Review for "Automata"

I recently wrote a review for Way Too Indie about the Antonio Banderas-led sci-fi film Automata, an interesting and thoughtful but flawed movie. Here is an excerpt:

"Sci-fi thriller Automata’s obvious parallel – so obvious that it has dominated press publicity — is with I, Robot, both the film and the Isaac Asimov novel it was adapted from. But it is instructive to consider where the two works deviate. Automata is a flawed film, but it succeeds – or, at least, tries to succeed – in a number of places where the I, Robot film fails significantly."

My Month of Horror Movies

It being October once again means that it is time once more to embrace the weird, wonderful little niche of genre films that is horror movies. And as an unapologetic fan of horror movies, I take great pleasure in having a reasonable excuse to embrace watching as many as I possibly can.

I plan to spread my journey far and wide, both in terms of the types of horror and the years of release. I want this to be a full-bodied experience of spine-tingling.

Admittedly I began this enterprise two days late into the potential game. But, as you’ll surely soon see, that will be made up for in the days ahead as I’m a compulsive, avid watcher of movies.

There was no real method to the madness here. Entries get progressively longer, in some instances, as I moved along. I didn't begin this anticipating writing such lengthy entries, but rather merely brief check-ins on my progress. But as I moved along the project shifted into something distinctively different. I regret not having written more on earlier entries (There is far, far more to be written about some of these films, and they deserve better, in hindsight).

Keep checking this post out if this interests you, as I will be updating it regularly. 

Oct. 3rd - Slugs (1987): This truly awful, dismally low budget movie is laughably bad, and sometimes just plain bad. This begins with its strange, impractical titular movie monster, and spreads from there to all sorts of other stilted, dull and questionable choices — in dialogue, in casting, in music. There are, at least, some good, unintentional, laughs early on. But it quickly becomes, well, sluggish.

Oct. 4th - The Stepfather (1987): Having started this with a singularly terrible film, it was nice to follow it up with this cult horror gem. The Stepfather is far from subtle, but its central theme about the universal fears of having a new step-parent is a strong, resonant one in spite of this -- as is the critique of Reaganism's reductive, fatal idealism. It helps that Terry O’Quinn as said step-father is fantastic. Joseph Ruben’s direction is also rather effective. It’s economical and fleet, and he brings great tension to the film’s action.

Jug Face (2013): While watching Jug Face, an uneven but interesting rustic horror film, I kept having the same thought: this is Harlan County, U.S.A.: Horror Edition. Jug Face is at its best when it simply soaks up some local color of an unspecified patch of Midwestern rural backwoods. Any time it deviates to try to have overly familiar paranormal freakiness happen -- rather than real strangeness that comes from having a culture so insulated from the rest of society -- it loses much of its tension as well as its charm. The film's production design is so specific and detailed in building up this world that it almost feels a little disappointing that some by-the-books horror wins the day.

Oct. 5th - The Brood (1979): The masterful director David Cronenberg's terrific early horror film The Brood has long been read as metaphor for divorce. But Cronenberg, like the best genre filmmakers (and it should be said that Cronenberg is, in deed, one of the best), is also interested in creating something exciting and disturbing, and he crafts a few stellar horror sequences where he really gets under your skin. Cronenberg was working on a modest budget that is apparent throughout. But Cronenberg plays that to his advantage, building up suspense, emphasizing the bleakness of the Toronto winter landscape, and rounding out the story with a feeling of psychological fullness. And because he's sneaking through such compelling themes into a gory little chiller, it makes the buckets of blood and his signature body horror feel like so much more than unsettling shocks. Cronenberg, as always, is reaching for something deeper and harder to shake.

The ABCs of Death (2012): Owing to its anthology nature, ABCs of Death is wildly uneven. While that's reservedly understandable for the film's structural conceit, it doesn't make the experience of the many horror shorts (26 in all: one for each letter of the alphabet, hence the title) any more satisfying. For one thing, far too many don't even feel like horror movies (flitting around in other genres or conventions entirely) -- and some barely qualify as stories. This isn't just due to experimentation though (although there are infrequent glimmers of that), but rather a pervasive feeling of off-putting weirdness that the film continually traffics in. Having brought together a lot of exceptional talent, it is a shame to see the film manage to do so little with them.

Oct. 6th - White Zombie (1932): Living in a post-Romero, Post-Walking Dead world makes it difficult to remember sometimes that the current conception of zombies is not what the word originally referred to. Zombies initially related to possession through voodoo and it was often associated with Haitian indigenous religious practices. Since so few movies have actually taken advantage of this, it makes White Zombie distinctive -- dead-eyed individuals whose humanity has been switched off has its own unique chilling effect -- which is good because so much else about its story is generic (although, to be fair -- and that's more than an understatement -- White Zombie's originality comes from being the progenitor of the zombie genre). There is some damsel in distress-ing that isn't necessarily bad but never feels entirely convincing; and that primarily exists as a center for some atmospheric sequences. Thankfully much of this cinematography is largely effective and creepy. The similarly set and shot Val Lewton produced I Walked With a Zombie had a comparable minimalist expressionism. Besides Lewton's low-budget films, White Zombie tracks with a parallel trend of German Expressionist-inflected Universal Monster movies, including Dracula, which shares Bela Lugosi in an even earlier utilization of his sinister suaveness and alluringly deadly eyes.

Oct. 7th - The Curse of Frankenstein (1957): The Curse of Frankenstein is a wickedly self-aware film. This is a film that knows that the viewer knows the tale of Victor Frankenstein and his mad science scheme to create new life, and then it proceeds to use our knowledge of this against us. The Curse of Frankenstein is playing around with familiar iconography, but it deceives us by deliberately playing up its artifice. This is initially a pretty campy movie -- in that Hammer Film way -- with sets that look like sets (the laboratory never for a second looks like an actual lab but rather a theatrical shorthand for a lab), and it is a film that doesn't take itself too seriously. It's just re-telling a familiar tale, after all. But it's also, quietly, slowly, subversively, a darker vision of the narrative. This comes from continually pushing back against the character of Frankenstein, who little by little compromises any remaining integrity and moral code in the name of science. Peter Cushing is excellent here, especially as Frankenstein becomes increasingly untethered from reality. Because, simply put, this version of Frankenstein is bat-shit insane -- without qualifications or room for redemption. But its a restrained madness -- at first anyway. Taking us back to the years leading up to making his infamous monster demonstrates how Victor's ambitions and obsessions ultimately drive him towards exponentially self-serving and unjustifiable ends. He's crazy and ultimately monstrous, but he's also desperately, pathetically human.

