We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
Sam Raimi, Mike Flanagan, Steven Spielberg, and a bad trip to the beach.
HAIL TO THE DEADITES (2020)
I never would've expected that a documentary about fans of the Evil Dead franchise could bring tears to my eyes, but there I was, getting choked up at least twice during director Steve Villeneuve's Hail to the Deadites. In general, it's not too difficult for a movie to get me to cry, but stirring up this emotional response was still an accomplishment for a documentary that I went into with some interest, since I'm a big fan of the Evil Dead franchise myself, but also a healthy amount of skepticism, as I wasn't sure what a 78 minute movie about Evil Dead fandom could really amount to. As it turns out, Villeneuve's movie provided a fun viewing experience with some moments that tugged at the heartstrings.
If you haven't gotten some degree of entertainment from the world of Evil Dead over the years, Hail to the Deadites isn't likely to mean much to you. This documentary about fans is the very definition of something that was "by fans, for fans" - the "by fans" part being so true that it doesn't even feature any footage that came directly from any of the Evil Dead movies or the TV show. The footage that we see between interviews comes from fan films; the closest it gets to showing footage from one of the official films are some clips from Evil Dead II that a fan rotoscoped by hand. It is kind of jarring that everyone is talking about the Sam Raimi films but all of the clips we see are from something else, but it's also cool that fan works were showcased in this way.
Villeneuve didn't attempt to give an overview of all the Evil Dead merchandise that's out there; there's so much of it, to do that would have taken forever. Instead, he focuses on some of the people who collect that stuff, the superfans. As one interviewee points out, this franchise's fanbase is especially interesting because each film in the initial trilogy is quite distinct. The original film is a down and dirty horror film, part 2 amps up the humor and the spookshow atmosphere, then the third movie is a medieval horror-comedy adventure - and fans come to the franchise through these very different entry points. Over the course of Hail to the Deadites, we hear from people who became fans through each one of them.
Among the fans that are interviewed is someone who won an online contest to be named the Ultimate Evil Dead Fan, a cosplayer who has some very cool props in his collection, another cosplayer who was able to meet Bruce Campbell after someone made a generous donation to a fundraising campaign he was running, fans who took international flights to meet cast members, a couple who got engaged in the presence of Evil Dead special effects artist Tom Sullivan, and the cast and crew of a production of Evil Dead: The Musical.
While we're seeing the impact these movies have on people's lives, the documentary crew also travels to various conventions to have a chance to talk with some of the actors from the films about the experiences they've had working on the movies and interacting with fans. Those cast members include Betsy Baker, Theresa Tilly, Ellen Sandweiss, Richard Demanincor, Ted Raimi, Danny Hicks, Sarah Berry, Kassie Wesley DePaiva, Richard Domeier, Bill Moseley, and of course Bruce Campbell. There's also an interesting moment with Bruce's brother Don Campbell, who has some props in his possession as well.
I have to admit, my enjoyment of this documentary was given a boost by the fact that it's filled with familiar sights and faces, which includes Arrow in the Head founder John "The Arrow" Fallon, who is one of the genre experts who was interviewed about the franchise. The aforementioned proposal took place at Cinema Wasteland, a "home away from home" convention for me. I didn't see the proposal in person and didn't see Villeneuve doing his filming, but I was there when they were happening, which was fun to realize.
Hail to the Deadites' 78 minutes go by quickly, and it's captivating throughout. I was amused by some moments with the superfans and touched by other moments. I don't know if fans will learn much from watching the documentary, but if you love the Evil Dead franchise it's worth checking out because it is a joyous celebration of the entertainment Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, and their collaborators have been bringing to us over the last several decades.
The review of Hail to the Deadites originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com
50 STATES OF FRIGHT: SEASON ONE (2020)
I have honestly never intended to have a long-term subscription to the Quibi streaming service. A service that has shows with chapters of 10 minutes or less because they're intended to be viewed on your smartphone while you're on the go, that's not really something I need to dig into on a regular basis. However, there have been some Quibi projects that I have been interested in, like the Kevin Hart / John Travolta movie-presented-as-a-show Die Hart, and there has been one show that was a must-see for me from the moment it was announced: the anthology series 50 States of Fright. The reason 50 States of Fright is something that I had to watch, no question about it, is that it's executive produced by Sam Raimi, who also directed the first three episodes (which would have amounted to one episode on any other streaming service).
