Lovely Molly (2011) Not-So-Happy Homecoming

A few years ago, I went back to the house in which I grew up.  It had literally been 20 years since I set foot in there, and the people who live there now were kind enough to let me come in and take some pictures - they knew my family anyway, so that made it easier.  If there were ghosts in that house on the lake, they were friendly and welcoming.

Let's just say that the homecoming Molly receives in Lovely Molly isn't exactly friendly and welcoming.

Directed by one of the co-creators of The Blair Witch Project, Eduardo Sanchéz (who also shares writing duties with Jamie Nash), Lovely Molly is one of those quietly terrifying films that stick with you after you've watched it, as you try to decipher the code left by the filmmakers.  Not everything is clear-cut, and yet the answers are there, depending on how you see them.  While the movie isn't perfect, the underlying story and the incredible acting help make it one to at least check out.

Newlyweds Molly (Gretchen Lodge) and Tim (Johnny Lewis, shortly before his death) move into Molly's childhood home, not far from her more grounded sister Hannah (Alexandra Holden).  It's a spooky old place, and former heroin addict Molly has a rough go of staying there alone while Tim out on the road as a truck driver. One night, Molly hears crying coming from a lonely closet.  We never see what she sees, but from there, it's all downhill for poor Molly.  Her behavior becomes increasingly strange.  She gets back on the "horse," so to speak.  She swears to her sister that their father is still alive and once again assaulting her, although no one ever sees him.  Film evidence shows nothing and Molly retreats into a drug-addled, fugue state that sees her wandering at night, having problems at work, and making lewd advances on the local pastor.  Oh, and something about a deer.  You'll see.  Things spiral out of control until the odd, subjective ending.

The film is undeniably creepy, with many of the scares coming during night scenes and when Molly is alone.  Is Molly being haunted by her evil father from beyond the grave?  You will have to decide as the end credits roll.  There are multiple interpretations, and a good deal of them make perfect sense.  The acting is tremendous, with Lodge as the focal point.  With little film experience, she masterfully conveys happiness, familiarity, rage, fear, and something quite spooky all within the runtime.  Holden is great as her sister, and Lewis shows just how much talent was wasted with his sad, short life.  The answers to the film are not all there, but it still stands as a pretty decent outing - despite one sort-of "what-the" scene.  I won't spoil it, but I did say "what the?" out loud during it.

So you want to visit your childhood home?  Just make sure it doesn't involve creepy sounds and horse imagery...unless you lived on a ranch.  Even still...

Here, enjoy the trailer:

Perkins' 14 (2009) Is It Wrong To Cheer For The Bad Guy?

Sometimes you just get a movie that...I don't know...doesn't click. You think it should. It's got the potential. It's got several of the pieces required for it to click, but it just doesn't. Perkins' 14 was one of those films for me.

Knowing me and my love for infection horror and apocalyptic survival fiction, you'd think this movie would fall right into my embrace. It's sort of about infection and there's sort of an apocalyptic atmosphere about it. But I wasn't left with warm fuzzies.

It has a unique genesis as being a film whose parts - script and cast - were put up for public approval far before shooting began. Making a film that asks for the input of the horror movie isn't exactly a bad idea, but it runs the risk of becoming said bad idea. Still, the plot synopsis was enough for me to give it a go. While I don't regret it, it's possible I may just forget it.



So you've got this guy, Perkins (Richard Brake). Turns out he kidnapped 14 kids from the Stone Cove area some years ago, and all of these children are presumed dead. Our protagonist, Deputy Dwayne Hopper (Patrick O'Kane), is the father of one of those kidnapped children, something that still haunts him to the present day. Haunts him so much, it makes him intense. I mean, really intense. He takes a shift at the station house while his emo daughter Daisy (Shayla Beesley) plans to head to a party and his pseudo-emo wife Janine (Mihaela Mihut) prepares for her book club. Another normal night at the Hoppers.

"Don't mock me, ceiling."

