Leave the Projector On-- All Kinds of Horrors

Leave The Projector On – All Kinds of Horrors

Hallow’s Eve has come and passed, but personally I love screening horror films all across the year. But with 2022’s October now beyond the horizon, I figured it was an opportune moment to write another “Leave the Projector On” installment, this time fixating on horror films.

In doing so, I wrote about three slasher films of varying quality; one is a studio film that feels as joyless as its victims, another is a camp-fueled romp that entertains, even if its reach overextends its grasp. And finally there was one film that I believe captured every idealized notion of what the genre should contain, having over forty years of the genre behind it.

The last film I wrote about was technically an arthouse drama, but alongside being my favorite of the four, I found it to be brutally honest in displaying terrors that are true to life here on Earth, including corruption, abuse, and mental duress. So I broke my own rule and put it in this article.

Anyway, here they are:

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Terrifier 2 – In a passing glance the Terrifier films don’t look like anything special; just another serial killer film with a psychotic clown. It was neither the premise nor the images of this “Art the Clown” character that piqued my interest, but the rumors of just how deranged the theatrically-released second installment was. So, after settling on seeing Terrifier 2 with my sister I put on the 2016 first film so I could follow what I was sure to be a sophisticated plot.

It did not take long for me to decipher what horror fans saw to be special in Damian Leone’s films. I recently commented how very few slasher films–even modern ones–really “deliver” what audiences are liable to be seeking, bodily carnage and cinematic depravity.

Leone’s Terrifier duology, however, understands what people want and delivers it again and again.

If people’s bodies are somehow safe, their sanity isn’t. There isn’t a single character who will be granted onscreen pleasure and bliss, save for Art, who takes great pride not just in killing, but in doing it playfully and creatively, dragging out the stalk just for their paranoia and keeping them alive for as long as possible just to toy with your dismembered self.

While the original Terrifier acts as more of a start-up for its successor, not distancing itself much from the Hatchet craze of the preceding decade, the second does something that Halloween fails horribly at, which is to build a mythological lore around its villain. Through bizarre dream sequences and small hints of memory and resources the audience learns more about the killer via the sequel’s protagonists, teenage siblings played by Lauren LaVara and Elliott Fullman. Through this we can become convinced that Damian Leone has at least the vaguest idea as to what this is leading to, whether or not it will be epic or simply gruesome is hopefully up to him.

What these films lack in nuance and masterclass acting they make up for in its relentlessly macabre camp-style presentation. While not for the faint-of-heart or the overtly pretentious A24-exclusive crowd, most adults with a sense of humor should be satisfied.

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Pearl – I was admittedly unimpressed with X. At no point did I see much more than a slightly high-budget take on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre save for the intentionally dreadful feeling that Texas left behind.

So when I learned that Ti West had made two other films within the continuity of X, while intrigued, I was in no rush.

However, I found that Pearl delivered in ways that X simply couldn’t. Fixating on one character instead of a group of porno-industry simpletons, we were granted a more focused and linear experience.

Perhaps it’s a personal preference thing– I’ve seen enough slashers to be more inherently interested in a film about a killer for two hours than one about normal pedestrians who fall victim to one. Nevertheless there was something about Mia Goth’s continued efforts in this apparent franchise that is becoming more and more iconic and prolific to her resume as an actress. Up until now I knew her most prominently in roles such as Nymphomaniac, Suspiria, and A Cure for Wellness and while all of those films have their own brand of cynicism and darkness, she did not quite earn the crown of a “scream queen” until five minutes into Pearl when she ruthlessly gutted a duck with a pitchfork.

In Pearl, the titular main character is a farm girl with big-city aspirations, hoping to sing and dance her way to stardom. And through its music and acting, you’d think you were watching The Wizard of Oz or Gone with the Wind. Ti West clearly loves all types of movies, with X being its own ode to grindhouse cinema, and Pearl being dedicated to older melodramas. The film itself would be boring and trite if Pearl weren’t a psychopath. But thankfully, she is.

Amongst horror fans, I truly think Pearl can satisfy everyone; for the more high-brow fans of films like The Witch, the stylistic choices and ironic sense of humor will be praised, whilst the more purist and traditional fans of slashers will appreciate the films content, particularly its ending. No matter who you are, nobody can argue with the film’s closing shot.

