1922 (2017)

Written by Stephen King as a novella, and directed and adapted for the screen by Zak Hilditch, 1922 is slow and simple. It's an age old tale of how easy it is to plot cold-blooded murder - and how impossible it becomes to live with the guilt.

Thomas Jane (another of my "He's in it? Okay, I'll watch it" actors) is Wilfred James, a farmer in Nebraska, in 1922. Wilfred is a proud man, and when he and wife Arlette (Molly Parker) disagree on what should happen to a recent inheritance of land, the consequence of their differing opinions leads to the first violent episode in a year-long run of bloodshed and bad news.

He turns their son Henry (Dylan Schmid) against his mother during secret talks amongst the corn,  and plots Arlette's murder, little suspecting what nightmares - real and imaginary - this is going to bring down upon himself and anyone close to the family.

1922 is an uncomplicated, tragic tale. While I wouldn't say I was scared, necessarily, it definitely has its moments both of eerie dread and the jarringly gruesome. 

Rats play a large, symbolic part, seeming to burrow into and "infect" the world around Wilfred, mirroring the guilt and madness pulsing and growing within his soul. 

Serving this purpose the rodents are obviously vilified throughout the film, and while that makes sense, it also made me a bit sad, as a rat fan... To this day rats get a bad rap, and this movie certainly doesn't do anything to help that! 🐭

A warning: There are a number of grisly animal scenes in this movie. I looked away more during this than I can remember doing in a while, Even if I'm 99% certain the animals are fine on film sets now, I still don't need to see the impressive CGI of a crushed rat or a cow with a broken back :(. So just know those are coming and be ready, if you are sensitive to that kind of stuff like I am.

King fans will enjoy some recurring motifs too, such as the well (reminiscent of Dolores Claiborne) and the inherently sinister towering cornfields (Children of the Corn, The Stand) plus, according to IMDb trivia, connections to The Mist and The Dark Tower.

You certainly don't need a shelf of Stephen King books to appreciate this, however. Give it a try if you're looking for something gloomy to fall asleep thinking about.

This is another Netflix original, so it's streaming there right now.

Pet Sematary (1989)

Having always shied away from watching this due to obvious concerns of dead/dying animals, tonight I was feeling brave and ventured forth. I was happy to see that there's minimal animal trauma - maybe even less than a normal horror movie!

Directed by Mary Lambert - a woman! Shouldn't be a cause for celebration, but it still is! - this was originally meant to be a Romero flick. Due to delays in filming George had to split on the project, so Lambert stepped in as director of this little beauty, based off of Stephen King's own screenplay.

Fact: Mary Lambert also directed Madonna's "Like A Prayer" video 🙏🏻

Quick Pet Sematary plot summary for anyone such as myself who honestly was clueless about it: A happy family of four (dad Louis, mum Rachel, young daughter Ellie and toddler son Gage) move into an idyllic house in the Maine countryside. The place is lovely - apart from the fact it's directly next to a road that Mack trucks come speeding down with alarming regularity.

They have an old man neighbour across the way, Jud Crendell (Fred Gwynne: Herman Munster!) who helpfully explains to the family that the path they see going into the woods from their backyard leads to a "Pet Sematary" (the sign is misspelled, hence the title is too). The place is pretty cool looking, and being there results in some pondering on death and loss - much to the annoyance of Rachel (Denise Crosby).

She wants to shelter her kids from the subject of death. Seems healthy! Though she does have her reasons...

In any case, when Rachel and the children are visiting her parents for Thanksgiving, the family cat, "Church" - short for Winston Churchill - a gorgeous Russian Blue, gets run over. To spare Ellie the pain of losing her beloved pet, Jud leads Louis through the Pet Sematary and up a hill, emerging at a Native American burial site. 

For reasons not made wholly clear, Jud encourages the burial of the dead moggy here, even though he knows from personal experience that this soil has "sour" resurrection properties.

Louis is like "yeah, right" and then "holy shit!" when Church actually does come back, but this kitty isn't happy and spends the rest of the film hissing with glowy eyes. He's not the cat he was.

