Last Shift (2014)

Oh hey Paimon! Listen, I know we had a rocky start with that first viewing of Hereditary, but I'm here now and I'm ready to listen.

I guess Last Shift doesn't really bury the lead here. There's a demon in this! If you're into cult-y, demon-y shenanigans then this little flick directed and co-written (along with Scott Poiley) by Anthony DiBlasi, is surprisingly unsettling and... full disclosure... I had to turn it off 30mins in the first time, as I was alone downstairs in my house and got freaked out. For that reason alone it gets points!

And so attempt #2, with company and knowing a little more about what to expect, I checked out this story of rookie cop Jessica Loren (Juliana Harkavy) spending the night in a soon-to-be abandoned police station. The old Assault on Precinct 13 location treatment.

There may only be a single locale for Last Shift - apparently it was an actual redundant police station - but it's used fantastically. Loren, initially bored and then increasingly on edge, wanders the empty halls and rooms of the precinct; experiencing strange noises and visions of a spine-chilling, violent past that played out within its walls.

We learn along with her that it may be more than just bad luck placing her on this doomed shift, in this doomed building. Her father's time - and death - as a police officer may be relevant, too.

The scares are often of the jump variety here, and there is at least one moment of that once heavily-relied-upon effect of sped up ghouls being ghoulish (that kind of 90s/early 2000s music video editing thing... yawn). However, the cult/demon visuals are pretty jarring and disturbing when they come, so this lends some heft to the proceedings. Despite some questionable paths getting us there, I found the scares and creepiness ultimately successful.


❝I am the dancing flame.❞
− John Michael Paymon

So, I mentioned Paimon earlier. His incarnation here is as a Charles Manson-esque cult leader called "Paymon" (Joshua Mikel). I'm not well-versed enough in my occult history to have recognised the name without the help of Hereditary, but I thought it was pretty cool to see him featured in something else. 

According to Wikipedia these are the only two films with a plot where Paimon comes up. Demon-specific double bill, anyone?* Though I think Last Shift would pair better with Let Us Prey for strong female police officers getting more than they anticipated during their first night on the job.

 *See my "double bill idea" tag. Maybe one day I can actually make use of all these?!

I caught this on Shudder but as usual, it's probably pretty easy to find. A movie that's smaller in scope, but with atmosphere and nastiness (that ending!) to feel like it deserves a seat at the table.

The Ritual (2017)

I fancied watching this again recently, and I'm really glad I did. Spoilers incoming!

Based on a novel by Adam Nevill, directed by David Bruckner (who co-wrote and directed Amateur Night in V/H/S and The Accident in Southbound) this Netflix movie takes us deep into dark Swedish forests with a group of friends.

Dom, Luke, Phil and Hutch.

Tension exists between these men, as we find out that Luke (Rafe Spall) carries a heavy burden of guilt for not stepping in during a violent attack which opens the film. The knowledge they all have of Luke essentially standing by as their friend Robert (Paul Reid) was killed hangs heavily over the beginning of their trip. We see Luke wake from a nightmare about the murder, and throughout our time with him images ripple through his reality of the trauma from that night.

These scenes are some of my favourites, as imagination and reality/fabricated building interior and forest mesh so effortlessly and organically together. It's incredibly impressive and extremely disconcerting. It reads very much like something out of a dream, where details and settings bleed together in a singular landscape.

On the night Rob died the lads were trying to decide where to go on holiday together, and now, six months later they find themselves hiking as a tribute to him (as he'd originally suggested it). Hutch (Robert James-Collier) is clearly the most comfortable in the outdoors, with the others joining through a sense of sad duty. These are middle-class affluent types, paying £200 for their hiking boots but neglecting to break them in before the trip. They are kind of out of their depth before they even set foot in the forest.

The turning point of events comes after Dom (Sam Troughton) gets hurt, and they make the decision to take a short-cut back to their lodge. Rather than staying out in the open, they realise with reluctance that entering the dense forest is the quickest way back.

❝What's up? Are you scared of the woods?❞

It's dark, damp, and visibility is low through the arrow-straight trees. Luke repeatedly thinks he sees a glimpse of something moving in the distance and tensions increase as pain and exhaustion take hold. Everything changes after their first night in the forest. Breaking into an abandoned cabin during a storm, they wake the following morning, nerves shredded from terrifying nightmares and sleepwalking. 

There is a palpable feeling of a dark presence infiltrating their minds as they slept, pushing its way into their deepest fears. The most alarming awakening is from Phil (Arsher Ali) who is found naked in a "praying" position in front of a terrifying headless totem.

