Banshee Chapter (2013) Modern Lovecraftian Hijincks

A couple things that creep me out are Lovecraftian-style stories and number stations.  You know, number stations...those mysterious shortwave signals of people talking or reciting numbers or other repeated gibberish?  Creepy.

And stories in the vein of H. P. Lovecraft, in which unspeakable horrors always lay just on the outskirts of perception, waiting to scrap through into our world and drive us mad?  Also creepy.

In the sort-of found footage flick Banshee Chapter, you get all that and more.  Like Ted Levine as a Hunter S. Thompson pastiche.

Written and directed by Blair Erickson, this part found footage, part regular point-of-view movie takes both of those tropes above and tries out a new spin on the Lovecraft story From Beyond (also a fun 80's cult film).  Author James and his pal Renny are in the midst of researching for a book that will delve into the mind-altering drug experiments that the U.S. Government allegedly inflicted on citizens.  James claims that he has a sample of the drug they were given and gets on with his own experiment.  The moment he drinks the sample, strange things start happening, including shadows outside the windows and a mysterious broadcast emanating from the radio.  Renny follows James to investigate, but is suddenly faced by a horrifically-changed James before his camera blacks out.  James' girlfriend, investigative reporter Anne (Katia Winter), makes it her mission to find out what happened to James and Renny, who even though he survived his encounter has now disappeared.  Anne tracks down eccentric author Thomas Blackburn (Levine), who says he has evidence and proof that could lead her to James' whereabouts.  At his desert getaway, Thomas and chemist Callie, take the drug and insist that Anne has taken it as well.  Strange noises and shadows fall over the house and Callie is changed in a similar way to James before she disappears.  Anne and Thomas track down Callie, which eventually leads them to a remote outpost in the desert - seemingly the source of the strange broadcasts.  Of course, what they find in there isn't exactly the truth they wanted.  And that's where I'll stop the synopsis because, you know, spoilers.

Balancing creepiness with occasional jump scares, Banshee Chapter finds itself in the upper echelon of found footage movies, in my opinion.  It features a compelling story with incredibly tense moments and fine acting from Winter and Levine.  There are moments where the scares are right in your face, and others where they're on the outskirts of your perception - much like a Lovecraft story.  Moments like Renny running into James and Thomas' disturbing seizure in the car added to the mystery and urgency of the story.

I've always been a little fascinated with strange signals coming through on shortwave radio, but after seeing this movie, I'm not so sure I want to uncover more about these number stations.  Unless they're broadcasting winning lotto numbers, then hey, I'm all ears.

Until next time, here's this movie's trailer:

Absentia (2011) Avoiding Tunnels Now

 Oh, those thin little pedestrian tunnels.

Took this picture back in Traverse City, Michigan.  I did not disappear when I walked through it.  That time, anyway.

 

Not those nice, spacious traffic tunnels that are so safe...oh, wait.  There was that scene in 28 Days Later. Hm.  Well, anyway, the claustrophobic elements of the pedestrian tunnels make them a tad more unnerving.  Add to that a history of Lovecraft-esque colonies of creatures lurking in the walls of the tunnel - and reality - and you have a combination that will make you not want to enter one, day or night, muggers be damned.  This is the scenario presented by writer/director Mike Flanagan in his small but moody film, Absentia.

The winner of a number of film festival awards in 2011, Absentia operates on a small budget with an enormous amount of spirit and atmosphere.  Special effects are minimal, and yet that minimalism only adds to the bigger picture.  I invoked the name Lovecraft earlier.  H. P. Lovecraft penned chilling stories where the ghastly, mind-destroying creatures on the edges of reality weren't revealed in full.  It was the idea of their existence that was terrifying.  We never see a full-on shot of what lies underneath reality in Absentia, but your imagination can fill it in.