So you see where this is going. Young children, speeding trucks, an ancient Indian burial ground? Yup, Church isn't the only being brought back to life during this runtime. But as Jud later says, "the person you put up there ain't the person who comes back...", and as tempting as it is to try and reclaim a lost loved one rather than deal with that loss... "sometimes dead is better."

Things get a lot "better" before the end credits.

Negotiating child death in a film is not easy, and Pet Sematary does it pretty excellently all while still giving the audience gasp-worthy moments. We don't see the accident, but we are shown a bloody little shoe. Similarly, we only ever get glimpses of Gage's tiny corpse, never a full on look at it. This builds the tension to when we actually see him again.

And Gage is completely adorable in life, so even though it's not a shock he dies; it is sad. When he returns... well, he's an adorable little monster.

An adorable little KILLING MACHINE monster.

Favourite moment alert: When his doctor father injects his neck to "put him back to sleep" - father's words, creepy much? - in an amazing scene (below), and he toddles off whimpering "no fair!". It's... it's perfect.

I haven't even mentioned Ellie's psychic abilities, Rachel's nightmarish sister, or Victor Pascow, the ghost jogger acting as a kind of spirit guide to the family. 

He first encounters Louis right before dying, and then continues to manifest throughout, offering warnings and handy advice, such as proper name pronunciation and tips on hiring a rental car!

My verdict on this film? Way less animal death than the name would suggest and a satisfyingly sad tale to boot. I wish I hadn't taken so long to see it!

Gerald's Game (2017)

One of my least favourite Stephen King books makes a pretty great film, thanks to the two leads and director Mike Flanagan (of Hush, Oculus, and Ouija: Origin of Evil fame). He's been a fan of the book for a long time, and it shows.

I always thought the premise of this story had such great potential, but found the book overly self-indulgent and too plodding in pace. Adapted into a film with some necessary tweaks, this plays like the frightening, disturbing tale it always should have been.

Jessie (Carla Gugino, who is amazing in this) is away for the weekend at a remote cabin with her husband, and when he wants to use real handcuffs to restrain her during sex, this begins an episode of multi-leveled trauma for Jessie which she must overcome if she stands any chance of making it out alive. 

Just for starters, husband Gerald (Bruce Greenwood, thoroughly charismatic and unpleasant here) seems to want to instigate a non-consensual rape fantasy, then shortly afterwards suffers a fatal heart attack, leaving Jessie helpless with the house wide open to whomever/whatever wants to come inside.

Stand-out quote from repulsive character Gerald (paraphrased): "A vulnerable woman is like an open door." Utterly disgusting and disturbing, and cuts right to the true heart of the man Jessie married.

Stand out Gerald moment: When Jessie's imagined Gerald absentmindedly licks his lips and takes one of the accumulating flies into his mouth without missing a beat. Such a tiny detail but perfectly unsettling.

While the idea of being cuffed to a bed with no one to help you is scary enough, all of the plot drive of Gerald's Game comes from Jessie having to finally face the abuse she suffered from her father when she was a pre-teen - and a lifetime of repression and poor decisions following this abuse. There are two instances in this film that make you feel sick, and the flashbacks to young Jessie with her father is one of them.

The blood-red light of a solar eclipse washes over this moment.

The film is shot almost romantically, at times. Certainly in the beginning the dreamy quality of the lighting and cinematography is such that it almost appears to be in soft focus. This was the first thing I noticed when I watched the trailer, and I found it an interesting and commendable choice, given the themes of the story. It's far from a new approach, but presenting horror in a visually non-horrific way just makes it seem so much more frightening, no?

Gerald's Game in fact gives us a range of different horrors; from the gut-wrenchingly sad abuse, to the pure terror of feeling a presence in the room with you, just out of sight in the shadows - I'd actually forgotten about the "Space Cowboy" aspect of the story, which I found to be the most frightening parts of the book and they have DEFINITELY been translated successfully to film - and finally, Jessie's visceral final fight for survival.

There is lots to love about this adaptation, and much to keep you awake in the dark. Highly recommended - catch it on Netflix now.

🎈

So it's here. I think it looks pretty good!

Children of the Corn (2009).

Final Girl Film Club time! Haven't done one of these in a while.