Oct. 8th: Halloween II (1981): There's nothing truly bad about Halloween II. Sure, in the broad-strokes of the storytelling there are some questionable, ill-advised choices (setting so much of the film at the hospital, for instance). But it still mostly works -- and yet, even more so, it just feels like it exists on the right side of being shrug-worthy. Because if anything does in Halloween II, it's that it's unremarkable. And that is a major strike against a follow-up to one of the best, most influential horror films ever made. That isn't to say that it's poorly made. Rick Rosenthal took over directing duties from John Carpenter, and he makes the most out of the narrative's limitations. Rosenthal makes great use of space and frames the action well, but eventually it becomes obvious that a ludicrous body count -- and even more ludicrous demises for said bodies -- is the most pertinent thing on the film's mind. Michael Myers as credible mean of inducing fears swiftly diminishes; he's more supernatural anomaly than brute-force human. It's a stylish slasher, and occasionally a pretty scary one, but unfortunately it's also very little else.

Oct. 9th - The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963): The films of Alfred Hitchcock are only a few steps removed from being horror movies, constantly threatening to spill over to out-and-out horror -- and in one classic, seminal instance, 1960's Psycho, embracing that storytelling mode entirely. We politely describe Hitchcock's films as "psychological thrillers" because his artistry has earned him status, but his thrillers are, admittedly, pretty lurid. Mario Bavo, who directed The Girl Who Knew Too Much, on the other hand, is another auteur who worked in disreputable genres and who was most certainly a maker of horror movies -- and ones that were most definitely lurid. But here Bavo borrows liberally from Hitchcock (just look at the film's title, a nod to one -- um, two -- of Hitchcock's best known films), and that turns the film into one that's straddling genre lines between thriller and horror. This was one of the earliest examples of the Italian horror genre the giallo, a florid foreign -- often more artistically interesting and ambitious -- counterpart to the slasher movie. While the Hitchcockian overtones are hard to miss, this is undeniably a Bavo film. For starters, the plot is fairly clunky and primarily an excuse for some great compositions and thrilling sequences -- that might be somewhat nonsensical given a second-thought. But Bavo is bringing real craft to his little exploitation work. Note the way Bavo plays around with black and white cinematography to create atmosphere and suggest unknown horrors. And take the feverish, baroque ending (or, rather, the one before the exceedingly dumb, dated coda): that's pure horror; madness consuming almost every major character in a not-entirely-logical but emotionally powerful way.

Oct. 10th - Shadow of the Vampire (2000): Shadow of the Vampire is a horror movie about a horror movie; one of the most important, distinguished entries to the horror genre, F. W. Murnau's Dracula-inspired Nosferatu. The film follows the production of Nosferatu, re-imagining it as a troubled one defined by real terrors on set that influenced what ended up on screen. Max Schreck's performance as the vampire Count Orlock is legendary and his is a such a creepy, memorable performance that it inspires that feeling: "What if he really were a vampire?" We laugh to ourselves; it's only a passing a feeling. It's absurd, right? E. Elias Merhige's film imagines a scenario where Schreck (played by Willem Dafoe) is in deed a vampire and Murnau (played by John Malkovich) has made a Faustian bargain, offering Schreck up the film's female lead in exchange for his star turn. Initially, this plays somewhat like a twisted, almost farcical joke. But then it begins to dawn on us just to what lengths Murnau is going in the name of artistry and authenticity. Shadow of the Vampire is meta, yes, and a dramatically clever tribute to a beloved film. But it slowly becomes every bit as unsettling as its source. There is humor to be found in this concept and Merhge hits upon it, but it is simply a way for him to begin digging into the chilling implications of his brilliant conceit.

Oct. 11th - The ABCs of Death 2 (2014): As I've written up a piece on this that I'll soon be posting (and which I'll link to soon), I'll just direct you to my thoughts from a few days ago on the first of these anthology films. They should suffice.

Stage Fright (2014): Part of me wants to believe that Stage Fright was intentionally meant to be bad. Much of its appeal stems from a parodic Wet Hot American Summer-like send-up of summer camp movies, like Meatballs and, this being horror, Sleepaway Camp (a lot of which are pretty bad and when it digs into them it is winningly funny and charming). There are even some jabs that seem aimed at the Jonas Brothers-Demi Lovato Disney Channel Original Movie vehicle Camp Rock and other sunny tween programming of its ilk. That is to say that Stage Fright attempts to marry two very different genres, slasher films and musical comedies, and the result is a tonal and narrative mess. No matter how much of its quality is intended to be low-grade, what is completely certain is that the horror elements are utter nonsense. There are hints of what Stage Fright would be if it were merely a broad comedy about adolescent awkwardness and the foibles of young theater companies and summer camps. I'm not sure that this other version would be good, but it would sure be a heck of a lot more amusing.

Oct. 12th - Vampyr (1932): Carl Theodore Dryer's 1932 vampire film Vampyr, in almost no way, acts like a vampire movie, or really any horror movie for that matter. It lacks genre elements and it plays more like a straight drama at times. It isn't interested in being scary -- not in any traditional manner, anyway. Dryer's emotionally flush austere directorial style would initially seem antithetical to crafting a horror movie, but it makes sense for Dryer's recurring pet themes: spirituality and death. Vampyr is less a film concerned with vampires (vampires don't actually appear) than what falling prey to demonic spirits suggests for pious Christians. The biggest underlying fear is about falling out of the grace of God and how easy that can happen to even the most devout individual. But prior to getting to that heavy thematic unloading, Dryer builds up a waking nightmare where reality and dream blur together until they feel like they are one and the same. This is a gorgeous film with exquisite cinematography by Rudolph Maté (who had previously worked with Dryer on the emotionally overwhelming The Passion of Joan of Arc). Dryer and Maté build up the first third of the film as a series of hypnotically dream-like tableaus filled with haunting, inventive black-and-white imagery; each flowing one into the next. Much of this is amplified by Dryer's choice to make most of the film play out like a silent film, which serves to accentuate the creepiness at hand. Dryer's trick is to keep things grounded while also building up a creeping sense of dread. Things feel like they are set in reality but strange, otherworldly happenings keep upsetting the balance. But the supernatural here is simply a battle between Heaven and Hell. Few things could be more frightening than getting caught in the middle of something like that. 

