A Ghost Wanted Man

[Content Warning: The following will contain mentions of suicide and genocide]

Horror is such a versatile genre to blend with others because horror, at its core, is about a very primal part of the human experience.  Baked deep into our DNA is this fear of the unknown; since the first campfire illuminated the night, we have been afraid of what lies beyond that warm glow.  Of course, those things were always there, but having that light and that feeling of safety makes the places where we’re unsafe that much scarier.  So horror taps into that dread that we have locked in the back of our brains that doesn’t get a whole lot of action during a normal, relatively safe day that most people in the modern world have.  Applying dread to other genres and using horror mechanics can lead to some very satisfying mash-ups.  I just wrote about the blend of horror and war, and, of course, you know my affinity for the subversion of the horror-comedy.  But what about the horror-whodunnit?

It’s easy to see why the two would work well together, even though it doesn’t seem like a blend we see often.  If you’re talking about the traditional Agatha Christie-style murder mystery, you have a lot of shared elements.  A group of people together, often in a secluded place (like a cabin in the woods), cut off from help and the rest of the world (often by inclement weather), and then, well, people start dying.  Whether it’s supernatural or human, the end result is the same—people are dead and they need to find out why and stop it from happening again.  And we are talking Agatha Christie here, as we return to Kenneth Branagh’s (Hamlet, Oppenheimer) Hercule Poirot films with A Haunting in Venice, based on Christie’s Hallowe’en Party and streaming on Hulu.

Instead of a cabin in the woods, we have an old house, a palazzo, in Venice, where Poirot has been enticed to join a Halloween party at the behest of his old friend, writer Ariadne Oliver, played by Tina Fey (30 Rock, Saturday Night Live), who wants his help to debunk a medium who seems like the real deal.  The set and setting are excellent, as the house feels haunted when you’re in it and the atmosphere is properly chilling.  Ariadne has made a bit of a career writing mysteries, basing her detective on the world famous Hercule Poirot.  I actually like this lore drop here, because as a whodunnit super fan, I’ve seen a lot of shows and movies about world famous detectives, but I’ve been in the world for a little while now and I can’t name a single detective and I used to work for a judge.  So the idea of a “world famous detective” has always seemed a bit silly to me and this explanation of her books feeding his fame helps to explain that.  Anyway, she’s in a bit of slump.  30 books written, 27 best sellers, but three in a row that have been commercial and critical failures; she needs something to get her out of her rut and Poirot is the perfect person to help pull her up.

Unfortunately for Ariadne, it’s 1947 and we see Poirot as a retired recluse now, uninterested in seeing anyone but his bodyguard and the baker who delivers him fresh pastries by boat twice a day.  A line of people hoping for his help gathers outside his door daily, but no one ever gets through.  He’s lived through two World Wars (having fought in one) and feels the weight of the dead after a career of being surrounded by their mysteries.  He is a man himself haunted; what use does he have for a Halloween party and a woman who claims to speak to the dead?  He’s had enough of ghosts, he lives with them everyday.  But, through a little teasing about him being past it and a great deal more cajoling, she was able to convince him.  A party held at a house haunted in more ways than one.  It was an orphanage at the time of the bubonic plague and, unfortunately, in times of great fear and panic, people make awful decisions.  In this case, the doctors and the nurses locked the children away and left, allowing sickness and starvation to take them all, scared and alone. 

This original sin of the house has led to the Children’s Vendetta, as it’s called, which causes tragedy to befall everyone who lives there.  And they take particular pleasure in causing the demise of medical professionals because they’re the ones who left them to die.  Not the house I’d want to spend the night if I were a doctor.  Or so the story goes; so much falls to myth and legend, I remember being taught that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree and used it to build a space skateboard so he could do a sick flip in from of some martians and I’m not entirely sure that happened.  But, at the very least, tragedy has befallen the current resident, former opera singer Rowena Drake, played by Kelly Reilly (Yellowstone, True Detective), whose daughter Alicia fell ill after her fiancé left her and then fell from her bedroom into the canal under suspicious circumstances.  Some say she was so heartbroken she committed suicide, others believe she was so out of sorts with illness that she accidentally fell over, and others still believe it was the children who took her, indiscriminately exacting revenge for the atrocities committed against them.  Either way, Alicia is the one the medium is there to speak with and boy does she put on a show.

She shows up in a small boat, which in itself is unremarkable because it’s Venice and that’s just how you get around, but when boats and docks and shadowy nights are involved, it just makes everything feel more dramatic.  If someone says they have to meet someone, no big deal.  If they say they have to meet someone at night at the docks, that’s immediately intriguing.  I want to know what they’re doing.  And if the person shows up wearing a mask and cloak with two assistants in tow, then, well, all the more intriguing.  She is Joyce Reynolds, played by Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All At Once), and she insists that she is just like Poirot, someone who speaks for the dead, but in her case, more literally.  Poirot, in his Ralph Anderson level of self-assurance, knows completely that she is a fraud, because like Ralph and like me, he doesn’t believe in any of it, so they must all be frauds.  And so far every single one that Ariadne has come against in her recent stint of proto-Oh No, Ross and Carrie has turned out to be a fraud, so Poirot feels pretty confident. When pushed, Poirot answers plainly and brutally as to why he doesn’t believe.  He has seen too much of the world; the wars, the countless murders, and as he put it, in a way that cut so deeply and poetically that I had to rewind to make sure I heard every word correctly, “the bitter evil of human indifference” to believe that there is any spirit or being that’s steering the ship.