While at the station, Deputy Hopper starts having suspicions about the pharmacist arrested earlier in the evening, this being Perkins, of course. Through some slick detective work and intense interrogation, Hopper concludes that Perkins is indeed the man who took his son. Perkins doesn't help his own case by being the Chesire Cat of horror films and taunting Hopper just a little. Hopper convinces one of his buddies to check out Perkins' home, and Perkins' facade drops. He warns Hopper, but the deputy just won't listen. Hopper's pal inadvertently opens the cages in Perkins' basement, where he's kept the kids for the last several years.

Now worried about his fellow deputy, Hopper frees Perkins and they head for the house. There, Hopper finds his friend, dead and bloody. Also in the basement, all the evidence needed on Perkins, including the possibility that his own son, Kyle, may still be alive. Perkins not only admits to the kidnapping, but explains his motive. When he was a child, his parents were brutally murdered. The police never solved the crime, and Perkins took it as they just didn't care. When Hopper and the other families called off the searches for their own children, Perkins called that his revenge, that he wanted them to feel what it was like to abandon all hope. He's brainwashed and drugged the children, and now they're loose. His taunting gets to be too much for Hopper, and he shoots Perkins in the head, thereby killing the best character in the movie.

I really wanted Perkins to stay around. Is that wrong?

In town, the 14 kids Perkins kidnapped - yes, Perkins' 14 - are on the attack. They're slaughtering townsfolk left and right. One shows up where Daisy and her friends are partying, killing all but Daisy and her rocker boyfriend, Eric (Michale Graves, formerly of The Misfits). Poppa Hopper shows up just in time, but they find the boy who attacked them quite unkillable. Off they go to find Mrs. Hopper. Only she's not in a book club, according to Daisy. She's at some no-tell motel with an illicit lover.

At the motel, Janine and said lover are attacked by a wild young girl, who literally - and quite impressively - beats the lover's face into ground chuck. Janine locks herself in a bathroom until she's rescued by the rest of the Hopper family and Eric. They take refuge in the police station, where the final siege takes place. Another of Deputy Hopper's co-workers bites it, proving that Dwayne Hopper is a life-size bad luck charm to other law enforcement officers in this movie. The one remaining prisoner in the cells, a hippie protester with a bad attitude named Felicity, also shuffles off this mortal coil after a bad run-in with an air duct.

"Why do you hate my hands?"

The Hoppers formulate a plan to leave, but not only does Janine volunteer to crawl through the air ducts to the evidence room to snag a set of keys to Perkins' car, but Dwayne wants to try to get through to Kyle. The years of conditioning and constant injections of PCP are putting that latter plan into a precarious area. Janine gets the keys, but also a faceful of hopped-up psycho kids. Dwayne locks Daisy in a cell, arms her with a shotgun, and sets off to rehabilitate Kyle.

I dare you to kiss her.

Dwayne finds Kyle and they hesitantly embrace. Kyle lovingly snaps his fathers' neck before taking the cell keys and saying a big shotgun-y hello his sweet sister.

Aaaaand, scene...

All the pieces were there for me to love this movie. Sadly, it didn't click. I'm sure Patrick O'Kane is a fine actor, but he was so intense that I had a hard time buying that he was a loving father in those flashbacks with a younger Kyle. It was as if he had two speeds: intense and about to snap any minute. The other actors weren't bad, but none of them had the presence of Richard Brake, our man Perkins. Brake's been around, too. He's been on TV shows like NCIS and Cold Case. He was in Outpost (on my Netflix list) as well as Doom and Batman Begins, where he plays the very pivotal character of Joe Chill. Hell, he's even in Muse's video for "Knights of Cydonia," which makes my personal zombie movie soundtrack list (cheap blog plug).



In Perkins' 14, he delivers his lines with relish and perfect timing. When he gets half his cerebrum blown out, I thought, "well, there goes the movie." Not entirely, but I half-hoped he'd show up later on.

Like I said, this movie didn't click for me. It might for others, I don't know. I almost would've liked to see a hint that Perkins had stumbled onto creating the first strain of zombie virus, but other than the rampant cannibalism by the 14 kids, there wasn't any indication of it spreading through infection. This movie did have a real "indie spirit," but that's not always enough to carry it in my eyes. Valiant effort, but in my opinion, it simply fell short.