No one, especially Phil, is ever the same after that night. Arsher Ali doesn't have an awful lot to do aside from this, unfortunately, but he gives a haunting performance as someone who can't process or escape the fear of his ordeal. Phil is shell-shocked and violated.

Similar to the "lost in the woods" idea, the stripping back of anything our characters have -  in this case: possessions, unity, sanity - is not a unique narrative approach, but in capable hands, it's so effective. The lads start with the latest gear, and end with nothing, having lost tents, party members, and a full grip on what the fuck is even going on. With a steady hand, The Ritual peels back to the terrified primal core of these characters.

The creature reveal is what solidifies the success of this movie for me. This beast is a "Jötunn", an ancient god worshiped by villagers and offered sacrifices of unsuspecting visitors to the area (their possessions dot the landscape, nature claiming them in varying degrees). In turn, the locals are granted unnaturally long lives. The things we do for eternity, eh? I did find it interesting that none of the villagers seem particularly happy, however. Their lot appears more duty and fear-fueled than actively wanting to be eternally stuck in this existence.

The design of the Jötunn is stunning, even in full view it's difficult to comprehend as it seems compromised of human and beast body parts, as well as having aspects of the forest, too. It feels profane in a way that both captivates and repels.

As Luke attempts to escape his fate of being trapped forever, this showstopping moment is captured:

If he had lost his mind then and there, who could have blamed him?

As the third act draws to a close, the warm tones of a burning village give way to a landscape bathed in dawn light. In the far distance we see a car on a road. Luke is returning to civilisation and leaving old gods behind. At least physically. He was chosen because his "pain was great" - is his pain gone, by the end? I doubt it. If anything it's deeper, along with his guilt. His primal scream at the creature stuck at its forest's edge certainly hints at a lifetime of nightmares to come. 

This movie would pair well with Blair Witch for a night's viewing, as I think they'd complement one another for a "we're lost in the woods and we're f*cked!" double bill. Tents and trees by torchlight; distant, gigantic sounds you can't identify... That kind of fear pre-dates almost everything, it's woven into our lizard brains.

The Ritual is streaming on Netflix now. I appreciated the abrupt, not-necessarily-sad but definitely not happy ending (see also: Calibre). Beautiful landscapes, old gods and flawed humans - what's not to love? Very tempted to pick up the book and see how the two compare.

Angst (1983)

Coming off the back of a true crime binge (I pretty much constantly listen to true crime stuff, but recently it's been particularly intense) I've been tempering my desire to watch home invasion horror movies. This is a sub-genre I really enjoy, but part of that enjoyment stems from the fact it's one of the most terrifying.

Nevertheless! Once I realised it was on Shudder, I couldn't put off watching Angst (alternative title Schizophrenia) for very long. This may well be the granddaddy of home invasion movies, and it is a relentlessly unsettling experience.

Made in Austria (in German, with subtitles) and directed by Gerald Kargl - causing such controversy and box office backlash upon its release that he never made another movie - Angst is based on the true case of mass murderer Werner Kniesek and even utilizes phrasing from real confessions...

(How do you know you're too deep into true crime? When you can identify real confession dialogue without being told...)

The story chronicles the first 24 hours of freedom of "K", a psychopathic murderer. We not only follow K (an astonishing performance by Erwin Leder, whose other roles include Das Boot, and er, Underworld) but we're inside his head, too; hearing all of the manic thoughts, twisted leaps of logic and sickening plans that pass through his damaged brain.

Angst has us witness, in painstaking detail and intimacy, every single moment of this man's mania; the entire spectrum from an almost hysterical bloodlust, through sweat (and semen :/) drenched murders, to the post-kill clean up and groggy comedown, to thinking about doing it all over again.

We see him leave prison and immediately begin the hunt. Like a true addict, he's desperately uncomfortable and barely able to function, he needs to spill blood so much. We watch as one-by-one he chooses victims and dismisses them, finally finding a satisfactory set-up: a huge but strangely devoid of furniture house to break into, and a family to terrorize.

Sparse of dialogue in-scene, much of the exposition comes from either a doctor, giving comprehensive background and the medical/criminal diagnoses of K; or the man himself, narrating his obsessive frenzy.