Only upon reading about this version did I learn that the 1984 Children of the Corn (reviewed here) doesn't entirely follow the plot of Stephen King's short story. It was pretty much given a "good triumphs evil" ending, whereas the original tale and this made-for-television film both finish on a downer. Closer to the source material + more depressing = a good thing, I thought.

Well, sometimes King's short stories work as feature length adaptations (Shawshank! Stand By Me!) sometimes they don't (this!). The sins of the 80s original are sadly repeated here: with pacing which makes minutes feel like hours and boredom taking the place of really any of the emotions you want from a horror movie. It's a shame, because who doesn't love brainwashed cult children killing adults in small-town rural America? That sounds just delicious and a whole lot of fun.

This film is neither of those things. Womp womp.

This may also be the least scary horror film opener I've ever seen. A group of children look gormless in a tent while some heavy handed scene setting goes down. It's NINETEEN SIXTY-THREE people, and we're in GATLIN, NEBRASKA. The death cult theme is introduced and we learn that adults are sinners, and the town's being punished by a cornfield-lurking Old Testament God because of this. So the kids are to kill all the grown ups - no one is to live above the age of nineteen.

The ranting child prophet is dressed as a cowboy, by the way.

Twelve years on brings more shitty dialogue badly acted, and not one but two more mentions that we're in GATLIN, NEBRASKA. Bickering married couple Burt and Vicky are road tripping and end up here after accidentally running over a child, as he hotfooted it out of a cornfield. 

Awkward.

Wait, where are we again? I forget...

"Come take a look! So you can tell all your NRA buddies what you bagged in NEBRASKA!".

Oh, yeah.

Upon closer inspection they discover the kid was bleeding out from a slit throat anyway. What a spot of luck! That doesn't stop the incessant bloody arguing between the two though. Vicky wonders aloud how she ever ended up married to Vietnam veteran Burt, whilst we ponder likewise. But this isn't a depiction of a vulnerable marriage like in, I dunno, The Shining; it's merely aggravating having to listen to a couple going on and on and ON at one another. If I wanted to listen to couples pointlessly arguing, I'd turn off the TV and eavesdrop on my neighbours.

They load the kid in the trunk and head off to find Gatlin police, to report the accident.

Unfortunately for them, this is the Gatlin police dept.

Then this happens.

This is my favourite part of the film, this shot.

Preston Bailey plays prophet and leader, Isaac. You may recognise him as Dexter's son, from the popular TV show! Here he spouts scripture and delivers lines with exceedingly repetitive parrot-fashion intonations, to the extent that I couldn't concentrate on what he was saying, half the time. Exposition in this movie is a choice between adults yelling, or children talking nonsense.

Big hats: not generally scary. But at the least the corn's in shot.

I much preferred the weird young-old looking Isaac from the first one (John Franklin). He may have been an adult playing a child, but at least he was creepy.

It is an age old trick, using kids and kiddie-related stuff to ratchet up the creepiness in a narrative; yet somehow the casting of actual children in this does nothing for the sinister feel of the movie. They went to all that trouble of employing mostly under-agers (whereas the '84 version did not) but it only really pays off in the more explicit scenes, which I'll talk about in a little while.

The pace picks up finally, when Burt goes to investigate a church, leaving Vicky in the car. She is ambushed by the children and despite what must have been a hell of a lot of noise in an otherwise dead silent town, it takes Burt ages to go back outside and try to help his wife.

Um, spoiler... he fails.

This confrontation with the little religious zealots appears to kick off some 'Nam flashbacks in Burt, who spends his remaining screen time killing or maiming children and slowly losing his mind - illustrated by some sweet visual effects which look like they belong in a music video. Because horror needs more of those.

Ultimately the corn god gets bored waiting for the kids to kill Burt, so he does it himself. Then we're given a looong post credit sequence of ginger sergeant-at-arms Malachi saying goodbye to his knocked up lady love Ruth, because he's reached the age he must offer himself up as a sacrifice. 

This film... it kind of baffled me. On the one hand, it's not very good and the acting stinks (best performance by far? Alexa Nikolas as Ruth, her faith shaken). Nothing much happens for stretches of it, the dialogue during the dialogue heavy sequences... just awful. Yes, it was made for TV and I'm not too sure what the caliber of work is on the SyFy Channel - wasn't Sharknado from there? - but this is dire and yet strangely explicit, at the same time? It depicts graphic (compared to mainstream films) child death and young adult T&A. 

