30 NIGHTS OF NIGHT, Night #2: NEFARIOUS (2023)

I should have pegged Nefarious as a Christian film before I started watching, but it pulled a fast one on me. I was expecting a regular ol' nasty demonic thriller like Sinister and Insidious and Malignant and other vicious adjectives, and it wasn't until the halfway point that I realized it had other aspirations. I like to consider myself smart enough to know a trojan horse when I see one, but the Devil is a wily one, as they say.

It's a shame that Nefarious doesn't know what a deft job it did at reeling me, a pro-choice liberal Catholic, into its procession, because that doesn't seem to be what it's trying to do. Rather, it seems squarely aimed at its own choir. It's one of those alternate versions of popular entertainment that's repurposed for the evangelical set: there's Christian rock, Christian pop music, Christian theme parks, and now there's a Christian horror movie. Sinister for Jesus Camp.

Except, well, Sinister itself should probably play pretty well at Jesus Camp: it was at heart a moral fable about ignoring one's family for fortune, and even cast a former Republican Senator--Fred Dalton Thompson--as the moral authority. A lot of mainstream horror movies tend to portray Christianity generally positively, from the questionable exploits of the benevolently portrayed Warrens in the Conjuring series to the admirable clergy in the Exorcist films. Nefarious doesn't realize that it actually doesn't need to stray far from the norm to make its point. So it's a shame when it stakes its claim firmly in its own yard and doesn't seek to go anywhere else. 

Dr. James Martin (Jordan Belfi) arrives at an Oklahoma state prison to deliver the final psychological analysis of a prisoner about to be executed, Edgar Wayne Brady (Sean Patrick Flanery). Mr. Wayne Brady (Whose Line fans laugh there) claims to be inhabited by an ancient demon who used him as a vessel to commit the murders. Nefarious, the closest approximation of the name of the demon inhabiting Edgar, boasts to James that he wants Edgar to be executed so he can return to Hell. James, an atheist skeptic, is confident he'll be able to see through the supposed demon's facade, but his confidence soon falls apart when the demon begins to tell him things no one else knows.

Nefarious doesn't take long to get under James's skin, and that's because writer-directors Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon (adapting a novel by right-wing media personality Steve Deace) make James into such a soft-headed bozo that he caves to the demon's will immediately. James is the evangelical bubble's version of an atheist secularist, with a self-assured cockiness that crumbles upon the first challenge. He's a human "Share this and make a liberal cry" meme.

The movie's best moments are the early ones between James and Nefarious in which the demon establishes his pomposity. It's here that Flanery really shines in one of his best performances, playing Nefarious as a properly dismissive and arrogant eternal being who's disgusted to be in the room with inferior humans. The writing shows some cleverness too, and Flanery and Belfi have a fun rapport in their early exchanges as Nefarious explains the origins of the human world through a fallen angel's eyes. Tom Ohmer, recognizable as the cop who tells Detective Crashmore that he "do[es]n't care who gets in [his] way" in I Think You Should Leave, has some fun as a tough-as-nails warden.

But around the end of the first act the directors lose their confidence in the audience and start catering to the lowest common denominator within the evangelical bubble. James turns from a formidable opponent to the easiest mark in the world, and all Nefarious need do is provoke him in the slightest for him to break down, as the filmmakers assume all atheists would. It's a common fantasy among the truly isolated faithful that nonbelievers need only to be confronted with something they're unfamiliar with in order to be convinced. Lots of their literature revolves around "told you so" rapture porn and "you can't explain that" question-begging: check the Left Behind series or Kirk Cameron's banana video for more examples. 

It's no fun to watch the movie pander for the rest of its running time. It's clear that it speaks a language that only the devout will respond to. If you guessed that the movie wheels in the old favorite enemies by having Nefarious confront James's history of both (1) assisted suicide, and (2) abortion for a one-two punch, a shiny red apple for you. Amid a U.S. political climate where about 70% seem to be in favor of abortion rights in at least some capacity, this movie still speaks of it as if it were a secret shame, with James's cries of "It was her choice" serving only as a weasely shirking of masculine and fatherly responsibility. (The woman in question, of course, never appears and her voice isn't heard but for a too-late outgoing voicemail message. The decision-making, of course, lies entirely with men.) And his assisting of his mother's suicide during a terminal illness is written off as a ploy to quickly gain an inheritance; I certainly pray to my own God that none of the filmmakers are faced with such a situation only to have this assumption made of them.

