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.
Home invasion thrills, exorcism, and Chucky.
SEE FOR ME (2021)
Voice-over actor Skyler Davenport gives a terrific performance while making their on screen feature lead debut in this thriller from director Randall Okita. Davenport, who is visually impaired, plays a visually impaired character, a young woman named Sophie, who makes cash by housesitting for wealthy clients... and stealing items from their homes to sell on the side. Her latest client is a woman who is newly divorced from her rich husband. While she's out, Sophie is planning to steal a bottle of alcohol that she could sell for a few thousand dollars.
She's not the only person planning to steal from this woman's secluded home. Sophie is awoken in the night by the sound of three men breaking into the house and going to work trying to crack into a hidden safe that contains millions. When these men realize someone else is in the house with them, things get complicated and dangerous. But while we've watched home invasion scenarios like this play out numerous times before, the screenplay by Adam Yorke and Tommy Gushue throws some interesting elements into the mix. Starting with the fact that Sophie is blind, and therefore wouldn't be able to identify the men in the house. Then add to in that she's not the most scrupulous character herself. There is also some depth to the thieves; they each have a different approach to the situation. Joe Pingue's Dave wants nothing to do with violence. Pascal Langdale's Ernie is the pro criminal who sees multiple options, up to a point. George Tchortov is the homicidal hothead, because there always seems to be one.
Then there's the element that the film gets its name from. A smartphone app called See for Me, which Sophie uses when she needs some assistance getting around. This app connects her with a person who can "see for her" through her phone's camera and help her navigate through a room or accomplish a task. The person Sophie connects with through this app happens to be a woman in a different state, Jessica Parker Kennedy as Kelly. She gets in contact with Kelly when the men first break into the house, and Kelly does everything she can to make sure Sophie will make it through this situation unharmed. Although she kind of messes things up at one point as well, having this connection to Kelly proves to be quite beneficial for Sophie.
Prolific character actor Kim Coates also gets involved at one point, but I don't want to give away too many details on what happens in this movie. If you like thrillers, you should definitely check it out. I didn't have high expectations for the movie, but ended up really enjoying it and getting wrapped up in it, and so did blog contributor Priscilla.
THE EXORCISM OF GOD (2021)
There are certain kinds of horror movies I never get tired of. For example, I watch as many slashers as I can get my eyes on, and it doesn’t matter how similar they all are to each other. I want those similarities. I want the new slasher I watch to be the same thing as the old slasher I love. Then there are other kinds of horror movies where I’m put off by the similarities. Getting into an exorcism movie is always a struggle for me, because they’re never going to match up to The Exorcist and yet they keep doing the same things that were done in The Exorcist. The possessed people usually look about the same, they’re going to levitate or their bed is going to levitate, they’re going to spew vulgarity and probably something green, and we’re just going to watch a priest talk at them and say stuff like “The power of Christ compels you!” Directed by Alejandro Hidalgo, the new film The Exorcism of God is not innocent of repeating things we saw in The Exorcist. All of that stuff is in this movie. There’s even mention of someone having their head twisted backwards. But Hidalgo’s movie also wins points by doing some different things along the way.
The story Hidalgo crafted with Santiago Fernández Calvete begins in 2003, when Father Peter Williams (Will Beinbrink), an American priest stationed in Mexico, conducts an exorcism to save nun Magali (Irán Castillo) from the grips of a demon called Balban. Father Michael Lewis (Joseph Marcell) warns Peter against doing the exorcism on his own, feeling he’s not prepared for it – if there’s any hint of sin within him, the devil will take hold. And Peter does have sin inside him, particularly a lust for Magali. Celibacy has clearly messed with this guy’s head, because even when Magali is sporting her possessed look – jacked-up teeth, reptilian eyes, black tongue, open sores – he is still overcome by lust. Because of this, something awful happens during the exorcism.
Eighteen years later, Peter is still a priest. He’s carrying the guilt of what happened during that exorcism, but he hasn’t fully atoned for his sins. He never carried out the penance he was given. Then children in the area start dying for no apparent reason, heralding the return of Balban. The demon is now in the body of a young woman named Esperanza (María Gabriela de Faría), who is locked up in a prison cell for committing a murder while under the demon’s influence. Peter is going to have to face Balban again, and in the process face what happened in 2003.
So there’s actually a very interesting story going on in The Exorcism of God, between the familiar sights and sounds of the exorcisms. There’s some serious drama for Beinbrink and his co-stars, particularly Castillo, to handle, and they do very well acting out these scenes. Hidalgo and Calvete have the story play out in an interesting way. Although we see a large portion of the 2003 exorcism right at the start of the film, they still keep doling out further pieces of information on what happened here and there throughout the running time. While we’re getting this information, we’re also introduced to Sister Camila (Evelia Di Gennaro), a nun who has to deal with some terrifying things. Hidalgo has some messed up visuals to show us aside from the possessed Magali and Esperanza as well. Camila faces some of them, and one of the most notable creepy/disgusting things is a vision Peter keeps seeing: that of a possessed, zombie-like Jesus Christ.
As the film builds up to the climactic exorcism, Peter is joined by Father Michael Lewis – and viewers who recognize Joseph Marcell from his role as the butler Geoffrey on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air are going to get a whole extra level of entertainment from watching him battle the possessed. Even if you don’t know Marcell from Fresh Prince, he still brings a great energy to his role and the occasional touch of humor. Never mind the horror, my favorite moment of The Exorcism of God comes when Michael expresses his disgust at the condition of the prison Esperanza is in. I found what he says about it to be quite amusing.
