Midnight Mass

Midnight Mass

2021, TV mini-series

Creator – Mike Flanagan

Stars - Kate Siegel, Zach Gilford, Kristin Lehman

 

 

Flanagan’s characteristic slow build and grasp of character reaps rewards, and is always punctuated by memorable horror set-piece or images: glowing eyes in the bushes (look closely); dead cats washed up on the beach, etc. The impending horror is at first hinted at in throwaway comments and then sealed in uncanny and disturbing incidents like a disappearing pregnancy. And then, when things are settled, a surprise is thrown in and things really get going…

 

It’s a wordy piece, very concerned with existential questions – guilt, responsibility, repentance, existence, mortality, death, etc. Second Chances are a major theme, with the limits of the island manifesting those of the characters. But it’s also very good at the passive-aggressive and manipulative rhetoric of religion: in this case, used to invite and justify the monstrous/vampirism. Dracula seduced his victims with promises of longevity and anti-Victorian liberation, warded off by Christianity’s piety and symbolism; but Flanagan’s piece here suggests that Bible prose isn’t any protection at all and in fact can be used to fit any personal agenda, even tailoring it to vampire lore. When scientific explanation is also thrown in, the story has all bases pleasingly covered. The tale of one man's Faith being endorsed with an encounter with a vampire is the pleasing, playful, subversive stuff of horror, however po-faced the aesthetic (and that's a fine vampire). And there's all the stuff equating religion with a plague.

But this talkiness becomes an issue in the last chapter, when action and character agency gives way to monologues and speechifying. Proceedings still slow for philosophical and existential discussions even though the show has covered this at length in the build-up. In light of what is happening and has gone before, the show seemingly making a last-minute reach for God feels more like a platitude given what the show has proven.

 

It makes sense that the characters plunge into a hymn, but by this moment the show has leaned towards sentimentality and undermines the horror that has been so carefully arranged and earned (this was the same failing with Flanigan’s ‘The Haunting of Hill House’, only more destructively there). And it’s true that the burning up of vampires is more poetic and romanticed here. Let’s leave aside that I am not wholly unconvinced, given they have a whole island, that there wouldn’t be some way that some of them could have hidden from sunlight, that there wouldn’t at least be protective shade.

 

Nevertheless, the slow build features lots of memorable horror exclamation marks and Hamish Linklater’s performance as Father Paul is a wonderful, riveting and nuanced anchor*. Samantha Sloyan’s turn as Bev Keane is also delicious as the kind of Stephen King God-bothering fanatic you can love love love to hate. As a contemporary ‘Salem’s Lot’ (and to be honest, what could replicate the effect that had on me as a thirteen-year-old?), it holds its head up high. ‘Midnight Mass’ continues Flanagan’s run of mature, character-based horror that knows how to deliver its genre ingredients with both deliberation and full-blooded relish.

 

• For which Hamish Linklater won both Critics Choice Super Awards’ “Best Actor in a Horror Series” and IGN Summer Movie Awards’ “Best Dramatic TV Performance”.

The Northman

 

The Northman

Director – Robert Eggers

Writers – Sjón, Robert Eggers

2022, United States

Stars – Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang

 

Alexander Skarsgård’s long-term desire to make a Viking film definitely hit the target with Robert Eggers, a director renowned and celebrated for his attention to verisimilitude and detail. Eggers calls says, “this is in some respects me trying to do Conan the Barbarian by way of Andrei Rublev”, a description that perfectly captures the twin poles from which it works: rip-roaring blood-and-guts machismo and downbeat adherence to period pseudo-realism. One minute, characters are primally impersonating roaring rampaging beasts, the next we are shored on the pixie-witch beauty of Björk, or the sharp and stony beauty of Anna Taylor-Joy.

 

This tone also makes it a bit of a mainstream outlier: ‘Conan’ had pseudo-seriousness and fantasy fun, and ‘Andrei Rublev’ had existential humourlessness and sublime artiness; but ‘The Northman’ falls somewhere in-between, so that one moment you’re enjoying the Defoe cameo and ‘let’s be a dog’ rituals, and the next you are stunned by a brutal one-shot village massacre which can’t help but remind of the similar unbearable sequence in ‘Come and See’. It’s a big-budget gung-ho action-art film with solemn interests. It is perhaps the same feel that puts off punters from Denis Villeneuve.

