews past, but hopefully address some thoughts and arguments that are not.

Before I hash into the details of the film I enjoyed, I will say that the film is less a horror film, and more of a Halloween film.  Think of it in terms of the difference between a Christmas film, as opposed to a family feel-good movie.  The aptly named Trick ‘r Treat becomes an exercise in recapturing a childhood holiday essence.  It is not entirely scary as a viewing experience, but what I did notice was that the ominous feeling of dread, which lingers long after I removed the blu-ray from my hardware device, was more powerful than the horror depicted onscreen.

Which brings me to the central angle I approach this film with: atmosphere and the psychological underpinnings of the experience of Halloween, specifically.  There is a difference between the suspense of being alone at night (with strange noises coming from outside and inside your house) at any given time of the year, and the emotions that are conjured, like demons, that forebode your inevitable mortality on Halloween night.  In this case, this film manages to surpass genre classics such as the Halloween series.  Halloween, in those films, is a prop, a backdrop through which a serial killer’s massacre is set against.  In Trick ‘r Treat Halloween is the essence through which the films plotlines and actions derive.

When I was a kid, Halloween would be the only time of the year when everything felt a little scarier, when the promise of death was just a little bit closer, and the fear that Hell lurked beyond your passing was just a little more evident.  The rest of the year, you could tell yourself that you are a good person, and that the tiny indiscretions that plague your seemingly well-intentioned Christian conscience will not lead you to an afterlife of torment and macabre.  Of course, this would only really apply to those who had grown up Christian.  Those from a variety of other religions have equally disturbing omniscience that they must deal with, I’m sure.

So after the film had finished, I was drawn back less by the imbricated storylines and dialogue that helped accent the film, and more by the atmospheric presence it holds.  The continuous presence of jack-o-lanterns, twilight yellows (from either candles or from the eerily disturbing Halloween sun), delight in costuming, and the wonderful entity of Sam (the childlike figure who plagues each story, wearing a custom fitted burlap sack over his suspiciously enlarged head).  What writer/director Michael Dougherty managed to pull off with the character of Sam, is a pre-iconic figure that encapsulates the childlike fear and attraction to evil and dread that comes with the fascination of Halloween.  The film is littered with this sensation, much like how a Christmas film incorporates all the seemingly traditional Euro-North American associations with that particular holiday.

            This is why the film is scary.  It’s not because something terrifying happens in the film (of which some do, but nothing to overwhelm the senses of fear).  It is because long after the film is done, you begin to remember when you were a child and could not pragmatically reason your way out of a fear spiral that you begin to recall that sensation.  How you felt trying to relish in the fun of Halloween: getting and consuming candy, dressing up as your favourite (anti-)hero, and watching scary movies.  Always knowing that in the back of your mind, there was something more dark and sinister about what is happening, what Halloween is really about, and the fear that on this day, you should not tempt the fate of your mortality.
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Grade: 87% (A)