So, fellow survivors, make sure your kids are within your sight at all times. Who knows if we have a nutball Perkins in our midst?

Until next time, stay safe and un-undead.

Jeremiah Kipp's Contact (2009) Drugs Can Be Somewhat Bad

So you want a quick, intense high? You think maybe that weird guy in the abandoned building isn’t really all that creepy and his “product” will give you just what you need? You’re thinking maybe doing the mysterious drug with your lover will bring you closer together?

Watch Jeremiah Kipp’s short film Contact and think again.

The film begins with an older couple solemnly setting a table. They’re exacting in how they perform this action, and I have to tell you, meticulous people sometimes make me nervous. Filmed in moody black-and-white, the lack of dialogue and nervously sad expressions on the pair added to the tense atmsophere. We’re then introduced to a young couple in love, played with real chemistry by Zoe Daelman Chlanda and Robb Leigh Davis. They buy a mysterious, unnamed hallucinogen from a strange drug dealer who has the only real clearly-spoken dialogue in the entire short. From there, the young couple descends into a trip that begins with an erotic atmosphere, but quickly turns disturbing and hellish enough to make David Cronenberg say "whoa."



It’s an effective anti-drug piece that presents you with some questions to ask yourself after viewing, ways in which the story could go according to your perception of the film. Personally, I like to be challenged in that way, to allow my own fevered brain to come up with answers as to what came before, what the drug could be, why it affected them the way it did, and why the story was bookended with the older couple. At the center of it all was this couple who seemed innocent and curious in their own way, and how this strange drug changed everything about them. Maybe it only changed them, as people and only physically. Maybe there’s something deeper, more – dare I say – supernatural about what happens. All I know is this: I’m not taking that drug.

Kipp’s direction leads your eyes to where they should be and it never felt disjointed. The calm portions were calm with a sense of foreboding and danger, and the drug-fevered sections were appropriately chaotic. Cult film figure and producer Alan Rowe Kelly has a memorable turn as the drug dealer, portraying him with sinister androgyny. Both Chlanda and Davis work well together onscreen, but I was especially struck by Chlanda’s performance – her terror, affection, and curiosity were conveyed stunningly through her eyes. With no dialogue, those eyes had to show everything. And show they did.

I asked Kipp a few quick questions about Contact and here’s what he said:

Regarding what inspired the subject matter: “A dozen filmmakers were asked to contribute to a Halloween film festival in downtown New York entitled Sinister Six -- and my contribution was Contact. A few years ago, I made a film about an underground drug entitled The Pod, but wanted to push the material further. I wanted something graphic, iconic, where each scene relied on visual elements to create tension, and my starting point was a body horror image of faces melted together. But I was also inspired by the rehearsal process involving my lead actress Zoe Daelman Chlanda. She has a unique charisma I wanted to tap into; I wondered what would happen if I used her as an iconic presence in the movie, immersing her in a nightmare world of romance and mystery."




Regarding the thought of a feature film along the same lines: “Perhaps, but I have other feature length narratives I would like to share that are closer to the front burner, such as a monster movie that I'm very keen on putting together. I would love to revisit the material of The Pod and Contact again, but to make it even more abstract, visually provocative and only 60 seconds long, in hyper-saturated colors with distorted images and a camera that is non-stop in its relentlessness.”

Regarding if we’ll see more from these characters: “I think artists wind up repeating the same stories over and over and over again. The character Zoe plays in Contact is not too far removed from the curious 10-year-old boy who was the hero of a movie I made a few years ago called The Christmas Party, where a child is dropped off at a holiday party run by Christians, and he finds himself within a conversion process that is both enlightening and brutal and mysterious. I'd like to believe we have not seen the last of these characters, since the actor playing Zoe's boyfriend (Robb Leigh Davis) said that after the movie is over, he will never stop searching for her. Maybe someday he will find her.”

A big thank-you to Jeremiah Kipp for taking the time to answer! You can view Contact at this link and watch, judge, and interpret for yourself.

And remember, fellow survivors, getting high during a zombie apocalypse might be fun in the short run, but one bad trip can make you a delicious entrée.