Halloween 2025: September 21st

 

Nang Nak (1999)

Every corner of the globe has their own monsters. However, it does seem certain ideas catch on within specific geographical spaces. Practically every Eastern European country has their variation on the vampire. La bruja seems to be the dominate bugbear in Latin American cultures and the djinn is prominent in Muslim majority countries. Meanwhile, multiple areas in East Asia tell tales of ghostly women who seek vengeance on unfaithful men. Sometimes while having long, stringy black hair and wearing white burial gowns. Japan has been fascinated with the story of the ghost of Oiwa for two centuries. The equivalent figure in Chinese myths is called a nü gui while the Korean version is usually known as cheonyeogwisin, the virgin maiden ghost. In Thailand, they have the supposedly true legend of Mae Nak Phra Khanong. A shrine to the phantasmic bride and her unborn child stands in Bangkok to this day. Wikipedia mentions at least 24 film adaptations of the folktale. This meticulously researched Letterboxd list points to a 1936 version as the earliest cinematic take on the story. Of these many retellings, the most well known in the West is 1999's “Nang Nak,” from director Nonzee Nimibutr. It was, for a time, the highest grossing Thai film ever made. 

For those unfamiliar, this is how the story goes: Mak has been drafted to fight in the Siamese-Vietnamese War. He leaves his small village behind, his devoted – and very pregnant – wife Nak being left alone. While on the battle field, Mak suffers a near fatal injury. He is rescued by a monk and his assistant, who insist he leave behind his old life and devote himself to the spiritual path. Mak refuses to abandon his wife and child though. He returns home, joyously received into his wife's arm. While haunted by dreams of the war, Mak notices that Nak is starting to act strangely. He also notices that no one else in the village wants anything to do with him and that many of their neighbors are dead. An old friend tries to convince Mak of something that seems impossible to him: Nak died during childbirth and now exists only as a ghost, terrorizing anyone who dare tries to separate them. Mak refuses to believe at first but soon can no longer deny that his wife is an undead spectre.

 

Most folk tales persist because they tell a moral that speaks to the values of the surrounding culture. Admittedly speaking as an outsider looking in, it would seem to me that the story of “Nang Nak” contains a specifically Buddhist message. After nearly dying and being saved by a monk, Mak is told to leave all his worldly possessions and passions behind. He can't do it because he loves his wife so much. Similarly, Nak herself cannot move onto the hereafter because she remains utterly attached to her husband. The idea of refusing to accept death as a part of a natural cycle and trying to escape the cycle of rebirth runs throughout the whole film. Unsurprisingly, the same Buddhist monk from earlier emerges as the story's hero by the end. It's as much a lesson about the tenets of Buddhism as any story of a vampire being warded off with a crucifix is a message about how awesome Christianity is. No belief exists in a vacuum and stories are reflections of the people that birthed them. 
 

It reads, like most folklore that is at least a hundred years old, as melodrama to modern eyes. The emotions on display in “Nang Nak” are quite oversized. The first ten minutes of the film involves characters' names repeatedly being shouted, amid dramatic partings. Nang and Mak often declare their love for one another. The guy is so excitable that, simply seeing an old friend is enough to make him leap naked from a lake. When the ghost business takes precedence, the villagers are soon wielding torches and promising to drive out the evil. Nak's threats of supernatural vengeance against those who are trying to separate her from her husband are similarly overblown. However, despite the sweatiness of the emotions in this story, it still worked for me. This is mostly because the love story, one-note as it may be, is quite sweet. Intira Joroenupra and Winai Kraibutr have strong chemistry together as the couple. We never learn much about their history together but scenes like a flashback, in which they flirt in the field and share some betel leaf, are genuinely sweet. By the end, when yet more operatic declarations of love are being made, I admittedly found myself effected by them. The idea of loving someone so much that you refuse to live without them – despite being dead – is a powerful one. 

Given the story its telling, Nimibutr's film functions more like a supernatural romance than a horror movie. However, the other villagers have good reason to be afraid of Nang Nak. When enraged, she summons a fire storm. In the legend's most famous moment, she stands upside down on a ceiling above a group of monks plotting her destruction. The special effects in “Nang Nak” are often quite cheesy. Another pivotal moment in the story, when Mak realizes his wife is a ghost when he sees her stretch her arm out to pick up a fallen piece of fruit, looks fairly silly. However, there is a classical eeriness to much of what follows. A thunderstorm billowing through a thatch hut, a dead body washing up in a boat, a shaman forced to bash his own head in: These are all striking moments that appear as mythic and old as they actually are. The period setting and ancient rites that seal the ghost make this the folkiest of folk horrors. Nimbutr's film is a respectable, stately retelling of these events that speaks to their power. 

Much of “Nang Nak” seems to function as a historical lesson. An opening narration establishes the period setting. An epilogue expands on the legend of what happened to the ritualistic artifact that ultimately contains the ghost. I have no idea how this “Nang Nak” compares to the many other tellings of the story. Older Thai genre cinema is still almost impossible to find on the English language web and largely undistributed on disc. However, it is easy to see why this legend has endured for such a long time. It is a story of undying love and supernatural rage, of rejection and acceptance and unbreakable bonds. It's highly culturally specific, that should go without saying, but these themes are also universal. It is hard to call “Nang Nak” scary. It's almost better described as corny. However, as an argument for the value of folkloric tales such as these, it makes its point. [7/10]

The Ear (1970)

Ucho

I'm not an expert. I know very little. But: In the sixties, De-Stalinization started in Czechoslovakia and a more liberal government began to take shape. During this time, distinctly Czech and Slovakian voices emerged from the country's literary and art scenes. This is when notable filmmakers like Miloš Forman, Juraj Herz, Jan Švankmajer and František Vláčil started to draw international attention. Today, this movement is known as the Czech/Slovak New Wave and produced some of the most acclaimed movies to be made in the country. It all came to an abrupt end when Soviet forces invaded the country in 1968. The previous period of protest, reform, and liberalization was shoved back into the closet and stricter government censorship was reinstated on all sectors. The films made right at this turning point were some of the most inflammatory in Czech cinematic history up to that point. The likes of Herz' “The Cremator” and Forman's “The Firemen's Ball” were quickly banned by the in-coming administration. Perhaps no film captures this time better – he says, not really knowing what the hell he's talking about – than Karel Kachyňa's “The Ear.”  The fusion of domestic drama, paranoia, ice cold absurdist humor, and an overarching tone of nightmarish dread would remain largely unseen until the nineties.

Ludvik is a low ranking member of the ruling Communist regime in Prague. He attends a work party with his wife, Anna. They hobnob with various government officials. Upon returning home, the drunk Anna realizes she left the key to their gate behind. The couple sneak into their own house. That is when they notice apparent government agents standing outside. Ludvik obsessively goes over his memories of the evening, becoming convinced that him and his wife are being targeted for elimination. As the two scour their home for hidden electronic listening devices – ears, you could call them – their already tense relationship begins to fall apart. Every minor slight and long-held complaint rushes to the surface. The night grows stranger and more distressing as they argue endlessly, burn documents, and repeatedly wonder how much they are being watched and listened to. 

