98. 1922 (2017)
97. LOCKE (2014)
96. BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE (2018)
95. HELL OR HIGH WATER (2016)
94. IT COMES AT NIGHT (2017)
93. A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT (2014)
92. THE INVITATION (2015)
91. EXTREMELY WICKED, SHOCKINGLY EVIL, AND VILE (2019)
What Zac Efron gets right is the hollowness. I have a feeling it's easy to method-act cunning, driven, angry, forlorn, or enthusiastic characters, but hollow is hard. The sense that there's nothing behind the eyes but craftiness. Deception. Planning the next move. No emotions except strategic ones. Hollowness.
Efron and director Joe Berlinger wisely avoid humanizing Ted Bundy, or rationalizing his motives, or explaining his background. It doesn't matter why he is. He just is.
Bundy confessed to murdering 30 people between 1974 and 1978. We don't see any of those murders on screen; we only see the prelude to one of them, and it's a visualization of one of Bundy's confessions. Truth be told, there's very little violence in this film at all, but it feels more violent than it is. That's because the violence is in Bundy's manipulation of the people around him, in his charm and charisma that enamor him to women, in his bland white Republican normalcy that enables him to fade into the background of suburban America.
Except for some glimpses, we see Bundy mostly through the eyes of his girlfriend Liz (Lily Collins), a single mother who is charmed by him one night at a bar and is soon inviting him into her life. Of course, Ted would never harm her: not because he feels an emotional connection to her at all, but because he would be easily caught. Once suspicion falls upon him for a murder in far-away Utah, Liz wants to defend him but soon discovers she cannot.
It doesn't end there. Soon Bundy flees to Florida, where he is suspected in several more gruesome murders. A boisterous televised trial follows, with Ted as its charming antihero. He commands the courtroom: riffing, frivolously objecting, firing his court-appointed attorney, lambasting the judge and prosecution. Efron deftly displays Bundy's hypermasculine confidence, which doubles as his weakness: his assumption that--of course--everyone will believe his plea of innocence, because he's smart enough to convince them. Even the judge (played with stoic authority by John Malkovich) admits to being impressed with Bundy's competence in representing himself. And because Berlinger puts us in the position of the charmed rather than the charmer, we're a little surprised when the guilty verdict comes.
Berlinger, a documentarian who--along with his late partner Bruce Sinofsky--delivered some of the best true-crime work that's ever been made, like Brother's Keeper and the Paradise Lost series, has dealt quite a bit with the notion of prejudice trumping evidence. The borderline-aboriginal family in Brother's Keeper finds it difficult to get a fair shake in court, as do the supposed Satan-worshiping West Memphis Three in Paradise Lost, even when the evidence seems to be in their favor. His much-maligned but underrated Blair Witch 2 spun out from the mockumentary format of the original to explore what happens when the footage doesn't seem to fit the fact.
Here Berlinger shows in disturbing detail how much of the public, including many women, took Bundy's side despite the evidence, possibly because he was handsome, affable, all the things that sociopaths learn to be in order to fool those around them. Even on death row, we see Bundy smiling, joking, still manipulating, still planning the next step. The evidence eventually won out in this case, but Berlinger seems to be saying that even in a seemingly clear-cut case such as Bundy's, it's an uphill slope.
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Sunday, December 29, 2019
The 100 Worst Movies of the '10s, #96: RINGS (2017)
100. THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB (2018)
99. 31 (2016)
98. THE ROOMMATE (2011)
97. WAR ON EVERYONE (2016)
96. RINGS (2017)
A lot of people complain about cancel culture. I'm more irritated with resurrection culture.
Somewhere along the line, movie studios got the idea that just because a series has lain dormant for a few years, a reboot or sequel or remake is somehow warranted. Sometimes, as with the long-awaited revival of The X-Files, it's worthwhile. Other times, as with the ill-fated fifth entry in the Pirates of the Caribbean saga, it's not. Rings, the revival of the Samara saga of the American version of The Ring (2002), is boring and ineffectual in addition to being unnecessary.
Give credit to director F. Javier Gutierrez (I know, I know--what did Javier Gutierrez ever do to me) for injecting as much atmosphere as he can. The credited writers are no flunkies, either: Akiva Goldsman has a ton of heavy hits to his name, and made a little throwaway thriller a few years ago called Stephanie that was a lot of fun; Jacob Aaron Estes has made some decent indie films, including the haunting Mean Creek; David Loucka wrote a moderate flop called Dream House that nonetheless introduced future spouses Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz, and a year later wrote a turd called The House at the End of the Street that was notable for headlining a budding star named Jennifer Lawrence--but more on that one later in the countdown.
Rings lands upon some interesting premises in its first half-hour, and then jettisons them immediately in favor of another pseudo-whodunit in which the main character tries to piece together the clues. Why? We know from six or seven previous movies between the U.S. and Japan that it doesn't matter and she gets you in the end.