The scene goes on for some time on the uncut DVD version, too.

Clearly some of the more intense stuff was not aired on TV, but that just makes the uncut version play disjointedly like exactly what it is: a weak TV movie with some graphic stuff thrown in to shift the DVD release. Personally I'd rather it picked a side and stayed there.

Visually speaking it's interesting to note that like the 1984 version, I found there to be some lovely shot compositions in amongst everything. The image of the dead boy in the foreground and car behind, for one. Here it is again, if you can't be bothered to scroll up.

Big juicy high-res version here.

Another is this one.

I'd be fine with someone taking a sickle to everything but these two visuals, and build it up anew from there. 

Children of the Corn (1984).

This film didn't scare me. It wasn't the worst thing I have ever seen, but it was laughably poor in places. Look, I know it was a Stephen King adaptation and the yardstick is rarely very high for those - but it is possible to do something successful with his material. I saw The Mist over the xmas holidays so I know this to be the case.

Well maybe not in 1984 - unless Firestarter is any good, I haven't seen it.

For this post I am going to walk you through some screencaps I have taken from Children of the Corn, and discuss what is scary, not scary, scary in completely the wrong way and... whatever damn else I feel like mentioning. I was actually given the boxset of all three Corn films, so perhaps I'll do this with all of them, who knows? It really depends on how bad they get to be honest.

Okay, let's start with the image-heaviness.

Scary: Creepy looking children staring menacingly through windows.

Not scary: Bad "poisoned" acting by old ladies.

Scary: Meat cleavers being waved around in a coffee shop.

Not scary: Children's drawings. I know a children-slant on horror can have great results (child's voices, nursery rhymes etc), but the drawings in this film didn't work. In fact they just pissed me off because she kept getting her S's the wrong way around.

Scary in the wrong way: Linda Hamilton singing and dancing. For a long time. In fact it even cuts away from her doing so, and then back again. Twice.

An aside: I'm not sure it is fair of me to mock this obvious dummy-work, as I only noticed this shot when I had the film paused, progressing frame by frame. Still, funny.

Scary in the wrong way: How pointy those trainers are.

An aside: I like this shot. Although it has to be said there are a lot of "hand holding weapon looming into frame" shots in this movie, which dampens their impact a bit.

Scary: Zombie children! Well, it was a good jump moment anyway.

Scary in the wrong way: Bad "laugh" acting by young children.

Not scary: Corn on the cob crucifixes.

Scary: I love the composition of this. One of the rare moments this film gets something very right.

Scary: Advancing armed child gangs.

Not scary: Corn-based vehicle vandalism.

Not scary: Histrionic child-acting.

Scary: Rotten crucified cops. Maybe more cool than scary, but it works for me anyway.

Not scary: Corn-haired and pink lipsticked Jesus.

Not scary: Obviously fake knives. Where is that blood coming from exactly?!

Not scary: More histrionic child-acting.

Not scary: More histrionic child-acting.

Scary: Deserted towns.

Scary: Sinister religious rituals at dusk.

Scary: Surprisingly genuine acting. He looked utterly petrified.

Not scary: Climatic reveal of much talked about monster results in some truly shitty CGI...

Not scary: ...and the corn crucifix taking off like a rocket? Against a sky which is lighter than in the previous shot.

Not scary: Corn "attacking" (and overpowering) a grown man.

Not scary: More shitty CGI. Looks like marshmallows.

Not scary: The grimacing face that seems to appear in this explosion.

Scary: Backseat assailants.


So the tally is closer than I suspected at:
Scary: 10
Not Scary: 14
Scary in the wrong way: 3

The problem is mainly in the pacing. After an introduction showing the children turning against the adults of the town, the focus switches to Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton driving through it three years later. For almost an hour, nothing of any consequence happens. By the time the decently scary moments started happening, it was a little too late for me to care. On top of this the bad computer effects and startling lack of continuity with regards to what time of day it is! Harsh but fair, I assure you.

Wish me luck with the sequel...