Oct. 13th - Phantom of the Paradise (1974): Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise is unlike any other movie. It is horror, and comedy, and a musical. It is Phantom of the Opera meets Faust meets the pointed, shambling cultural commentary of De Palma's Greetings. Yet none of that does justice to this trippy, absurd, deeply bizarre film. It taps into the anxieties of its era -- political assassinations, vast conspiracies, labyrinth organizations snuffing out individual rights, corporate corruption -- and then proceeds to filter them through De Palma's outrageous, gonzo direction. At no points does it truly make any sense (it's a fiery condemnation of the music industry and its dubious practices. But it's also a hallucinatory fever-dream). By the time the film reaches is its over-the-top ending, it has made so many plot contortions that it has effectively lobotomized any attempt at rationalizing it. The film is not functioning on narrative logic but rather on the emotional, gut truth of De Palma and his obsessions. Like De Palma's other early comedies, it is never meant to work on a macro scale but, in stead, from moment to moment. Phantom of the Paradise's saving grace -- in spite of its ferocious, defiant strangeness -- is that its satire is eviscerating and darkly comical, and its larger vision is also quite frightening once you begin considering its implications. Yes, this is self-consciously, preposterously wack-a-doo, but it fully embraces its singularly excessive phantasmagoria. It is a one-of-a-kind work only De Palma could have made.

Oct. 14th - From Beyond (1986): Stuart Gordon's From Beyond marries the sophistication of Lovecraftian horror with the bad taste of splattergore, and, well, it's just a god damn delight. I haven't really discussed the enjoyment I've gained from the films I've watched, but it bears mentioning for From Beyond because pleasure is one of the film's interests. Gordon is working in the vein of early 80's horror of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson's splatter films and David Cronenberg's body horror. Like these films, it pushes the limits of what an audience will comfortably tolerate -- either for discomfiting or hilarious effect. Every one of the major setpieces is not only entertaining but intentionally morbid, icky and sinister. Gordon plays these moments out with a delirious excess that is at once incredibly unsettling and yet comically absurd. Gordon begins his stories, like the excellent Re-Animator (also featuring the inimitable Jeffrey Combs), from gothic horror sensibilities but he digs deeper and he makes what would be subtext in that sort of horror (i.e. the Universal Monster movies) and turns it into nasty, blood-drenched text. But it is done with a deep level of affection for things that are supposedly in bad taste. Gordon clearly takes a great deal of enjoyment out of testing the limits of what he can acceptably get away with. From Beyond is gleefully transgressive, and this is perhaps no more apparent than its uncomfortably erotic moments (There is sexual subtext and recurring, blatant phallic imagery aplenty, and bondage is also key to one fantastic centerpiece sequence). Gordon keeps equating pleasure -- especially sexual pleasure -- with pain, which makes scenes that would already be strange and discomfiting all the more disconcerting. Yet Gordon always keeps things just on the right side of ludicrous absurdity. It isn't high art, by any means, but it is High Trash, and that's perhaps an even higher, more difficult honor.

Oct. 17th - Bad Milo (2013): There is a low-budget, kitschy charm to Bad Milo!, which purposely apes a style of terrible schlock circa the 1980's. The film's premise even suggests the type of dumb high concept premise seized upon to draw in a crowd as well as the hopes that a couple of lurid, bloody kills would make up for a lack of any actual compelling narrative. However, Bad Milo! does in fact have a pretty good story; it just tells it in the cinematic language of bad horror movies. Director Jacob Vaughn and his co-writer Benjamin Hayes put a sick comical spin on their junky premise, turning the rubber-faced creature that gives the film its title into a colon-dwelling id inside of Ken Marino's stomach. This is a dumb concept, but the film's commitment to its tacky aesthetic ensures that the film is aware of how juvenile and crude all of this is. There are some scatological jokes, yes, but there is also a surprising level of pathos, as the monster becomes a really good, if overly obvious, metaphor for the fears of parenthood.

Oct. 19th - The Seventh Victim (1943): The horror of producer Val Lewton's horror movies is a foundational text for how to build a scary horror movie. His films built up the fundamentals of how to make something -- anything really -- frightening. It sounds obvious now, but it is as simple as the notion of suggestion. Suggest that horrifying things are happening and the audience will fill in the gaps in their mind, and they will inevitably let their minds run wild with something far worse than anything you could put to film. Lewton took his cash-strapped productions and turned their modest budgets into a crucial asset. Just note the way Lewton, director Mark Robson, and cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca use light and shadow in The Seventh Victim. It makes it seem like something sinister and terrible is about to take place, and it creates an intoxicating feeling of dread. The Seventh Victim remains scary all these years later because Lewton's act of suggestion makes it timeless. There are no effects or too many production details to date it terribly so. In fact, The Seventh Victim's story becomes incredibly dark, in ways that may surprise modern audiences. Part of this is the patient build to the film's many reveals, and part of it is that building a film around deeply committed devil worshipers bent on murdering one of their own is still a very unsettling premise. But there are still other details that are considerably unnerving. For instance, they don't just want to kill this individual off but they want to force her to commit suicide. Then there is the structuring of the film's story, which essentially turns it into a film noir. The film is built around an investigation that slowly reveals an all consuming conspiracy. It's all hidden in the shadows, just out of sight. Nothing is more fear-inducing than that of the unknown.

The Fog (1980): John Carpenter's films are perfect examples of how to craft low-budget horror movies. Sure, Carpenter would get increasingly sizable budgets as his reputation grew, but, at heart, he has always been the same director who made Halloween. He ekes out a lot out of a little. He also takes premises that could be sort of dumb in the wrong hands and turns them into masterclass examples of tension -- and sustained entertainment of a Hawksian mindset (characters are defined through action and typically have a knack for down-to-earth, sharp wit). The Fog has a limited premise, but in Carpenter's hands it becomes a lean, efficient, highly atmospheric film. His films are economical and wonderfully shot, and Carpenter has a precision with the way he frames and shoots actions. Nowhere is this more apparent than how Carpenter utilizes the incoming fog and the eerie baddies that reside within. Carpenter may have made cultish genre movies but he had a classical sense of film-making. He knows that hinting at horrors is a much more powerful way of getting under the skin. The way he films the action is always careful to cut around the creatures inside the fog. We get just enough a sense of what they are to be thoroughly creeped out and convinced of the terrifying threat they present, but never so much that our imagination isn't on overdrive. It isn’t really in Carpenter’s wheelhouse to aim for something deep, but he makes up for this with plenty of smart filmmaking. His action pops; it’s thrilling and disturbing, and Dean Cundey’s cinematography has an eerie, ethereal beauty, fitting for the film's ghost-story narrative.