The more successful movies in the series--namely the first Japanese Ringu and the American sequel The Ring Two--worked because they focused more on experience and less on plot. The premise is simple--that there's a VHS tape that kills anyone who watches it--but most of the movies in the series can't find a way to let the primal horror speak for itself. What's scary is not the quest to find out more about the origins of the tape, but the nagging notion that even a silly threat like "You will die in seven days" might be true. Kind of like how the zombies in Night of the Living Dead aren't particularly scary on their own, but the inevitability of a horde of zombies coming toward you slowly but surely chills you to the bone.
The first act gave me hope of some invention in the series. A copy of the deadly tape ends up in the hands of Gabriel (Johnny Galecki, really stretching to play a sketchy college professor), who of course spins it into an academic project and shows it to his students. This could have been an interesting premise: how much of Gabriel's research is based in legitimate curiosity, and how much is smug academic self-congratulation? And how much of it comes from his simply trying to save his own life?
But never mind that. Most of the movie follows Julia (Matilda Lutz), the girlfriend of one of Gabriel's students who has disappeared. She's living at home to take care of her sick mom, who I suppose gets conveniently better once Julia needs to trek off to the corners of the forest to investigate her boyfriend's disappearance. From here on out it's the same old lazy mystery story, following pointless strand after strand, stopping for a bit at Vincent D'Onofrio's house for some reason, and settling into a thudding non-ending.
Though Rings is really too insignificant to make a Bottom 100 list, I'm using it as my stand-in for every franchise that has been needlessly retreaded over the past 10 years. There might have been a way to make a Ring movie seem warranted in 2017, but little effort was made here.
99. 31 (2016)
98. THE ROOMMATE (2011)
97. WAR ON EVERYONE (2016)
96. RINGS (2017)
A lot of people complain about cancel culture. I'm more irritated with resurrection culture.
Somewhere along the line, movie studios got the idea that just because a series has lain dormant for a few years, a reboot or sequel or remake is somehow warranted. Sometimes, as with the long-awaited revival of The X-Files, it's worthwhile. Other times, as with the ill-fated fifth entry in the Pirates of the Caribbean saga, it's not. Rings, the revival of the Samara saga of the American version of The Ring (2002), is boring and ineffectual in addition to being unnecessary.
Give credit to director F. Javier Gutierrez (I know, I know--what did Javier Gutierrez ever do to me) for injecting as much atmosphere as he can. The credited writers are no flunkies, either: Akiva Goldsman has a ton of heavy hits to his name, and made a little throwaway thriller a few years ago called Stephanie that was a lot of fun; Jacob Aaron Estes has made some decent indie films, including the haunting Mean Creek; David Loucka wrote a moderate flop called Dream House that nonetheless introduced future spouses Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz, and a year later wrote a turd called The House at the End of the Street that was notable for headlining a budding star named Jennifer Lawrence--but more on that one later in the countdown.
Rings lands upon some interesting premises in its first half-hour, and then jettisons them immediately in favor of another pseudo-whodunit in which the main character tries to piece together the clues. Why? We know from six or seven previous movies between the U.S. and Japan that it doesn't matter and she gets you in the end.
The more successful movies in the series--namely the first Japanese Ringu and the American sequel The Ring Two--worked because they focused more on experience and less on plot. The premise is simple--that there's a VHS tape that kills anyone who watches it--but most of the movies in the series can't find a way to let the primal horror speak for itself. What's scary is not the quest to find out more about the origins of the tape, but the nagging notion that even a silly threat like "You will die in seven days" might be true. Kind of like how the zombies in Night of the Living Dead aren't particularly scary on their own, but the inevitability of a horde of zombies coming toward you slowly but surely chills you to the bone.
The first act gave me hope of some invention in the series. A copy of the deadly tape ends up in the hands of Gabriel (Johnny Galecki, really stretching to play a sketchy college professor), who of course spins it into an academic project and shows it to his students. This could have been an interesting premise: how much of Gabriel's research is based in legitimate curiosity, and how much is smug academic self-congratulation? And how much of it comes from his simply trying to save his own life?
But never mind that. Most of the movie follows Julia (Matilda Lutz), the girlfriend of one of Gabriel's students who has disappeared. She's living at home to take care of her sick mom, who I suppose gets conveniently better once Julia needs to trek off to the corners of the forest to investigate her boyfriend's disappearance. From here on out it's the same old lazy mystery story, following pointless strand after strand, stopping for a bit at Vincent D'Onofrio's house for some reason, and settling into a thudding non-ending.
Though Rings is really too insignificant to make a Bottom 100 list, I'm using it as my stand-in for every franchise that has been needlessly retreaded over the past 10 years. There might have been a way to make a Ring movie seem warranted in 2017, but little effort was made here.
The Top 100 Movies of the '10s, #99: MOCKINGBIRD (2014)
100. THE NIGHTMARE (2015)
99. MOCKINGBIRD (2014)
Bryan Bertino's 2008 surprise hit The Strangers was so expertly made (and by a first-time director who learned the craft pretty much on the fly, no less) that it was easy to forget how fairly shallow it was. Though it had moments where Bertino's talent for tension transcended the need for extraneous things like plot and character, there was really nothing left in the end but an empty scream. Some characters survived, some didn't, and so what?