It at least manages a modicum of consistency by coming out against the death penalty as well, but by the end it's beyond recovery. The ending is a debacle of a literal deus ex machina, the worst "God did it" resolution with no real catharsis or confrontation. And what's more, it subjects us to an unbearably long epilogue in which James explains the aftermath on a talk show hosted by Glenn Beck (!), followed by a final ending that doesn't so much "twist" as it does writhe.

The movie really had me in its first act, and were the filmmakers interested in reeling in nonbelievers, it might have worked. They could conceivably have gotten some non-Christians to watch a good solid horror movie with a Christian message. But no movie that features Glenn Beck as its version of a mainstream talk show host is interested in reaching a mainstream audience at all.

And it's a shame: Flanery is really good in it.

** out of ****

30 NIGHTS OF NIGHT, Night #1: THE BOOGEYMAN (2023)

The Boogeyman is a pretty good movie based on one of the scariest short stories ever written, and the thing that distinguishes the story is sadly largely left out of the movie. What’s left is some tried-and-true monster-in-the-closet madness, which, because the director Rob Savage is very deft at this sort of thing, is very exciting and fun to watch. Those who’ve never read Stephen King’s short story won’t know any better, but probably won’t see it as anything better than the myriad other Boogeyman or Boogeyman-adjacent movies that we admittedly love for what they are.

It’s a spooky fun good time and that’s enough, though I’d still like to see the real heart of King’s story adapted into a movie someday. The trouble is it doesn’t expand well to feature length, mainly because the main character of the story is an unreliable narrator and a selfish, rotten person. Lester Billings, who tells much of the story and is here played with a wan complexion of pure terror by David Dastmalchian, is the father of three children who have all suddenly died, one at a time, all after professing to have seen a “boogeyman” in their closet. The movie features Lester as an ancillary character who walks into the office of therapist Dr. Will Harper (Chris Messina), who’s recently lost his wife. The grief in the Harper household naturally attracts the title monster to Will and his daughters Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) and Sawyer (Vivian Lyra Blair). 

And so The Boogeyman is an allegory for grief and loss, as a violent monster fills the space where Will, Sadie, and Sawyer are reluctant to confront their emotions. Fine—a lot of horror movies mine this ground, and Savage along with screenwriters Scott Beck and Bryan Woods do it well—though King’s story treads an uneasier path that would have been more rewarding to see on screen. 

The arc of King’s story runs more like The Shining. It deals not with grief but with resentment, less with feelings that are uncomfortable to discuss and more with desires that are impossible to discuss. Lester Billings, like Jack Torrance, is a bad person trying minimally to be good, and failing. Just as the Overlook Hotel is a reflection of Jack’s violent tendencies and his alcohol dependency, the Boogeyman is a manifestation of Lester’s reluctant fatherhood and bitterness toward his wife for favoring the children over him. 

That’s hard to expand to a full movie, though Savage, whose first two features Host and Dashcam are both brilliant in their own regard, probably would have been up to the task. Woods and Beck are the proper writing team too: they were done dirty by John Krasinski in his diluting of A Quiet Place, and their debut feature Haunt is delightfully nasty. The movie works best when it’s taunting us with apparitions in corners and hazy figures in the dark. The main image the movie takes from the story—a cracked-open closet door—is used effectively. 

And so even if The Boogeyman ditches the more appealing aspects of the source material, it’s still superficially fun to watch. The performances are all very good, notably Thatcher, who plays the teenage Juliette Lewis on Yellowjackets and anchors the thrills here quite well. I can’t gripe that the movie is merely an effectively presented monster story. We need those too. 