Dead Snow 2: Red Vs. Dead (2014): The original Dead Snow was a horror comedy. It had its scary moments, but its central concept, involving Nazi zombies, made certain that the film did not take itself entirely seriously. But the film's humor derived less from its ridiculous conceit and more from its willingness to really push the boundaries of the gore and violence on display. It shared an affinity with Dead Alive and Re-Animator, where the horror becomes so over-the-top that it becomes absurd, and, in turn, hilarious. Dead Snow 2 is left in a tricky position. It's a sequel to an already excessive film that essentially has no place to logically go. But go it does, and with a droll awareness of how crazy it is to be making a follow-up to an already fairly ludicrous movie. Dead Snow 2 barely makes a claim for the horror half of its predecessor's genetics; in stead, it aims almost entirely to be a comedy. The kills lack any restraint and consistently ignore any sense of good taste, and at nearly every turn the film amps everything up, bravely skidding into the absurdity and weirdness. Logic has no business sneaking its head into a film like this; when you start from a premise of Nazi zombies, plausibility loses all meaning, and therefore anything goes -- and that anything is frequently funny. The film is choppy in places (primarily in terms of pacing and plotting), but there is too much amusement to be found here to outright dismiss it.

Oct. 20th - The Masque of the Red Death (1964): Roger Corgman was the master of the exploitation movie. He could turn around any low budget movie with a salacious hook and make it into not only a competent, well-crafted work, but occasionally something quite good. A lot of what Corgman did would never pass as the stuff of genius, but he respected the filmmaking craft (which is why so many great directors would learn how to make films under him) and he knew how to turn trash into treasure. The Masque of the Red Death -- one of his Edgar Allen Poe adaptations -- is one of the more tame films of his, and one of the more respectable. This starts from its Gothic horror source, which gives it an air of reputability, and it extends to the faintly theatrical Vincent Price's fantastic lead turn as the monstrous Prince Prospero. But Corgman is nothing if not a person with a sick sense of humor, and he fills out the story with all sorts of weird, dark touches. Because what The Red Masque of Death really spins its stories out about is centered on a bunch of casually, caustically awful nobles. And while the film has a theatricality to it -- playing up the artificiality of its sets and performances to emphasize the underlying messages of death and faith, as well as to ensure staying on budget -- it is often subtle about reinforcing just how terrible these aristocrats are. It lets small moments stand in for a larger story of statewide corruption, immorality, and excess, and it (mostly) avoids overplaying them (that is until its final deliriously impressionistic moments where Corgman cuts loose). Corgman is able to get away with this because Price is so good and reliable in the role. Like Poe's story, the film finds its strongest moments in the divide between the haves and have-nots, and the wealthy's grotesque, wanton, orgiastic-displayed ignorance.

Oct. 21st - The Fall of the House of Usher (1928): To my mind, there is a certain bitter irony to the title of Jean Epstein's The Fall of of the House of Usher. The downfall of the titular house is long in progress when we first enter the film. We are witnessing the tail-end to the story of the Usher family history, and it is a sad, morbid one. Epstein builds his film around an old, oft-used story: a seemingly decent guy -- who's actually a flawed bastard -- through hubris and selfish actions causes the demise of his devout and faithful partner. (It's the kind of story that we just can't get enough of. One recent example is Terrence Malick's terrific The New World -- which also shares a love of long, lyrical passages that exist for their own sake. And this year's Gone Girl is an excellent upending of this type of narrative's fallacies). While this might be the film's plot, it is far from its primary interest. The film plays like an unending nightmare, and Epstein uses the freedom of his modest tale in order to come up with all sorts of inspired imagery that is both beautiful and highly unsettling. Epstein builds up a setting that is impeccably designed, reeking of moral and physical decay (Citizen Kane's Xanadu comes to mind; so much wealth and yet so much lack of fulfillment and misery). What really distinguishes House of Usher is that feeling of it being an experimental film -- it has a surrealist tinge to it and Luis Bunuel worked as an assistant director on the film -- and once you understand that that's what it's aiming for it makes a lot of its weirder and clunkier elements work. This is pure cinema; a cinema of experience, where it is best to shut down the part of your brain that nags and just let the film wash over you. Epstein keeps coming at the story from jagged, oblique angles that make the film all the more unnerving (There is so much raw, bleeding pain, guilt, resentment, and, of course, madness. It cuts like razors). This isn't to say the story at its core isn't notable, in of itself. In deed, it's somewhat horrifying once you consider it. Adapted from an Edgar Alan Poe story and preserving Poe's accumulating tonal dread, it acts as a reverse engineered Picture of Dorian Gray with Usher slowly murdering his wife in the name of an artistic vision (or does he?). Even with its pseudo-happy ending, The Fall of the House of Usher leaves us with that feeling that nothing will ever be set back to normal and whole again in this world.

Oct. 22nd - The Mummy (1932): Of all the Universal Monster movies, The Mummy has to be the one that least features its monster. There is a mummy, played wonderfully by monster-movie actor extraordinaire Boris Karloff, but he barely appears as the now-stereotypical vision of a mummy. Writer John L. Balderston actively creates a story that avoids playing up the usual toilet-paper wrapped zombie, and he does it by emphasizing American fascination with ancient Egyptian culture. There is a bit of fetishization of Egyptian culture to get towards these ends (this is a film, after all, that contrives a way to get lead actress Zita Johann into a skimpy, revealing, horribly-cliched Nubian princess outfit). One might describe this as Orientalism, but I'm not sure anyone involved on the production would have been aware of the questionable nature of a fair amount of this. The film was released only a decade after Howard Carter's discovery of King Tut's tomb, and the film is catering to the public's exoticized fascination with the "Far East" (Karloff's character even uses being from an "Eastern" culture at one point as an excuse). This does, however, open up opportunities for a story that is entirely unlike the rest of the Universal Monster oeuvre. There isn't any science run amok like Frankenstein and The Invisible Man and the motives of the Mummy are strikingly different from the similarly driven monsters of Dracula and The Wolf Man. There is room to believe these creatures could exist in the same universe -- as the studio would go on to suggest -- but Universal was wise to make all of these stories distinctive, not just carbon-copies with slightly different figures at their center. Ancient curses and complicated, highfalutin mythologies distinguish The Mummy even when it is resorting to a lot of the same expressionistic atmosphere and Victorian stateliness of other Universal Monster movies. While this is a fun, fleet and, yes, sometimes scary movie, it also is inflected with sadness brought on by Karloff. Karloff does so much excellent work with body language to convey a bone-deep sadness (Just look at those eyes of his. They are the saddest eyes ever). He's been on his quest so long that he's forgotten how to do anything else. That has always been what sets apart the Universal Monster movies from so many others that have tried similar storytelling. They are monsters, yes, but they also are all too human. They are tragic figures, monstrous yet relatable.

