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Posted on August 18, 2018

Down a Dark Hall: Female Gothic and ‘The End of Men’

Dawn Keetley

Down a Dark Hall is directed by Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Cortés who directed the critically-acclaimed Buried (2010). The screenplay is written by Michael Goldbach and Chris Sparling and based on the 1974 novel by the young adult author Lois Duncan (who also wrote, among others, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Killing Mr. Griffin).

In a plot reminiscent of The Craft (1996) or American Horror Story’s third season, “Coven” (2013-14), Down a Dark Hall centers on five girls with troubled pasts who arrive at Blackwood Boarding School, sent their by their parents as a kind of last resort. They are the only five students in a vast isolated mansion presided over by the mysterious Madame Duret (Uma Thurman), who soon makes it clear that the girls have special abilities that she intends to foster. And, indeed, the girls soon display talents they didn’t know they had. Protagonist Kit (AnnaSophia Robb) blossoms into a master piano player; Ashley (Taylor Russell) starts writing brilliant poetry; Sierra (Rosie Day) paints captivating landscapes; and Izzy (Isabelle Fuhrman) transforms into a math genius. Their new abilities come with a price, however, as the girls get sicker and strange figures start haunting the long dark halls of Blackwood.

Posted on August 11, 2018

Providence: The Shadow over Lovecraft

Guest Post

How two theatre makers brought the worlds of HP Lovecraft to life in their play Providence: The Shadow over Lovecraft, now playing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe until August 25, 2018.

“You know…” Dominic Allen looks up from his phone at me and narrows his eyes, “You kind of look like him.”

We’re sitting in the outdoor bar of one of the larger venues during last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It’s August in Scotland and the weather is doing its best to imitate a warm sunny day. We’re discussing the works and mythos of one of our favourite horror authors but it wasn’t until this moment that we sought to learn a bit about his actual life by reading up about him on Wikipedia. I gingerly take the phone from his hands and stare at a thin face, not unattractive but with a rather large forehead, he’s dressed smartly in a suit and tie and I can’t help but find some resemblance between our large, somewhat intense, eyes.

“His chin is bigger than mine.” I say as I hand the phone back.

“Yeah but you’re both tall, blonde… I’m just saying.” Dominic, my friend of over 10 years, is getting that creative glint in his eye that occurs when he’s about to suggest something huge:

“We should make a show.”

A chance to work with one of the most talented and hilarious people I know, playing the man who practically INVENTED the modern horror genre… How could I say no?

Posted on August 4, 2018

Fallen Kingdom and Empathy for Dinosaurs

Guest Post

Nothing will ever be Jurassic Park. In an interview for Fallen Kingdom, executive producer Steven Spielberg recalls his experience directing the franchise-opener explaining, “the moment that brought this home for me as a filmmaker was when the T. Rex started to attack two modern Ford Explorers, and you saw the modern world and you saw the prehistoric world meeting up 65 million years later. To me, that’s when I really felt we had captured lightning in a bottle.” That sensation, what Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) evokes when she asks Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), “Do you remember the first time you saw a dinosaur…it’s like, a miracle. You read about them in books. You see the bones in museums. But you don’t really believe it,” cannot be replicated.

Fortunately, that is not what Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) is attempting to do. Rather, the film evokes the memory of those emotions, via visual callbacks and recurring characters, both human and non, to drive J. A. Bayona’s purpose—empathy. The director insists, “It’s not about people rescuing people anymore; it’s about people rescuing dinosaurs. The whole movie’s about empathy. An empathy toward the dinosaurs.” This objective is simple, and Fallen Kingdom excels at simplicity—in jump scares, with Blue, demonstrating the dangers of commodifying life. However, the questions the film raises are inherently complex, and, though fun, Fallen Kingdom sometimes finds itself lost in its own complexity.

Posted on July 28, 2018

Our House: Great Characters, Unoriginal Story

Dawn Keetley

Our House is the feature-length directorial debut of Anthony Scott Burns, who also directed the excellent “Father’s Day” segment of Holidays (2016), reviewed here. Nathan Parker wrote the screenplay, based on a 2010 film, Ghost from the Machine, written by Matt Osterman.

Our House is set in a time that evokes the 80s (there’s an interesting ambiguity about time that resembles what David Robert Mitchell did in 2014’s It Follows). Our House centers on genius college student, Ethan (Thomas Mann) who is obsessed with creating a machine that forges a kind of wireless network of electricity (how it works exactly was a bit obscure). His scientific obsession, in time-honored fashion (going back as far as Frankenstein), causes him to neglect his family—something he soon lives to regret when his parents are killed in a car accident. In the wake of his parents’ death, Ethan must relinquish college and his fledgling career as an inventor to get a job, drive a minivan, and take care of his two younger siblings—Matt (Percy Hynes White) and Becca (Kate Moyer). As the months struggle by, Ethan is eventually lured back to his project, and it’s not long before he discovers that the device animates the dead—and not only the recent or the happy dead. Ethan unwittingly unleashes darker spirits that start to prey on his family and his neighbor, so he must, again, give up science and devote himself to protecting his family.

Posted on July 24, 2018

God’s Work: Witchfinder General and the abuse of power

Guest Post

Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General (1968), or The Conqueror Worm in the US, sits slightly at odds with other seminal Folk Horror texts The Blood on Satan’s Claw (Piers Haggard, 1971) and The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973). Despite similarly engaging with belief systems and Britain’s rural traditions it’s a more overtly political film, less straight horror, in which paganism is an excuse for the human horrors in the film rather than the cause of them. Indeed, almost no one in Witchfinder General believes in anything except advancing their own interests.

A low budget film produced by Tigon, Witchfinder General exists in several different versions (cut for violence in the UK; with additional voice over work in the US in an attempt to link the film to Corman’s Poe cycle; with extra nudity in Germany), it’s a little rough and ready but makes good use of the East Anglian locations and draws out an excellent low key performance from Vincent Price at odds with much of his work in the genre.