There’s a whole cast of characters here.  Their deeply religious maid, who attended to Alicia as she was sick.  The ex-fiance back for answers after receiving a mysterious invite.  The shell shocked, as it was called back then, family doctor and his creepy son who claims to speak to the ghosts of the house and says they told him Joyce is a fake.  And of course, Reynolds and her half-sibling assistants, Poirot, Ariadne, and Poirot’s bodyguard.  They conduct the seance in Alicia’s room, which was left untouched since her death months ago.  Not even the teacup, half off the edge of the nightstand, was moved.  The seance is properly dramatic, as unlike other mediums, Reynolds uses a typewriter instead of a crystal ball, and it types out responses on its own.  It’s all very convincing until Poirot barges in and exposes the fraud.  And that’s when it gets really interesting.  It‘s kind of a thought exercise; just because someone is lying doesn’t mean they aren’t also telling the truth.  Knowing what theatrics charlatans get up to, Reynolds could be using the trappings of fraudsters to actually contact the dead, which might be a much more subdued experience than people expect.  You know, she’s just jazzing it up a bit.  Either that, or she sandbags the really good stuff for when things get dicey.  The movie keeps things ambiguous, as the seance gets so intense it shakes everyone.  Poirot is steadfast in his skepticism, but he is seemingly alone.  Everyone is convinced, even Ariadne.  “The woman who beat Poirot”, she says, noting that it will put her back on top when she writes it.

Poirot confronts Reynolds and they argue it out, Reynolds doing her bit to explain the theatrical aspect of her particular dog and pony show, ending with her telling Poirot to lighten up—after all, she’s seen the horrors of the world just as he has, but she does her best to find her way through rather than wallow in it.  She tells him to trying bobbing for an apple, like the kids were doing at the party.  I think that’s terrible advice, to be honest.  First of all, bobbing for apples is disgusting, that’s a lot of people sticking their open mouths in a barrel full of water and then you going to do that right after.  No thank you.  I don’t even know why people thought sticking your face in water to grab something with your mouth was supposed to be fun.  And what’s the prize at the end of it all?  Is it a Switch 2?  No, it’s an apple; a readily available piece of fruit.  Hardly worth drowning for.  And drowning is exactly what happens to Poirot, as he is attacked during his attempt and held under.  He was revived by his bodyguard after a brief moment being mostly dead only to come to a grim realization that he wasn’t the target.  But it’s too late and the body drops.  Literally.  Through all the ghost stories, the jump scares, the whispers in the hallway you convince yourself is your mind playing tricks on you, we now have a real live corpse.  And it won’t be the last.

But, if you’re going to have a party with a murder, having the world’s best detective on the guest list seems to be a pretty convenient thing, like falling ill right outside a hospital. Sure, things would be better if that weren’t happening, but if it’s going to happen, there are worse places for it to go down.  The first thing Poirot does is lock them in.  The murderer is in there with them, so no one can leave or enter.  Not that there’s much of a need to lock them in; with the inclement weather causing the waterways to become dangerously choppy, there are no boats that are safe for them to leave on.  So now we have our classic horror setup and our classic whodunnit setup.  A dead body, an isolated group, and one steadfast protagonist, keen to get to the bottom of it all.  He may be rusty, but Poirot is the man for the job.  Or is he?  Is the house getting to him?  Is he losing his grip on reality?  Or are all the stories true?  Poirot wrestles with the mystery as the situation gets stranger and stranger and things become harder to explain.  The doctor’s creepy son even says to him that the dead consider him one of their own now, because he briefly crossed over to their side and he shouldn’t be surprised if they contact him.

It’s always a fun experience for me to watch Branagh go through Poirot’s process because I do really like his approach to the character.  He’s methodical and humorless, that sort of maestro who has given up everything in life to pursue his craft.  When Agatha Christie thought up Poirot, she did a wonderful job.  Even the two previous movies, Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, despite their flaws, were really enjoyable films for me because of Branagh’s performance.  Yeoh also does a great job as the questionable medium, but I will admit the acting is not the main draw of these movies.  The usually reliable Tina Fey plays Ariadne with a kind of flapperish lilt to the way she speaks, which feels less authentic and more Janet Snakehole than anything else, but still, her performance is passable.  Kelly Reilly as the grieving mother does a good enough job, though her accent changes through the film so often that even in my fourth time watching this, I’m unsure whether she’s supposed to be American or English.  Suffice it to say, this isn’t a perfect movie. 

The doctor, though, Dr. Ferrier, played by Jamie Dornan (Belfast, Fifty Shades of Grey), is convincingly traumatized by his time in the war and the things he saw and had to do, as he was one of the first medical personnel to be sent to the horrific concentration camp Bergen-Belsen.  I’ll spare you the details of what went on there (click if you want more information), but I fully understand why he walked away from the war with PTSD.  Even just knowing what happened there is more than troubling enough for me without having witnessed it firsthand.  And that’s really what this movie is about.  There’s a lot going on here and a lot of what we get to see of the characters is interesting, but A Haunting in Venice takes time to tell a story about trauma with these two characters, Poirot and Dr. Ferrier.  When we see Poirot at the beginning of this film, he’s living in seclusion, wondering if he just happens upon death or it follows him around.  He may not show it the same way as the good doctor, but he is also traumatized.  The death of his captain, the death of his fiance, the horrors of trench warfare, the murders that beckon to him; how could he not be carrying something after all that?  By WW2, humanity had found all new ways of killing each other, all the more brutal and in the hands of people willing to be brutal and the horrors that Ferrier saw were even greater than what Poirot endured.  Even Reynolds has her past in the war as well and she deals with it in a different way; whether or not you believe she can communicate with the dead, it certainly feels like more than a charade to her. 