Tricia (Courtney Bell) is at a crossroads.  She has moved on in her life after the disappearance of her husband, dating a police detective (Dave Levine) and carrying his child.  Yet she still posts notices right up until she finally decides to have her missing hubby declared "dead in absentia."  Her sister, Callie (Katie Parker), a struggling drug addict and free spirit, arrives to provide moral support.  Tricia begins seeing disturbing apparitions of the missing Daniel (Morgan Peter Brown) while Callie finds herself trying to help an apparently homeless and very frightened man (Doug Jones) in a pedestrian tunnel near Tricia's house.  Things get weirder, especially when Daniel shows up, looking tortured and nearly catatonic.  Where he's been is a mystery, and that unravels as the movie builds towards its inevitable, sad conclusion which I won't spoil here.

You're only given a glimpse of what Daniel has been through, and like a Lovecraft story, the idea of it is scarier than actually seeing it.  Besides the creepiness of the atmosphere surrounding that ominous tunnel, what struck me most was the stellar acting by the two leads, Bell and Parker.  Their scenes together are seamless - you really believe they're sisters.  Individually, their performances are natural and utterly believable.  While Levine, Brown, and the always-a-standout Jones turn in fine performances, it's the team of Bell and Parker that really draw the viewer in.  They don't seem like actors playing a part - they seem real.

Absentia is a small film but is making big waves.  If you want some low-key creepiness chilling you as you ponder what moves beyond the veil of the barely-hanging-on reality around us...yeah, you'll want to avoid pedestrian tunnels after you watch it.

Until next time, dear readers, here's the trailer:

In The Mouth Of Madness (1994) Getting Lovecrafty

When John Carpenter wants to end the world, he does it in such interesting ways.

In The Thing, he hinted that a parasitic, all-consuming alien life form would spread to the rest of the world unless it was stopped at that lonely Antarctic outpost.  The son of the Anti-God would usher in its unholy father in Prince of Darkness unless several desperate people ended the threat in a run down old church.  However, with In The Mouth of Madness, it's reality itself under assault from the Old Ones made famous in the literary world by H. P. Lovecraft.  And what can one man played by Sam Neill do?

In short:  nothing.

Lovecraft was known for penning tales of unseen horrors, monsters so vile and so primed to crack reality at its seams that to glimpse them would cause instant madness.  The whole Cthulhu mythos?  That was him.  Casting shadows over Innsmouth?  Lovecraft.  The fish people who worship the mad god Dagon?  Yep.  He even had a story called "At The Mountains Of Madness," so it's a pretty fair bet that In The Mouth of Madness is a tip of the cap to his writing genius.

But Lovecraft isn't the only prolific, talented writer showcased in the film.  There are several obvious nods to my own longtime favorite, Stephen King:  the northeast region, the small town, the name of the antagonist author (Sutter Cane = Stephen King).  In truth, the entire film is about fiction, about the written word and its power over reality.  Words guiding us to believe anything, then using that power to fuel...well, in this case, the return of the Old Ones.  And that's not a good thing, dear readers.

See, Sam Neill plays John Trent, insurance investigator extraordinaire. When we first meet him, he's a little on the...nutty side.  He's locked up in an asylum when he's visited by Dr. Wrenn (David Warner), who wants the lowdown on what brought him there.  So John tells him the whole, horrifying story...which begins when he's called in by a publisher (Charlton Heston) to find their missing cash cow, the eccentric mega-superstar writer, Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow), who has a final, blockbuster novel to get into the stores. The name of the book? "In The Mouth of Madness."  After reading some of Cane's horrific novels, John has bad dreams, weird feelings, and a sudden revelation:  the covers of Cane's books can be manipulated into a map of New Hampshire, revealing the location of a fictional town called Hobb's End.  Accompanied by editor Linda Styles (Julie Carmen), John sets out to find Hobb's End.  After a very trippy...er...trip, he finds it.

Hobb's End is like a ghost town with some eerie little residents, like the strange old lady up at the hotel bearing the name of a real Lovecraft character (Pickman from "Pickman's Model").  Discovering a menacing-looking church on the outskirts of town, John and Linda investigate and find Sutter Cane, that's for sure.

