If you are willing to dig deep enough, every year is a good year for horror. Thinking more specifically, if you stay in touch with the indie scene and don't judge merely based on what is playing at the multiplexes, you're likely to find lots of fantastic offerings in any given year. However, 2024 has been an especially good year for indie horror at the box office. As I type this, an unrated gore-fest made entirely outside the studio system is hacking up the top ten. NEON and A24 continue to make break-through hits with smart marketing. Most recently, arthouse digital distributor MUBI has proven the power of buzz-worthy genre films at the box office with “The Substance,” which has become a word-of-mouth hit and stuck around in theaters far longer than niche pictures like this usually do. “The Substance” has already been hotly debated but the simple fact remains: People are seeing it and talking about it. I'm a little behind, as usual, but it's my turn to weigh in.
Elizabeth Sparkle was once the toast of Hollywood, with awards and fame to her name. That was a long time ago. Now, she hosts a morning exercise show that is slipping in the ratings. On account of producers desiring a younger star, her show is canceled. Feeling despondent, she receives a tip about a new product called the Substance. She must go to a secluded locker to retrieve the order, a dispassionate voice on the phone informing her of the product's rules. She injects herself and a younger, sexier version emerges from Elizabeth's back. Her original self rendered catatonic, the new and improved model – who takes the name Sue – immediately finds fame and success in Sparkle's old timeslot. The conditions of the Substance dictate that “Sue” must trade places with Elizabeth every other week. Hungry to be loved and adored more, Sue begins to bend the rules... Which immediately has gruesome, horrifying side effects.
No, “The Substance” isn't subtle. However, Fargeat's film isn't merely taking potshots at the obvious inequalities we are all very aware of in Hollywood. Instead, this is a far more personal story about self-hatred. Sparkles – played by a fearless Demi Moore – obsesses over her own image as much as the industry does. She stares at her own body in the mirror. After getting a date with an old high school body, she smears her face with make-up over and over again before staying inside. After Sue – Margauret Qualey, a vision – emerges, Elizabeth begins to judge herself harsher than before. She sinks into self-destruction, resenting her better looking half. This is despite the mysterious voice on the phone assuring her that Sparkles and Sue are one. They are same person. However, Sparkles inability to love herself – an internalizing of Hollywood' brutal beauty standards – is ultimately what pushes her to more extreme actions. “The Substance” is an indictment of Hollywood's treatment of women but it explores that theme through the the more personal lens of self-hatred.
The fact that “The Substance” has crossed over to some degree of mainstream success is what surprises me the most. This movie is, ya know, pretty fucked-up. It attacks the body horror element with the same over-the-top vigor that is approaches its satire with. This results in one shockingly gross sequence after another. Notably images like multiple eyeballs swishing around inside one socket or a tumor appearing on an ass cheek is the movie only getting started. The emergence of a turkey leg seemed to be the nastiest scene... Until “The Substance” kicks further into gear in its second half, throwing one misshapen body part after another at us. By the finale, the film is reaching levels of spurting fluids and malformed flesh that would put a Troma movie to shame. It's over-the-top, vile, disgusting, and holy shit did I love it. That a movie can still make me wince is a sign that I appreciate it.
Fans of action movies owe so much to Menahem Galan and Yoram Globus' Cannon Group. While they produced a number of off-beat films during their glory days, the company will forever be most associated with the hyper-macho icons of eighties action cheese. They introduced Van Damme and Dudikoff to the world. They turned Dolph into He-Man, Sly into Cobra, Sho Kosugi into a ninja, and paired Charles Bronson with Michael Winner or J. Lee Thompson for a series of increasingly sleazier shoot-em-ups. If not any of those guys, there's no action figure more associated with the studio than Chuck Norris, who made his most successful films at Cannon. By the nineties, however, the studio was not what it once was. Golan left in '89 and an endless series of mergers, lawsuits, and buyouts followed. The company would finally collapse into bankruptcy in 1994... But not before putting out one final movie, starring their most faithful star. "Hellbound" is also notable for being, as my best buddy JD always ecstatically calls it, "the movie where Chuck Norris fights the devil." Now, how am I supposed to resist that? I figured I better sneak it in before October comes to a close.
During the crusades, King Richard would lock an emissary of the devil known as Prosatanos in a tomb somewhere in the holy lands. The magical scepter that would allow him to bring about the end of days is shattered and spread across the world. In the fifties, a pair of grave robbers would free Prosatanos, the demon setting out on a quest to find and reassemble the relic. In nineties Chicago, a rabbi and professor of folklore is brutally murdered in a sleazy apartment. Sgt. Frank Shatter and Det. Calvin Jackson investigate, discovering part of an ancient scepter at the crime scene. A link between the killings and the myths of Prosatanos soon emerges. The cops are dispatched to Israel, following a trail of violence that leads them to Professor Malcolm Lockley. Who is, obviously, Prosatanos in human form and is dangerously close to fulfilling the prophecy and bringing about the apocalypse.
The result is a tonally inconsistent, often tedious excuse for an action movie. Far too much of "Hellbound" is devoted to the comedy stylings of Calvin Levels, as Shatter's often frustrated and humiliated partner. Levels' japes and one-liners are never anything less than eye-rolling. The low-point of the film's groan-inducing comic relief is a painfully long sequence where an Israeli cab driver leads the heroes on a wacky car chase through Tel Aviv. That, and the equally long-winded scenes devoted to the pickpocketing kids, feel like scenes out of a PG family movie. Aaron Norris – not coincidentally, Chuck's brother who directed most of the movies from this part of the star's career – shoots "Hellbound" like a TV movie. George S. Clinton's score is often light-hearted, featuring a lot of clownish klezmer music. The Zionist subtext inherent in the Israeli setting, the reoccurring presence of a Jesus-like figure lurking in the background of multiple scenes, and the demonic villain irrevocably put the stink of a low-budget Christian movie all over this thing. About the only source of unintentional camp here is the homoerotism present in the cops' partnership. They argue about sleeping arrangements in their hotel room, talk about women without showing any sexual desire for them, and generally spend every scene together. Aaron throws in a few lingering close-ups of men's asses in blue jeans too, as if to confirm what the film unavoidably suggests.