The idea behind 50 States of Fright is that it will - if the series and Quibi survive long enough - tell a creepy urban legend from every state in the U.S.A. Raimi kicks things off with a story from his home state of Michigan, The Golden Arm.
Scripted by Sam Raimi and his brother Ivan (who was his co-writer on Darkman, Army of Darkness, Spider-Man 3, Drag Me to Hell, and other things), The Golden Arm stars Travis Fimmel as lumberjack David and Rachel Brosnahan as his beautiful wife Heather, who demands that she have the finer things in life. David makes sure she gets them, no matter what financial hurdles he has to clear to provide them. When Heather loses her right arm in a tragic accident, the story of this couple's life becomes a horror tale that would have felt right at home in an issue of EC Comics - which is to say, this sort of feels like Raimi doing an episode of Tales from the Crypt. The story gets its title from the fact that David makes Heather a prosthetic arm of pure gold, and any Raimi fan watching will probably immediately have Army of Darkness flashbacks when they see Heather putting this arm on.
I'm dedicated to watching everything Raimi makes, and I was glad I watched The Golden Arm. It was a cool little horror story, and the three episodes it took to tell the story were definitely my favorite of the fourteen episodes that make up 50 States of Fright's first season.
Five stories are told over the course of those fourteen episodes, and I didn't like all of them, but that's to be expected when you're watching an anthology. Some of the stories might not work for you, but there's always hope for the next story.
Kansas is represented by the three-parter America's Largest Ball of Twine, directed by Yoko Okumura. As it turns out, that ball of twine has a supernatural influence over the small town it's located in... and even though these episodes star Ming-Na Wen and Karen Allen, I was underwhelmed by America's Largest Ball of Twine. It had a very generic feel to it.
I was much more into the two-parter Scared Stiff, set in Oregon and directed by Ryan Spindell. That one stars James Ransone as a taxidermist who is tasked with stuffing the remains of a very strange beast. Scared Stiff features an awesome creature that was brought to the screen through practical effects.
Next up was Grey Cloud Island, about a group of youths running into trouble on a stretch of land in Minnesota that people tell spooky stories about. Those youths, including a character played by Asa Butterfield, soon find themselves trying to rescue a young woman from a group of cultists, and this three-part story sort of plays out like a slasher. Directed by Adam Schindler and Brian Netto, Grey Cloud Island was a decent addition to the series.
Season one wrapped up with my least favorite story of the bunch, three episodes directed by Alejandro Brugues from a story crafted by Eduardo Sanchez and Gregg Hale. Titled Destino and set in Miami, Florida, this one is presented in the "found footage" style; the scenes are captured through security cameras, dashboard cameras in police vehicles, and the body cams of police officers. It has something to do with occult activities and a sacrificed goat, and it never grabbed me at all. I was just waiting for these three episodes to be over.
The first season of 50 States of Fright has its ups and downs, but I enjoyed it for the most part. I'd say this is a pretty good show, and would especially recommend The Golden Arm and Scared Stiff.
THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE (2018)
Steven Spielberg is clearly fascinated by the story Shirley Jackson told in her 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House. Although the story was already turned into a film in 1963, Spielberg produced another - and not nearly as good - adaptation in 1999. Before that film went into production, Spielberg had been working with Stephen King on a different take on the story, which King ended up turning into a mini-series called Rose Red. Twenty years after those projects, Spielberg's company Amblin decided it was time to dig into Jackson's story again... and when Amblin chose to let genre filmmaker Mike Flanagan take the helm of a mini-series inspired by The Haunting of Hill House, they made a decision that resulted in some excellent television.
Over the course of ten episodes, Flanagan and fellow writers Meredith Averill, Jeff Howard, Charise Castro Smith, Rebecca Klingel, Scott Kosar, and Elizabeth Ann Phang told a story that really only has a few similarities to the source material, but that's okay when the original story this group crafted is so captivating and deeply emotionally involving.
The story of the mini-series, which Flanagan directed entirely himself, centers on the Crain family - parents Hugh and Olivia, children Steven, Shirley, Theodora, Luke, and Nell - who moved into a creepy mansion called Hill House decades ago with the intention of flipping and selling it. Much like the family in The Amityville Horror, the Crains ended up fleeing Hill House in the middle of a night not long after they moved in, chased out by the spirits that inhabit the haunted house. Unfortunately, Olivia did not get out of the house with the rest of her family. She died in Hill House that night.
