Annihilation is an all female-led science fiction film about guilt, biology, and the human tendency for self-destruction. So I guess its no wonder Paramount dumped it on Netflix after loosing sleep over its box-office appeal.
It copped some controversy after being caught up in a battle between the studio and director Alex Garland (Ex Machina) for being “too intellectual.” While financially the studio’s fears were confirmed, visually its damn lucky they didn’t water it down. This is a film with a cool plot and some downright lush visuals.
Natalie Portman is Lena, a cellular biology professor who is recruited along with four others to study a quarantine zone in a swampy corner of America called The Shimmer. Lena’s reasons for accepting the mission are more personal than scientific: her military husband is the only person to enter The Shimmer and come out alive. You just know this is going to be a twofold journey: a trek through an alien landscape, and the dark emotional landscape of the protagonist.
The first scene we’re given after entering The Shimmer is the inside of a tent which feels like an odd and underwhelming decision by the director. But when Lena emerges from the tent and announces she remembers nothing since passing through the shimmery wall, it feels like the perfect way to introduce this strange new world.
Without giving too much away, something is seriously not right within The Shimmer. As the scientists begin to join the dots, the film shifts gears into “thriller” mode. But don’t get too excited; while there are some excellent tension-filled scenes – one in particular involving a bear-creature that echoes screams of agony from its latest victim – Annihilation never crosses fully into the horror genre. It’s an enjoyable ride, but nothing to write home about.
It’s the ending that’s the kicker. Garland tackles some complex conceptual territory (at least for this High School Science flunker) that will probably require a debrief with a mate, or at the very least a quick Google. Up until this point Annihilation was lingering dangerously close to being mediocre, but the last few scenes cement it as a Sci-Fi classic.
The Diagnosis: So is it as amazing as you’ve heard? Probably not. Should you see it? Absolutely.
Veronica. Went into this film after reading articles about people who couldn’t sit through the whole thing.
Too scary. Too terrifying. Based on a true story. Too real. Mummy hold my hand… that kind of thing.
So, maybe I’m the exception. Maybe I watch too many horror films and I’ve become immune to the horrors of a Ouija bored (slightly concerning).
However, I was no where near having to switch it off. Far from it. Veronica had me glued to the screen from start to finish. It’s what horror film dreams are made of.
I’d run off into the sunset with this film if I could. Finally, a horror to arrest the recent run of iffy films on Netflix. Your horror film prayers have been answered.
The Spanish horror directed by Paco Plaza ([rec])is set in 1991 Madrid. Sandra Escacena gives an eerily intense performance as Veronica, a 15-year-old schoolgirl who cares for her siblings while her mother works round the clock at a local café.
Veronica rounds up a few pals for a Ouja board sesh during a solar eclipse in hope of contacting her late father. Then, things go haywire. DUN DUN DUNN.
It’s not an original story. It’s conjuring-ish, exorcism-esque you get the idea.
However, Veronica is a thematic patchwork. An exploration of the inner landscape of a teenager who has lost her father and has had to grow up all too quickly.
She is pulled and pushed by different forces throughout the film, not only by the spirit haunting her but also the fatigue and parental solitude forced upon her by her mother.
The demon acts as a specter for unwanted maturity. Her innocence and stunted growth are highlighted when we discover that Veronica is yet to have her first period. This symbolism is carried throughout in various scare-rific ways.
In one of the most chilling scenes in the film, Veronica imagines herself being eaten alive by her brothers and sisters.
A terrifying metaphor for how working class families had to disassemble in order to function.
Good luck getting that creepy image out your head for the next three days. Opt for vegetarian snacks.
The cinematography in Veronica is beautiful. Plaza and his team stay away from the stark, realist lighting of most modern horror films.
The lighting gives us a phantasmal mix of the surreal and reality. I find films are more chilling when they feel real. Veronica feels real.
Its in Spanish too, how real can you get? Plaza has hit the nail on the head with highlighting that Veronica is a true story.
The Diagnosis:
See? Horror films aren’t always small budgets and cheap scares. Veronica is certainly not profound or ground breaking but its nice to know that some good old fashioned metaphors lurk beneath. Veronica has meat on its bones.
A thick Swedish forest looms ahead; dark and foreboding. Four hikers on a boy’s trip decide to cut through it, veering off the path, to get help for their injured mate. Spoiler: this turns out to be a very bad idea. Like the promotional tagline warned; they should have gone to Vegas.
The Ritual is based on the novel by Adam Nevill. It’s the sort of book that plants deep roots into your head that won’t let go. The sort of book that makes you think; “someone should really make this into a film.”
And someone did.
Director David Bruckner (V/H/S) does a killer job creating a genre film of the ancient-Nordic-folk-horror variety. He excels at creating glimpses of things that may or may not be there, unseen things darting between the branches. You’ll find yourself nervously squinting at a wall of trees along with the protagonist.
At first, the bad omens occur in the form of a gutted deer dangling from a tree, then come creepy carvings and a Wicker-Man style twig effigy. But these are nothing compared to the true evil lurking deeper into the shadows.
As the intensity of their situation increases, the already rocky relationship between the men becomes more and more strained. They panic and lose their grip on reality, while we the audience clap our hands in glee from the sheer horror of it all.
You almost don’t want to know what’s stalking them; there’s a wonderful sense of building dread that gets somewhat tarnished when the cause of their distress is finally revealed. This is where the film loses its footing, and the conclusion won’t knock your socks off either.