He speaks incessantly of his "plan", although this spree repeatedly plays out like he's close to losing control of the situation. In one of many choices made that tinge the film with horrible realism, K is not a "cool" looking dude (see: most serial killers are awkward, conventionally unattractive individuals). He is a thin, sweaty, rat-faced man. His strength comes from his psychosis, not from his physical stature, and so even though he possess a terrifying presence, he is also barely able to move his hostages, alive or dead. There are numerous, uncomfortably protracted scenes of him dragging his victims from room to room.

"Visceral" is a word that gets thrown around a lot in this genre, and there are definitely a couple of instances in this movie where that word springs to mind.

Learning that Gaspar Noé is a fan of Angst came as absolutely no shock, and the sickening violence and profound sadness of Irreversible now makes a little more sense. Tonally both films are brutal in subject matter and uncompromising in their portrayal of it. They're also both aggressively visual pieces of cinema.

The cinematography in Angst was by Zbigniew Rybczynski who, I was excited to learn, was the director of a short I became slightly obsessed with a couple of months ago! 

The camerawork often takes on a dynamic, experimental style: when K runs, the vertigo-inducing "SnorriCam" is used; our viewpoint appears abnormally high up in some scenes, and too low to the ground in others; outside, what today would be a simple drone shot, must have taken some doing in the early 80s to achieve, as the camera lifts so high we're able to watch K from a bird's eye view as he runs around the house's estate opening gates and jumping over walls. 

And good luck forgetting the faces of Angst, in all of their grotesque close-up glory.

Every aspect of this film was a choice to provoke unease. Even the soundscapes are unnerving, with the score a repetitive synth march or a low-note dread-filled dirge, and normally innocuous noises such as footsteps and chewing food are blown up on the soundtrack to monstrous versions of the real thing.

Films that dwell so heavily on the viewpoint of a cold-blooded killer are always going to be for the strong of stomach, and the depths to which K sinks are matched only by the fact that we sink there too, in witnessing every painful second of it. If you want a truly soul-destroying double bill, Angst and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer would be a hell of a way to spend an evening. If the thought of taking stock of what you just participated in doesn't appeal, then maybe give this a hard pass.

Personally, as deeply grim as this film gets, I "enjoyed" it an awful lot for its full on commitment to making me feel so uncomfortable. Like Irreversible, it'll leave you with an empty feeling afterwards - but it's a beautifully constructed, frightening representation of the mind of a psychopath. It's a fucking travesty Kargl never made another movie. I cannot imagine the sights he would have shown us, if THIS was the first thing he had in his head. 

On Shudder right now, and you'll get a content warning if you decide to watch it!

Tourist Trap (1979)

I think I'm having a bit of a "WTF did I just watch?" moment with this one.

The irresistible artwork of this lured me in, but I'm not sure I was completely won over by this quirky debut from from director David "Puppetmaster" Schmoeller.

The promises made by the poster (and that tagline!) sadly aren't kept by the actual reality of Tourist Trap.

The set-up: a group of nubile young things are on a trip when one of their cars breaks down, forcing the guy to take a walk to look for help. In the film's first horror sequence, we're treated to a bizarre scene of laughing mannequins and inanimate objects dancing around a locked room as he screams for help.

The fate of the poor motorist (Keith McDermott) is handled surprisingly well at the end of this chaos. After hammering on the door he suddenly stops dead from being speared through the back by a length of pipe. There's silence, and then a strange sound, revealed with a slow expansion of the shot to be his blood running through the pipe and hitting a metal container on the floor. This was one of my favourite death scenes in this film. Bit of a pity that it happens so soon after the opening credits.

The dead man's friends continue down the road, as yet unaware of what happened - and passing a vulture, always a great omen! - where their car also breaks down, so they seek help inside a nearby down-on-its-luck wax museum.

Everything is going to be FINE...

The place is weird, the owner Mr. Slausen (Chuck Connors) is weird, and the house they are expressly told NOT to enter is... extremely weird. Mannequins fill the rooms and line the walls, some of them frighteningly lifelike. If that wasn't creepy enough, their eyes follow intruders, and occasionally they can be heard to talk.

❝There's something funny about that man...❞

Connors goes full-tilt with his scenery chewing as Mr. Slausen, swinging between innocently eccentric and bug-eyed bonkers. Slausen claims to be a widower (and has a mannequin/waxwork of his wife to prove it) with a talented brother who made all of the dolls on display, and then left him for a job in the city. But, of course, this man is much more than he claims to be. 

So, one by one the friends wander off alone, sometimes meeting a House of Wax-type fate, revealing the true origin of some, if not all, of the dolls in the house.

The killer, "Davy". Happy nightmares!