After all, what is a haunting other than trauma that surrounds you like so many specters and phantasms?  Even the palazzo where Rowena lives and her daughter died is haunted by its trauma, the Children’s Vendetta.  And it’s only by working through that trauma that you can get past it.  And there’s no one way to deal with it, for each person it’s different and there are healthier ways than others.  Maybe it’s realizing that getting back to your passion is the way you move forward.  Maybe it is freshly delivered pastries two times a day, I’ve never tried that.  Maybe it’s rigging a typewriter in a masquerade to bring false comfort to the bereaved, since maybe false comfort feels the same as the real thing if you don’t know it’s false.  Maybe it’s ruining the lives and/or murdering people who move into your house after you’ve died tragically there (don’t do this one, this is on the unhealthy side of the scale).  But certainly burying it down and trying to numb the pain isn’t the way forward.  Ghosts have to be exorcised.

The movie has some genuinely spooky moments and some well timed jump scares that complete the horror movie experience, even though as a PG-13 movie, it avoids gore. Which I honestly don’t mind, but if you’re looking for a splatterfest, you’ll be better served with a movie like Abigail than this, but if you want a spooky ghost story, A Haunting in Venice delivers it.  It’s already become one of my go to Halloween movies, this being the third year I’ve watched in the run up to the holiday since its release in 2023.  It really has become a Halloween favorite of mine because it so successfully marries the spooky elements of ghostly horror with the style of the traditional whodunnit that I love so much.  It has flaws, of course, and I’ll not yell at clouds about it deserving an Oscar or anything, but it’s a solid mystery and a solid spooky film rolled into one and it’s definitely worth putting the well-paced 1 hour and 43 minute film in your Halloween rotation.

Tower Rangers

On the eve of the most important military operation in American history, a group of soldiers is tasked with going behind enemy lines to destroy a Nazi radio jammer tower so that the Allied invasion of Normandy will have air support.  Their mission is as critical to D-Day’s success as any other part of the Operation Overlord offensive.  If that jammer isn’t down by 6AM, a lot of people are going to die.

You might be wondering if you’ve blinked and woke up in November and I’ve moved on from spooky coverage, but don’t worry.  2018’s Overlord, streaming on Paramount+, gets plenty spooky, but it starts with a bang.  Several of them, really.

When we meet these soldiers, they’re in a plane above the fleet on their way to Normandy.  The opening scene is not as brutal as Saving Private Ryan, but it is no less unforgiving as the movie takes no time at all to remind you that war is hell.  Gunfire and flak tear planes apart, brave young men are cut down before they get a chance to face the enemy.  It is an extremely visceral first scene to the movie and it sets the tone for the rest of the film.  Scattered in the chaos, the squad’s mission has just begun and it’s already in jeopardy.  The first scenes here on the ground are fantastically composed; there is no question that this kind of violence is sudden, it is vicious, and it is irrevocable.  The night sky is black as space itself, the only light is coming from fires, giving it a hazy orange glow that feels like they’ve crash landed into a hell on Earth.  If we’re following the hero’s journey, this is when our protagonists enter the underworld and have to find their way out.  But not all of them do and even the ones we only get to know for a short time have an impact on you, which is a testament to the writing in this movie.  Though there are some rough lines here and there, the characterization is spot on, largely because they rely on stock war movie characters and then give them individual charm, helped along by the list of underrated actors in this film.

The squad is led by Sergeant Rensin, the no-nonsense soldier who is unfazed by the war around him, played by Bokeem Woodbine (Fargo, Spider-Man: Homecoming), with the mysterious and single-minded Corporal Ford, played by possibly my favorite nepobaby Wyatt Russell (Lodge 49, Thunderbolts*), and Private Boyce, the shaky handed, gentle one that is presented as if he were wearing a red shirt on an away mission from the USS Enterprise, played by the perennially underutilized Jovan Adepo (Jack Ryan, 3 Body Problem).  The squad is rounded out by the pigeonholed John Magaro (Past Lives, First Cow), playing the wise-cracking sniper Private Tibbet, the very much not combat ready photographer Private Chase, played by Iain De Caestecker (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), and Private Dawson, played by Jacob Anderson (Game of Thrones).  Lastly, there’s the petrified Private, played by Dominic Applewhite (The In-Betweeners), who is rightfully afraid of what the Nazis would do to a Jewish soldier like him, considering they were in the middle of committing a genocide against the Jewish people.

As you can imagine, with the squad making it to the ground the way they did, not all of them make it to the rendezvous, but those who do carry forward to complete their mission.  Along the way, they stumble upon French villager Chloe, played in wonderfully expressive fashion by French actress Mathilde Ollivier (1899, Mrs. Davis), who sees bunch of men in uniforms carrying guns and makes a run for it.  It’s not that she doesn’t know that they’re Americans and not Nazis; it’s just that when you know the brutality of war, it doesn’t matter the colors the men with guns wear, because wherever they go, violence follows.  Ford orders them to capture her so she doesn’t give them up to the Nazis.  This is where we start to see the divide between Ford and Boyce.  Ford’s only concern is the mission.  The math is simple for him.  Everything is a trolley problem and the stakes of not flipping the switch in time are pretty high.  Thousands of Allied lives landing at the beachhead in just a few hours, the lives in the occupied nations across Europe should D-Day fail, the lives of the Jewish people in concentration camps; nothing standing in their way could possibly come close to that kind of cost.  So to Ford, there is no line he won’t cross to accomplish his mission.  Boyce doesn’t do the math.  He sees a life in danger and he wants to protect it.  Timid though he may be, he’s unwavering in his view of right and wrong.