*** out of ****

THE WHALE (2022)

The Whale is a no good, very bad movie with a collection of very good, admirable performances in service of an unworthy screenplay. The film doesn't appear bad until we've had a chance to think about it: its director, Darren Aronofsky, is no fool with this sort of emotionally wrenching drama, having delivered such truly raw tragedies as Requiem for a Dream and The Wrestler. It's the sort of movie that's very good at tricking you into thinking it's profound, with its cathartic confrontational dialogue and its carefully crafted authentic performances. But make no mistake: it's as empty as its main character's chicken buckets and pizza boxes.

It garnered an Academy Award for Brendan Fraser as Charlie, a college professor who's housebound with extreme obesity, barely able to move without assistance. The win is not undeserved. Fraser's performance is a marvelous, genuine display of despair and submission. Some have questioned the ethics of whether Fraser, who appears comfortably overweight but not dangerously obese, should have donned a fat suit to appear larger than he is. That isn't quite as troubling as the fact that the character he's playing is a phony concoction to force the audience into pity.

When his friend Liz (Hong Chau), a nurse who also happens to be the sister of his recently deceased boyfriend--and don't worry, all of this backstory is explained in full detail in long exchanges of dialogue--tells him that he's in congestive heart failure and will die if he doesn't seek medical help, Charlie instead contacts his estranged daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink) to try to make things right before he goes. She resents him, of course, as he left her and her mom (Samantha Morton) when he came out of the closet. But he offers to ghost-write a few essays for her to make sure she graduates high school, in exchange for her company and for the inheritance he's about to leave her. 

It's only because of the honesty in the two actors' approaches that this arrangement is believable at all. Ellie is a cipher who's a boomer's idea of what a zoomer behaves like (TV programming in the background reveals that the film takes place amid the 2016 election, a setting which adds absolutely squat to the story). She takes odd pictures for her Facebook page (strike one right there), and gives little hints of a sense of humor beneath a tough exterior, sure to project to everyone around her that beneath every traumatized youth is a Gal Friday just begging to be let loose. Compare Ellie to Stephanie, the daughter of Randy "The Ram" Robinson in The Wrestler, another estranged kid whose strained relationship with her father is believable and relatable at every step. Aronofsky has proven that he knows how to do this sort of thing; it's unthinkable that he'd struggle so much here.

The other main character who pops in and out at convenient times is Thomas (Ty Simpkins), a young door-to-door evangelist from a nearby church who happens to knock on Charlie's door at a crucial moment. Thomas, like all of the others who Charlie interacts with, has a journey that seems cathartic but is only contrived: the plot twists surrounding his character are unrealistic even by this movie's standards, and his final revelation to Charlie negates a lot of what the movie seems to have been using him to say all along. His whole arc might have just been removed and the movie would have been no worse.

Sometimes a good melodrama can strain credibility and still work wonders. Look at Dark Victory, or Now, Voyager. Maybe if this movie were in black & white and starred Bette Davis I could take it more seriously. I'm not familiar with the source material, a play by Samuel D. Hunter, but it's not surprising that The Whale originated as a stage play. It takes place entirely in one location: Matthew Libatique's cinematography, complete with the choice to frame the film tightly in a 4:3 ratio, does a good job at enhancing Charlie's locked-in environment. But Hunter, also the screenwriter, fails to adapt his play in any significant way for film. Characters speak as if they're beholden to Aristotle's three unities, loading themselves with exposition and emotional heft, to speak out loud what Aronofsky might otherwise have depended on, say, film techniques to reveal. Every scene has at least one character baring at least one monumental revelation. This may be the first film constructed entirely out of audition monologues.

The conclusion comes with a moral lesson--Hunter works in a perfunctory theme about being honest and writing your heart or something like that--but it barely reads amid the machinations and emotional manipulation. Those unfamiliar with Aronofsky's work might find the last act somewhat effective. I found it infuriating. It ends with one of those sudden magical-realist transitions where a character's tragedy is ironically transformed into a victory. Aronofsky is very good at this, in a way that many directors aren't. But it's the same trick he pulled in Requiem for a Dream, and The Fountain, and Black Swan, and The Wrestler. Slapping it onto this maudlin wreck is little respite.

