Denouement Renouement

Tag: fantasy

  • Hooptober 12: Mandy (2018)

    Film #29 — 3/3 Cult or Conspiracy Films

    By C. Ramsay

    A hallucinatory phantasmagorical nightmare of a film that cycles through the stages of grief and their inciting incident in its 2-hour runtime, Mandy is mean-spirited but not without sympathy. There is not enough praise that can be given to its stylization—it’s hard to find fault in how the cinematography, soundtrack, score, costumes and makeup, and even the title and chapter cards come together to make something as uniquely metal as this. 

    Though much of the film features a strong degree of absurdity and outlandishness, the weight of the circumstances is always felt. There is a process to how things work, and a flow in how they’re affected and what they influence in turn, that grounds the story progression in comprehensibility. We see just enough of the mechanics of this microcosm to accept it for what it is and follow along for the ride.

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  • 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: 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: Вий (Viy) (1967)

    Film #7 — 1/1 Former Soviet Film; 1/6 Countries (USSR)

    Also filed under: A-One

    By C. Ramsay

    One of the few feature-length horror films from the USSR, sometimes argued to be the only true title in the category, Viy is a morality tale wrapped in folk horror. Beginning with three seminary students who find themselves lost in the country after trying to make it home for vacation, they eventually find a farm and rudely demand shelter and food from a witch in the form of an old woman. Khoma is the most egregiously demanding of the three, earning him interest from the witch, though all the students are completely uninterested in the praxis of their doctrine and are shown to be disruptive to everything and everyone around them. None seem to practice earnestly, and Khoma repeatedly uses his ties to piety as a way to conceal his wrongdoings, at no point showing any actual selfless consideration for those around him or the harm he causes. 

    The film builds tension through the quickening of cuts and increasing the speed of camera movements, using lots of playful handheld camerawork to add a fluidity to much of the motion that becomes jarring when it suddenly stops. The viewer is told exactly how to feel and when to feel it, but there’s such a strong comedic tone throughout that this approach adds to the absurd surrealist ride rather than feeling like the audience is being spoon-fed. Blending with beautiful imagery, Viy becomes nightmarish in its repetitions and in the length that some sequences carry on for, eliciting the same feelings of frustration from not being able to run properly in a bad dream. The use of diegetic music in one scene, too, adds to the absurdity faced by the protagonist, and to the joy the people he is staying with glean from his terror. It’s notable that Khoma is drunk, drugged, sleep deprived, or some combination of the three, for practically every supernatural event he witnesses, raising questions about what his actual experiences are, though they have the same effect whether in his head or in front of him.

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