Bertino has come into his own since then, with the well-received character drama/fairytale horror film The Monster in 2016, which featured a career-defining performance from Zoe Kazan. But he made a movie in between, which BlumHouse released directly to streaming without any fanfare, called Mockingbird, and it's not only one of the best horror films of the decade, but a pointed deconstruction of the found footage genre in particular.
The opening title reads "Once upon a time in 1995." Before social media, before cell phones became ubiquitous, before the world turned into a general panopticon where everyone's lives have been more or less documented at every moment. This is important to the story.
The movie is told through three separate parallel narratives, defined by titles as "The Woman," "The Family," and "The Clown." Each is sent a video camera in the mail along with a message of "Congratulations!" and instructions to record themselves. The cameras are already recording and streaming the footage. Just what they've won is unclear, but the victory is not unexpected; all parties make a vague reference to having signed up for a contest at the mall. All are excited to participate in whatever they've just won: after all, they're stars now.
Then the Woman and the Family receive a message demanding that they never stop filming themselves, with a videotape that brutally displays the consequences of disobeying. The Clown gets no threat or demand, but receives a series of increasingly ridiculous instructions which he enthusiastically follows, to the point of embarrassment and self-harm.
Mockingbird was written by Bertino from a story he created along with Sam Esmail, who since has rocketed to auteur status with the brilliant series Mr. Robot, which just wrapped up its four-season run on USA. I don't know exactly what Esmail's contribution here was, but what it shares with his other flagship work is a caution about the fragility of privacy. The characters are completely cavalier about the personal information they give away, in the name of simply performing in a proto-version of a reality TV show or social media. In signing up for the "contest," they've unwittingly signed their lives away. Anyone who's skeptical about this should recite for me any line from Apple terms and conditions.
The movie crosscuts until the three storylines inevitably meet, in an ending that seems contrived because it is. The orchestrators of the "contest" are making their own horror film with unwitting subjects, and they essentially script it without scripting it, similar to any reality TV show. (They even place record players throughout the houses they stalk to score their scenes with foreboding music.) I won't reveal who the orchestrators turn out to be, but it's worth noting that Bertino and Esmail realize that young people have mastered technology that older generations still treat as novel. Just look at the number of baby boomers taken in by Trump bluster, Q conspiracies, and online scams. In the end, "reality" can be scripted as easily as fiction can. Maybe easier.
99. MOCKINGBIRD (2014)
Bryan Bertino's 2008 surprise hit The Strangers was so expertly made (and by a first-time director who learned the craft pretty much on the fly, no less) that it was easy to forget how fairly shallow it was. Though it had moments where Bertino's talent for tension transcended the need for extraneous things like plot and character, there was really nothing left in the end but an empty scream. Some characters survived, some didn't, and so what?
Bertino has come into his own since then, with the well-received character drama/fairytale horror film The Monster in 2016, which featured a career-defining performance from Zoe Kazan. But he made a movie in between, which BlumHouse released directly to streaming without any fanfare, called Mockingbird, and it's not only one of the best horror films of the decade, but a pointed deconstruction of the found footage genre in particular.
The opening title reads "Once upon a time in 1995." Before social media, before cell phones became ubiquitous, before the world turned into a general panopticon where everyone's lives have been more or less documented at every moment. This is important to the story.
The movie is told through three separate parallel narratives, defined by titles as "The Woman," "The Family," and "The Clown." Each is sent a video camera in the mail along with a message of "Congratulations!" and instructions to record themselves. The cameras are already recording and streaming the footage. Just what they've won is unclear, but the victory is not unexpected; all parties make a vague reference to having signed up for a contest at the mall. All are excited to participate in whatever they've just won: after all, they're stars now.
Then the Woman and the Family receive a message demanding that they never stop filming themselves, with a videotape that brutally displays the consequences of disobeying. The Clown gets no threat or demand, but receives a series of increasingly ridiculous instructions which he enthusiastically follows, to the point of embarrassment and self-harm.
Mockingbird was written by Bertino from a story he created along with Sam Esmail, who since has rocketed to auteur status with the brilliant series Mr. Robot, which just wrapped up its four-season run on USA. I don't know exactly what Esmail's contribution here was, but what it shares with his other flagship work is a caution about the fragility of privacy. The characters are completely cavalier about the personal information they give away, in the name of simply performing in a proto-version of a reality TV show or social media. In signing up for the "contest," they've unwittingly signed their lives away. Anyone who's skeptical about this should recite for me any line from Apple terms and conditions.
The movie crosscuts until the three storylines inevitably meet, in an ending that seems contrived because it is. The orchestrators of the "contest" are making their own horror film with unwitting subjects, and they essentially script it without scripting it, similar to any reality TV show. (They even place record players throughout the houses they stalk to score their scenes with foreboding music.) I won't reveal who the orchestrators turn out to be, but it's worth noting that Bertino and Esmail realize that young people have mastered technology that older generations still treat as novel. Just look at the number of baby boomers taken in by Trump bluster, Q conspiracies, and online scams. In the end, "reality" can be scripted as easily as fiction can. Maybe easier.
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