Oct. 23rd - Onibaba (1964): Onibaba is a distinctly Japanese production -- its pacing, its tone, its production design, even its big scares and the ideology driving them all strongly reinforce this. But it also has a Western feel in its sense of psychology, which, to put it in Western vernacular, would surely peak the interest of Sigmund Freud. There are two strands of horror underpinning Onibaba. One drives its narrative and one drives its ever present mood. Horror really is something that can appear in just about any genre (for instance, some of the most generic rom-coms feel more horrifying than many of the most mediocre horror movies). Technically the film is a war movie -- and also a melodrama -- but the film emphasizes the horrifying aspects of wartime. However, writer-director Kaneto Shindo isn't interested in the standard war movie story. Set during a civil war in the 14th century, Shindo sets his sights on the fringes of the battle where civilians find themselves indirectly (which is to say incredibly directly but without any explicit combat experiences) affected by the fighting. Desperation clings over the film: this is a film, in part, about debasing yourself in the name of survival. Nobuko Otowa and Jitsuko Yoshimura as a young woman and her mother-in-law have been forced to resort to murdering unsuspecting stragglers and deserters in order to steal their military equipment. Shindo's treatment of this is so causal and matter-of-fact that it can be easy to forget just how truly terrible this is. But Shindo means for us to understand that there is no other option for these circumstances; it's life or death every day. This isn't to say Shindo condones this behavior. Much of the production design and subtext of the film reinforces the feeling that this is taking place in a non-real, or rather beyond real, location. It's essentially purgatory. And Shindo is putting his characters to some sort of eternal/moral test. This brings us to where the primary horrors of the film come from: the mother-in-law doing everything in her power to prevent her former daughter-in-law from carrying on an affair with ex-soldier Hachi (Kei Satō). Her motivations are initially reasonable -- if entirely selfish -- but she slowly loses her grip on reality and earns the right to the English translation of the film: demon woman.

Oct. 24th - Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989): It should be said up front that I have never seen the film’s leading up to the eighth installment in the Friday the 13^th franchise. I have seen the original (which is underrated and actually fairly scary; with a great twist ending), but I have felt little need to visit the other film’s in the series, having heard they are pretty generic slashers. However, I made an exception for the gloriously titled eighth film in the series; a title that suggests the series would embrace the element of self-parody doubtless growing in the franchise. And occasionally Jason Takes Manhattan hints at being a bit more playful and satirical – and is quite funny and wonderful for it – but, on the whole, this film drags, as it gets bogged down in all sorts of terrible creative decisions (Why the hell are they on that boat for so, so, so long?). The film’s premise – Jason heads to Manhattan for some of his familiar killing spree -- suggests an embrace of the more comical and silly qualities of a long-in-the-tooth series. But it never materializes in the way it seems it ought to. And that’s just a shame; a really wasted opportunity.

Oct. 25th - Irréversible (2002): Irréversible is not for the faint of heart, to say the least. Most will not want to watch it, and I really can’t blame them. It is highly confrontational, and it rubs your face in some incredibly ugly things. More importantly, it seems to do this without purpose for about half of its run time. It is a problematic movie, but director Gaspar Noe has some meaningful things he is trying to say. However, it is really easy to miss them. After all, Irréversible is best remembered for its centerpiece scene: a nine-minute long rape scene, which is excruciatingly painful and uncomfortable to sit through. As it well should be. The scene is a response to so many revenge flicks that use rape as a catalyzing plot device (i.e. the steaming pile of garbage that is I Spit on Your Grave). Films, and really pop culture more broadly, too often use rape carelessly and thoughtlessly, cheaply deploying it for easy emotional manipulation. This comes at the expense of exploring the trauma of such a devastating experience, not to mention the larger culture of rape that allows for this to happen so frequently. Noe shoots the scene so that absolutely no enjoyment or pleasure will be derived from it. While the rest of the film is highly dynamic and stylistically adventurous (Noe’s camera is constantly swooping and spinning, leading to a great deal of disorientation), the rape scene is static and forces us to watch as the crime unfolds in all of its horrifying, disgusting detail. Not to read too much into it (or really much of the rest of the film), it feels like a response to the ignorant folks that shame and victimize – and objectify as well – women for these experiences. The first half of Irréversible, roughly everything leading up to this scene, doesn’t work nearly as well as the second half. The first half has all sorts of questionable elements -- excessive violence, casual homophobia, odious displays of masculinity – that don’t sit well at all, and Noe’s lack of commentary seems to suggest his tacit acceptance of the underlying values on display. But the second half -- less violent, more talkative and contemplative – initiates a conversation with that first half and revenge films more widely. This is far from perfect, but it becomes an incisive dissection of gender roles, masculinity, sex and sexuality, and societal expectations for men and women. The most crucial part of this is the way Noe utilizes this section to humanize Alex (Monica Bellucci), the rape victim. In this way, Noe is able to turn Alex from a plot device to a real person with opinions, beliefs and a sharp personality. Her agency is restored. So much of the film’s first half – and it should be said: the story is told in reverse -- finds Marcus (Vincent Cassel), Alex’s current boyfriend, and Pierre (Albert Dupontel), her ex and still close friend, hunting down the man responsible for the violence. But as we jump back, we see Noe criticizing this course of action and the men more generally. Noe’s attacks are initially aimed at the dumb macho Marcus, an easy enough task. But the even more invaluable critique is aimed at Pierre, a nebbish “nice guy” who is equally, if more subtly, awful. Again, it’s not a film for everyone, but for those who can stomach it, its horrors hold value. Sick, sick value.   

Why "New Girl" Remains So Enjoyable Even as Its Plot's Gone Wonky

 

Unlike those critics who felt New Girl declined a degree in quality between its second and third season, I never found the change in quality all that significant. To be sure, the back half of the second season was fantastic, charged as it was with Nick and Jess consummating their unspoken feelings. It’s unlikely the series will ever reclaim such a feeling of excitement. But then again, few shows ever can stake a claim to leaving you feel that buzzed throughout the entirety of their runs.

To be fair, New Girl’s third season had notable flaws. Its plotting was scattered. This was due to, among other reasons, Nick and Jess facing being a couple, Winston’s descent into craziness, and Coach’s re-arrival. But it remains difficult to write off New Girl, in part, because it has such a strong sense of who its characters are (besides Winston, which I’ve come to just accept). The writers have increasingly come to understand the strengths of all of their performers and they play to them incredibly well. 