Fortunately, Chloe lives in Ciel Blanc, the town where the radio tower is located, so they go to her home to use it as a forward operating base while they figure out an approach.  She lives with her 8 year old brother and her ailing aunt.  We learn that the church where the radio tower is located is also the site of very strange goings-on.  Boyce gets a look at Chloe’s aunt and what he sees is grotesque and only borderline human.  Villagers live in great fear of being taken to the church because the ones who do come back do not come back the same.  At Chloe’s home, we are introduced to Nazi Captain Wafner, a monster in every sense of the word.  He’s played with a quiet and menacing demeanor by Pilou Asbaek (Game of Thrones), who is such an immediately hate-worthy character but who manages to avoid being a campy, over-the-top villain.  His type of evil is very grounded in reality.  When Chloe isn’t receptive to his advances, he is more than happy to threaten to take her brother to the church.  When the sexual assault is imminent, Boyce breaks rank and intervenes.  This is an important moment in everyone’s characterization.  Boyce won’t let it happen, that’s why he’s the one you immediately empathize with; that’s part of his character, he wants to right wrongs or prevent them from happening.  He may not be typically heroic when you first meet him, wouldn’t hurt a mouse and all that, but when he sees a wrong being committed that he can make right, he doesn’t hesitate.  And with Ford, we see that to him the math is still simple; even though it’s happening right in front of him and is one of the worst violations of a person.  But when Boyce makes his move, Ford immediately backs his play.  There is tension in squad, they squabble, and Tibbet especially picks on the people he sees as weak in an effort to be tough (he won’t even have a catch with Chloe’s brother Paul), but when it comes down to it, these men are fiercely loyal to each other and they know right from wrong and they’re in France to do right.  As much as Ford is willing to push up to the line, he has ones he will not cross.  And they will be tested in this film.  And Chloe, we learn, has been enduring this for long enough that she feels like she’s losing herself by what she’s having to survive.  It’s a great setup for some payback for her.

They discover that the tower is also home to a horrific, grotesque laboratory where the Nazis are conducting inhuman experiments.  I’m talking way beyond the realm of science and into science fiction here, with truly disturbing results.  About halfway through the film, the horror elements are on full display after foreshadowing and hint-dropping.  I don’t want to go into details and spoil anything for you, but if you’re thinking at this point that they made Call of Duty: Zombies the movie, you’d be so wrong.  What looks like a low budget action-horror blend is hiding so much depth in its 1 hour, 50 minute runtime.

What makes this movie work is how seriously it takes itself.  Sometimes this can be a negative when a movie takes itself too seriously and doesn’t deliver, but that’s not a problem here.  Instead of calling out genre tropes and trying to get meta about it, they simply play the tropes and execute them well.  Playing it straight down the middle like this really helps sell the blended fiction of the world.  It’s not that far off reality, if you think about it, which makes the transition from war movie to horror movie so seamless.  Hitler and the Nazis did all sorts of experiments, so it’s not too much of a leap to the fiction here of these lab-made monsters.  You don’t expect a movie like this to feel realistic, but it does.  It’s a really good example of historical science fiction and the horror aspects of the movie, even though you have to wait for them to really show themselves, are played very well.  You’re thrilled when you’re supposed to be thrilled, you’re concerned when you’re supposed to be concerned, and you’re scared when you’re supposed to be scared. 

This is another movie where a simple premise is elevated by fantastic character work.  I can see why Wyatt Russell got the role of US Agent in the MCU after this.  He carries himself well as a soldier, even though I will always think of him as slacker surfer Dud from Lodge 49.  I can’t see why Jovan Adepo isn’t a bigger star, he is stellar here and in Jack Ryan.  Well, I can make a few guesses, but I’ll leave that for another day.  I’d also love to see more of Mathilde Ollivier, her commitment to the role here is fantastic and she’s believable from start to finish.  John Magaro’s accent may leave him typecast, but I’ve never seen him in anything where he isn’t terrific.  His performance in Past Lives especially shows off his talent, when he can still stand out in a movie designed to sideline his character (if you’ve never seen Past Lives, I highly recommend it; Greta Lee deserved an Oscar).  Every main character has such a satisfying arc.  Boyce’s kindness gives way to bravery replacing his timidity, Ford’s single-mindedness gives way to selflessness and true leadership that doesn’t come from his relative rank, but, rather, his innate ability to inspire.  Tibbet finds that a tough exterior is less important than Boyce’s kindness.  Chloe is able to find herself again.  And they’re all likable, even though they’re flawed, because they’re all so thoroughly human and when push comes to shove, they are all willing to sacrifice everything to do what’s right.  And that meant stopping the Nazis no matter the cost to themselves.  Because Nazis have to be stopped.  Always.

I don’t often talk about the technical aspects of a film because I’m not really qualified to talk too deeply about it, but there is something special about how this film was put together because I really noticed it watching this time.  The visual composition, especially in the first act, is stunning.  The aforementioned hellscape visuals from the opening few scenes have stood out in my mind since rewatching it.  It’s perhaps not as disturbingly beautiful as the nighttime shots from 1917, but they’re of a kind.  And then the sound engineering here is also noteworthy.  When these people fire a gun, you can feel it.  The pops of bass came through even on my HomePod Minis and really helped bring you into the action. When a gun is fired, you heard the report, you saw the bolt fly back and forth and heard it slam into place.  There’s even a moment where you get foley of the famous M1 Garand ping that was all over Saving Private Ryan.  And a large percentage of the special effects were practical and not CGI, which really makes for a great, visually consistent experience.  You never get a moment where dodgy CGI takes you out of the immersion.