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Halloween Ends – David Gordon Green has one of the most fascinating descents into mediocrity that I’ve ever seen in a filmmaker. His early indie films (George Washington, All the Real Girls) rank amongst my favorites.

However, as is the case with many filmmakers who thrived on small budgets, the more money he attained, the more he lost his focus. I haven’t the time to track his entire career, but suffice to say those slower, moodier, art-house dramas were Green’s wheelhouse, and big-budget comedies and horrors just don’t cause the same triumph.

This Halloween sequel trilogy (negating all previous Halloween sequels, again) depicts Green as he seemingly gives up and “ends” the franchise not with a bang, but with a whimper.

While roughing it through awkward editing sequences and disturbingly terrible dialogue, we find a new protagonist in Rohan Campell’s Corey, who, after accidentally killing a child in 2019, is released back into Haddonfield and sparks the interest in Allyson (Matichak), the now-orphaned granddaughter of Laurie Strode (Jaime Lee Curtis).

I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right— none of this is interesting, where’s the lunatic with the butcher knife?

And this may be a light spoiler, but I think people should be prepared for this if they’re going to go into this film and (somehow) try to enjoy it. Here it is: Michael Myers is scarcely in Halloween Ends until the final third. His brief appearances beforehand are that of joint killings and strange mutual eye-contact with Corey, for some reason.

Yup. Michael Myers isn’t a superhero, yet somehow he was granted a sidekick.

From here there are a multitude of anticlimactic scenes of the two killers hunting their prey until their partnership comes to a bloody (yet still anticlimactic) end. Jaime Lee Curtis’ story arc sees little to no development in this one, without even a subtle realization that she’s wasted the better part of her life trying to kill Michael Myers.

The 2018 Halloween is where the saga ends for me, and, saddest of all, shows that David Gordon Green had true passion for the source material he was borrowing from. But the two films that followed the 2018 film felt more like they were interested in money and in milking a franchise long past its expiration date.

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Blonde – The woke-mob had a double-headache last month, being upset both by the new Dahmer limited series and by the new pseudo-biopic depicting the many trials of Marilyn Monroe. The three-hour ordeal, directed by Andrew Dominik in an adaptation of the openly fictitious “Blonde” novel written by Joyce Carroll Oates, is mainly a horror story that fixates on the disturbing ordeals that women have to endure to be considered “talented’ enough; in climbing this ladder, Ana de Armas in the title role, has to don both faces of starlet adoration as well as one that draws upon a cornered final girl in this male-dominated industry.

The film, as expected, follows Norma Jean Morteson as she navigates the moviemaking land of Los Angeles, whilst longing for a father figure and finding herself in tumultuous love affairs and marriages. The supporting cast, including Bobby Cannavale and Adrien Brody, all play their roles as they were meant to be played, that is supplementary to de Armas’ who, behind a breathy voice and underneath golden hair hides true intellectual curiosity. And while she reads and references Chekhov and Dostoevsky (to the amused dismissal of the men around her) the viewer never feels she has the fullest awareness of what’s going on around her.

This may be due (this may be a light spoiler) to her mother, a woman who attempted to murder young Norma Jean and spends her remaining years institutionalized. While it will never be explored in-depth, we know that Norma (now Marilyn) is raking in small moments of psychological distrust and insecurity, exacerbated by the abuse she receives from bosses and husbands, as well as by the perpetual deaths of her children inside her own womb.

Blonde toys with a multitude of color palettes and aspect ratios that are liable to confuse first-time viewers. While I have yet to decipher why such choices were made, I found that the experience of the film, whilst not story driven and definitely not seeking to tell the whole truth (as some would’ve liked) was that of a Hollywood cautionary tale. Blonde has much more in common with Mulholland Drive than it does with the luminous daydream of La La Land or the by-the-book “true stories” of any of those Oscar contenders. Its “agenda” is not exploitative, nor is it a biography, but a warning towards those who are vulnerable to abuse or (actual) exploitation, whilst making a painfully true portrait of the filmmaking industry.

As someone who loves movies but is often disgusted by Hollywood’s self-indulgence, its couch-casting, and its politics that destroy creativity, I saw Dominik’s uncompromising vision as a beacon of hope, not just for films to “call out” that detrimental behavior, but hope that films that don’t worry about being “dangerous” or “problematic” are still being made. For films are not dangerous or problematic, disturbed and confused people however, can be.