There’s still around 30 minutes of movie left when Peter and Michael enter the prison to perform that climactic exorcism, which was surprising to me. How was Hidalgo going to fill all that time? As it turns out, he filled it by having a lot more going on in that prison than I expected. This doesn’t end with a couple of priests just talking at a possessed girl while she writhes around on a bed, and I really appreciated that.
If you’re a fan of exorcism movies, you’ll get the usual familiar stuff and also some unique twists and turns. If you’re not a fan of exorcism movies, I would suggest giving this one a chance. The Exorcism of God was one of the rare entries in this sub-genre that won me over. There were some weak spots, but I really liked how Hidalgo handled the story overall. This one held my interest by going in directions I wasn’t expecting.
The review of The Exorcism of God originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com
CHUCKY: SEASON ONE (2021)
When horror properties make the move from film to television, they're usually reimagined along the way. For example, Bates Motel started the Norman Bates story over from scratch, it's not a follow-up to Psycho. That's not the case with the Chucky television series - this is a follow-up to the original Child's Play and its sequels (not the remake). The show was created by Don Mancini, who has written every Child's Play / Chucky movie (except for that remake), so it picks the story up right where the last movie, Cult of Chucky, left off. The first season of the show is really just another sequel, it's just longer and chopped up into eight episodes. Which may have been jarring for some viewers who haven't kept up with the movies, because the Chucky story got very wild and wacky as it went along.
The show does ease us into the sequel of it all. The initial focus is on eighth grader Jake Wheeler (Zackary Arthur), a kid who collects dolls so he can take them apart and create his own art pieces out of them. So when he sees a vintage Good Guy doll up for grabs at a yard sale, he makes the purchase... and it isn't long before he realizes that this doll is a living, homicidal little maniac called Chucky. And for some reason, Chucky's new objective in life seems to be to turn Jake into a killer just like him.
A regular sequel would have just been told in about the same amount of time as two episodes, so having four times as long to tell this story allows Mancini and his fellow writers to really build up the Jake character. We see him dealing with bullies, his sexuality, his father's negative reaction to the idea that his son is gay. We see him being lured into the idea of murder by Chucky. And we spend a good amount of time with other characters as well. Devon Sawa does double duty playing twin brothers, Jake's father and his uncle. Lexa Doig of Jason X plays Jake's aunt, Teo Briones his unlikeable cousin Junior. Alyvia Alyn Lind's character Lexy Cross is awful at first, a snobby rich kid bully, but she changes along the way. We find out she has depth, she becomes an ally to Jake as they deal with Chucky's latest killing spree. Another ally is Jake's true crime podcaster classmate Devon Evans (Bjorgvin Arnarson), who also becomes Jake's love interest. And Jake isn't the only person Chucky tries to turn into a murderer. If he can't get Jake to kill, maybe Junior will kill. Maybe Lexy's little sister Caroline (Carina Battrick) will take a life. He clearly needs to corrupt someone into homicide, but why?
Once Chucky has the viewer invested in the overall story, that's when the show fully enters "direct sequel to Cult of Chucky" territory. That's when it reminds us that Chucky can now split his soul into multiple bodies; not only is Charles Lee Ray in control of multiple doll bodies at this point, but he's also possessing Curse and Cult heroine Nica Pierce (Fiona Dourif). And using her body to carry out an intimate relationship with his longtime girlfriend Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly), the "Bride of Chucky" who now inhabits the body of actress Jennifer Tilly. The gender fluid child Chucky and Tiffany had at the end of Bride of Chucky, the "Seed of Chucky" conceived when they were both in doll bodies, is mentioned but not seen.
Also in the mix is Alex Vincent as Andy Barclay, the character we originally met as a child in the first movie, and Christine Elise as Andy's foster sister Kyle, introduced in Child's Play 2. Now Andy and Kyle travel the country, destroying all the dolls that have Chucky in them. This whole "soul split between multiple dolls" idea becomes a major part of the story by the last episode.
Mancini also used the extra time provided by episodic storytelling to give us more information on the history of Chucky himself, taking us back to the days before he was a killer doll. When he was a human serial killer named Charles Lee Ray. The show even takes us back to the days when he committed his first kills, when he was just a child. I was nervous about the "Chucky's back story" aspect of this show because I didn't like the Charles Lee Ray flashbacks in Curse of Chucky, but this worked better for me. When we see flashbacks of Charles Lee Ray as an adult this time, he's not played by Brad Dourif, the actor who voices Chucky and played Charles Lee Ray in the flesh in the past. Instead, the decision was made to put some prosthetics on Dourif's daughter Fiona and have her play the guy. With her father's voice coming out of her mouth. It's an interesting choice, and quite bizarre to watch. She shares scenes with Blaise Crocker, playing a young Tiffany with Tilly's voice coming out of her mouth. That's weird, too. But not as weird.
It's kind of surprising to see how much creative control Mancini was able to have on Chucky. It doesn't seem like Syfy or USA Network (the show airs on both) made him compromise his vision at all. The movies got weird, and the show was allowed to remain weird. Chucky was even able to keep his foul mouth on the show, dropping F-bombs on commercial television. This is a good sequel, and I look forward to watching it continue. Season 2 has been announced, and it's very necessary, because season 1 ends with a cliffhanger we need to see the resolution to as soon as possible.
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