Episodes bounce back and forth between showing us what the Crains experienced in Hill House back in the day and revealing the troubled people the Crain children turned out to be. Each of them is still haunted, in their own way and in varying degrees, by what they witnessed in that house, and by the loss of their mother. Steven has become an author who writes about haunted locations, but says he has never seen a ghost himself. Shirley has become a mortician. Luke struggles with drug addiction. Nell is plagued by nightmares and sleep paralysis. Theo has a psychic ability that works through touch, and she uses this ability to help children as a social worker.
The fact that the story is told across multiple time periods helped the writers get ten episodes out of this concept, and it also helps that they had so many Crains to focus on. Every member of the family gets an episode that is shown primarily through their perspective, which means seven episodes are accounted for right there. The show never feels like its spinning its wheels, it's fascinating throughout, and when there aren't scary sequences to watch - and Flanagan did make sure to include scares in every episode - the viewer gets to enjoy some strong drama brought to the screen by a fantastic cast.
Flanagan cast each role perfectly, and since he was cutting back and forth between the past and present day he had to cast two actors for most of the roles. Hugh is played by Henry Thomas and Timothy Hutton, Steven by Paxton Singleton and Michiel Huisman, Shirley by Lulu Wilson and Elizabeth Reaser, Luke by Julian Hilliard and Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Nell by Violet McGraw and Victoria Pedretti, and Theodora by Mckenna Grace and Kate Siegel. Since Olivia died, she's played solely by Carla Gugino. Robert Longstreet and Annabeth Gish are also in there as Hill House caretakers Mr. and Mrs. Dudley. The director obviously knew how lucky he was to have this cast, because there are several instances of characters being given lengthy monologues to deliver, and they did great work on each occasion. I love those monologues; if someone made a supercut of just those moments, I would watch it regularly.
The standout episode for me and many other viewers was episode 6. After five episodes of the Crains gradually starting to gather in the same place for a terrible reason, episodes that were told from the perspective of each Crain child, the family is finally - mostly - reunited in episode 6. It's a very emotionally charged episode, and Flanagan chose to shoot it through a series of long single takes. Even while using the single take style, the story moves back and forth between events that took place at Hill House in the past and the Crains purging their emotions at Shirley's funeral parlor in the present. The weather reflects the emotional state of the characters; storms rage outside in both past and present. That episode was an impressive technical achievement.
And The Haunting of Hill House was an impressive artistic achievement. It's a great show, and I was caught up in it for every minute of its ten episodes. After The Haunting 1999 I would have said that Spielberg / Amblin should leave Hill House alone, but I would have been wrong. I'm very glad this mini-series exists.
THE BEACH HOUSE (2019)
Making a slow burn genre film can be risky. If you're going to make the audience wait a substantial amount of time before showing them any sort of major event, you have to have a pay-off that's worth sitting through all the build-up. You can't whiff when the action comes in, you have to knock it out of the park. With his feature debut The Beach House, writer/director Jeffrey A. Brown made a slow burn genre film and took the risk of losing the audience. Thankfully, blog contributor Priscilla and I both felt that The Beach House had pay-off that was worth all the build-up.
Liana Liberato and Noah Le Gros star as young couple Emily and Randall, who are looking to get some alone time at the titular location, which Randall's family owns. Their alone time is disrupted when they discover that Randall's father is already letting middle-aged couple Mitch (Jake Weber) and Jane (Maryann Nagel) stay there while Jane battles a terminal illness. Brown spends a lot of the film's 88 minute running time letting us get to know these two couples, to watch them interact, to see what happens when they share a batch of marijuana edibles. He spends enough time on this that some viewers may start wondering why they're watching these couples, and when something is actually going to happen.
Then the horror action starts. How did Brown make all the build-up worth it? By dropping his characters into what seems to be an apocalyptic event. Something strange is going on in the ocean that the beach house sits on the edge of, and Brown shows us this strangeness in scenes that are unnerving, often disgusting, and sometimes painful to watch. Liberato makes for a good heroine as Emily tries to navigate through the situation, and Emily proves to be quite capable... But she might not be capable enough to get through this horrific night.
If you like slow burns with pay-off, give The Beach House a chance.
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