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 ****