But again, the performances from Fraser, Sink, and Chau, even Simpkins as the movie's least believable character, and Morton as another function of the plot, always threaten to elevate it. It's the sort of Oscar movie that might have appeared as a trailer in Tropic Thunder, between Simple Jack and Satan's Alley. It might have lost the award to Home for Thanksgiving.  

* 1/2 out of ****

SKINAMARINK (2022)

I fear that not enough people in the Year of Our Lord Twenty Twenty Three will allow themselves to experience Skinamarink in the appropriate way. There's a reason it's set in 1995 and not in the present day. Technology offers us an escape, and Skinamarink is designed to offer no escape. The director, Kyle Edward Ball, arrived at the premise when he polled Redditors on what their worst nightmares were, and found that many people responded with the same or a similar dream from when they were kids.

The dream: I wake up in the middle of the night to find that my parents are gone, and there's something in the house. I don't know what, but I know it's something bad. Ball personifies this primal fear in two children, four-year-old Kevin (Lucas Paul) and six-year-old Kaylee (Dali Rose Tetreault), who wake up to find that their parents are missing, and that the windows and doors on their house have disappeared. They respond the way a kid their age would. They travel the lengths of the house calling for Mom and Dad: Jamie McRae's masterful cinematography makes the normal house (Ball's parents' house, which he grew up in) seem positively expansive and labyrinthine, the way it would seem to a very young child. They watch an endless loop of cartoons and play with Legos. They call 911 (the phones are out, of course). And then something makes itself known.

For 100 minutes, the film sits on the waking verge of a nightmare. It occupies the moment when we're aware we're dreaming, but that awareness doesn't make the danger any less real. The surroundings are hazy but familiar. The cartoon images and sounds that pump constantly from the TV--assembled from various public domain sources, including Ub Iwerks's impressive and mildly terrifying "Balloon Land"--provide a kind of anchor into childhood reality, until a key moment at which whatever the presence is begins to manipulate them. Voices echo in the dark hallways. There are subtitles to help us decipher what's being whispered. Sometimes they don't seem to match the sounds.

What sets in after the first act--and yes, like a lot of David Lynch's work, Skinamarink does have a plot that can be analyzed and divided into very traditional acts, despite the outward appearance of being a fluid dream sequence--is the crushing sense of abandonment that's often felt in a nightmare. That a previously felt sense of security is suddenly gone without explanation. I do not use hyperbole when I say that one scene in which Kaylee journeys upstairs to her parents' bedroom might be the most tragic and devastating moment I've ever seen in a horror movie. Not because of any shocking imagery or manipulation of the child's presence for cheap sympathy, but because of what's implied in the dialogue, and what emerges from the darkness as her eyes adjust, and what she is left with in the end. It's the moment the greatness of the movie settled in.

The tension ratchets but rarely releases. Even the jump scares--and there are a few--don't provide the relief that usually comes with such moments. After the jolt, we're still in the nightmare. In directing the child actors, Ball shows a surprising sensitivity. We rarely ever see their faces, which works to several advantages: it provides a sense of removal from reality, and it allows Ball to distance the child actors from the terror in the movie. The horror is created in the editing and cinematography, never really explicitly on screen. The two children are directed to deliver the dialogue innocently and straightforwardly, mostly on ADR, and I have to assume phonetically, similar to the child voice actors in Peanuts specials. This prevents us from being yanked out of the nightmare by any fear for the actors' safety.

It's this intricate work that makes Skinamarink into more than the terror roadshow event that it's gotten the reputation for being. I expect it will be very divisive. Many will hate it. Others will shut themselves off from it. It's an extraordinarily immersive film made by a filmmaker who is in tune not only with nightmares but with film language. Like Lynch, Ball knows how to use traditional film to tell a nontraditional story. His fascination with nightmares may have given birth to Skinamarink as a concept, but it's his deftness as a director and editor that has made it a great film, and has allowed him to deliver--and again, I use no hyperbole--a shot late in the film that is the scariest thing I have ever seen in a movie.

**** out of ****

Kyle Edward Ball's short film "Heck," which is the basis for Skinamarink, is available on Youtube. I would recommend watching Skinamarink first and checking out "Heck" afterward.