This ensures that New Girl is one of television’s most reliably funny shows. New Girl sucks at plot -- not only because this is a lovable hang-out comedy but also because its comedy is more character driven than anything else. To some extent, tonight’s episode “Dice” is conceptually dumb. It uses a parody of Tinder as a central plot point. But what makes it work in spite of this sitcom huey is that the plot is focused on Jess and her very specific responses to this situation. The way Schmidt coaches her also creates very specific, very funny responses. On top of this, pairing these two characters together creates a distinctive comedic scenario from pairing these two characters with any other characters. 

Beyond its character specificity, New Girl continues to be successful thematically. At its core, this is still a show about growing up. It is about people who are old enough to be considered adults but still haven’t quite settled down and figured it all out. (Nick and Jess are the show’s center for a reason. Both are very child-like individuals). They keep striving for it though.

Take “Dice” as an example. Winston seeks to become a police officer. Schmidt admits he wants something more meaningful than hook ups. They’re slowly moving towards being full-on adults. Eventually that will mean not smoking pot or hooking up through a phone app. Not yet though. It’s going to be messy and it’s going to be fun. I think, anyway.

Review for "Starred Up"

I recently wrote this Way Too Indie review for the excellent, tense prison drama Starred Up. Here is an excerpt:

"However, for all its cutting social commentary, Starred Up is not only a well-observed psychodrama. It is also an intense thriller. Eric’s arrival shakes up the social order of the prison. This is coupled with his unpredictable behavior. His actions ripple out to effect the whole prison hierarchy. When he runs afoul of the prison’s lucrative drug trade, he puts his life greatly at risk, both from above and within. But Eric welcomes it, needling people to see how far he can push them and jumping to violence as a first response to conflict. [David] Mackenzie ratchets up the tension until it becomes unbearable and destruction feels all but inevitable."

"God Help the Girl", and the Problematic Conversation About Twee

God Help the Girl is one of the most delightful films released this year. This will make, and has made, more than few skeptical about its actual quality.

The film doesn’t exist in reality. It is a pop song as film. It is an ode to an endless summer. It has an aesthetic of youthful romanticism. It has the silly, playful improvisatory feel of early Godard and Richard Lester. It has very little plot and an abundance of charms. 

Films like God Help the Girl, quirky, self-consciously whimsical affairs, tend to get written off. We bulk them together under the label of “Twee”. These films, admittedly, are easy to nitpick. This is because they don’t run on plot or traditional logic or even typical storytelling or structuring. But nitpicking misses the point entirely about these films. They’re about a mood and a tone; a perspective regarding the world and how to live in it. Yes, sometimes in their concern for creating an artificial, fantastical vision, they can sometimes feel a little too hollow or empty. 

But “Twee” has become a dismissive term. It has become a blanket statement. It allows for the ability to refuse to actually fully engage with a work. There are elements to twee that we just aren’t reckoning with. There are certainly things to twee and its aesthetic that can be questionable. It can be indulgent and disconnected from reality to a fault (Michael Gondry is a prime example for this sort of criticism, see especially in regards to his most recent film Mood Indigo). But there’s a more problematic underlying motivation for criticizing these works. Twee is defined by being feminine, and, by virtue of this, we tend to take it less seriously. Feminine works, to oversimplify, typically focus on things like emotion and character over plot. They also tend towards stories that are more low-key and less propulsive.

Masculine works, by contrast, are more deliberately self-serious and dark, and this quality has begun to infect not only our films but also the way we talk about them. We have begun to equate gritty and dark with important and good. The recent evolution of this is often tied back to Christopher Nolan’s Batman films, which were so popular and successful that their style and tone started to seep into many major mainstream works. But that serious, gritty tone doesn’t work well for every type of story and every type of film. For instance, Man of Steel very consciously apes that tone and style, and it is an absolute mess because it takes a style that was great for one character and utilizes it for another character who required a different touch. Man of Steel was one of the most divisive films of last year. The critical split was largely drawn around what side of the argument over the Nolan Touch and its effectiveness you fell on. 

In regards to both gritty revisionism and twee, we have failed to create nuance in using and defining our terminology (James Parker in his review of Marc Spitz’s book Twee notes that Spitz’s definition for it is so broad as to be impossible to pin down), and we’ve started to do it at the same time that filmmakers are widely using these popular, though loosely defined, styles and sometimes inappropriately for the given material. We don’t necessarily always have the best grasp over what “twee” means, and thus we use it a little carelessly, not to mention mean-spiritedly. One stereotypical conception of it is Zooey Deschanel Incarnate. But looking on Deschanel’s filmography as a whole suggests that this is a reductive argument and perspective. It’s far more diverse than just “twee”. Almost Famous, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and even The Happening paint a different picture. 

Even accounting for a seemingly crucial, oft-cited example of Deschanel’s twee-ness, (500) Days of Summer, demonstrates cracks in the designation and its sloppy, needlessly scornful use. It’s worth noting that much of Deschanel’s labeling as twee centers on her playing supposed Manic Pixie Dream Girl roles. But (500) Days of Summer is a valuable critique of the manic pixie dream girl archetype. The film is told entirely from the perspective of protagonist Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and the film slowly reveals how Tom’s failure to imagine Summer as a human being rather than an Ideal erodes their relationship. All the supposed empty whimsy of (500) Days of Summer actually speaks to far more meaningful, thoughtful ideas. It isn’t merely quirk for its own sake. So, to some extent, we evidently haven’t really fully considered the implications of the term twee. (Another consistent piece to the argument of Deschanel as a prime example of twee is her tv series New Girl. But, in many ways, that series is a compelling argument in favor of twee as both a life philosophy and a storytelling style).

But on a more lighthearted note, I just find that we could use more twee in our films now – specifically what I desire in relation to it I’ll get into in a moment. I’m tired of all these dark, gritty films. When they’re done well, they can be really good. But our obsession with this tone and style of storytelling has limited the types of stories we tell and the possibilities of the ways in which we tell said stories. These dark, gritty films are about how terrible, insecure and corrosive the world and the people in it are. They are about breaking things down rather than building things up. (A good example from television is the contrast of Breaking Bad and Parks and Recreation. Both are excellent, but both also have vastly different views of the world. We have plenty of what the former was attempting scouring the television landscape and not enough of what the latter aims for).

I think we tend to devalue things that are light and feel-good. We prize drama more highly than comedy, for one thing. And we value darker, sadder responses to works over responses of joy and contentment. Yet when we go to the movies we wish to watch over and over again, that we turn to when we’re feeling down, those are films that are about lifting us up. So why do we treat them as lesser and or less valuable? 

