Denouement Renouement

  • Hooptober 12: Paperhouse (1988)

    Film #19 — 1/1 Film with Dreams as Part of the Plot

    By C. Ramsay

    From Bernard Rose, director of the original Candyman, Paperhouse is about a young girl named Anna who uses a dreamworld she’s created by drawing in her school composition notebook to escape her struggles in real life. Using a touch of Solaris to establish this, the quiet emptiness of Anna’s initial visit to her dreamworld is then juxtaposed with the suffocating and endlessly busy city of her reality, made worse by the fact that she is trapped in a car with her mother driving while being scolded for her recent behaviour. Tonally, however, the film is most reminiscent of The Babadook—Anna being annoyingly whiny but still endearing, the script a touch repetitive in its dialogue, and the editing a bit too choppy to fully come together in a polished way.

    Although the concept of drawings coming to life or generating an alternate realm is not unheard of, it also isn’t the most popular basis for a storyline. Relatedly, as the film is only loosely adapted from a novel, Bernard Rose was able to establish the lore and mechanics of the dreamworld as he desired, which was incredibly interesting to experience unfolding without knowing what would come next. The set design is gorgeous, with the house itself being faithful to the wonkiness of Anna’s drawing capabilities. Having been drawn with regular pencil, every part of the house is in drab sepia tone and is disorienting and cavernous, the walls only meant to create a sheltered space to contain the most imaginative components of Anna’s world. The dreamworld set and its dressings are stylistically similar to Terry Gilliam’s designs, and do a great job of solidifying the imagination of their creator, reflecting whimsy along with the underlying fear and unease that so easily creeps into the minds of children.

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  • Hooptober 12: Spoorloos (The Vanishing) (1988)

    Film #18 — 4/4 Films Based on Novels

    Also filed under: A-One

    By C. Ramsay

    An extremely slow burning, quiet character study about loss, grief, and the human condition in the face of tragedy. Rex and Saskia, a couple on holiday, pull up to a busy rest stop where Saskia suddenly disappears. Rex, never having given up the search and taunted by postcards from the supposed abductor, returns to the scene after three years desperately seeking answers. Aside from a few minutes the audience has alone with Rex and Saskia at the beginning of the film, the killer is introduced early on. The focus is almost never on who, but on the depressingly unanswerable question of why.

    Jumping between character perspectives, director George Sluizer subjects the viewer to a mixture of firsthand accounts of the actions of certain people as well as the secondhand understanding of them through stories and explanations. From our own viewpoint there is no telling what’s reliable or to what extent, we’re forced to accept what we’re given without question or risk our questions being forever unresolved. The scene of Saskia’s disappearance at the start of the film, shot from Rex’s point of view, provides a sample of the frustration this feeling brings—of realizing something isn’t right and thinking there must be an easy explanation, something simple we’ve overlooked, before the aching sense of dread starts to creep in, giving way to overwhelming panic. Everything can be done right and it still won’t matter.

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  • Hooptober 12: The Blob (1988)

    Film #17 — 1/1 Film I Hadn’t Seen from Cinemonster’s Favourite Horror Movie List

    By C. Ramsay

    Far more disgustingly claustrophobic than it first appears given the level of humour involved, The Blob truly savours the uniqueness of each kill. Benefitting from some of the visual effects crew from Cronenberg’s The Fly, the body horror is immaculate and never feels hindered in some scenes as a means to spotlight the set pieces in others. Every single sequence is as exciting and new as the last. Often stylized to look like people’s internal organs are rapidly flooding from their bodies once it’s finished with them, the titular entity is most vivid in its filth, slinking through and around any obstacle in nearly all types of terrain. It is entirely unhindered by most physical barriers and thrives in its perpetual desire to consume, enlarging itself at an exponential rate with every feed.