 

Starting with a growled narration that would put ‘The Batman’ to shame, ‘The Northman’ offers up an everything-all-at-once splash, like a fevered painting of a historical battle, anchored by the same source that inspired Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’. If ‘The Witch’ and ‘The Lighthouse’ showed what Eggers could do on low budgets, this Viking epic sees him glorying in and using this budget for all it’s worth, as if he knows that he many never get such a chance again. It focuses on the beefed-up, primal wounded animal performance from Skarsgård as Amleth, frightening as a Beserker. His adored father, the King (Ethan Hawke), murdered by his uncle, who then marries his mother. All but orphaned, Amleth loses himself in Beserker rages, which we see in a stunning tracking shot of a terrifying Viking raid on an unsuspecting Slavic town. He is then reminded by casual post-pillaging gossip and a Björk vision of his vow to avenge his father. The ever-popular revenge narrative goes full-ahead, peppered with a little magic-realism and fantasy portentousness and ending up at the edge of a volcano.

But there is no deep slavish dedication to machismo here: the violence may start as exhilarating camerawork, but it’s horror. Amleth’s mission of vengeance brings nothing but ugly truths and betrayals, plunging towards that showdown by magma that doesn’t truly possess the catharsis that revenge is meant to bring.

 

Perhaps this dour, existentialist tone is why David Stratton calls it “surprisingly dreary”? Filmspotting feels the need to ask, “does the director’s new Viking revenge epic add up to anything but a bloody good time?” So which is it: drearily reflective or rip-roaring mindlessness? That Eggers delivers the pleasures from both ends without losing balance is ‘The Northman’s overall artistic success. Fun, furious fantasy and packed with a seriousness approach to theme and detail that will reward multiple watches. It’s epic, pretty, a bit crazy, a bit lost in its own detail and excess.

Playground - Un Monde

Playground

Un monde

 

Director – Laura Wandel

Writer – Laura Wandel

2021, Belgium

Stars – Maya Vanderbeque, Günter Duret, Lena Girard Voss

 

Laura Wandal’s camera is only really interested in the faces and reactions of our two young protagonists and never strays, only occasionally taking in the faces of others. We first meet sister and brother Nora and Abel in a fraught embrace as this is Nora’s first day at the school and she’s very nervous. And that’s the poster.

 

What follows is a back-and-forth, up-and-down rotations of the bullying that comes between the siblings that comes to define their lives as they try to negotiate their place in this world. Watching Nora (Maya Vanderbeque) build in confidence and find friends is warming, but that too comes with pitfalls and snidey remarks – more bullying.  It’s a short film and just as anxiety-inducing and gruelling as ‘Uncut Gems’, but without the fun. It’s spare, direct and acutely focused even as it is loose enough to allow the naturalism and, therefore, vulnerability of the young actors to reach through to audience empathy.

 

And it is even more enraging for the recognisable truths it portrays, a clear-eyed portrayal of playground and classroom politics for anyone that’s been the recipient. Its protagonists are just youngsters trying to survive in a world of cruelty, whether that’s outright physical violence or micro-aggressions. The adults are mostly helpless in this battlefield. Indeed, one vivid moment is when a beloved teacher admits that sometimes adults don’t know what to do. There are no solutions here, because there aren’t, but the representation goes straight to Roger Ebert’s statement that cinema is an empathy machine. A kind of 'Eighth Grade' where consolation is hard to come by. It’s the kind of social minefield that will lead to adult contexts such as ‘The Assistant’.

 

James Lattimer* feels that the naturalism and the story are not fully reconciled – the contrivances of aesthetic and narrative – and attributes this to being a debut feature. But most doubts are likely to be overwhelmed by the visceral reaction the film provokes. It’s a little heartbreaker which portrays the kind of difficulties of socialising that any sensitive person will recognise.    

 

·       * James Lattimer ‘Playground’ review, ‘Sight & Sound’ May 2022. Vol. 32 issue 4, pg 78

The Devil Commands

 

The Devil Commands

Director - Edward Dmytryk

Writers – Robert Hardy Andrews (screenplay), Milton Gunzburg(screenplay), William Sloane(novel "The Edge of Running Water")

1941, USA

Stars –  Boris Karloff, Anne Revere, Amanda Duff

 

Perhaps you can’t go wrong with a black-and-white shot of a “haunted” house in a storm with a portentous opening narration, but the mood is immediately set to maximum Gothic pleasure.  It’s the kind with the feel of ‘Rebecca’, and as with all good Gothics, the storms happen at the correct moments.

Slightly mixed-up from William Sloane’s novel ‘The Edge of Running Water’, this has some nice black-and-white imagery – the séance of corpses in diving suits is quite unforgettable – and some hilarious science-y stuff with equally madcap/entertaining experiments and equipment as a main source of enjoyment. And, of course, Karloff’s central performance to ground it all. In fact, all the older actors give their thin roles more colour than perhaps warranted; and although Karloff rules, it’s Anne Revere that steals the show as the mercenary sham medium.

The mash-up of science and supernatural, but without the influence of religion (the title means nothing), is notable and promising, but although there’s the sense that the execution is all a step above the script, it never really delves deep into this mad doc’s delusion and what he might be touching on. But it’s short and entertaining in an old-school gothic-horror manner.

linktree