Which brings me back, finally, to God Help the Girl. The immediate reaction to it is perhaps to treat it as frivolous. The film, written and directed by Belle and Sebastian member Stuart Murdoch, is about three twenty-somethings who decide to make a band. The film centers on them performing a number of infectiously feel-good indie pop rock numbers. Murdoch emphasizes a vibe, a sustained mood of carefree buoyancy. There is loosely a plot center -- Eve (Emily Browning) is recovering from an eating disorder and has a possible romantic relationship with flat-mate James (Olly Alexander) -- but it’s just a point from which to pivot off of to create a bunch of musical sequences.

Those musical sequences are indelible. As shot by Murdoch, matching the winsome, catchy rhythms of the songs, they craft an irresistibly effervescent experience. There is little else here though. As previously noted, it’s the film equivalent of a pop song. While inhabiting its cheery, lovely airtime, it doesn’t matter that it’s all ultimately a little airy and light. It makes you feel good and that’s what ultimately matters.

And yet, it isn’t total escapism. Murdoch understands that the best songs are created by infusing life experiences into the music, some that aren’t always pleasant, and transforming them into something beautiful even transcendent. The songs written and performed by the band members are based on difficult, trying life experiences, especially Eve’s struggles with mental illness – and, even more accurately, Murdoch’s life experiences. We take for granted that quiet sadness often underlines some of the best pop songs, just as we take for granted that twee is one of many available, not necessarily bad, options for telling a story. God Help the Girl is far too personal and intimate a film to be written off; it’s filtered far too thoroughly through Murdoch’s perspective to be seen as just mere fluff. Ultimately, twee, at its best, consistently masks this sort of deeper emotion and more personal visions through its artifice of whimsy and cute affectation. (Indeed, Wes Anderson is one of the most notable examples of twee and also one of our best working directors. His films are a perfect example of quirky artifice that conceals troves of melancholy).

We need more films like God Help the Girl. It isn’t perfect, but it’s perfect at what it’s trying to do, and not enough films are trying to what it attempts. It’s an invitation to temporarily depart reality. To escape into someone else’s vision of what the world is like. It’s a pleasant one. I think I’ll put it on repeat.  

Thoughts on "Ida"

Every frame of Ida is immaculate, framed and shot with a rare precision and thoughtfulness – and shot unconventionally in the aspect ratio of 1.37:1 (or the Academy ratio). Shot by Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski, and directed by Paweł Pawlikowski, the film looks gorgeous. Shot in a stark but frequently expressionistic black and white, the film looks something like a cross between old post-WWII photography and neoclassical paintings. The film has the quality of the imagery of Polish master Andrzej Wajda’s films (especially Ashes and Diamonds), and, like Wajda’s war trilogy, its interests also lie in placing a small story as a stand-in for a larger story about Poland in flux. 18-year-old Ida (Agata Trzebuchowska), who initially believes her name to be Anna, has been raised in a convent and will soon take her vows. The Mother Superior asks her to visit her last living relative, her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza), before she goes through with her vows. Wanda -- stubborn, flighty, boozy, and sexed-up -- is initially reluctant but eventually starts discussing Ida’s deceased parents and family. Ida wishes to visit her parents’ graves, but this proves to be problematic. Ida is given a great shock when she learns that she is in fact Jewish. She survived through World War II and the Nazi occupation of Poland due to being in the convent. The news understandably shakens her and causes her to question her beliefs. Much of the film finds Ida in a crisis of faith, contemplating whether she truly wishes to be a nun. The film finds tremendous value in Ida and Wanda’s odd couple pairing, and a dry, bitter humor understatedly runs through the film. Wanda and Ida are firm opposites, and Pawlikowski gets a lot out of each confounding, and subtly growing on, the other. But this is an unconventional road trip movie that is in no rush to get where it’s going, content to contemplate a moment or a mood. And for good reason: Wanda is helping Ida seek out where her parents may have been secretly buried, returning to the old village where their family grew up, and, in the process, angering and upsetting a number of people who wish to see the past stay in the past. Set in the 1960’s, the recent past of World War II and its aftermath are a fresh wound still bleeding fresh. The memories remain in the form of the new Stalinist regime that installed itself immediately in the wake of the Nazi government’s collapse. The black and white cinematography has some degree of austerity which fits with Ida’s unfailingly serious and reserved demeanor and the intensity and solemnness of the story. For all its seriousness, however, the film doesn’t feel stodgy. Rather, the film is absorbing, filled with stunning beauty, both in the quiet, stark moments on display, as well as its spectacular imagery. Like the films of Ingmar Bergman, which it shares a degree of thematic and visual similarity, there is a transcendence to the narrative, interrogating spirituality for uplift and insight, as much into the protagonists as into ourselves.  

"The Leftovers": Sometimes Brilliant, Sometimes Baffling. Always "Bleak", Always Peerless.

There is nothing like The Leftovers on television. It is uncompromising. There are few shows like it that are so doggedly interested in putting its viewer off, or quite so stubbornly devoted to telling its story on its own terms, for good and for ilk.

Television has gotten a little obsessed with dark programs, and The Leftovers makes some of the most disturbing series look pleasant. “Bleak” is the word most commonly used to describe the show. It is unrelenting in how miserable and hopeless its vision is. Where some shows might crack a joke at their own self-seriousness and portentousness, The Leftovers can be humorless to a fault. It bathes in how unpleasant and unforgiving its vision is. 

However, the show doesn’t revel in misery for its own sake. It beats its audience over the head with how achingly dissatisfying its world is and how numbingly empty the characters who inhabit it are. (It takes the sort of constant, unshakable unfulfillment and dissatisfaction of the characters of Mad Men and ramps it up to eleven). But it does this with a purpose.

The show’s premise starts from an intriguing concept that the show takes full advantage of: 2% of the world’s population inexplicably vanished on October 14^th, 2011   – and there’s no clear pattern to the sudden disappearances, some are innocent while others were awful people. It’s not enough people to destabilize the world but it is enough to be noticeable and impactful. As Maureen Ryan succinctly describes it, “life is the same, but it isn't”. Life has become both far more meaningful and simultaneously more meaningless. The show jumps ahead to three years later, as the remaining people of earth, the leftovers, try to understand what the event meant while putting their lives back together. Life in The Leftovers is kind of like ours, except everyone constantly, gnawingly hates existing.  

All the things we ask ourselves on a day-to-day basis -- What is the meaning of life? Is there a higher power? What does it mean to be a good person; is it even worth it?, etc. -- are still there but they feel ten times more pertinent. The rapture appears to have happened and yet life keeps going on, as mundane, boring and a little unpleasant as ever. At its core, the series is about living with grief and loss, and how we come to terms with it -- and also the ways we never fully do. 

