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.