You probably know that horror isn’t really my genre, but the horror movies that really resonate with me are often allegories for grief.  Titles like The Babadook or The Outsider explore the grieving process so humanly, they give you a worthy emotional payoff for the dread you and the characters experienced.  Overlord though, is much more straightforward.  It’s about the seemingly simple concept of right and wrong, good and evil.  Being simple isn’t bad; it’s like on Top Chef, you can win with a simple dish as long as every part of it is executed well.  And that’s Overlord.  The tension and urgency permeate every frame.  It is breathless and panicked and you always feel the deadline they’re up against.  Even in the few calm moments of the film, the weight of the mission hangs heavily in the air.  Time is running out and it has been since they were still on the plane.  When they make the final push to take the tower, they have an hour left to complete the mission or D-Day will be a disaster.  If I have an hour to get ready and meet someone for a drink, I’m probably going to be late because invariably I’ll pick up my phone and get distracted or think to myself “Yeah, yeah, I have time for a little Pokemon ZA”.  These guys have to infiltrate a Nazi facility, plant explosives, and, if there’s enough time, get the hell out of there and to minimum safe distance so they’re not buried along with the jamming equipment.  And also, it’s a horrible laboratory that has monsters in it. Call them zombies if you want, but whatever they are, you can trust they’re going to complicate things.  Five versus forty—at least forty (living) Nazis—and monsters to boot.  It’s a desperate, uphill battle and one which they cannot lose.

The odds of survival are long and they are willing to make them worse to save as many innocent lives as they can.  The right thing is stopping the Nazis and they’re willing to die to do it.  Even if it means going against monsters, because, really, when people act as monstrous as the Nazis, what is the difference between human and monster anyway?  The movie even points out that the Nazis went out of their way to put the jammer tower in a church, perverting religion for the furtherance of fascist authoritarianism.  Anything that is meant to be good is tainted by that kind of evil.  And Overlord is about people who stand up and stand against it.  And because of how successfully this hidden gem blends war, action, and horror, it’s a film that you can slot into your movie night whether you’re in a spooky mood or you want to see some stuff get blown up.  Every time I watch this movie, I’m always surprised at just how good it is when it very easily could have been cheesy and silly.  But this low budget film pulls off the horrors of war and the horrors of the fantastic at the same time so well, it’s hard to believe that JJ Abrams was involved.  Apparently they had flirted with the idea of tying this into the Cloverfield universe, but thank goodness that idea fell through.  As a standalone movie, Overlord sets an example for what lower budget films should look like and what Hollywood should be doing more.  Overlord cost a reported $38 million to make.  The Electric State cost $320 million.  Over eight times the budget and where did it go?  Like Upgrade or Attack the Block, Overlord is a great example of what filmmakers, writers, directors, and actors can do with a limited budget, a good script, and the dedication of everyone involved.  It’s not to be missed.

Splatter is the Best Medicine

It’s the age old story.  You take a job, you’re not allowed to tell anyone your name, you’re part of a small team of anonymous skilled criminals who each play an important cog in the machine, and then, well, invariably, things go horribly wrong and people start dying.  We’ve all been there, right?  Right? 

But that’s the setup for the 2024 genre-bending horror-heist film Abigail.  When they show up to kidnap their target, they realize that it’s just a little girl dancing through Swan Lake and one of them protests.  But a job is a job and we all do them because they pay money and this particular job is meant to pay a cool $7 million each for our merry band of kidnappers.  They take her to an isolated mansion in the woods to hold her until the ransom is paid, an optimistic 24 hour job.  It’s not exactly a cabin, but you get the idea.

The man who arranged the job is Lambert, played by Giancarlo Esposito (Better Call Saul, The Boys), and he names them all after members of the Rat Pack before taking their phones to a secure location so they can’t be tracked.  You see, real names and back stories are strictly off limits and only Joey is allowed to interact with Abigail, to minimize their exposure.  Our main characters here are Joey, played by Melissa Barrera (Scream 2022, In the Heights) and Frank, played by one of my favorite actors Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey, The Guest).  Despite all their warnings about backstories, they can’t help but play a game when Dean, played by the late Angus Cloud (Euphoria, The Garfield Movie), decides he can read everyone easily, as a misguided ploy to win over the temporary affection of Sammy, played by Kathryn Newton (Detective Pikachu, Big Little Lies).  Turns out that Dean is as wrong as he is dim-witted and Joey is the one who can really read people, including the muscle Peter, played by Kevin Durand (3:10 to Yuma, Smokin’ Aces) and former Marine Rickles, played by William Catlett (A Thousand and One).  Not exactly a team-building exercise, they end up more at odds after than before.  The Avengers they ain’t.

And then a body drops.  One of the kidnappers of course.  And it’s properly gruesome too, leaving the victim in pieces.  It’s at this point they discover that Abigail’s father isn’t just some tech billionaire or some penguin who has to take off the tuxedo Succession character; he’s Kristof Lazar, a Keyser Soze style urban legend of an underworld crime boss and this strikes fear into all their hearts.  The last thing you want to hear is that the person you just wronged is the most dangerous person you can think of.  They argue over whether to leave, but it turns out to be irrelevant.  The house is a fortress and they’re stuck.

