Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Grace
This movie was really freaky and disgusting. I have seen a lot of horror movies in my time, but it's really hard for them to get under my skin like this.
Madeline is a woman who really wants a baby. Like, yesterday. We see her having "sex" with her husband and she looks pained and she's doing everything but looking at her watch. then the awkward sex scene is over and she's doing that thing where women sit with their legs in the air trying to direct the sperm where to go. Those things SWIM, hon, you don't have to tell them which way to go, but I've seen other woman do that, too, in movies and on TV, so we get the picture here...Madeline really really really wants a baby. She's obsessed with it, it's her life.
So of course, as these things go, bad things happen to Madeline and she's in a car accident but instead of being concerned that her husband is now dead (she didn't really care much about him anyway, judging by her reactions toward him throughout the movie)( she's insisting on carrying the now dead baby inside her to term and delivering it, even though it is, as I said, dead. So that's what she does, but through sheer force of will and with weeping and begging, Madeline is able to bring the dead baby back to life while holding it in her arms. So her dreams have come true, right?
Wrong. She soon discovers that while adorable, her little baby Grace has some strange proclivities. She smells bad, her hair falls out, she attracts flies, and she wants to drink blood, not milk or formula. Of course, since Madeline's life revolves around taking care of this baby, she goes to whatever lengths she has to go in order to keep the baby alive.
I haven't even mentioned the mother in law here yet. This woman is so grating and evil that you want to kill her the first time you see her. she badgers an 8 month pregnant Madeline that she's doing everything wrong, she turns into even more of a shrew once her son is dead, and I have no sympathy for her because she was this way from the beginning. Then once she finds out that her grandchild is alive, she hatches a plan to take the baby away from Madeline, and she plans to breast feed the kid, so she gets on with producing breast milk by forcing her husband to suck on her breasts, and are you disturbed yet? I sure as hell was. these poor men are pawns in the hands of these unstable women, and it's horrible to watch.
It's even more horrible to watch little Grace feed. Guess how she gets her supply of blood? She suckles Madeline's breast until she's sucking blood, not milk. OMG THAT IS DISGUSTING. EW. Seriously, I kept cringing and looking away from the screen, and I can watch the most grisly death in a "Saw" movie without batting an eye, but this? This hits too close to home. Pregnancy and birth and breastfeeding and obsessed family members and the whole lot of what this movie serves up are what get to me; what digs under my skin and stays there, so "Grace" is a truly disturbing movie for me whereas other movies don't manage to come close. I respect it for that, but it's also an exceedingly unpleasant experience.
Monday, May 10, 2010
The Innocents
I remember reading Henry James' story "The Turn of the Screw" when I was younger. I remember it being a "ghost" story that had an ambiguous ending that left it open to interpretation whether the ghost had been real or not (hence the quotation marks around the word "ghost") and the story was mysterious and cool, but it's the kind of ending that's hard to pull off on film. In film, you almost have to take one interpretation or the other and run with it (either the ghost is real or it isn't) or it's hard to have a coherent story. That's the biggest problem with this movie, I think. Don't get me wrong, the movie is very good, it's just that the movie leans more toward one interpretation than the other, and that makes the story a little befuddling and the ending a little unsatisfying. With the movie "Picnic at Hanging Rock," a movie infamous for leaving its central mystery unsolved, at least the movie left us with a definitive answer to SOME of our questions, which made it easier to take. With "The Innocents," we have a lot of questions and we're left to figure out the answers ourselves, and that can be hard to swallow. Nevertheless, this movie is masterful at unsettling us with its atmosphere, and for that reason alone it's well worth seeing.
Mystery Science Theater 3000: Werewolf
If you ever want the experience of watching a movie with me, watch "Mystery Science Theater 3000" and you'll get a sense of what it's like. The three snarking, wisecracking voices commenting on every aspect of the movie (and mocking it to death) soun d like my friends and I at our best. When this show is good, it's great.
Memporable lines from this movie (snarking comments bolded): "How is he doing?" "Bad." How bad?" "BAD bad." "Is that BAD BAD bad, or bad bad BAD?"
*guy writhing in hospital bed* "His condition has deteriorated to bad bad bad, bad bad bad bad."
*guy in hospital bed growing progressively more hairy* "Quick! Apply intravenous Nair!"
Watch this, seriously.
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