In other words, "Hellbound" in no way, shape, or forms lives up to what its "Chuck Norris versus the devil" premise promises. Especially since the bad guy isn't actually the devil but the devil's errand boy. JD, you fool, you mislead me. If "Hellbound" had been made during the eighties and directed by a splatter expert like Zito, it probably would've been awesome. Being made deep in Chuck's wholesome period, with Aaron Norris' middling talent behind the camera, results in an unfortunately limp experience. Cannon's turbulent late years meant "Hellbound" didn't see general release – straight to video, unsurprisingly – until two years after it was shot, showing the sad final fate of the once-proud exploitation studio. Of the handful of horror mashups Norris appeared in across his career, this one falls far short of "Silent Rage" and "Hero and the Terror." I haven't seen that zombie movie he did since coming out of retirement as an internet meme but I'm going to guess that "Hellbound" is probably marginally better than that, on account of not co-starring Vanilla Ice. [5/10]
"American Horror Story" is a show I have an unearned resentment towards. Everything I've read makes it sound like a series that prioritizes shock value and a kind of self-aware outrageousness over the things that make horror interesting to me. Mostly though, I was annoyed by the program advertising itself as an "anthology." This pedantic nerd feels that label should be reserved for shows that tell a stand alone story every week, instead of devoting a season to one plot line. Yet "American Horror Story" was so popular that it changed the meaning of the phrase for a while, numerous networks debuting "anthologies" following the same one-season, one-story format. Basically, for almost a decade, I'd see the words "anthology" in a press release, get intrigued, only to see the program doing the twelve-hour runtime shit. And it was all "American Horror Story's" fault. By 2021, either real anthologies had regained a foothold in pop culture or somebody finally told Ryan Murphy he's been using the wrong word all this time. That's when a spin-off, "American Horror Stories," debuted. A genuine anthology program telling self-contained narratives, the show hasn't garnered much attention outside the pre-existing "AHS" fandom... But I figured, for the sake of fairness, I should give it a shot.
"Ba'al" follows Liv, a rich heiress, who has been struggling to conceive a child with her actor husband, Matt. When all else fails, she's given a small fertility idol by the secretary at the clinic. She places it under their bed while having sex and, nine months later, they welcome a little boy named Aaron into the world. However, the postpartum depression hits Liv hard, as she becomes fearful that her own baby hates her. That's when she starts to see and hear strange things. Such as a demonic figure looming over Aaron's crib or threatening voices over the baby monitor. She looks up the idol and discovers it is of the demon Ba'al. Becoming increasingly convinced that an evil presence is threatening her baby, Liv slips even further into madness... But is everything as it seems?
In general, the narrative is obvious and awkward in its execution. Liv never questions how strange it is that a random woman gifts her a pagan statue. When the idol begins to reappear in her home, taking on a more demonic shape each time, it never occurs to her to simply throw it away. When she belatedly looks up the symbol she's been given, she immediately finds a Wikipedia page explaining exactly what she's dealing with. A second trip to the magic user who gave her the statue has the woman pausing to explain what a grimoire is, among other laden dialogue. When the twist in the tail arrives, everybody involved flatly explains their participation like cartoonish villains. That twist, by the way, seems to be in service towards social commentary about believing women. It's the kind of satirical angle that simply cannot wait to congratulate itself, right down to using the actual word for the phenomenon this episode is about. The fucking exposition doesn't stop there either, literally continuing until the final scene. There is not an atom of wit, subtly, or emotion invested in this story.
If you're looking for modern horror shorts on YouTube, the options are overwhelming. Once Sturgeon's Law settles in, you realize that the majority are simply not worth your time. This is, presumably, the advantage of curator networks like CryptTV and Alter. They sort through the dross and find the gold, right? Unfortunately, I haven't personally observed this to be true. Alter is a little higher quality than its competition but most of the horror shorts showcased on these channels are formulaic jump-scare delivery machines with little else on their minds. Diamonds in the rough do exist though. Such as "The Sermon," which takes place in an isolated religious community. The pastor delivers his daily sermon, preaching fire and brimstone and decrying the "abominations" in their midst. In flashback, we see an older woman in the village has been discovered to be a lesbian. She is subsequently dragged into the woods by the townsfolks, strung up, and humiliated. Among the crowd is the pastor's daughter who is also the woman's lover. During the service, we see that the younger woman has found a way to deliver revenge against the fanatics of the church with a little help from an otherworldly force.
Stories of cloistered off Christian communities, where the self-proclaimed pious authority figures are given free reign to abuse and manipulate their followers in the name of God, are nothing new. I already wrote about at least one film on that very topic earlier in the month. While "The Sermon" hardly breaks new ground, it is an exercise in economy. We know little of the presumed cults' habits and beliefs. From what we do see, it's easy to assume that everyone lives in fear of sinning, with any non-conformist and women in general being treated badly. "The Sermon" doesn't elaborate on what time it takes place in or most of its characters' names. However, with a handful of scenes and the use of some visual short hand, we learn everything about these people that we need to know. The Holy Word is preached, not in service of brotherhood or community, but as a bludgeon of control. With an ominous electronic score and slow, isolated shots of the empty English countryside, "The Sermon" immediately gives us an idea of what it's like to live in such a judgmental environment.
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