Molly (Jocelyn Jones), who could not be more symbolically virginal, with her dainty features, blonde hair and modest white summer dress (compared to the other females who are sexy, fun brunettes) is a classic final girl. She's less daring than the others, and initially trusting of everything she's told. Her character arc follows a pretty standard pattern as she gains the courage and strength needed to escape this unreal place.

Tanya Roberts (❤) as Becky and Jocelyn Jones as Molly.

I feel like pacing is such a common gripe for me with horror movies, and this one does suffer from extended periods of pretty uninteresting action in between the creepy mannequin scenes.

There's also the fact that the killer randomly and inexplicably appears to have telekinesis. No idea how, or why, but to be fair it does make for some of the most bizarre and enjoyable set pieces in the entire movie!

Mannequins are inherently scary, and they are used to mostly great effect here. 

Apparently the executive producer hated the score for Tourist Trap, and wanted something more like the atmospheric synth of Halloween. I can see his point; coupled with the largely hokey acting, the music, reaching pure melodrama on more than one occasion, makes the whole film seem a lot more quirky/weird and a lot less weird/scary.

This is streaming on Shudder at time of writing. I'm not going to fall over myself recommending this, but it might be fun in a cool double bill with Puppet Master or Maniac!

Raw (2016)

We're looking at my favourite so far this October. I really loved Raw. Tell me, what's not to love about an awkward, coming-of-age drama with some cannibalism thrown in?

Justine (Garance Marillier) is following in family footsteps by attending a prestigious veterinary university. Her parents met there, and her older sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf) already goes there. Justine's got a lot to live up to; but for this quiet, "average" (her word) girl, that doesn't initially appear to be too much of a problem. 

That is, until "rush week" gets underway, where Justine and her fellow rookies are put through some fairly intense initiation ceremonies. She's nervous but doesn't falter, not until there's one involving eating raw meat. All of her family are strict vegetarians, she says, she can't do it. But under threat of being outcast this early on in her student career and with pressure from Alexia, she caves.

At first, her only reaction is a really nasty skin allergy that appears almost overnight. She visits the nurse who diagnoses it - and then lights a cigarette right there in the examination room, gotta love the French! - and gives Justine some cream.

But the sense of something being off... of feeling itchy and not right deep down in her skin doesn't go away. And gradually, tiny moment built wonderfully upon tiny moment, Justine starts to realise with growing fascination and horror, just what it is she's yearning for.

WHERE do I start with this? It looks beautiful.

Everything looks beautiful. And it has big wide shots with nothing happening in them for a couple of beats, until a little car or a little person appears on the edge or the horizon. This is something, for some reason, I absolutely adore in films - and even replicate in my own photography, a lot of the time.

That this was written and directed by a woman (Julia Ducournau) comes as no surprise. Justine and Alexia are interesting, human, flawed, and beautiful characters. They bicker like sisters do, but they make up quickly like sisters do. Alexia tries to guide Justine and open up her worldview, but also protect her at the same time. It's such a lovely, real relationship.

Including a blackly comic home waxing scene.

Much of Raw's dark comedy comes from the bond between these two, and it's the subtle moments of humour, along with a fantastic performance from Marillier, that coat the plot in a warmth you aren't expecting.

Additionally, can I get three cheers for the normalisation of female body hair, please!

This would make a great companion for Teeth for a double bill, I think (and both are on US Netflix now, at time of writing!). With its depiction of a young woman discovering herself, both in a normal sense, ie: being of Justine's age where she's suddenly thrust into this un-parented world of boys and parties - and this playing out alongside the more extreme, fantastical changes the young woman is noticing in her body, too.

A shy, weird, late-bloomer who's simultaneously terrified of her urges and wanting desperately to indulge them. Justine even fucks her roommate to try and calm the storm boiling inside her. It doesn't work.

It never gets old when female sexuality is represented as well as this in horror. There's so much power in it and it's a monumental task to try and understand that power. Adding something gruesome on top of an already pretty fucking scary time is just the cherry on top of the sundae.

Cannot recommend this one enough.

Bonus: It has one of my favourite Blood Red Shoes songs on the soundtrack, as well as some pretty amazing other stuff to check out.

Shelley (2016) & Antibirth (2016)

This turned out to be an inspired "fucked up pregnancy" double bill I made for myself. While both about an unconventional pregnancy, these two films could not have been more different.

Where Shelley was a quiet, slow build; Antibirth was an obnoxious, trippy mess. Where Shelley was set in nature, at a remote cabin on a lake; Antibirth took place in the slums of a city, full of warehouse raves and low-budget motels.

