Diabeł
When I first encountered it, Andrzej Żuławski's "Possession" was merely known as that weird movie where Isabella Adjani fucks a squid. In the last twenty years or so, the film's reputation has been re-evaluated to the point that "Possession" is now regarded as one of the greatest horror films made. Turns out the A24 crowd loves tentacle sex when you shroud it in hyper-real hysterical emotions! The cult following of "Possession" has grown to the point that Żuławski's earlier films have started to garner some attention too. "Possession" was actually the third part of a trilogy of art-horror movies Żuławski made early in his career. "The Third Part of the Night" is a doom-shrouded journey through Nazi-occupied Poland, filled with lice, obtuse dialogue, and apocalyptic dream logic. Frankly, I'm too dumb to understand it. Having been thoroughly baffled by that one – which has few explicit horror elements anyway – I decided to give Żuławski's second feature a shot. "Diabeł" was considered so inflammatory in 1972 that the Polish government immediately banned it. The film, with its themes of madness and murder, slots more comfortably into the horror genre than the director's debut too. I'm also too dumb to understand "The Devil" but, at the very least, I have enough thoughts about this one that I can formulate them into some sort of hopefully coherent review.
During the Second Partition of Poland, a mysterious man in black rides into a town torn apart by war and madness. He frees Jakub from prison and grabs a nun in white, sitting the two on a horse and instructing the young man to go home. Upon arriving at his family estate, Jakub finds his father dead. His mother works in a brothel. His brother has married his sister and regularly inflicts beatings on her. Along the way, he discovers his best friend has married and mentally broken his fiancée, as well as a trope of perverse actors hiding in the woods. All along, the stranger in black reappears to him, urging him to commit evil acts over and over again. Soon, Jakub is totally consumed by madness.
Perhaps the suffocating layers of meaning are intentional, in order to make the viewer feel more like the protagonist, a man losing his mind. As a horror film about a descent into utter depravity and madness, "The Devil" is most successful. All throughout the film, Jakub is confronted with the idea of incest. His half-brother married his sister, who later admits their father molested her. His mother is now a literal prostitute and nearly sleeps with him as well. There's a spiritual incest at work here too, with his best friend stealing his girl and then later implying that he's gay for Jakub too. (One of two depraved homosexuals in the film, which are admittedly depicted as hang-ups on the protagonist's part and not reflective of all gay people.) The moment when Jakub finally, truly snaps happens in an underground orgy pit. He is told everything is permitted and takes that to mean murder is okay. In fact, all the sexual encounters in the film seem to proceed acts of gruesome violence. While Żuławski is obviously operating on countless levels here, "The Devil" mostly seems to be about a guy trapped in a world designed specifically to make him go entirely insane. The last act is an explosion of self-destructive violence and retaliation, showing a lead character who has completely given up on everything and has nothing left but a desire to destroy. While the political subtext of the film largely goes over my head, perhaps "The Devil" also contains commentary on how war makes monsters of us all.
After "Diabeł" was banned, Żuławski would migrate to France, where he spent most of the rest of his career. (Though he did return to Poland long enough to make a sci-fi epic that is also respected by high-minded critics with less brain rot than me.) Sources describe many of his later films as "romantic dramas" that don't seem to be discussed too passionately, though he did make at least two more films that stray somewhat into the horror genre. I liked "Possession" because it was rooted in a universal feeling, the maddening sense of betrayal and loss that follows the end of a serious romance. "The Third Part of the Night" and "The Devil," meanwhile, are much more specifically about being Polish during times of disaster and political upheaval, in ways I'm obviously not well read enough to thoroughly grapple with. Both films can work for me, somewhat, as doom-laden mood pieces. Of the two, "The Devil" resembles genre frameworks that are easier to get my head around. It's kind of like the art house version of "Demons of the Mind," maybe? I guess this is what happens when exploitation movies inform your filmic understanding more than the further reaches of the Criterion Collection. Either way, sometimes you have to simply admit when a film has defeated you. I admire "Diabeł" on a technical level and can appreciate some of the things it is doing while also realizing that I simply did not get it. [6/10]
Mistik: Punahnya rahasia ilmu iblis leák
I've always been a monster kid. As a small child, I was fascinated by Halloween decorations and masks, despite often being terrified too. This blossomed into an interest in beasties and ghoulies from all sorts of sources. If a book contained a bunch of pictures and info on many different types of mythic creatures, I was sure to spend hours looking over it. As I've gotten older, this interest spread beyond the typical entities of English folklore, Greek mythology, and pop culture. Turns out the world is full of all sorts of weird monsters! An especially nasty folkloric concept that reoccurs throughout Southeast Asia is a vampiric being that typically preys on pregnant women or newborn babies, sucking their blood with a proboscis-like tongue. It's usually depicted as a beautiful woman's head that has detached from her body, lungs and entrails dangling from her neck stump as she floats through the air. In Thailand, it's called a Krasue. The Malay know it as the Penanggalan. On the Indonesian island of Bali, this demon is named Leák. Despite – or perhaps because of – how gruesome this beast is, a number of movies have been made inspired by these myths. Perhaps the most notorious is "Mystics in Bali," a 1981 horror flick that was influential in its home country and has become infamous among cult movie fanatics.