    A wide-ranging group of characters are given ample screen time, and all, from the protagonists to the people only in a single scene, are fleshed out enough to feel three-dimensional. Brian Flagg in particular, the local juvenile delinquent, works exceptionally well as a character in a survival setting that spans the extent of a city because he’s got nothing to lose, no respect for authority, and strong survival instincts, all of which drive him to move through set pieces in ways no other character would think to. Each scene is memorable for its own reasons, and just as the characters are given enough definition to remain interesting no matter how well the audience actually knows them, the action of the film takes place in so many different areas of the city that the entire place feels familiar by the end, from the woods to its residential neighbourhoods, and from its staple businesses and amenities to its sewers.

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  • Hooptober 12: Veneno para las hadas (Poison for the Fairies) (1986)

    Film #16 — 1/1 Film from a Mexican or Central American Director; 4/6 Countries (Mexico)

    Also filed under: A-One

    By C. Ramsay

    The short, introductory scene that kicks this film off is a perfect encapsulation of the atmosphere the rest of the film carries. Being unclear about the larger context, the audience is met with a child wandering the darkness of a home with a single candle, her intentions unknown but undeniably fixed. She walks slowly but resolutely, her steps at pace with the score, which is already swelling. Unwaveringly, she slices the throat of an adult who is surprised by her entrance into their room, their blood lavishly red against the backdrop of an otherwise black and white scene. The girl grins as the blood begins to pool, and the opening credits are queued into rolling. The colour grading for the remainder of the film is rich and vibrant.

    Full of gothic melodramatic flair, the film centres around two young girls and their developing friendship: Veronica, an orphan with a penchant for witchcraft living with her nanny and sick grandmother, and Flavia, a wealthy atheist who comes from a loving home but joins the school mid-semester and is too shy to make friends aside from Veronica. In an effort to impress Flavia, Veronica begins trying to convince her that she’s a witch who wields great power, which both interests and scares the new girl. Though some of the spats between the kids seem comedic and overly juvenile, the film frames any tension between them not as a punchline, but out of understanding that from the girls’ perspectives the intensity is justified, even if it’s also humorous.

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  • Hooptober 12: Razorback (1984)

    Film #15 — 1/1 The Animals Are Pissed at Us Film; 3/6 Countries (Australia)

    By C. Ramsay

    Primarily following an American couple who find themselves in Australia for different reasons, Razorback is about a giant wild boar that has made a small town and its surrounding area its hunting grounds. Featuring amusingly gruesome death sequences, the film implements lots of humour throughout, particularly through the use of some incredibly funny prop comedy.

    When tension is needed, a key shot is typically left running long so that the viewer can notice details in the background, allowing the audience to reach certain realizations at the same time as the characters. This works very effectively, yet this slow, simmering tension is almost always instantly obliterated to prioritize shock value.

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  • Hooptober 12: Angst (1983)

    Film #14 — 1/3 Wildcard Films; 6/9 Decades; 2/6 Countries (Austria)

    Also filed under: A-One

    By C. Ramsay

    This might be the most difficult film I’ve ever watched. Opening with a warning to the squeamish followed immediately by some of the most uniquely disorienting camerawork to ever be featured in filmmaking, the viewer is never given a moment to find their bearings. K, the psychopath, provides narration throughout the film explaining his ideas and reasoning. The calmness of this narration initially begs for the viewer’s interest, but is mixed with demented imagery, and the gravity of the descriptions K provides of his actions are dread-inducing. It is incredibly uncomfortable to be inescapably stuck with him for the duration of the film knowing what he’s capable of.

    The avant-garde filmmaking is nauseating, full of fast, swaying motions that are almost always pinned to K and his movements, putting us directly into his headspace while simultaneously victimizing the audience. We see which details tend to stand out to him in potential victims while also being bombarded with extreme closeups of him doing things like eating, something that should be a regular action, but in his case is witnessed as being just as deprived and destitute as the rest of his behaviour. 