Muted natural colours (aside from a blood red title screen) versus an overload of bright colours, loud music and ever-changing TV commercials. Simply living characters, without even electricity or running water in their home, versus relentlessly bong-hitting, drunk party girls.

Shelley tells the story of Louise and Kasper (Ellen Dorrit Petersen and Peter Christoffersen), a married couple living a quiet life. Louise desperately wants a baby, but is unable to bear children after her last failed pregnancy resulted in a hysterectomy. When their new Romanian maid Elena (Cosmina Stratan) decides to help them, her surrogacy quickly becomes very unusual.

Antibirth, meanwhile, deals with a surprise pregnancy. Lou (Natasha Lyonne, basically playing her Orange Is The New Black character but not in jail - not a complaint) wakes up from a heavy night of partying feeling decidedly worse than just her usual comedown/hangover. Her stomach starts growing at an alarming rate, she's hungry all the time, yet sick to her stomach. 

Is this just one rave, one bong hit too many? Or does the sinister local drug dealer/pimp boyfriend of her friend Sadie (Chloë Sevigny) have something to do with it?

Oh yeah, and Meg Tilly is in this, too!

The differences go as far as pacing, too. The pacing of Shelley is extremely measured, it's a very, very slow burn, and even its conclusion is quiet and still - though not without making the viewer think about what the future holds for this family, and the world at large. 

It's a film that demands your attention, not least because a fair amount of the dialogue is subtitled (languages spoken, according to IMDb: Danish, English, Norwegian, Swedish, Romanian!) but a lot of it also is non-verbal, with reactions, realisations and contemplation taking place silently. It's a sense of creeping dread, rather than a loud announcement of horror.

In contrast, Antibirth moves along pretty quickly... though not always making complete sense. Lou is a train-wreck, and you can't help but feel for her as things finally start getting explained as to just how messed up her situation is.

Its climax, as one quote on its poster suggests, is "especially fucked up!". It's pretty fucking insane and amazing. I did not see that coming!

Being so different, I don't feel forced to choose a favourite between these two films... though if I had to recommend one over the other, it would probably be Antibirth, just for being so out there and such a trip to watch. I really don't want to give anything away, but if you've seen it feel free to comment with your reaction to that ending!

Both films are streaming on Netflix at time of writing.

Starry Eyes (2014)

From the synth score to the retro looking titles, Starry Eyes seemed like a film I would really get into... but something about it just didn't stick.

Charting the questionable ascent into stardom of aspiring young actress Sarah Walker, this is a slow moving body horror... cult... slasher? (an argument could be made for any and all of those sub-genres). There is a lot of build up, a very grisly payoff and some gruesomeness along the way. But somehow the pacing seems off. We shouldn't have to wait until the last 15min to be fully engaged with this movie, right?

Sarah lives in LA and works a crappy job while going to auditions for acting roles. She's competent enough as an actress, that much we see - but she's not getting anywhere, and after each disappointing audition experience, she goes into a kind of... demonic, hair-pulling seizure. For one audition she's caught in the bathroom doing this by the casting director and asked to return to the room and do it again, to order. After some initial hesitation, she complies.

It appears that these filmmakers are after something very special from their leading ladies.

I will concede that this poster art is gorgeous though.

I will give writer and director team Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer credit for not having this play out exactly as a run-of-the-mill Faustian tale, and there are some really arresting visuals throughout, particularly in the final sequence (even though what happens is kind of signposted about halfway through the run time).

The slightly hyper-real vibe about the movie also works to make everything feel off-kilter and nightmarish. Most of the film is shot in a cold, blue light; going against the warm tones of Los Angeles that we're used to in movies. This doesn't seem a nice place to be.

LA itself is shown as a sleazy, unfriendly place full of shallow young people with no clue what they're doing. And this fact specifically posed a problem for me.

For one thing, all of Sarah's friends are pretty shitty. One in particular had my husband yelling "Christ, just kill her already!" so yes, you know or at least hope that they are going to get theirs, eventually. The problem is that it takes sooo long to get there! At least with a conventional slasher (a good one anyway) you know kills are going to happen with some kind of regularity.

Ordinarily, films that are still and slow are more satisfying in their denouement than this. What was I missing?

I don't know... maybe I'm being too harsh. It had occurred to me that this might be good to watch in a double bill with The Invitation. Both are Hollywood hills-centric with a cult twist, and maybe a themed re-watch might make me appreciate it a little more...