Much of this grimness is, in fact, not very different from a lot of dark, violent content on television, but it is the context in which it is presented which makes it feel so desolate and morbid. It comes from what Phillip Maciak calls the “aesthetic of the ordinary”, or the show’s willingness to portray the ordinary, everyday, and mundane – to be plotless and aimless, and to capture the details of the day-to-day, of simply being and existing. “This is what seems to be frustrating. It’s not that the show is sad or that it’s brutal, it’s that we don’t have a propulsive plot that distracts us from that sadness or that brutality,” Maciak argues. The Leftovers lingers on it, dwells on it, and what it lingers on is emotional, not plot, turmoil: ennui, guilt, longing. The big moment has passed: it’s all aftermath, all the time.

The show centers on the Garvey family, an interesting choice, since they haven’t lost anyone. Yet the Garveys are, in some ways, even more broken and sad than a lot of people who have lost far more. The reasons for this aren’t immediately apparent and are part of the show’s ongoing mysteries. Kevin (Justin Theroux, initially a bit bland but slowly reveals a wonderful, manic desperation), the police chief of a small New York town called Mapleton, is trying to maintain order in his town, while also possibly losing his mind. He lives with his quiet, rebellious teen daughter Jill (Margaret Qualley, great in a role that could so easily have fallen into cliche), who provides a window into the way adolescence life and ritual functions in this new world. 

It’s quickly revealed that the remaining Garveys are disconnected in ways beyond the emotional. Tommy’s wife Laurie (Amy Brenneman, stunning in a largely wordless performance) has joined a nearby newly formed religious order/possible cult called the Guilty Remnant that formed in the wake of the Departure. Finally, son Tommy (Chris Zylka) has dropped out of college and lives on the compound of a cult messianic figure who claims he can hug away people’s suffering and has an unhealthy obsession with underage Asians. 

Mapleton acts as microcosm of the larger world, and co-creators Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrota (who’s book the show is based on) do an excellent job of building up this world, filling it out with all sorts of weird, distinctive details. The most notable example of this is the Guilty Remnant, which is possibly the show’s greatest, most fully realized creation. They take vows of silence, chain smoke, and wear all white, and their constant presence lingers over everything, as they stalk or hang around in judgment in order to amass more recruits. The Mapleton chapter is led by the menacing mother hen Patti (Ann Dowd, also fantastic in another primarily silent role). The Remnant are bizarre and sinister, but they’re not really the villains of the show, so much as one odd corner of this world trying to cope with their loss and faith in their own peculiar way (They take actions that mark them as dangerous, but they also offer up one of many, not entirely unreasonable, perspectives). 

The show’s focus extends beyond the Garveys and the Remant though. Indeed, the show’s two best episode are deep-digging character studies centered on the two Jamison siblings. The third episode centers on Matt (Christopher Eccleston), a local preacher, who finds his faith and beliefs put to the test. Meanwhile, the sixth episode deals with how Nora Durst (Carrie Coon), who lost her husband and two children on the day of the Departure, grapples with such overwhelming loss.

Trying to find comparisons for the series are somewhat futile. There are parallels, but they fall short. Lindelof’s most famous work, the television series Lost, has some overlap. Both have confounding ongoing mysteries at their center that never entirely get explained, and both play around with some narrative ambiguity that can be as frustrating as it can be riveting. The closest thing the two shows have in common is their interest in their characters above all other elements, and thankfully The Leftovers has a number of distinctive, well-acted characters. Otherwise, Lost is a far more inviting series, inclined to use genre elements and throw in a nice dose of levity to make the crazy go down easier. 

More accurate comparisons might be to the work of auteurs working in the medium. The show is distinguished by how uncompromising it is. It has the quality of Louie in its willingness to simply not give a shit about what anyone thinks or feels about its singular vision. If you can’t get on its particular wave-length, the show isn’t going to try to do anything to make you feel more at ease or at home. 

Perhaps an even better analogous example is David Lynch’s work on Twin Peaks, a show that was super bizarre and surreal, and that could care less about its central mystery. Instead, the show was concerned with the lack of answers to that mystery and the way it haunted and confounded the characters surrounding the mystery (This, of course, frustrated viewers and helped lead to the show’s cancellation – and it did lead to answers being given, but they were never as satisfying as hoped for. Sometimes a lack of answers is exactly what a show needs to thrive). Looking for and receiving answers is beside the point, a wild goose chase at best. 

The simple fact is that the show is not for everyone. The show significantly goes out of its way to alienate its audience, and even when it’s understandable why the show feels the needs to be so brutal and dark, it doesn’t make the experience of sitting through it any easier.

And yet, if you can get on its level, The Leftovers is exhilarating. It’s a series concerned with mood, tone and atmosphere, crafting an intense, singular experience. In its desire visually, tonally and narratively to push our discomfiture and unease, it has a lot in common with Hannibal. Like that series, it is also visually arresting, as well as equal parts pointed symbolism and dark, twisty narrative (For one thing, the show is essentially a giant parable with many installments acting as mini parables).

Sonia Soraiya, in her review of the pilot, compared the experience to trying to dissect a novel for a high school English class. Admittedly there is a certain self-importance to it that can be a little grating. The show winds and wends, twists and turns in on itself. It has a modernist novel quality, where it seems to have deeper significance, if only you’re willing to dig a little deeper and ask what it all means. (But at the end of the day, the meaning of the series is whatever we and the characters ascribe to the events taking place). 

The show doesn’t always work. Sometimes the strange structuring to the show – sometimes huge and sprawling, sometimes laser focused and penetrating -- feels like a gambit that hasn’t quite paid off yet – and may be never will. The structure also makes the series occasionally feel scattered and fragmented and like it hasn’t kicked into high gear yet (potentially problematic for a show with one episode left unaired in its first season). Episodes often don’t feel like a standard episode of television, beginning in one place, meandering all over, and then ending in an unexpected, not entirely understandable place. Some stories just aren’t compelling enough to warrant the attention they’ve been given, especially Tommy’s story -- which is too disconnected from the rest of the show. And then there's the basic frustration borne from its general opaqueness and strangeness.

Yet there is something overall to the show that is unshakable. It’s ambitious and reaching, and probably trying to do far more than it is really capable of. The series is like someone speaking in tongues. It doesn’t always make sense and perhaps it’s not as meaningful as it seems, but it’s also so fascinating and striking that it’s hard to resist.