“The Ear” is not a traditional horror film by any means. Despite its presence on many lists of acclaimed scary movies, it resides on the margins of the genre. The horror present in this motion picture is strictly of the psychic variety. As Ludvik becomes increasingly convinced that every aspect of his life has been under surveillance, he reflects on everything he's said and done. The threat of living in a totalitarian state is that nothing is private. You are held accountable for every thought you have. Every grumble, whisper, and yawn can be held against you. Throughout “The Ear,” Ludvik and his wife move from room-to-room in their house. Private sanctums like the bedroom and bathroom slowly become violated as they are revealed to be bugged too. Their mental state slowly cracks up under the pressure of constantly being listened to and watched, any and all personal feelings being flattened out and kept private by a state that demands constant and complete submission. 

One of the scariest suggestions in “The Ear” is that it doesn't truly matter whether this governing body, policing everything the characters say and think, exists or not. Throughout the film, Ludvik and Anna frequently argue about the degree of observation they are under. By the end, there is this creeping suspicion that the bugs in the house aren't hooked up to anything. The events of the next morning, coming at the very end and only after the endless night, leaves the protagonists wondering if they've done anything “wrong” at all. That perpetual uncertainty is exactly where the state wants them to be. Never sure when the hammer might come down, always fearful that they could slip up at any moment and be unpersoned the next day. Whether the structure of control exists or not is irrelevant The mere suggestion of it is enough to shake the duo to their core. The last line in “The Ear” is simply “I'm afraid.” When everything you say and do may or may not be evidence against you, it creates an unending fear of the inevitable punishment. Because we are all guilty of something, after all, aren't we? 

In such an environment, what role does interpersonal relationships play? From the opening minutes of “The Ear,” it's evident that Ludvik and Anna's marriage is not a happy one. He seems to regard her with contempt. She seems to drink to help deal with the repressed feelings of resentment towards her husband. The two have a child but he never appears on-screen, only existing as a voice and a concept to be argue about and bargained over. A reoccurring thread in “The Ear” is how these two have never actually known each other, how both have sides they refuse to show. Not unlike how they must keep some thoughts and feelings secret from the government's ever-listening ears. They clearly dislike each other far more than they've ever cared about one another. However, they stay together anyway. In an oppressive country such as this, all relationships are mere tools for the government. More than once, Anna shouts out to the ears, eager to reveal (real or imagined) betrayals her husband has inflicted on her. “The Ear” gets quite a lot of suspense out of how far this unraveling of the relationship will go, supported by a properly frantic performance from Jiřina Bohdalová as Anna and a far more contained Radoslav Brzobohatý as Ludvik.

I say all of the above as if I actually have a clue what the hell I'm talking about. Much as I did when I watched "The Devil" last year, I must concede that I lack the proper cultural context to truly get my brain around "The Ear." Kachyňa's film is not only specifically Czech but also very relevant to life in the country during this particular moment of transition. Which means everything I wrote above is mostly me grasping in the dark. However, that doesn't mean I didn't find value in "The Ear." Josef Illík's black-and-white cinematography is extremely moody. The shadowy images establish an eerie tone right away. When the lights come on for the first time halfway through the movie, it feels almost akin to a jump scare. So much of "The Ear" is about secret deeds done in dark rooms, that the presence of brightness feels like an intrusion. The camera often assumes the point-of-view of the film's characters, furthering a paranoid feeling of being watched. Svatopluk Havelka's eccentric score creates a deliberately surreal atmosphere. A sequence where the government officials begin doing a strange dance at the party is when "The Ear" properly captures the sense of a nightmare. When Ludvik's "friends" from work arrive at the house and refuse to leave, it continues the feeling that we are stuck in a bad dream that simply won't end. When the sun comes up and the night finally concludes, the characters are stuck with the realization that their nightmare of paranoia is far from over. 

I'm definitely too dumb to fully understand "The Ear." I think I would have to watch a lot more Czech New Wave movies – plus read a few books about the Prague Spring, the resulting Warsaw Pact invasion, and life under Soviet rule – to truly appreciate this one. I'd also argue that its classification within the horror genre is more metaphorical than literal. Not that the spectre of constant government surveillance, the resulting de-personalization, or the crushing paranoia isn't pretty scary. It simply doesn't scream Halloween spookiness to me. Nevertheless, the chilly atmosphere, the creepy visuals, and entombing tone of suspicion did work for me. It's kind of funny too, in that extremely dry and very absurd Eastern European way. Probably best recommended to the serious art house crowd and not your average Fangoria reader, unless you're working hard to expand your boundaries like I am these days. [7/10]

 

Darkroom: Uncle George
 

Looks like it was about six years ago when I last watched an episode of NBC's short-lived 1981 anthology “Darkroom.” I wasn't much impressed with what I saw but the James Coburn hosted program does have its defenders. Let's give it another shot, shall we? “Uncle George” concerns the Haskells, a nice old couple who live in a simple home out in the woods. Since Bert had a heart attack, he can't work the way he used to. Margo devotes her days to taking care of Uncle George, the bed-ridden relative in the upstairs bedroom. When Uncle George passes peacefully in his sleep, it is more than simply an emotional loss. Old George received a pension check every month and it helped the couple pay their bills. Bert buries George in the basement and drives over to the local bar. He finds Dixie, a homeless man. Bert takes him into a bar, buys him a drink, and makes him an offer: Dixie can live in their home for free if he poses as Uncle George, insuring that the household still gets that check every month. It seems like a sweet deal and Dixie happily accepts it... There's a serious catch though. 

IMDb lists 16 episodes of “Darkroom.” However, this was one of those hour-long shows that usually included two segments per episode. Meaning the whole series actually only lasted for eight installments. The other “Darkroom” stories I've seen have been tales of supernatural horror. The one paired with “Uncle George,” for example, is a monster movie riff from ol' reliable Robert Bloch. For the majority of “Uncle George's” runtime, it seems to be an exception to that rule. It's a thoroughly sentimental story. Bert and Margo are happy to take care of their Uncle George, simply because he's family. It wasn't until Bert's injury that the checks became essential to their survival. When he picks up the old drunk off the street, it's basically a charitable act. Dixie describes how he's never had a family of his own, never been much valued by anyone around him. Here a complete stranger is, giving him a roof over his head and a bed to sleep on. There was a part of me that was wondering if this wasn't “Darkroom's” “Kick the Can” or “The Messiah on Mott Street.” Ya know, a break from the usual macabre subject matter for something more whimsical. 

However, all throughout the episode, there is an underlying sinister intent. Claude Atkins and June Lockhart are as warm as can be as the couple. However, they approach what they are doing like it's a serious crime. I mean, it is a swindle but they are rather grave about it. The hushed tones they carry themselves with leaves the viewer guessing, wondering what exactly is up with these two. When that reveal comes, it's literally minutes before the end credits roll, the truth being held off until the final second. It's a hell of a swerve too, that changes the entire tone of the episode and successfully moves an otherwise sweet story into the realm of grisly horror. I don't know if “Uncle George” would have much value at all if it wasn't for that dynamite ending. However, sometimes that's all you really need to bring a half-hour episode together. Maybe “Darkroom” was better than I thought? James Coburn isn't a bad host either, with a wry winkle in his eye as he delivers grandiose, Serling-like introductions. [7/10]

The Addams Family: Pugsley's Allowance

If you'll allow me to, once again, compare and contrast America's two favorite families of the macabre once again:. It is a common observation that, while the Munsters are a working class family, the Addams family are rich. Herman was often at his day job at the funeral home. I think there's been exactly two episodes where Gomez' profession as a lawyer has been relevant at all. I bring it up because the Addams' philosophy towards employment is central to “Pugsley's Allowance.” The eldest child comes to his parents with a strange request: He thinks it's time for him to get a job. Gomez and Morticia are horrified at first, wondering why an Addams should have to work at all. The boy refuses offers of an allowance or an easy job with his dad. Instead, he seeks out a series of odd jobs, none of which are particularly suited to his eccentric personality. It comes to a head when Mr. Henson, frequent season one antagonist and the normie next door, hires the kids to clean out his attic. 

