Sinister (2012)

Director: Scott Derrickson

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Juliet Rylance, Fred Thompson, James Ransone

Have I Seen it Before: Really, really, completely unsure if I had, as I started things. Pretty quickly became convinced that I have not. But only marginally, so. Great. Have I become my father? The man has hardly ever remembered any movie he’s ever seen.

Did I Like It: I don’t usually like to start my reviews with the negative, but that is unfortunately what my mind keeps coming back to several days after watching it. Where would the horror genre be if people searching for good real estate deal? As long as I keep paying my mortgage, does that mean I’m going to avoid those deeper, cosmic horrors?

What’s more, where would the horror genre be without people like the Oswalts allowed to make snap new decisions about their living situation in the middle of the night? Maybe the genre would be able to survive, but third acts might have a rough go of it.

I’ll push a little harder. Ellison Oswalt (Hawke) may be one of the least observant horror movie protagonists in memory. Spooky things are perpetually happening at the edge of the frame, and he just refuses to be looking in the right direction at the right time, allowing the movie to continue for longer than ti might otherwise have any right to. Things come to a head for him when, after drinking everything in sight throughout the runtime, downs a cup of coffee that has been laced with just enough poison to knock him out to be murdered by his daughter. Now, before we go judging the child too harshly, she did leave a note for him.

Lest we think I don’t like the film at all, I actually kind of enjoyed it. With the amount of horror movies I take in on a regular basis, I do worry I’m starting to develop something of a reaction callus. I can like the style or ideas (or lament the implausible characters) in something from time to time, but how many horror movies are still at all scary? This one, in fits and starts, actually accomplishes that tall task. That should probably be enough of a recommendation.

The Black Phone (2022)

Director: Scott Derrickson

Cast: Mason Thames, Madeline McGraw, Jeremy Davies, Ethan Hawke

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Probably wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been on the podcast schedule.

Did I Like It: Filled with enough of the same 70s/80s energy that fueled Super 8 (2011), it’s impossible to not like the movie. The moment I most responded to had nothing to do with the horror running under the proceedings, but instead the moment when Finney (Thames) loses himself in whatever film is airing on TV on a Friday night. It’s a movie consumption method completely lost to the sans of time, and I felt strangely wistful for it in that moment. The film, for the most part, feels like it may have come from the period in which it is set. That’s a difficult enough trick to accomplish, and probably leaves me with enough goodwill to recommend the film.

Hawke’s work as the Grabber certainly creates a menacing presence in the film. He clearly understood the assignment. The climax taps into just enough Hitchcockian tension for the film’s final act that once again, I think I’m landing in the “recommend” camp on the film.

My reservations are tied to the fact that there are more than a few plot holes dragging everything down. The Home Alone-ing of Finney’s cell proceeds with such little scrutiny that I was pretty convinced most of this was happening in his imagination or delusion. After about the third kid disappearance, wouldn’t this entire town be possessed of incredibly understandable paranoia? Instead, every adult seems even more committed to the idea of it being 1979 than the filmmakers were and proceeded as if everything was status quo. More to that point, the fact that Terrance appears to be entirely absolved for his abuse by a heartfelt/self-serving apology strains credulity in any decade.

Maybe if the film had been more throughly frightening, I’d be able to more completely get over those qualms. But it isn’t, and I’m not.

Doctor Strange (2016)

Director: Scott Derrickson

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch*, Chiwetel Ejiofor**, Rachel McAdams, Mads Mikkelsen

Have I Seen it Before: Yes, but oddly enough I did not make it in the first weeks of its theatrical release. Between this and Ant-Man (2015), I’m not entirely sure why I wasn’t in much of a hurry on some of these latter phase 2/early phase 3 MCU movies.

Did I Like It: Yes, but I wonder if the movie is holding back.

I suppose I have something of a conception of why this film didn’t initially rise to the top of my agenda, and that’s because I had next to no knowledge of the character up until the MCU tried to bring it into the mainstream***.

And from what I’ve seen of the movie, it is that jamming into the mainstream that weakens the whole endeavor. People love Strange because his exploits are like an acid trip in 64 colors. Here, the film is loopy at times, but not “last ten minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and more just loopy enough to make sure the film can have a strong opening weekend. Amid the cascading dimensions, there’s an unrequited love story and a pretty basic superhero origin tale at the core. It’s fine, but it’s not terribly revelatory.

So the movie succeeds, as it’s objectively an enjoyable time spent at the movies, and doubly succeeds because it makes me want to steep myself in the greater mythology of the Sorcerer Supreme. I want to be a fan of Strange, I just wish Marvel hadn’t held back.

And maybe they won’t from here on in. 

*Joking about his name has become pretty passé by the time I write this, but I’m as certain as I can be without actually checking the footage that his one of the alternate names for Gerry Dorsey, and I’m reasonably sure that we hadn’t heard of the actor before that time. What is he hiding?

**Why my spellcheck was bent out of shape about “Chiwetel” and not “Ejiofor” is beyond me. Why it’s only bent out of shape the second time I typed the last name, I’ll never know.

***Which would be a big part of the reason that the casting of Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One. It is whitewashing, sure, and that’s not great, but it also frees a character from the constrains of gender, which is better than not good. Interesting at least that the film could both fail and succeed to embrace diversity. And it certainly isn’t the most whitewashed film to star Cumberbatch.