The Diagnosis:
Not every genre film has to be ‘clever.’ The Ritual proves that when done well, there’s nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned, straight-up scary story.
Back in the 90’s there were four TV series you could argue were the flagship shows of that decade.
One was an animated cartoon that (at the time of writing) is still going (although not for much longer if rumours are to be believed). Another two were 4-walled sitcoms set in New York that shared a universe via a 3rd sitcom called Mad About You.
But the 4th was something else. It was about two FBI agents “banished” to a basement chapter of the Bureau called the X-Files. In one of the episodes the male lead talks to the female lead about a real-life case called The Mad Bomber.
Long story short – from 1940 to 1956 George Metesky blew up shit at random locations in New York using homemade bombs. Catching him was next to impossible using traditional forensic techniques, so as a hail-mary cops consulted a criminal psychiatrist.
After analysing the crime scene photos and the taunting letters Metesky had sent to the authorities, the psychiatrist painted a detailed portrait of the sort of man the “Mad Bomber” was.
It encompassed his personality traits, his age, build, even his nationality. It even went so far as to say Metesky was likely a virgin, had an Oedipus complex and should they catch him: “He’ll be wearing a double-breasted suit, buttoned”.
What this psychiatrist had done was create one of the world’s first criminal profiles. And yes, it did eventually lead to Metesky’s arrest. Legend has it he answered the door in his P.J.’s, but when the cops told him to get dressed, guess what kind of outfit he put on…?
So, what does this all have to do with Netflix’s Mindhunter?
Well in the mid 90’s I found myself wandering through a bookstore on George Street when, for some reason, this thick paperback leaped out at me. It was black with silver lettering and it was titled Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit. I still have it. It was about a relatively new investigative technique called forensic profiling – developed throughout the late 70’s and 80’s. Only now it was about to hit the zeitgeist, and reading about it seemed a great way to load up on what (at the very least) would be an awesome dinner party conversation starter. (This was pre-Wikipedia don’t forget).
So, I bought the book and devoured it cover-to-cover. It cites the story of Metesky and his capture (so it wasn’t just a flight of fancy from Mulder…) before detailing the career of former real-life FBI agent John E. Douglas, and his partner Robert Ressler.
In the 70’s they hit upon the idea to interview notorious and incarcerated serial killers back when the term serial killer had yet to be coined. Initially it was to try and get a sense of the senseless nature of their crimes, but in doing so they found they were unearthing patterns and “reasons of logic” that lay within the world of psychological motivation (as opposed to traditional motivation – eg: I need money, this person has money, I’m going to kill this person to get their money).
This new investigative tool was the stuff of Hollywood dreams. To be able to predict what sort of car a vicious killer drives? What sort of house he lives in? What type of watch he wears and on what wrist? It was Sherlock Holmes but sexier – more mysterious, because it was the “psychic TV detective” come to life!
And I knew about this miraculous thing before all my friends. That is…until about a year or so later when Hollywood (not for the last time) shat on my parade by releasing Millennium and Profiler – two TV series that centred around, you guessed it, a criminal profiler.
My book had gone mainstream. Nowadays the lexicon of profiling is so common, you can’t throw a letter at the various NCIS, CSI’s and SVU’s without it being raised with the general assumption that EVERYONE in the audience knows what you’re talking about.
But back then, it was magic. And the magic of Mindhunter the TV series is that it takes place at a time when profiling can be sexy again. Ie: The time of its birth.
For it is a very dramatized recreation of my black & silver book. Set in the 70’s it follows a young Special Agent Holden Ford (effectively Douglas in this universe) and an older pro Bill Tench (Ressler) as they go about conducting their earliest interviews. They do this very much on their own time amid scepticism & resistance from their fellow agents.
As a series it dips into real life cases & characters when it needs to – it’s portrayal of their very first interviewee Edmund Kemper is both chilling and chillingly accurate in regards to the person I had painted inside my head. To see Ed “come to life” after all these years is a sensation I can’t begin to describe.
Yet other elements – usually to do with the home lives of the two leads – are the stuff of typical TV drama. As a series its rhythm is hard to describe. It’s not a serial killer-of-the-week cop show by any stretch, yet it’s not a straight up dramatization of “real-life events” with all the oblique plotlines that can go with such a story.
What it certainly is, is compelling. Well set up for a 2nd season, you will be skipping the end credits big time to get to the next episode.
As a Douglas avatar, Ford – played by Jonathan Groff – will go through an interesting evolution in subsequent years (should the series go beyond 2) mainly because when profiling entered the world of popular media both Douglas and Ressler (by all accounts) had a huge falling out over credit.
Undoubtedly Mindhunter the book is a biography that very much downplays Ressler’s involvement, as it’s told through Douglas’s eyes. And by all accounts Douglas himself has no problem being Hollywood-ised in multiple ways – eg: he has been cited as the inspiration behind Silence of the Lamb’s Jack Crawford, as well as Criminals Minds’ Jason Gideon AND David Rossi.
Yet in the land of the internet – passionate advocates for both men often fall in the “either/or” category. Very much like how a lot of young Australian kids fell into “You’re either a Ford man or a Holden man. You can’t be both. One car is shit, the other is the real deal”.
It is this duality in fact that caused the producers to name Douglas’s character Holden Ford.
The series is also co-produced by Charlize Theron and David Fincher.
Also, I completely made up that bit about Holden’s name. I have no idea why they chose it.
Prognosis:
Series 2 will be just as good if not better than series 1. But it’ll jump the shark by series 3.