“Pugsley's Allowance” does feel a bit like an episode where the writers looked around at some elements they hadn't used in a while and decided to do something with them again. Pugsley hasn't truly been the focus of an episode since that time Fester thought he turned him into a chimp. Mr. Henson is brought back, for the first time since “Gomez the People's Choice,” to once again fill the role of all-purpose antagonist. Now, he's the Addams' neighbor and ends up threatening to sue the family after Pugsley and Wednesday blow his attic up. That is when Gomez' knowledge of the law come back up, planning on counter-suing the guy. Ya know, for all the hardcore “Addams Family” nerds who are closely following the continuity of this silly old sitcom. 

This episode does have a good number of funny bits. Pugsley repeatedly being sent back home by his employer every time, because of his unusual perspective, makes for an amusing running gag. It reaches an ideal climax when Pugsley's final attempt to find work outside the home – being the assistant to a bookie – results in another visit. Lurch reaching for guests' hat also gets a good repeat here. The direct way the kids did with Henson's dirty attic is a joke you see coming. But it's a strong one, specifically because it plays off the differing values between the Addams and stuffy, regular suburbanites like Henson. This episode also shows one of the few times in the series when Morticia gets genuinely angry, when her children are threatened. You definitely don't want to piss her off! “Pugsley's Allowance” also features Gomez being chained and padlocked by his wife. He remains tied up for most of the episode. Looks like these two are altogether freaky, am I right? [7/10]

Director Report Card: Danny Boyle (2008)

 

12. Slumdog Millionaire

This is right around the time I jumped off the Danny Boyle train. "Sunshine" disappointed me so much that I immediately became skeptical of his involvement in any other project. When his follow-up was announced, I can vividly recall narrowing my eyes and thinking "Oh, so it's a movie about "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?" Who cares about that?" A lot of people, it turns out. We all know now that "Slumdog Millionaire" would become a sleeper hit, grossing 375 million worldwide against a 15 million dollar budget, making it the biggest film of its director's career by a large margin. "Slumdog Millionaire's" success did not end there, as it also swept through most of the big award shows. The film's list of accolades include eight Oscars, seven BAFTAs, four Golden Globes, three Grammys, and plenty of others. This did nothing to dissuade my notion that Danny Boyle wasn't on my wavelength anymore. Though I like to think I've mostly outgrown my teenage contrarian attitudes, I'll admit this marks the first time I've actually sat down to watch "Slumdog Millionaire." 

Jamal has the chance of a lifetime. He is appearing on "Kaun Banega Crorepati," the Hindi version of "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?," and he's very close to winning the grand prize. He's so close that the show runners think he is cheating and Jamal is brutally interrogated by law enforcement. This is when he recounts the journey that has brought him to this place: Jamal and his brother Salim grew up in the slums of Mumbai. After the death of their mother, they fell in with a gangster who trains children to be beggars... Usually by crippling or wounding them, so their increasingly pathetic state will receive more hand-outs. There, they meet Latika, a young girl who also grew up in the slums. While escaping their master, Latika is separated from the boys. The brothers do whatever they can to survive but Jamal remains determined to find Latika. They discover her being prepared to be a prostitute, resulting in Salim murdering their former caretaker and pushing his brother away. Years later, Jamal works as a gopher in a call center, Salim is an errand man for a high-profile gangster, and Latika is now the kept woman of the same mobster. Jamal has worked to appear on the game show in hopes of contacting Latika and winning enough money to change their lives forever. 

The thread most connecting "Slumdog Millionaire" to Boyle's earlier work is its brutal depiction of poverty. You can find a line from the junk houses of "Trainspotting," the vagabonds of "Strumpet," and the post-apocalyptic wanderers of "28 Days Later" to the homeless kids here doing anything they can to survive. The film doesn't pull many punches. It starts by literally covering the protagonists, head to toe, in human feces. Somehow, this is only the beginning of the challenges the boy faces. That children are the focus of the first half of the film only makes these events more harrowing. In life under the poverty line, in the shadows of Mumbai, even little kids are another potential cash source to be exploited. Whether that's via prostitution or burning their eyes and breaking their arms to make them more effective beggars. The people who claim to want to protect and care for these kids are only manipulating them for a chance to make more money further down the line. Cash is the only thing that seems to matter to the majority of people in this world, Jamal being propelled by love making him an outlier in a thoroughly cynical world. 

"Slumdog Millionaire's" depiction of life as an unhoused child around the city formally known as Bombay attracted considerable controversy. This is a film partially made by Europeans about marginalized brown people in another country, bringing with it the expected subtext of othering different cultures and races in order to score points as a properly aware white person. This would make the film typical "misery porn," made by white storytellers for a white audience, about how bad those poor people have it in some far away place. A tokenized and simplified version of life in another country designed to make rich people thousands of miles away feel bad on the route to making themselves feel better. That Jamal speaks with a British accent in the latter half of the film also suggests an uncomfortable need to align the Anglo viewer with the dark skinned protagonist. Indian critics have accused "Slumdog Millionaire" of painting an overly negative depiction of India, some going so far as to call it an "anti-Indian film" or an assault on the country's self-esteem. These are obviously very serious accusations, not without foundation, that deserved to be considered. 

I'm merely a pasty-skinned dumb-ass on the internet and any contribution I could make to this debate is unneeded. However, it's not as if any of the things depicted in the film – child exploitation, prolific poverty, criminal empires – don't actually happen in Mumbai. "Slumdog Millionaire" does not depict India as a country without kindness, love, or joy. However, it does accurately reflect India as a country crippled by a caste system designed to keep the disadvantaged poor and the rich ever more powerful. Crime or falling into money is depicted as the only way to achieve true upward momentum on a culture that values currency more than it values people. If this is seen as an unfair criticism of Indian culture, then it must be an unfair criticism of places all over the world. It's not as if the film was made without an Indian perspective, as Loveleen Tanden receives a co-directing credit on the film. I'm far too dumb and white to contribute meaningfully to this conversation. I would say an outsider making observations on Indian culture is worthy of criticism but it would seem to me that most of the problems depicted here are very real and this is an honest handling of them.

As much as "Slumdog Millionaire" is a gritty drama about life on the streets, it is also paradoxically a fairy tale of sorts. This is designed to be the underdog-iest of underdog stories. By sinking Jamal into a pool of literal human excrement in the first act, our hero begins in about as low a situation as can be imagine. From this, he pulls himself up to being a literal millionaire. He escapes adversity and then learns to survive through his own wits. There's a sort of frantic, youthful energy to scenes of him and Salim riding the rails of a train way, stealing food and goods from the rich, that is delivered like a child enthusiastically telling an exaggerated story of their adventures. When he starts to con gullible tourists into believing he's a tour guide to the Taj Mahal, it has the impish feeling of getting away with something, pulling one over on the snobs. There's no doubt that actually living this life would be difficult, full of hardships, starvation, and misery. "Slumdog Millionaire" acknowledges that while also playing like someone joyfully recounting the misadventures of their younger days. 