From there, things get really freaky in the little hamlet of Hobb's End.  Linda goes after Cane, but she's helpless against the new, vast power that the Old Ones have granted the author.  Then it's down to John, and his role in what is essentially the end of all that is.  John slowly discovers the truth about Hobb's End, its residents, and Sutter Cane, and give the man credit, he stands up to it the best he can.  But despite his obvious strength, Cane is far, far too powerful.  John is meant to deliver the end of the world, typed just as Cane envisioned it, and there's nothing he can do.

The ending doesn't present any in-your-face world destruction scenes.  In that Carpenter never shows you out-and-out chaos, he's making it even more frightening.  John Trent may be the last sane person on Earth, and we're hanging on to that final unraveling thread with him.  We know something's going on in the world, but just like Lovecraft did in his stories, we don't see it.  The knowing is terrifying enough.

In The Mouth of Madness isn't linear in its storytelling.  Much of the story is a flashback controlled by John's memories.  But there's a bit of meta-storytelling going on here as well.  Sutter Cane goes on and on about controlling reality, and he may be controlling what we see in the movie as well.  During a fun little scene on a bus late in the movie, he proclaims that he "is God now" and asks John, "Did I ever tell you my favorite color is blue?"  When John snaps awake, everything is indeed blue.  But throughout the movie, the color blue shows up, especially in peoples' eyes.  Has Cane not only been controlling what John sees, but what we see as well?  Possibly.  Something to think about.  I love when movies play outside the sandbox, and Carpenter has never been afraid to do that.

What a fun movie In The Mouth of Madness turns out to be.  It's the third in Carpenter's loose Apocalypse Trilogy and it can be argued that it's the most dire of circumstances - certainly it's the most bleak in terms of ultimate endings.  The little nods to Lovecraft and King are a kick to uncover.  Sam Neill does a fantastic job as a true "omega man," part detective, part skeptic, all victim.  Definitely a great closing to the Apocalypse Trilogy, and a great way to spend a movie-watching evening.

In fact, get a hold of all three movies and watch them back-to-back.  It'll put a little sunshine in your day.

Now here, enjoy the trailer:

The Call of Cthulhu (2005)

I've been a fan of H. P. Lovecraft's stories and mythology for some time, I have to admit. His style of writing - obviously termed "Lovecraftian" - has influenced countless writers, including yours truly. A story I once wrote for a writing class at Florida State called "To Walk Again On Wicked Ground" was directly influenced by ideas he brought forth. On a much grander scale, one can see Lovecraftian nuances in the wonderful (I think, anyway) Cloverfield. So, when I heard about the short film, The Call of Cthulhu, and how it was presented, I had to post it high on the ol' Netflix queue.

Made in 2005 and distributed by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, it's filmed in black and white (a technique they call Mythoscope) with only a musical score for sound. It's based on Lovecraft's short story that bears the same name and is pretty faithful to it, with a few changes here and there. I gotta say, the changes didn't bother me all that much. I took this film as a 47-minute chunk of fun that pays respect to the source but carves out an identity of its own through its sheer imagination.

In the film, a man in an asylum relates a story to his therapist about delving into a mystery that his great-uncle investigated before dying. He traces clues that show a relation between a massive earthquake, a murderous cult, an artist's disturbing dreams, and a horrifying incident that claimed the lives of sailors on a mysterious, uncharted island. When the man reads the diary of the only man who survived the incident, a Norwegian sailor named Johanssen, the horror of what is on the edge of the world is revealed bit by bit. The ancient Old One, known as Cthulhu, had awakened and just the sheer knowledge that it's out there drives the main character mad.


That was always the hook for me in Lovecraft's fiction. What was there, but not seen. He hints at things, but rarely ever shows them. Many characters go insane just from seeing a fraction of what monsters lie on the other side of a very thin wall between dimensions. It isn't in-your-face horror. It's sneak-up-on-you-and-blow-your-mind horror. Madness and horror go hand-in-hand...read a little Lovecraft and see how.

Brrr.



Almost scarier than that group of zombies I just saw surrounding the library downtown. Keep clear of that, if you can. Maybe they'll move on. In the meantime, I'll go land this bird and get ready to watch the next horror film in my stack, George A. Romero's 1973 film, The Crazies.