An anthropologist named Cathy arrives in Bali to write a book on black magic. She meets with her boyfriend, a man named Mahendra whose uncle is a good wizard. Mahendra introduces Cathy to the idea of Leák magic, said to be the most powerful form of sorcery on the island. They seek out the Old Queen of the Leák who, in exchange for some fresh blood, begins to teach Cathy her accursed ways. Unbeknownst to her, the Queen begins to use Cathy to acquire more blood and spread her dark magic over the village. Soon, Cathy's head is detaching from her body and flying around town at night, sucking the afterbirth from the bellies of pregnant women. Mahendra and his uncle team up in hopes that they can save Cathy and stop the Queen of the Leák.
While the flying leák is certainly the focus of "Mystics in Bali," it's far from the only insanity on display here. There's not a whole lot to the movie, narrative wise. Most of the runtime is devoted to Cathy meeting with the Queen and partaking in her magical rituals. In the tradition of Indonesian topeng, these scenes involve a lot of dancing, furious drumming, and figures in bizarre and colorful masks lunging about. Such a loose structure allows the film to ramble off on odd digressions. One of the most notably inexplicable scenes has the Queen transforming into a floating ball of fire and fighting off another floating ball of fire, which seems to be her greatest rival in the world of evil witchcraft. For its big finale, "Mystics in Bali" goes completely into the realm of far-out, martial arts movie style mystical combat. Mahendra's uncle levitates through the air while meditating and the Queen shoots bolts of light at him. Figures grow in size, shift in density, and toss all sorts of neon colored special attacks at each other. That's before an entirely different character, that we've never seen before and played by the same actor as the uncle, appears to save the day. After this explosive burst of bizarre, unconvincing but incredibly charming special effects, "Mystics in Bali" then abruptly ends, leaving the viewer with the best kind of whiplash.
"Mystics in Bali" came about because of a push by the Indonesian government in the late seventies and early eighties to increase film productions meant for foreign markets. Despite this, and the existence of that English dub, the movie was mostly distributed in mainland Asia and Japan. Nevertheless, its reputation as an insane overseas offering slowly spread. When it was given a North American disc release in 2003 – once again, by our good friends at Mondo Macabro – the film's cult following intensified. Honestly, it's well earned. "Mystics in Bali" is exactly as delirious and delightful as I had been told, living up to the rumors and whispers I've heard about it over the years. Indonesian genre cinema would get a lot more sophisticated in the decades after this but "Mystics in Bali" certainly set the mood, as far as being unpredictable and nonstop entertaining goes. If any horror fans with a taste for the weird and wild haven't seen it yet, float your head on over to your nearest specialty retailer and pick up a copy. [8/10]
I always thought of Blumhouse's "Into the Dark" as the ever-busy studio's training ground for new filmmakers. While some of the feature length episodes of this Hulu exclusive were made by relative newcomers, such as Paul Davis or Mike Gan, most of the involved directors were established. Patrick Lussier, Nacho Vigalondo, Sophia Takal, Carter Smith, and Adam Mason all had at least one indie hit to their names. This was especially true of Daniel Stamm, whose "The Last Exorcism" was probably the most high-profile title from all of the involved filmmakers. Stamm would direct the fifth installment of the series, "Down." The plot is related to Valentine's Day but, since I've already reviewed both of the Halloween set episodes of this series, I figured I might as well give this one a try.
Office worker Jennifer hopes to spend Valentine's Day weekend with her estranged ex, patching things up. As she's leaving work that night, she gets into an elevator with a guy she doesn't know. The box soon becomes stuck, trapping the two in a small space with no idea when they might be rescued. She gets to know the man, who says his name is Guy. As they spend the next 24 hours talking and finding ways to pass the time in such an enclosed area, things quickly get heated. After their impromptu tryst, Jennifer tells Guy that she has no plans to make this into a relationship. That's when "Guy" starts to get possessive and violent, revealing that none of this was an accident and that he's not going to take "no" for answer.