In fact, that's exactly what "Slumdog Millionaire" is. The majority of the film is told in flashback, Jamal relating his story to the cops interrogating him or reflecting on past events while in the middle of the game. He recalls events with such specificity, the circumstances he has lived through leading so directly into the questions he is asked on the game show, that the movie comes dangerously close to feeling contrived or corny. There's a real “Dewey Cox has to think about his entire life before he plays” atmosphere to the way the film is structured. Human memory doesn't actually work like that and, on account of all of us being human hopefully, we all know this. You have to buy into the improbable likeliness of that set-up to enjoy "Slumdog Millionaire" or else you'll be incredulously shaking your head the entire time. This is why the film invokes that fairy tale like tone throughout most of its runtime. It allows for contrivances that would otherwise drop you right out of the reality of the story. 

And what would a fairy tale be without a princess? Throughout the life time of events "Slumdog Millionaire" depicts, it looks like Jamal and Latika meet only a handful of times as adults. One of those meetings includes him seeing her from a far-off distance, the woman waving at him. Over years, Jamal remains fixated on Latika, making it his life long mission to find her, rescue her from the situation she is in, and be with her forever. The film ends soundly on the note of "And they lived happily ever after." This premise never once addresses if Latika wants Jamal to "rescue" her from the life she has. If being the moll of a Bombay gangster is an existence she might actually have become accustomed to. In fact, the character is never given any sort of interior life at all. She exists exactly like a princess in a tower, a goal for the hero to work towards, a reward for triumphing. The script takes it as a given that the girl wants to be with the boy. She is an enshrined ideal, a perfect sweetheart, whose presumed life of affiliation with criminals is only passingly acknowledged. Latika remains oddly virginal for someone nearly sold into sexual slavery, untouched and unsullied like a prim princess in a children's tale is supposed to be. 

Like I said, "Slumdog Millionaire" is knowingly invoking this tone, allowing it to get away with tropes that might otherwise have been deemed problematic. We simply have to take the film on its word that Latika is a fully-formed human being who has understandable reasons for everything she does. I guess the kid you knew briefly in grade school who is suddenly a millionaire is probably the preferable choice over a grouchy crime boss, despite him kind of stalking you for a decade. That Boyle and his team can get away with this is because "Slumdog Millionaire" is partially a homage to the greatest format for improbable tales that has ever been devised: The motion picture. The character establishing moment for Jamal is when he wades through shit to get an autograph from Amitabh Bachchan, a beloved icon of Bollywood cinema. Stories shown from a projector or a television screen are depicted as whimsical escapes from the characters' harsh lives. It is the medium that ultimately provides Jamal an out from this hard life. I am woefully unfamiliar with Hindi cinema but, from my understanding, fantastical stories of heroes escaping adversity, brothers becoming enemies, strangely chaste romances, and random song-and-dance numbers are reoccurring tropes of this world. "Slumdog Millionaire" is clearly invoking these ideas in a self-aware way, most blatantly in the subplot of Salim's rise and fall within Mumbai's underworld. The movie makes the viewer wait the entire runtime for the dance number, that most expected of Bollywood cliches, and it acts as a much awaited exhale right before the credits role. Those who are familiar with India's national style of filmmaking primarily through cultural osmosis can still recognize the tools Boyle and Tandan are intentionally working with. (This also explains why the Academy loved the movie so much, as odes to the magic of the cinema are among their favorite topics.)

Ultimately, "Slumdog Millionaire" is using these ideas in service of a story about destiny. Though perhaps not from the angle you are expecting. Throughout Jamal's recollection of his life, he comes across events that very specifically prepare him for the questions he has to answer on the game show. Some of these function as quirks of happenstance, the answer he needing in that moment appearing as a minor background detail during a pivotal memory. Other times, they appear as acts of divine intervention, such as when a vision of Rama appears to him as a boy. It would be easy to assume that "Slumdog Millionaire" is telling a cheesy story about a protagonist who happens to have lived the exact correct circumstances to bring him to this moment. However, the retrospective aspect to the way the film is constructed gives me another reading instead. We are all results of the lives we have lived. The choices we make in the future are an accumulation of the events we have lived through, the people we've known, and what we've learned in the past. If you see "Slumdog Millionaire" as simply a fairy tale, Jamal gets his cash prize as his "Cinderella" reward for living through a shitty life. If taken as an pondering on the nature of life and fate, the film can be seen as showing us that each of us are constructed by everything that has come before us.

For all the interesting ideas inside the film, this easily could have still come across as a coy and overly calculated attempt at sentimental story telling, with a possibly patronizing tone towards another race. However, what I think truly holds "Slumdog Millionaire" together is Dev Patel's lead performance. As Jamal, he is a bundle of utter sincerity. You believe that he truly loves Lakita because Petal makes the guy seem so utterly enraptured by this woman he's only talked to a few times. The absolute sincerity Petal brings to the character makes him easy to root for. You want to see the guy succeed, against the adverse circumstances he's lived with. The entire movie truly belongs to Patel, as his youthful energy and charm keeps the viewer compelled during the more improbable narrative choices the film makes. When the final question, the climax of the story arrives, the look of dumbfounded luck on Patel's face goes a long way towards selling the emotion of not only that moment but the entire film.

This would mark Boyle's fifth collaboration with Anthony Dod Mantle, the director of photographer ultimately winning an Oscar for his work here. The gritty, digital style Mantle is known for, that be brought to "28 Days Later," is certainly present here. Much of "Slumdog Millionaire" is characterized by a dark and muddy approach. However, this is paired with some colorful visual exclamation points, pauses in the chaos that stand out. While I'm not the biggest fan of Mantle's cinematography, it is considerably enlivened by Chris Dickens' editing. Dickens previously worked on Edgar Wright's first two features and, funny enough, that high-energy style of cutting recalls the kinetic approach of Boyle's earlier films. This means, visually, "Slumdog Millionaire" represents a fusion between the approach that defined his earlier work and the digital graininess that had come to dominate his last few movies.

Having now seen “Slumdog Millionaire,” I think I can safely say that there were probably better movies released that year, that arguably deserved to sweep the Oscars more than this one. However, it's also not a bad movie. A strong leading man and an interesting approach to its material makes the film a pleasant enough watch. If this represents Boyle's shift from indie weirdo to mainstream crowd-pleaser, I suppose worst fates are possible for directors. The film will soon become a Broadway musical, proving that this certainly isn't the most forgotten of Best Picture winners from that decade, no matter how divisive it remains among the serious film fan crowd. Corny but energetic, calculated but sweet, “Slumdog Millionaire” does manage to entertain decently enough for the time you spend watching. [Grade: B]

RECENT WATCHES: Saw VI (2009)

The common wisdom is that the first entry in a long-running horror series is some sort of critically acclaimed genre classic while the endless sequels were increasingly derided by the mainstream press as nothing but senseless gore. This is sometimes true but I was actively reading a lot of critics in the 2000s and recall the original "Saw" as being considered pretty dumb by most professionals even then. Once the moral panic around "torture porn" kicked in, the yearly "Saw" sequels became an excuse for writers to clutch their pearls and search their thesaurus for as many synonyms for "mindless drivel" as they could find. That was certainly the case by the time we got to "Saw VI," which Liongates did not bother to screen for critics. However, to considerably surprise, the sixth film actually received some better notices than the previous sequels by incorporating some social commentary into its explicit violence. The installment is also beloved by fans, with many considering it a late-in-the-series highlight for a franchise that was terribly close to being totally wrung out by this point.