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  • Hooptober 12: Salem’s Lot (1979)

    Film #13 — 1/1 Tobe Hooper Film

    By C. Ramsay

    A fun score, immersive camerawork, and some gnarly special effects with some equally gnarly pants situations. I’d been thinking about how much the location reminded me of Point Dume from Messiah of Evil and then Elisha Cook Jr. appeared playing basically the same character, which was delightful. 

    The makeup and gleeful grins the vampires have are effectively haunting, especially considering the contacts give them a somewhat unfocused gaze, making them seem lost in their bloodlust. They often appear to be drooling, and the way the prosthetic teeth fit almost make it seem like their lips are swollen, cut in their eagerness to feed with tools they’ve not yet adapted to. The insides of their mouths remain fleshy and pink whereas the rest of their skin is made to look rotting and dead, the person they used to be now just a husk commandeered to feed.

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  • Hooptober 12: The Stepford Wives (1975)

    Film #12 — 3/4 Films Based on Novels

    Also filed under: A-One

    By C. Ramsay

    “Tell me about yourself…What does your husband do?”

    Walter, Joanna, and their two young children, Amy and Kim, are finalizing packing their car to uproot from Manhattan to Stepford, Connecticut when they’re first introduced to the audience. Joanna, a photographer, seems distracted in longing for the city before they’ve even left, and the kids are curious of the world around them. When Walter eventually catches up to them with the last of their things, he’s bitter, rushing to take off, and expressing contempt for the liberality of the home the rest of his family has not yet processed giving up. With him driving, they take off for the destination of their new all-white, pastoral, guarded community to start the next chapter of their lives.

    The viewer is transported through the hazy dreaminess of Stepford with a drifting camera that gently follows Joanna as she adjusts to the traditionalism of rural suburbia. People of colour are absent as residents and tokenized when brought up, every woman is expected to be quiet and obedient, and Joanna is the only one who sees the children in the area as people. As her unease about the values of their new town grows to safety concerns, Joanna tries to vocalize her fears to her husband who becomes frustrated, making it clear that decisions he’d previously tried to frame as being mutually beneficial were actually based out of patriarchal conservatism.

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  • Hooptober 12: The Exorcist (1973)

    Film #11 — 2/4 Films Based on Novels

    By C. Ramsay

    An interrogation of the idea of God’s abandonment of us, of why good people are exposed to bad things—in this case a 12-year-old girl experiencing demonic possession—and of who is willing to provide support to strangers in need at great personal cost. Opening with a classic archaeological attachment to mysticism representing a fear of the unknown and a channel to ancient, innate evil, the Exorcist is full of flare yet lacking in foundation.

    In his first credited role, Jason Miller gives a fantastic performance as Father Karras, an altruistic priest working primarily as a psychiatric counselor who’s undergoing his own crisis of faith in the wake of his mother’s declining health. Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair also give solid, and noticeably physically challenging, performances as actor Chris MacNeil and her preteen soon-to-be-demonically-possessed daughter, Regan.

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  • Hooptober 12: The Devils (1971)

    Film #10 — 1/4 Films Based on Novels (or Books); 5/9 Decades

    Also filed under: A-One

    By C. Ramsay

    Though it might be cliché to quote Shakespeare’s “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here” as the truest sentiment this film embodies, there’s no closer description of the nearly two-hour frenzied descent into sacrilegious hedonism that it presents. Set in 1634 France and following Urbain Grandier, a priest who has temporarily inherited control of the fortified city of Loudun from its deceased Governor, as well as Sister Jeanne des Agnes of the city’s Ursuline convent, the film intertwines the country’s conflicting religious fanaticism with an outburst of mass sexual deviancy.

    Featured throughout are colossal but stark sets, their architecture illustrative of the people most commonly frequenting them—rounded and enveloping for Sister Jeanne, jagged and commanding for Father Grandier, all of it cavernous and empty. The streets of Loudon, the space of the masses, are where the excesses are found: an orgiastic cacophony of visual opulence that in detail is built of disease, rot, and poverty, swelling to consume all who wade through it. 

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