Normally, I’d play a little hide the ball here with the reveal, but if you navigate yourself to Peacock to watch this, where it exclusively streams, the blurb will tell you all this right away, so here we go.  Abigail isn’t the innocent little ballerina you think she is.  She’s a vampire.  The movie would be better if you didn’t know this going in, but it’s unavoidable, so there it is.  She’s not locked in with them, they’re locked in with her.  And it’s playtime for this perpetual adolescent.  Our pack of rats quickly learn they’re in over their heads and that Twilight is not the playbook they’re going to need to survive the night.  Cut off, locked in, with the embodiment of certain death waiting for them inside and the specter of a nigh mythological underworld figure lurking on the outside, the kidnappers are in serious trouble.

If, at this point, you’re thinking “This sounds like Alien meets The Usual Suspects”, then you’d be pretty much right.  It’s reductive, of course, but if I had to describe this movie in one sentence, that’s exactly what I’d say.  A ragtag group in complete isolation comes against an unknown monster that they are in no way prepared to deal with.  Lambert even seems to be a reference to Veronica Cartwright’s character in Alien and Lazar is completely Keyser Soze coded.  I really, really wish that the movie hadn’t been marketed the way it was and I wish I didn’t feel like I had to tell you that Abigail is a vampire, because that would have been such a great reveal.  Yes, going back and watching it again, I noticed a few things I didn’t catch the first time.  Like how Abigail’s questions to Joey aren’t the typical ones you’d expect a scared 12-year-old to ask; she wants to know about Joey’s son and what kinds of things he’s into before proclaiming that she doesn’t know much about kid stuff.  If it weren’t literally in the blurb about the movie, that would have been a huge clue that Abigail isn’t exactly what she appeared to be, but since you’re going into the movie knowing it, it does take a little weight out of the reveal.  That said, this is still a wildly entertaining movie.  After all, knowing that the movie Alien is about an alien going in doesn’t stop that movie from being one of the all-time horror classics and one of the best movies of all time.  Sometimes being just exactly what’s written on the tin isn’t such a bad thing if you can execute everything as well as Abigail does.

Once we get into the second act of the film, the pace is absolutely frenetic.  There’s hardly a moment to breathe until the third act, which helps the protagonists’ desperation permeate the film.  They move so fast, making terrible decision after terrible decision, while trying to piece together works of fiction to figure out a way to combat the pint-size neck-biter.  I’ve heard some criticism about the movie along these lines.  The characters make stupid decisions, often making the same mistake twice (plan after plan requires them to split up, which is not a great idea when you’re the thing being killed in the kill box, but people in horror movies keep doing it).  The reward is too good to be true—$7 million for a quick, one night ransom?  Insistence that the job will only take 24 hours to complete.  But you need these; not just for the movie to happen, but they also work diegetically.  All these people are desperate for one reason or another and dangling the $7 million carrot is just too much for anyone in just about any situation to walk away from.  And for one night of unpleasantness only?  I’ve had worse experiences for less reward (that’s probably an exaggeration, but I did once go to see a Chris Kattan movie in the theaters, so you tell me).  You’re talking about a group of people who are in this position because they need the money and you’re also talking about people who are largely crime film stock characters.  The hired muscle, the hacker, the wheelman, the lookout, the back alley doctor, the disgraced cop; these are not people who are being presented as the best and the brightest.  If Abigail is revealed to be a vampire and all of a sudden a bunch of career criminals turned into Buffy season 2, then, well, the narrative wouldn’t work at all.  And that takes me into the other point as well—of course they make bad decisions; if they made good ones, they would be like the other 8 billion people not locked in that mansion.  These characters are not meant to be at the top of their field; they’re average, or, in some cases, kind of stupid.

And it is that stupidity that leads to the comic relief in this movie quite often.  Kevin Durand’s Peter in particular plays this goofy, likable big guy very well (he also plays the exact opposite—but still big—very well) and he is a source of a lot of the laughs here.  Sometimes with his outlandish comments and sometimes he’s the butt of the joke.  While there are a lot of comedic moments and I got a lot of laughs out of it, but I wouldn’t strictly call this a horror-comedy.  The way the story plays out and resolves doesn’t really fit a comedy structure, but you will get laughs along the way.  And while it’s definitely in the horror genre with the fantasy monster and the gore, it doesn’t really ever fill you with dread because knowing what Abigail’s nature going into it relieves a lot of the tension in the first act because her reveal is a known inevitability.  It’s definitely a crime film as well; I could have fit this in when I did my crime block back in April and it wouldn’t have felt out of place.  But it is this seamless blending of horror, comedy, and crime that makes Abigail so compelling to watch.  There are characters to root for, Joey in particular.  She shares a tender moment with Abigail, promising to keep her safe from harm, and that endears you to Joey.  That even though she’s on the line here kidnapping this kid, she isn’t happy about it.  It’s the desperation that put her there; she doesn’t want anyone to get hurt, least of all the kid.  Others are less concerned about her safety than she is, that’s for sure.  But the story here isn’t the main star; it’s all in the performances.  Melissa Barrera, veteran of the Scream franchise (from the same directors as Abigail), does so well here.  Her character is easy to get behind and Barrera’s performance is really kind of flawless.  Yes, I’ve said before that not having familiarity with an actor makes it easier to lose them in a character and it’s true I don’t know Barrera’s work.  But I am very familiar with Dan Stevens’s work.  I go out of my way to watch Dan Stevens movies.  I suffered through Godzilla x Kong because of him.  In nearly every imaginary fan cast I do when I’m daydreaming, I find a way to sneak Dan Stevens into a leading role.  And yet I also lost him in Frank.  The rest of the cast does a great job as well, albeit with less meaty roles than Barrera and Stevens.