With the FBI agent on his tail dispatched, Mark Hoffman has officially established himself as the successor to the mantle of the Jigsaw Killer. He tries and frames his dead nemesis for his crimes while harassing John Kramer's widow, Jill, for hints about the latest game. Director Erickson and Agent Perez – who survived her encounter with an exploding Billy the Puppet doll in part four – are quickly putting the pieces together about Hoffman's deception. Meanwhile, Jigsaw's most elaborate game is getting underway. William Easton, the health insurance executive who denied John's policy, awakens in a labyrinth. His colleagues are strung up in fatal devices that will force Easton to confront the life and death decisions he makes every day up close, as he moves towards rescuing his family in the maze's center.

As I remember it, horror fans were very receptive to the annual tradition of new "Saw" movies. I seem to recall posters on the Bloody Disgusting and MovieManiac.net forums enthusiastically accepting Hoffman as the new Jigsaw. This is funny as the sequels themselves increasingly seem to regard him as unworthy of this legacy. Maybe the clear gulf in charisma between Tobin Bell and Costas Mandylor was more evident to the producers. Either way, "Saw VI" agrees that Mark Hoffman sucks. While John Kramer kept the authorities fumbling around in the dark for years, Hoffman seems to have screwed up by the start of his second "game." Rather than attempting to teach people the value of their own lives and push their will to survive to the limit, Hoffman acts more directly as a vigilante punishing criminals. More pressingly, Hoffman is using the Jigsaw identity to destroy his enemies, get revenge, and get himself promoted at work. Incoherent and contradictory as his philosophy was, John Kramer was a fanatic with a mission and a point to make. Hoffman is a self-interested bully, a power-hungry supervillain, and kind of an idiot who has given himself a lofty, unearned sense of superiority. 

Saying this engineer of sadistic torment machines is morally sounder than this other torture master is ridiculous, of course. While the initial hook of the "Saw" series was that Jigsaw's justification for his crimes were unreasonable, the sequels have aligned himself more and more with his twisted mission. Now, in this pitch black moral universe, we are rooting for one serial killer to fail to confirm himself as the heir to another serial killer's title. I have to wonder if this isn't Kevin Greutert – promoted from editor to director – making some sort of commentary on the different audiences for these movies. Is he comparing the gore hounds who show up every October merely to see more elaborate methods of mutilation to Hoffman, who uses Jigsaw's games for selfish or petty purposes? As opposed to those that actually engage with the twisted lessons John Kramer was trying to teach his victims? Horror villains becoming fan favorites is basically impossible to avoid but Jigsaw becoming an antihero this admired suggest somebody's wires got crossed along the way. Or maybe this is Twisted Pictures throwing shade at the other "torture porn" films that imitated "Saw" and deeming them unworthy. Whatever the purpose, "Saw VI" is clearly distinguishing one type of bloody maiming as holier than the other. 

Whether this was intentional or not is debatable but "Saw VI" clearly does have weightier ideas on its mind. The sequel came out five months before President Obama signed the Affordable Healthcare Act into law, prompting unfounded fear mongering from the right-wing noise machine and endless debate about how healthcare is distributed in America. A humble horror sequel has no deep reflections on this but clearly communicates one message: Health insurance workers are fucking assholes. Jigsaw turns his wrath on the executives and pencil pushers who cynically decide who lives and who dies, forcing them into grisly challenges as a metaphor for their own corporate greed and lack of empathy. Literally, as Jigsaw has Easton decided whether a healthy young man with no family is more worthy of life than a woman with pre-existing conditions and several kids. In this current era, where Luigi Manigone can become a folk hero overnight for capping the CEO of UnitedHealthcate, it's not hard to be on Jigsaw's side here. The sequel's most stirring moment isn't any of its brutal gore sequences. Instead, it's when Tobin Bell goes on a fiery rant about the callousness of insurance companies, ending by directly comparing them to predatory fish. 

Taking target at the kind of real life villains that probably do deserve some torturous lessons in humanity brings something back to the "Saw" series that hasn't been present since the second film. There's a kind of joyful ridiculousness to the grim traps that are thought up this. A Billy the Puppet doll swings towards a glass window, as if the protagonist is venturing through a jump scare filled haunted attraction. The central set piece of the film involves people tied to a rotating platform with a shotgun pointed at it, a very silly set-up that actively invites the comparison to a carnival spectacle. While the traps in the last two movies could get a little too conceptual at times, Greutert cuts the scenarios down here. Having to chop off a literal pound of flesh or navigate a corridor full of spewing steam are straight forward enough concepts. The climatic murder device is so over-the-top that it pushes "Saw," for the first time, almost into the realm of campy gore comedy. It's not only CEOs and insurance agents that are punished here but also some predatory lenders and a gossip magazine columnist, all played as thoroughly despicable characters by leaning on overwrought emotion. 

Not that this was an intentional move on "Saw VI's" behalf. As always, these movies take themselves very serious. The degree of continuity between sequels and the number of past events to keep track of remain dense. Whenever "Saw VI" focuses on Jill trying to fulfill her husband's twisted plans or Hoffman's manipulative tactics, we've definitely reached soap opera territory. The level of melodrama, when added to the grim subject matter, does result in the first decent twist ending in a while and a finale that puts a novel spin on one of the classic "Saw" gimmicks. Greutert sticks to the hyper-grim visual palette that has been long established by now. Admittedly, the spastic montages and dingy lighting aren't utilized quite as much, these visual clichés starting to fall out of popularity by 2009. 

Honestly, one has to wonder if Lionsgate and Twisted Pictures themselves weren't aware of how silly this series was starting to get. Before "Saw VI" went before cameras, there was an accompanying VH1 reality show entitled "Scream Queens," in which the winner got to be a special guest victim in the sequel. Competing to be graphically tortured in a horror movie strikes me as a weird premise for a game show but I guess that was the state of both the horror and reality TV genres at the time. (The winner, by the way, was Tanedra Howard, who does a decent job of hacking her own arm off in the opening trap.) Whether "Saw VI" knowingly started to embrace the overly edgy element of the series for humor or at least incorporate a tiny bit of social relevance, it did inject some energy into a horror series that was starting to run its course. [7/10]

Director Report Card: James Wan (2004)

Of the horror filmmakers to achieve critical praise and mainstream hits during the early 2000s – a group some might call the Splat Pack – James Wan is undoubtedly the most successful. He's launched three separate, long-running horror series, at least one of which defined the genre for a while. He's directed two billion dollar grossing movies, making him the 17th highest grossing director of all time by current calculations. Honestly, if there's any one writer/director who can be said to have shaped the genre in a big way over the last twenty years, it's probably this guy. A question must be asked, however: Are Wan's movies actually any good? I shall attempt to provide my answer as I watch my through all of his features, as well as the many sequels and spin-offs associated with the work he's done. 