A suitably strong enough screenplay could overcome these challenges. "Down" doesn't have that either. Once Guy and Jennifer are humping on the elevator floor – itself a pretty unlikely event – you can guess that he's a psycho with a crush. That his behavior escalates from slightly uncomfortable to outwardly violent and unhinged shortly after that further represents "Down's" unwillingness to trust the tension of its own premise. It all bends towards a point we've seen made many times before. The man is an unhinged misogynist who thinks he's entitled to sex and love, immediately becoming violent the minute he's denied those things. Since the term "incel" was not quite mainstream when this was probably written, "Down" makes its villain another easily hated stereotype: An alpha-douche corporate exec. (Which, yes, requires quite a lot of narrative backflipping to justify.) None of these elements are lacking in potency or truth. However, the relative lack of backstory that Jennifer receives, in comparison to the male villain, really makes this look less like incisive commentary on male entitlement and more like the writer was worried about being called sexist. The climax goes for empowerment, which is hard to take seriously after an hour of a woman being physically and mentally brutalized by a man.
The most memorable part of "Down" ends up being an over-the-top gore gag in the last third, the kind of moment every elevator related horror movie has to touch on in one way or another. A little bit of visual inventiveness that elevated "The Last Exorcism" above the look of your average found footage movie is shown here, Stamm and his team at least finding a way to make the limited location look cinematic. Ultimately, "Down" is not clever enough to overcome the challenges of its premise or subvert them in especially clever ways. Its attempts at social commentary are warmed over . A mildly compelling first act suggests this probably should've been a half-hour episode of an anthology show, instead of a double-length quasi-movie. [5/10]
Ginî piggu 2: Chiniku no hana
Earlier this month, I watched “Snuff,” the earliest example of a horror movie attempting to replicate a genuine snuff film on-screen. This morbid simulation has been attempted many times since, especially once the found footage format started to become popular in the new millennium. Of all these titles, none is perhaps more notorious than “Guinea Pig 2: The Flower of Flesh and Blood.” The second entry in a direct-to-video series of hyper-gory Japanese short films, “The Flower of Flesh and Blood” would supposedly be pulled from shelves in its home country. It would be connected with an infamous real world serial killer and was deemed obscene by the British. In this country, anyway, “Guinea Pig 2” owes its infamy to a now-legendary 1992 incident where Charlie Sheen viewed the film and became convinced it was a recording of an actual murder. He called the FBI who quickly deemed the 45 minute film was fictional but that was enough to ensure “The Flower of Flesh and Blood” a place among “extreme” horror history.
What of the film itself though? Plot wise, there’s almost nothing to “Guinea Pig 2.” An opening disclaimer claims that the short is a recreation of an actual film its director, mangaka Hideshi Hino, was sent. It begins with a woman in a black dress being abducted off the streets of Tokyo. She awakens in a dungeon, strapped to a table, with a pasty-faced weirdo in a samurai costume standing over her. He injects her with a drug that converts pain into pleasure and then proceeds to graphically dismember and disembowel her, all the while going on pretentiously about how he’s going to transform her into a blooming flower of flesh and blood.
The unavoidable feeling that someone is cranking their hogs to this grotesque display – all the more evident in the ecstasy the killer display in the final minutes – makes “Guinea Pig 2” unpleasant on a meta level beyond its stomach-turning effects. If one where to try and find some deeper meaning in this production… The samurai goes on about his philosophy that this ultraviolent act is akin to a beautiful flower. Considering “Flower of Flesh and Blood” is a show reel for its vivid special effects, one assumes that this is a testament to the skills of the make-up artist. On that level, “Guinea Pig 2” is impressive. The hand and arms being slowly cut apart is sickeningly realistic, with tendons and bones protruding through the bloody sinew. The disemboweling scene is equally detailed. On that same level, some of the gore effects are rather crude. If Charlie Sheen thought this was real, it suggests that his state of perspective was altered. While I can appreciate the scientific accuracy of the gore effects, it’s hard to consider “Flower of Flesh and Blood” having much worth beyond shock value. If you simply want to see some fucked-up gore, this’ll satisfy. There’s a certain doomy, nihilistic tone to the film that might’ve been effective, if paired with any skill in direction. Otherwise, “Guinea Pig 2’s” notoriety doesn’t extend much pass its extensive gruel for a reason. There’s simply not much else here to talk about. [5/10]
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