I should take a moment to note the gore.  I mentioned it earlier, but I don’t want to downplay this.  It’s not particularly gruesome, if that’s something bothers you.  You’re likely to see more explicit gore in an episode of The Walking Dead, if for some reason you’re still watching that, but this movie is very bloody.  I’m talking about huge explosions of blood, pools of blood, I’m talking that scene from The Shining levels of blood.  Because of the fantasy nature of vampires, I wouldn’t think it would be particularly upsetting to people, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention it because it certainly earns its R rating.  This is very much a splatterfest once things get going, so if that’s up your alley, you’re going to be in for a good time.

Actually, even if it isn’t specifically your thing, you’re probably still in for a good time.  Because, amid all the felonies and the claret being spilled left and right and the exploding bodies, there’s a really fun time to be had here.  It’s just such a competently done movie that doesn’t strive to be anything more than it is.  There are some moments of depth where they touch on the meaning and weight parenthood and choices, but, really, it’s more a mechanic to make you care about the characters than a deep meaning to the film’s narrative.  It’s not fluff either, but it’s absolutely the kind of movie you can sit down and watch and just enjoy.  It’s a genre film, though which genre I’m not entirely sure, and it’s well-executed.  It reminded me of the first time I watched John Wick, thinking it would be preposterous and straightforward.  And even though it was, I had a fantastic time watching that movie.  Not every movie needs to shake you to your core or make you question the nature of your existence; I don’t want it to come across like I need every film to pry at the darkest nailed down doors in my heart and soul for me to think it’s great.  Because sometimes you do just need some freaky, scary fun, some frights and some thrills, and Abigail delivers that in spades.  It felt like a spiritual successor to movies like Fright Night, which blend genres together, while still delivering on the promise of each genre.  It has its flaws; at 1 hour, 49 minutes, it could have economized its time a little better, with the third act dragging on a bit.  And the major flaw was the marketing.  I mean, they show Abigail covered in blood on the poster of the movie!  Why give away that twist for free?  It would be like having Bruce Willis clutching a gunshot wound on the poster of The Sixth Sense.

But despite these minor missteps, Abigail is the kind of movie that is really easy to like, fun to watch, and the kind of thing you want to share with others, doing the opposite of what I’m doing here. Tell your friends or your partner or whomever that you want them to see this movie and then don’t tell them another thing.  Queue up the film on Peacock (or if you live near the last Blockbuster, pop in the Blu-Ray) while they’re out of the room so they never seen the poster or the blurb, and just enjoy the ride.

The Parapsychosocial Network

Meet Gus Roberts, a service technician for the telecommunications company Smyle, which is striving for 100% coverage of Britain so that every one of its customers can know that they will have the reliable service they need when they need it.  Gus isn’t just your regular installer and technician, no.  He’s the best.  And his boss Dave, played by Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz, Mission: Impossible), wants him to take on a new partner so he can pass some of that knowledge down to the next generation of Smyle techs.  Elton, played by Samson Kayo (Our Flag Means Death), is eager to learn, but has a history of jumping from job to job.  Although, that does mean he as a vast well of shallow, particular knowledge, which is nice to have to drawn upon.

Oh, did I forget to mention that Gus, played by Nick Frost (Hot Fuzz, Attack the Block) is also a part-time paranormal investigator with a YouTube channel called The Truth Seeker?  And that on their first job together, they run into something very, very strange?  On the way to the job, though, Gus plays a station on the radio that just repeats “1” in patterns of four.  He explains to Elton that it’s a numbers station, put in place to defend England during WW2.  Why it’s still going decades after the war ended, nobody knows.  It only repeats “1” in patterns of four.  But when Elton goes to change the frequency, for a reason as inexplicable as the station’s existence itself, the message is changes. 1 5 9 7.  The broadcast remains a mystery.  The job is at a little old lady’s house called Connolly’s Nook (I can only imagine the chutzpah it takes to not only name a house, but also to name it after yourself, as her father did), and despite her being very happy with their service, she calls them back in for a follow-up.  During the second visit, Gus and Elton discover a secret door when Elton realizes that the interior dimensions of the room appeared too small compared to the outside of the house.  He worked construction for short time, so it’s the kind of thing he notices.  Eventually they open it and find that it was hiding a travesty of animal cruelty.  Turns out, Ms. Connolly’s father was a scientist; a bit of a Dr. Frankenstein of his day, except he was using his daughter’s pet dog as an experiment in soul separation.  And in all this time, a scared young woman being chased by apparitions after surviving a catastrophic event finds her way to them, hiding in the back of their work van, which Gus lovingly dubbed the HMS Darkside.

And that’s our introduction to Truth Seekers, the short-lived Amazon Prime series that you probably missed the first time around back in 2020.  Centered around Gus, Elton, and Astrid, played by Emma D’Arcy (House of the Dragon), with Elton’s sister Helen, played by Susan Wokoma (Enola Holmes) and Richard, played by Malcolm McDowell (Community, A Clockwork Orange), the show follows them as they conduct their paranormal investigations for Gus’s YouTube channel.  Elton and eventually Astrid are drafted into the project as things get weirder and weirder and the stakes of their endeavor get bigger and bigger.  The soul transference of Connolly’s Nook is just the beginning.  Gus and his late wife Emily have been involved in paranormal investigations for years, but it’s now that things are really beginning to heat up.  The show takes the Truth Seekers to all sorts of places, including a haunted theme hotel, an abandoned restaurant in the English countryside, and the horror classic, a disused mental hospital for the criminally insane with a history of patient abuse and misogyny.  As you can imagine, for people who believe in ghosts and psychic energy and stuff, that’s got to be a hotspot rife with paranormal activity.  And you’d be right.