1. Saw

The child of Malaysian-Chinese immigrants, James Wan grew up in Perth, Australia. He would attend the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, majoring in Arts in Media. As part of a 1998 student project, Wan co-directed a 72-minute long horror movie called “Stygian.” The film has never been commercially released. From what little has been written about it, you get the impression that the filmmakers are embarrassed by their novice effort. However, at least one positive thing came out of “Stygian.” One of the actors in the movie, playing the role of “Clown / Punk Kid,” was Leigh Whannell. The two hit it off and began writing a script for a feature, inspired by their own nightmares. Wan filmed one scene from the script as a ten minute short, entitled “Saw.” It managed to attract enough attention from investors to put together a million dollar budget for a feature length version. Lion Gates Films picked the movie up, originally intending it for a straight-to-video release before deciding to put it in theaters, on the Friday before Halloween of 2004. Wan and Whannell's “Saw” became a pop culture phenomenon. The movie would spawn multiple sequels, launch several spin-offs, and popularize an entire subgenre. “Saw” and all its imitators have prompted much debate and controversy along the way. 22 years after these humble roots, how does the original “Saw” hold up today? 

A man named Adam awakens in a bathtub, a small light on a string emerging from his mouth. He realizes he's in a dingy public bathroom, his ankle chained to the wall. He's not alone. Dr. Lawrence Gordon, a surgeon he does not know, is similarly bound to the opposing wall. A corpse lies on the floor between them, a pistol in its hands. The duo discover two hand saws and a pair of audio cassette. They relay a message, that Gordon must kill Adam if he hopes to see his wife and daughter again. Similarly, Adam can only escape if he murders the other man. They both must saw through their feet for either objective to be fulfilled. Gordon quickly realize they are caught up in the latest “game” of the Jigsaw Killer: A deranged inventor who captures people – deemed guilty of some sin by him, as explained via the puppet he uses as an avatar – and forces them to escape deadly, elaborate contraptions or traps he's created. The police determine that Jigsaw always watches his victims. As Gordon and Adam struggle to escape the fatal scenario, the obsessed Detective Tapp is hot on the killer's trail.

You can't talk about "Saw" without discussing its impact on the horror genre. The film's surprise success popularized what became known by the deeply unfortunate moniker of "torture porn," gory horror films focused on elongated scenes of sadism and bodily mutilation. The fad generated a minor moral panic, marking the last time in my life I can recall horror movies actually being deemed "dangerous" by the press. You can debate the merits and negatives of this trend all you want. You can also argue about whether the first "Saw" truly qualifies as one of these movies. Most of its intense gore happens off-screen and there truly aren't any moments of physical torture. However, a more interesting question is why this hyper-grim style of horror was so popular for a brief time. "Saw" was made by two Australians, so it's hard to say how much of this was intentional. However, "Saw" captured the anxieties of post-9/11 America. The nebulous threat of "terrorism" could strike anywhere, at any time. In "Saw," the victims are always abducted from mundane locations like a parking garage or their own home. They are thrust into a sadistic scenario by a villain with motivations that they can't totally grasp, beyond knowing this is somehow their own fault. Much the same way the average American was told the terrorists – that could strike anywhere, at any time – hated us "for our freedom," despite the hard-to-repress creeping feeling that America's foreign policy gave birth to the monster that was vexing it. Meanwhile, the hyper grim visuals, of people awakening in dilapidated bathrooms or basement torture chambers, reflected the videos of journalists being beheaded distributed over the internet or briefly glimpsed on news programs. 

"Saw" also recalled images of prisoners-of-war – or illegally detained suspects – suffering through "enhanced interrogation techniques" in prisons over seas or near our own coasts. The paranoia of the post-9/11 world wasn't based only in fears of a decentralized enemy striking in public places. It was a fear of our own government, increasingly compromising our rights to personal privacy in the name of our own "protection." These Patriot Act anxieties are present in "Saw" through the villain being a constant voyeur. Jigsaw pointedly watches his victims struggle, as well as observing them for some time before they are abducted. Upon realizing they are being recorded, Adam compares their situation to a "sick reality show." This was before social media and cellphone cameras, when we truly were all being watched at all hours. However, the feeling that the surveillance state had arrived – and that this violation of privacy was already being commodified – was well in the air in 2004. Modern day "Saw" knock-offs has tortured victims being recorded, either broadcast over the Deep Web or sold as snuff films to depraved collectors. Wan and Whannall couldn't have predicted these advances in technology at the time but "Saw" preceded them anyway. It was a new millennium and our most private, vulnerable moments were no longer our own, watched by government spies or techno-perverts. 

Funnily enough, I'm doubtful Wan and Whannall were thinking about these ideas much at all when conceiving "Saw." Instead, they simply hoped to cook up the cheapest, easiest premise for a thriller that their meager budget could afford: Two guys in a room. In a lot of ways, "Saw" is a triumph of practicality and low budget creativity. Probably inspired by "Cube" – an often unspoken but obvious influence on "Saw" – the movie manages to generate some decent suspense and a compelling mystery from this extremely limited premise. The audience, at first, have exactly as much information about what's happening as Adam and Dr. Gordon. Jigsaw leaving clues and messages for his victims makes the film a game to be played and solved. (As well as the predecessor to the late 2010s popularity of "escape rooms.") The film doesn't wait long to cheat, going outside the four walls of its setting via flashbacks and other scene. A version focused solely on the guys chained up in the bathroom probably would've been tighter, smarter, shorter, more intense, and far less commercial. 

The gorier, more brutal sequels and imitators that followed in "Saw's" wake were the work of horror nerds following the intensity of fucked-up Asian movies. Wan and Whannall's influences were much more humble. These guys wanted to be the next David Fincher, drawing from the gritty, grim mood and visuals of "Seven." Much like that film, "Saw" freely exaggerates the clichés of the cop vs. killer thriller popularized by "The Silence of the Lambs." If Hannibal Lecter was the most brilliant and twisted killer the early nineties could concoct, and John Doe was his more elaborate and meticulous disciple, then Jigsaw is the apotheosis of the serial killer as a genius with a convoluted modus operandi. He's clearly gifted as an inventor and engineer but he uses that ability to fashion complex contraptions of death and agony, all in service of making some sort of sick point. Meanwhile, this first film includes a detective element. Danny Glover plays Tapp, the cop so fixated on hunting down the killer that he's gone far beyond the moral and reasonable boundaries in his pursuit. You can tell Tapp is a little obsessed because he's got an apartment with walls pasted with newspaper clippings and clues. He's given a detailed backstory, seeking out Jigsaw to avenge a dead partner. It's all stuff we've seen many times before in past films, added to pad out a script that otherwise would have been composed entirely of two guys in a room. 

"Saw's" obvious status as a regurgitation of past tropes is most evident in how the movie looks. Whenever the film peeks into any of Jigsaw's torture chambers, they are bathed in a sickly green color and grimy browns or blacks. Everything is lit in a manner to invoke a feeling of discomfort and nastiness. Especially during the infamous reverse bear trap sequence – the basis for the short film before this – this seasick coloration is paired with a jittery editing style, invoking lots of frantic montages of people panicking while the camera jerks around wildly. If you remember the nineties and early 2000s, you'll remember this visual style from roughly a hundred industrial and nu-metal music videos. It's an immediately recognizable look, that is meant to signal to the audience that you're watching something “twisted,” “sick,” or edgy. Cinematographer David A. Armstrong and editor Kevin Greutert commit fully to this approach, keeping an aesthetic that probably should've died out in 2000 alive for another decade or so. 

