The People Under the Stairs

 The People Under the Stairs

Writer & Director ~ Wes Craven

1991, USA

Stars ~ Brandon Quintin Adams, Everett McGill, Wendy Robie

An oddity that’s tonally all-over-the-place, which isn’t unusual for Craven. Having enticed the viewer in with the promise of a sinister population under the house (they look like … zombies? Mutants?), there’s the odd mash-up of fairy-tale-meets-urban-realism. Our protagonist is a young black boy, “Fool”, not stereotypically streetwise but convinced to commit crime for the good of his family. It’s mentioned in the documentary ‘Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror’ that the fact that this hero was a black kid was a key moment for some viewers not used to seeing themselves portrayed on screen – and for this, the kind of territory we’re more used to seeing post-Jordan Peele, Craven is to be commended.* And Craven’s committed too: the villains are grotesque white landlords who have a room full of money like Scrooge McDuck, are greedy for greed’s sake, and kidnap people for kinks.

To this end, Everett McGill and Wendy Robie ham it up and then some as if they’re finally being let off the hook after being an odd couple in ‘Twin Peaks’, which wasn’t so straight to begin with. Ving Rhames comes on like a proto-Juan from ‘Moonlight’. All the way through, Brandon Quintin Adams as “Fool” is the endearing, sensible, resourceful voice running through the walls of this unhinged urban fairy-tale. There’s a queasy rollercoaster of slapstick, the genuinely perverse, implications of horrific abuse next to unhelpfully coarse use of gimp suits (they aren’t synonymous), righteous social awareness, both sympathetic and cartoonish characterisation, etc etc. Quite often, you may wonder where you are, and it’s full of red herrings (not least the title). But like the geography of the house, Craven isn’t particularly interested in pinning things down but rather creating a funhouse of genre moods where his empathies for the disenfranchised provides the peg to hang it all from. It’s uneven, doesn’t work as much as it does, of its time in genre-feel as much as it’s ahead of its time in its sociological awareness, and ultimately an intriguing little oddity.

·         * Indeed, “[Jordan Peele] tells the interviewer that seeing a young Black protagonist was rare and almost unheard of. As a result, it positively impacted the representation of Black people in horror. Fool does not follow troupes, he does not die first, he is not the sacrificial Black character, and he proves successful by the movie's end.”  

 

Malignant

Malignant

Director ~ James Wan

Writers ~ James Wan, Ingrid Bisu, Akela Cooper

2021, USA-China

Stars ~ Annabelle Wallis, Maddie Hasson, George Young

I suppose there is camp value, but right from the off there is neglible acting and dialogue, and after the credits, we get set-pieces that haven’t earnt any of our intellectual or emotional investment. It’s slick with the camerawork overcompensating for the rudimentary horror shenanigans. A pleasingly showy overhead shot of our protagonist running through the house, but which leads to nothing; giallo homages; random Roxy Music; wafer-thin characters and dialogue; a fairly engrossing/bonkers chase that owes more to superhero physicality; and then ….

 

Hahaha! Well, it’s one of those films where the craziness of the last act makes up for all the underwhelment that preceded. It’s that last act that means everything and it’s likely, if you’re a horror fan, that you’ll be grinning at the audacity. For this alone, it’s the most satisfied and least insulted I’ve been by a James Wan film since ‘Saw’ (his style is too pantomime for my taste). Of course, it doesn’t make a lick of sense, it’s all resolved with weak speechifying and sentimentality, and it's not particularly good, but by then the pleasure has been had. 

Talk to Me

Directors -  Danny Philippou & Michael Philippou

Writers - Danny Philippou, Bill Hinzman, Daley Pearson

2022, Australia

Stars - Ari McCarthy, Hamish Phillips, Kit Erhart-Bruce

 

With a strong one-take opening set-up and a decent horror premise, ‘Talk to Me’ soon becomes predicated upon the idiocy of young adults. Once they learn that the porcelain hand they touch and incant to will grant them temporary possession by the dead, they treat this as a party trick for yucks and vids (vids automatically dismissed as “fake”). So although we are meant to empathise with Mia (Sophia Wilde), she’s a bit of an asshole… well, she’s young. And is it her grief over her dead mother that makes her more a target for predatory spirits? This might be seen as meanness and as the territory of horror, and certainly the whole film plays out like a manifestation of her isolation and persecution complex, but there’s a decided lack of self-awareness to the film to its own ramifications. The most direct victims are casualties of Mia inability to resolve her grief, so this theme is very present.

Indeed, the supernatural rules appear a little random when it seems to have side-effects for a few but not for others. What about the apparent Christian boyfriend that soon gets swept up and plays along with dabbling with the Dark Arts despite manifestly positive results? It’s an opportunity the film just sidesteps. Are you more susceptible the younger you are? Yes, it’s another horror that could benefit from a little more discipline and more texture to character. For example: Mia's family trauma is central, but her father is just a placemat.

The tone is not dissimilar to ‘Smile’ with duplicitous supernatural forces, failing reality and issues of mental health, and although that film was often scruffy, it owned more realised characters and genuine unease. As ‘Talk to Me’ meanders to martyrising Mia and to a logical conclusion (although the audience I saw it with did laugh), the cruellest stuff is saved for the least deserving (yeah, he won’t recover from that) in a film not self-aware enough to address its themes of peer pressure, or unresolved grief, or youth’s trivialising of death – Death, which is seemingly a devilish tricker that wants to con you into murder. It goes for the downer ending currently in vogue, but ‘Talk to Me’ is too superficial to touch the disturbing horror of injustice, leaving the hand still out there for potential franchise and improvement.

Smoking Causes Coughing - Fumer fait tousser

Smoking Causes Coughing

Fumer fait tousser

Writer & Director – Quentin Dupieux

2022, France

Stars – Gilles Lellouche, Vincent Lacoste, Anaïs Demoustier

Dupieux films often start with the WTF? element upon realising what the premise is, followed by a steady run of amusement as you settle into the surreal humour. ‘Smoking Causes Coughing’ – which is, alone, a perverse title for a Super Sentai parody – has that and digressions aplenty, being somewhat a portmanteau. These smaller stories are great too. If Dupieux’s last film, ‘Incredible But True’, introduced some genuine human frailty into his irreverence and surrealist farce, just as ‘Deerskin’ was off-beatly disturbing, ‘Smoking’ gives free reign to his silliness and non sequiturs. Suicidal robot team member? A larder supermarket? Sleeping in hero helmets? A grotesque puppet-sensei, the kind found in low budget superhero series for kids, but one that turns all the women on? But we are talking a superhero team ridiculously based upon smoking, although it doesn’t quite fully satirise branding.

And yet with one tale shows that Dupieux can’t help tweaking slashers (ref. ‘Rubber’ and ‘Deerskin’) and satirising the genre (in one of the film’s best gags, one character can’t help selfy-ing even when confronted with a horror scenario and would rather argue her right to do so than act in the interest of survival). And the barracuda… well. Dare it be said that this quietly distinctive-divisive director is finding a way for his absurdist schtick to nudge the commercial? If ‘Incredible But True’ had existential concerns about the self, ‘Smoking Causes Coughing’ goes for the scatological comedy, punctuated by horror gross-outs. It never adds up to much, but never has Dupieux’s silliness been so digressive, appealing, consistent, and not just amusing and clever but funny.