As you can probably imagine by the cast, it’s not exactly the new X-Files.  It’s a horror-comedy, which, again, is my favorite way to engage with the horror genre, but in this case, Truth Seekers definitely brings the horror with the comedy.  As much as I loved The Blackening for its sharp comedy and cutting satire, it isn’t really functional as a horror movie.  It’s not scary; there’s some tension, but even for the least seasoned of horror movie watchers, The Blackening is unlikely to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up (which is fine by me, that’s not a criticism).  Astrid, on the other hand, is being chased by really quite scary looking ghosts that have this really cool out-of-phase thing going on with them, which adds to the otherworldliness of their appearance.  There are genuinely unnerving moments in this show and genuinely exciting ones as well.  And, of course, there are genuinely funny moments too.  With this cast, there pretty much has to be.  Simon Pegg is relegated to little more than a cameo (though impactful to the story as it is) as Gus’s enthusiastic boss, but he and Nick Frost are sharp as ever in this series.  More than that, Frost also flexes his dramatic skills as an actor, bringing a great deal of pathos and heart to the character.  Samson Kayo and Emma D’Arcy (who uses they/them pronouns off-screen) are a delight as well.  The two have instant and easy chemistry and they come off as old friends very quickly.  Kayo went on from this to a successful run on Our Flag Means Death, where he shone again.  Emma D’Arcy went on to do House of the Dragon, which I haven’t bothered with, but I’m told some people like it.  I can’t say for sure that Truth Seekers was the thing that set the two of them up for more big prestige projects like those, but there’s no rule that says I can’t believe that.  And, of course, Malcolm McDowell is a legendary actor, so you know he’s going to bring his particular brand of old British snark and bring it well.

I went into Truth Seekers when it first hit Prime 5 years ago thinking it was going to be a fun comedy in the vein of Hot Fuzz.  But it is so much more.  Not only are there properly scary moments that will get your blood up, it turns out to be one of the most touching series I have seen in a long time.  There is such an amazing openness and bigheartedness to this show that is hard to put into words, but you don’t just know it when you see it, you feel it.  From the lonely young, agoraphobic Helen making a connection with the lonely elderly Richard helping to alleviate both their loneliness at the same time to Gus’s kind manner in dealing with just about everyone, including the little old lady who sabotaged her own cable so she could have an excuse to reach out to a real human being.  I’ve seen this show six or seven times by now because it’s one I keep coming back to; despite the frights, its warmth has turned it into a comfort show for me.  One where people who care about each other find a way through grief and loneliness together and they learn to reach out to one another, all while stumbling on to a massive conspiracy involving a whole hell of a lot of murders and the promise of eternal life after death.  Even after all those viewings, I still can’t not cry at the end of the second episode.  When you get there, you’ll understand why, but I wouldn’t dare deprive you of experiencing that moment of pure beauty for yourself.

As the show draws to a close, there are harrowing and heartwarming moments in equal measure.  There is so much unexpected depth to a show that seems as silly as this one does at first glance.  I mean, we’re talking about ghosts and spirits and eternal life dimensions.  I didn’t expect a show that still has the ability to the make me cry this many times into watching it.  I didn’t expect a show that would be so moving when it’s about a ghost-hunting cable repair guy going up and down the English countryside, installing 6G coverage and finding beasts and phantasms.  How could it possibly be so good, so affecting, so memorable, and so overlooked?  Truth Seekers is happy to serve up laughs, scares, and heartrending moments one after another in a way that feels both balanced and earned.  You end the show as crestfallen as you are hopeful.  And, in my case, changed.  No, I’m not suddenly going to start believing in ghosts or the afterlife or anything paranormal (in the fiction of the show, there is no ambiguity; ghosts are real, there is some sort of areligious afterlife or spirit world where people get trapped), but Truth Seekers is about a lot more than ghosts.  Every single one of the main characters is living in a little bubble that keeps them from connecting with other people.  Which is ironic when your protagonists work for a telecoms company ensuring connectedness for all its customers.  Gus is grieving his wife Emily still. Helen is almost a total shut-in because of her anxiety and agoraphobia.  Elton jumps from job to job, sometimes after as little as a few days, making it so he can’t make friends with anyone because he’s not around long enough.  Richard is also grieving and living an isolated life in Gus’s house.  Astrid is lost, her only companions the angry spirits chasing her.  But throughout the show, one way or another, they all manage to find each other and in that, they find new ways to deal with the weight they carry.  And, on top of that, they also manage to do some really cool stuff and in a very real way, save a lot of people from very violent ends.

As much as it is this show’s heart that won me over, it really does offer a lot more than just that.  It’s a show about caring and empathy without being melodramatic or sanctimonious.  It’s that rare thing that a show or any piece of media is this good at everything it sets out to do.  It’s funny when it wants to be, it’s scary when it wants to be, and it’s heartfelt when it wants to be.  And there’s even some good action as well.  It remains a travesty that Truth Seekers never got a second season and the proper ending it deserves, but the end of the first does work well enough as an open-ended conclusion to the series that I can almost convince myself that it didn’t need another season (with all the cancelled shows I’ve loved over the years, I’m used to this particular shade of self-deception; I’m looking at you Lodge 49, Firefly, Terriers, The Tick, and others).  Though its cancellation still hurts, the journey we did get to undertake with these lovely characters deserves to be shared and celebrated.  This 10 episode series averages about half an hour an episode and is available for streaming on Prime Video.  And I don’t normally do this, but I would love it if you check it out, because I have been looking for someone to discuss it with for five years and have found very few who have seen this real hidden gem.