This points towards something else that you inevitably notice about “Saw,” here in the future year of 2025: This movie is kind of goofy, isn't it? Not only because the visual style is trying so hard to be freaky and extreme that it immediately becomes antiquated, though that is a big factor why. Not simply because the movie assigns things like barb wire, ventriloquist dummies, and hooded executioners – clichés even at the time – an unearned degree of seriousness, though this too makes the film play more like camp than it did in 2004. Largely, the performances strike me as rather over-the-top. Leigh Whannall gets all the silliest dialogue, his delivery proving that he was probably better suited to being behind a keyboard than in-front of a camera. Cary Elwes grotesquely overacts as Dr. Lawrence, most prominently in the final act, as things get more desperate. Danny Glover also spends most of his screen time staring wide-eyed and sweaty-skinned, playing the character as obsessed and hammering that one note as hard as he can. 

Once you notice the gulf between the seriousness “Saw” is clearly striving for and the evident camp in its execution, it becomes difficult not to notice a lot of the silly things about this grisly motion picture. Namely, the Jigsaw Killer's attempts to justify his grotesque actions. Supposedly inspired by a moment in Whannell's life when he feared having a brain tumor, the franchise's villain puts people through Hell – almost always killing them in the process – out of some twisted desire to punish those who have “wasted” their lives. Among his victims we see are a drug addict and a man who attempted suicide despite seemingly having no problems in his life. Which, ya know, does not show an especially nuanced understanding of depression or addiction. Since the Jigsaw Killer is a sadistic maniac, I don't think we're meant to take his justifications seriously. At the same time, the film obviously considers some of these ideas novel, if not “deep.” When it is so blatantly a threadbare justification for the elaborate traps the script cooks up. Jigsaw could have merely been a psycho and “Saw's” premise probably would have made more sense if he was. However, a desire to mark him as another great cinematic madman or to grapple with some sort of real world topics saddled the budding franchise with the goofiest of backgrounds. 

Credit where it is due: As dumb-ass stupid as lots of “Saw's” story is, Whannall's script does do many things well. Aside from the catchiness of the “two guys in a room” premise, the story does successfully play a long game of misdirection with the audience. Throughout the film, bug-eyed and fittingly sketchy looking character actor Michael Emerson is seemingly presented as our villain. This is a red herring and the actual culprit is a lot closer to his prisoners than they realize. Watching the film now, when we are all well-aware of the Jigsaw Killer's identity, makes that twist less potent. Back in 2004 though, watching the body rise from the bathroom floor, as Charlie Clouser's immediately iconic theme music kicks in, and all the clues the film laid down throughout slid into place... Yeah, that was pretty cool. It's still a decent moment today.

Scenes like that suggest, despite the many ways in which “Saw” tries too hard or overestimates its own seriousness, there is some genuine cleverness on-display here as well. Wan and Armstrong do engineer some striking visuals once or twice. A shot of Glover and his partner stepping up through a staircase, as smoke billows around their ankles, is cool. The notorious Reverse Trap Mask is a genuinely nightmarish idea. Once you divorce the premise from any real world logic, it is indeed a pretty fucked-up way to kill someone that nobody would want to be stuck in. The huge iron lips and rusty rivets of the device are probably one of the few times the film's ultra-grungy visual approach actually works the way the film's creators clearly intended. 

That elaborate gizmo is one of several images from the first “Saw” that went on to become very famous. Maybe that's another reason why Wan's film comes off as sillier now than it did in 2004. In retrospect, “Saw” seems very aware of its own franchise potential. Calling its villain "The Jigsaw Killer" – justified by his unimportant calling card of taking a jigsaw puzzle piece shaped bit of skin from his victims – is the kind of catchy nickname people will remember. The visual of Billy the Puppet – his little suit and tricycle, the spiral patterns on his cheeks, the contrast between his ridiculously gravelly voice and cartoonish appearance – seems like an obvious attempt to reverse engineer a horror movie image as iconic as Jason's hockey mask or Freddy Krueger's glove. If merchandisers and fans didn't immediately latch onto that, “Saw” also includes a literal mask that could be turned into a Halloween costume. That would be yet another obvious steal from the Nine Inch Nails' “Closer” video, in a pig head with greasy long hair and an executioner's robe. I wouldn't assume that Wan and Whannall had any idea that such a long running, profitable series would emerge from their indie film. At the same time, every horror nerd dreams about creating their own Michael Myers or Chucky, a character that gets carved onto the Mount Rushmore of horror fan favorites. The possibility probably wasn't too far from their minds then.

”Saw's” eventual impact on the direction horror took in the next decade cemented its standing in genre history. Trying to divorce the movie from that, it is equally a very silly, sometimes quite dumb, often trying too hard motion picture that also shows a lot of promise and creativity. Perhaps we would've been better off if this had stayed as the under-the-radar indie hit that Lion Gates originally envisioned. Wan and Whannell's careers probably wouldn't have taken off like they did in that scenario. Do I want to live in a world where Billy the Puppet isn't the bridge between Ghostface and Art the Clown? I guess not. “Saw” may be at its dumbest when attempting to be more than a mere trashy horror flick but that doesn't mean it can't be fun in its own twisted way too. [Grade: B-]

Director Report Card: Julius Onah (2019)

3. Luce

It seems to me that the Sundance Film Festival remains the most prestigious of the big independent film festivals. It's where future Oscar winners and break-out indie hits often first emerge, where careers are made and dreams are broken. A related phenomenon is a movie getting rave responses out of Sundance, a major studio paying big bucks for it, only for the film to open to middling box office. Julius Onah had technically already had his breakout film by 2019, though I can't blame him for wanting to put "The Cloverfield Paradox" behind him. He truly seemed to catch people's attention with "Luce," an adaptation of JC Lee's 2013 stage play. Fantastically received at the festival, NEON picked it up for a wider release. It didn't exactly break through in a big way, not flashy enough to catch the attention of the industry award shows, but it remains a movie people discuss and think of fondly. If nothing else, it established Onah as a director to watch. 

Teenager Luce Edgar has an inspiring story. Born in war-torn Eritrea, he was adopted by Peter and Amy, an upper-class white couple. He's a track star at school, a lauded student, and has been asked to deliver a speech at a presentation. His history teacher, Miss Wilson, confronts Amy with something she finds troubling: When asked to write a paper from the perspective of a historical figure, Luce chose Frantz Fanon, an African revolutionary who believed violence was necessary to overcome colonialism. Wilson also found fireworks in Luce's locker. Peter and Amy are concerned but Luce claims Wilson also singles him out, as a symbol of "black excellence," while tokenizing other members of his class. Luce, while talking with Wilson, seems to subtly threaten her. Amy, meanwhile, gets in touch with a former girlfriend of Luce's, who describes being sexually assaulted while drunk at a party. A series of events unfold, Wilson convinced Luce is playing the people around him to further his personal grudges while Amy grows increasingly unsure of what her son is capable of. 

"Luce" is a film with a lot of ideas on its mind but one of its primary concerns is with the other people perceive us. Luce's story, raised as a child soldier in Africa before being brought over to a wealthy American family and achieving academic and scholastic success, strikes many as inspiring. It's a status the young man seems happy to embrace at first. He's held up as a symbol of the American dream, coming from horrible circumstances to achieve greatness. He's referred to as "Obama" by more than one person. Wilson treats other members of her class in similarly idealistic ways: Stephanie, plagued by rumors of sexual misadventures, is regarded as a female suffering in silence. A friend of Luce's, DeShaun, was thrown off the track team after Wilson found pot in his locker, as the teacher seems to consider him a more standard example of an underachieving youth. As writers, we often create characters as "symbols" of various ideas, representing social woes or philosophical concepts. But real people aren't symbols. They are messy, complicated human beings with conflicting attributes. "Luce" presents a scenario where someone fires back at being elevated to symbol status. 

It goes without saying that race plays a major role in how others are perceived and what they become symbols of. Luce, being a black boy from a poor country and adopted by a white couple, is already well aware of how the color of his skin influences how others see him. Rich white people adopting little black babies from poor countries to call their own and raise in the lap of luxury is a phenomenon covered in difficult social layers, prompting discussion of race and class, of white Americans acting as saviors to anyone deemed less fortunate in order to make themselves seem more progressive. Luce, meanwhile, is culturally perceived as "one of the good ones," someone destined to rise to great status... With the implication being that he overcame the disadvantage of being born brown, poor, and African.

He's an erudite, well spoken young man, knowledgeable about history and culture. This is comparable to DeShaun, who smokes pot and peppers his speech with slang and profanity, whose name seems to be indicative of both his skin color and his standing in society. Luce was not born with that name. His mother couldn't pronounce his African name and he was given Luce – Latin for "light" and exactly the kind of thing a pampered white couple would name their kid – as an alternative. Luce can see through the artificial designations society has given both him and DeShaun. The two black boys are not that different in many ways. Luce enjoys a joint every now and then too. The perceptions other tie to them is what makes them different, what makes one a future Obama and the other a "thug." 

"Luce" could also be short for Lucifer, which brings up another complicated layer in both the film and the character. Throughout, we see Luce easily slip into the persona of a well-spoken young man eager to impress. This has made him a favorite among the school staff, the principal joking around with him in a casual manner at one point. The boy is well aware of how others perceive him and is capable of using that perception. Not necessarily for innocent goals either. His seeming admiration for a violent revolutionary suggests he sees force as a way to achieve a goal. When "apologizing" to Wilson, he seems to subtly sneak a threat into his words. He does it again before the end. Throughout the film, there's this mounting fear that Luce is manipulating everyone around him, playing people's bias against each other in order for him to come out on top. There's a word for people like that, who see others as mere tools to control and only cares about his own success: A sociopath, a highly mythologized term that nonetheless accurately describes a personality type we've all encountered or seen in office. 

Miss Wilson seems to be the only person, at first, capable of seeing Luce as a manipulative, dangerous person. After a humiliating day, Wilson comes home to find a racial slur written on her house. She accuses Luce of doing this but nobody else can imagine such a shining star student being capable of such a thing... At first anyway. When presented with the concerning history paper, Amy is fast to defend her son. This is what a mother does. However, as the story goes on, as she sees more of what exactly her son can do, Amy begins to have doubts about Luce herself. Peter is more willing to see their son's sinister side. Ultimately, his wife says it's their job as parents to defend their son while being unable to suppress her own fears. Who is the true Luce then? The popular, successful, intelligent young man that the principal and most of the other students? Stephanie sees Luce as a kind person who only wants what is best for her. Wilson believes Luce is smart and capable enough to play games with others. Amy wants to protect her son, still seeing him as her beloved baby boy. She asks Peter at one point which side he's on. Which is what it often comes down to. We choose which perception of someone is personally true for us, which one is "real."  

Of course, the perception of people is not only formed by their friends and loved ones. Society does it too. Miss Wilson has a mentally ill sister that lives with her. She comes to the school, having a meltdown, stripping off her clothes. She screams at Wilson, accusing her of thinking she comes from a better racial class then her. The white students whip out cell phones and record the public breakdown, happy to provide another example for the stereotype of black people as mentally instable. Near the film's end, Luce confronts Wilson at her home and she explains how she feels her singling him out is justified, that people of color must be extraordinary to overcome the limitations the culture has imposed on them. Luce objects to being made an example or a spectacle, Wilson arguing that he has no choice in the matter. If the versions of us that exists in other people's heads are as valid as any other, then the effect race and status play in forming that perception can't be overlooked.

The contrasts and complications of how we might be perceived versus the people we might actually be is something “Luce,” as a film, is willingly playing with. The musical score is often sparse, adding to the sense of chilly tension in the film. Whenever it seems Luce is up to something devious, a rap style beat with rough vocalizations plays. It's as if the film is intentionally baiting the audience, asking us to consider whether this upstanding young black man is, in fact, prone to the violence that “super-predators” like him have been accused of. Stephanie is a young Asian girl, the kind of figure that is culturally shown as vulnerable and exploited. Luce has her intentionally playing up that element of her appearance as part of his final scheme, another way the movie is pushing some buttons very intentionally in order to make us question our beliefs and preconceived notions on how we look at someone.

Julius Onah clearly has a personal investment in this story. He is an immigrant too, born in Nigeria, lived all the over the world, and settled in the United States. “The Girl Is in Trouble” and several of his short films touched on this subject too. Something pointed Luce says is that, as an immigrant from a war torn country, he feels like he only has two options of what he can grow up to be: Either a monster or a hero. The film intentionally has him existing between both of these poles, showing a number of unsettling personality traits while outwardly achieving a lot. In this context, we can't see his apparent sociopathy as anything but a reaction to the pressures of being from a foreign country. You either exceed the expectations society puts on you or you play right into them. Onah is clearly reflecting on some of his very personal frustrations through the film's story.

The director brings some of his other trademarks with him. The usage of cell phones throughout the film show a continued interest in technology, in the way it has changed how we communicate.  Mostly, Onah and cinematographer Larkin Seiple shoot “Luce” like it's a horror movie. They often place characters apart from each other, between the foreground and background, as if to emphasize a predatory distance between them. There's a coldness to the color palette, the interiors shadowy and haunted, that adds to a disquieting atmosphere. The camera often peeks into lockets or at desk, creating an alien and inhuman feeling in this setting, further adding to that chilly tension. Save for a moment or two, “Luce” stubbornly refuses to alleviate the suspense it creates, the unsettling questions and uncertainties the film raises lingering with the viewer long after the movie ends. The clearly cinematic style also helps the film escape its stage-bound roots, helping the audience overlook that most of the movie is made up of people sitting around and talking in rooms.

Holding “Luce” totally together is an excellent cast. Kelvin Harrison Jr. gives what should be a star-making performance in the title role. Harrison is especially good at hinting at the darker capabilities of Luce while also putting on an outwardly inviting appearance. His ability to control his exterior, and his awareness of how that effects people, because very clear in one of the final scenes of the movie. Harrison swinging so easily between such convincing poles is chilling. Naomi Watts, without going into histrionics, does a strong job of showing the conflicted emotions she is feeling. Amy goes through the wringer, still loving her son despite the suspicions she has about him. Tim Roth is more caustic, as you'd expect from him, though he makes every line count. Octavia Spencer, as Miss Wilson, says a lot with a single look or glance, suggesting the frustration and anger she is feeling under the surface. 

”Luce” is a movie clearly without a lot of complicated ideas on its mind, approaching thorny issues in a thoughtful way that doesn't rob them of their power. Race, class, and self are discussed without turning the story into a boring lecture, the film often operating as a tense thriller in its own right. It's the kind of movie that is perhaps a bit too proud of its own boldness. There are several moments where it seems to be pontificating. I suppose that is an unavoidable aspect of the material being adapted from the stage, where standing before an audience and saying your piece is kind of expected. Nevertheless, it unfolds in a tense and disturbing manner, powered by some damn fine performances. It's clear that this is the kind of material that Julius Onah excels at and I hope he gets to make more movies like this someday. [Grade: B+]