The Lost

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Rating 2¾


Directed by Bryan Goeres

Written by Dan Dworkin and Jay Beattie

Starring Armand Assante (Kevin), Lacey Chabert (Jane), Dina Meyer (Mira), David Selvas (Hugo), Ferran Lahoz (Gil), Sergi Mateu (Molina), Ricard Sales (Alex), Jorge Bosch (Delgado), Miquel Gelabert (Alonso) and Toby Harper (Barry)

Kevin, once a practicing psychoanalyst, now a successful writer, is approached by Mira in New York during a book tour to promote his latest book. At first she asks for his autograph, but then she tells him she is the older sister of Jane and that his diagnosis of her sister’s condition three years earlier during a high profile criminal trial in Spain had condemned her to spend the rest of her life in an institution, drugged to a permanent near-comatose state. Mira claims that it was the wrong diagnosis and threatens to expose his mistake in the newspapers. Kevin reluctantly agrees to reassess Jane’s condition, travelling back to Spain, and as he learns more about her split personalities he becomes ensnared in a web of intrigue.

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‘The Lost’ (or ‘Perduts’, to give the film its Catalan title) is a made-for-television film, first released at the beginning of 2009. It was made by the Barcelona based Drimtim Entertainment production company, which specialises in product that has appeal in the American market. It is not exactly a horror film, although it might be marketed as such. More accurately, it is a psychological thriller. There are no scares as such and certainly no blood and gore.

The premise that takes Kevin back to Spain to reassess Jane is daft in the extreme and the twisty ending is equally outlandish. The film follows a tried and tested formula that is very familiar, but all in all it is really rather well done and enjoyable, with decent performances all round by an experienced and very competent cast.

The writers Dan Dworkin and Jay Beattie are an experienced team, having also worked together on numerous American television series, including ‘Cold Case’, ‘Criminal Minds’, ‘Surface’ and ‘Vanished’. Director Bryan Goeres has direcetd several other films for Drimtim.

Review posted 26 April 2009



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Imaginary Playmate

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Rating 2½


Directed by William Fruet

Written by Christine Gallagher

Starring Dina Meyer, Rick Ravanello, Cassandra Sawtell, Kurt Evans, Kay Vance, Bronwen Smith, Nancy Sivak, Jim Shepard and Nicole Muñoz

Suzanne (Dina Meyer), an illustrator for a publishing house, moves to a sleepy community with her husband of one year, Michael (Rick Ravanello), and seven-year-old step-daughter Molly (Cassandra Sawtell). Michael has been sent there to manage a local logging mill, which is experiencing financial problems and is in danger of closing. The workforce does not trust the new owners and they treat him with suspicion. Molly, who is still coming to terms with the death of her mother, invents an imaginary friend called Candace. Following a series of disquieting incidents, Suzanne begins to suspect that Candace is real, causing conflict in her relationship with Michael.

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This made-for-television horror film, starring the always dependable Dina Meyer, was premiered on the HBO subscription channel in America in December 2006. It was made by the film production arm of the Lifetime Movie Network. Television movies are all too often dismissed, quite possibly because they are typically assumed to be aimed specifically at a female audience, but the production values are usually high and there is just something almost comforting about them.

‘Imaginary Playmate’ is not exceptional by any stretch of the imagination. It is formulaic and the revelations, as they occur in the story, are easy to guess long before they happen. There isn’t much suspense and the film follows an obvious route, but it is done with some degree of skill that makes it a perfectly enjoyable 90 minutes.

Review posted 24 February 2009



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Riddles Of The Sphinx

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Rating impossible


Directed by George Mendeluk

Written by Brooke Durham and Jacob Eskander

Starring Lochlyn Munro, Dina Meyer, Emily Tennant, Mackenzie Gray and Donnelly Rhodes


A cryptographer unwittingly unleashes the Sphinx, a creature from Egyptian mythology, which then kills him. It is left to his estranged son Robert (Lochlyn Munro), the granddaughter he never met, Karen (Emily Tennant), and his son’s former lover, Jessica (Dina Meyer), to avert an apocalyptic plague by solving a series of riddles, while passing through portals found on the sites of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World into sacred chambers existing in parallel dimensions.

This film was made for broadcast on the Sci-Fi Channel. Lochlyn Munro plays a kind of bargain bin version of Indiana Jones and Dina Meyer is, as one fan review I read put it, “Laura Croft’s hot aunt.” It is a mix of ‘The Mummy’, ‘Stargate’ and ‘Indiana Jones’, seemingly made on a budget that probably would not buy a sandwich from the location caterers of one of those films. I have no idea what the production budget was, but it is tempting to surmise that they still had change left over from a ten-dollar bill once the shoot was completed.

This is the most hilariously bad film I have seen in a very long time, although that is not to say it was not enjoyable in its own preposterous way. It is not exactly so bad it’s good – more like, so bad it has to be seen to be believed.

The special effects, provided by the same company responsible for the new big-budget FOX network show ‘Fringe’, are minimal in the extreme. Clearly, the budget did not stretch far enough to allow for proper effects to be added. When various characters are battling the Sphinx, the creature is usually out of the shot, leaving the actor to fight nothing. Our heroes fly across the globe in a small jet airplane, which appears to carry enough fuel to fly any distance, no matter how far, but they never seem to actually land or take off, and each location bears no resemblance to the real thing. Olympia in Greece is a wet and wintry place (somewhat akin to the region of British Columbia where it was filmed, in fact) and the Giza Plateau turns out to be some kind of disused quarry!

The riddles are simplistic beyond belief and the supposedly deadly traps set in the various chambers they visit are so easily thwarted that they really should have been blindfolded at the time, just to even things up a bit. Although Robert is supposed to be, like his father before him, a genius with considerable knowledge of the ancient world, it seems to be his teenage daughter who makes several of the deductions required to continue the journey, apparently by using what appears to be a portable games console.

It is tempting to wonder what Dina Meyer did wrong for her career to have come to this, but in fact these kinds of films seem to be her stock in trade. Lochlyn Munro, like Meyer, might also be wondering what he ever did to deserve such a fate, although I cannot help but think of him as a kind of new Doug McClure. Emily Tennant was young Daphne in ‘Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed’ and had small roles in ‘I Robot’, ‘Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants’ and ‘Juno’.

‘Riddles of the Sphinx’ is laughably silly, but it is fun. I generally like films with this kind of theme and this one stars Dina Meyer, which is a plus. It is rubbish, but I am sure I could happily watch it again sometime.



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Birds Of Prey

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Created for television by Laeta Kalogridis

Based on the characters created by Bob Kane and William ‘Bill’ Finger, and the comic book written by Charles ‘Chuck’ Dixon, Gail Simone and others

Starring Ashley Scott, Dina Meyer, Rachel Skarsten, Shemar Moore, Ian Abercrombie, Mia Sara, Robert Patrick Benedict and Shawn Christian


‘Birds Of Prey’ was a short-lived television series broadcast on the WB network (the original home of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’) between October 2002 and February 2003. It was developed for the network by Laeta Kalogridis, who turned up again four years later as an executive producer on the equally ill-fated revival of ‘Bionic Woman’. It was made by the same production team as ‘Smallville’ and ‘One Tree Hill’.

The show attracted viewing figures averaging more than 7.5 million, the network’s largest audience in the 18-34 demographic, or so it says on Wikipedia, but it was cancelled after thirteen episodes. Given that the viewing figures appear to have been above average for the network, it would seem strange that the show was cancelled after such a short run, but I have read that some ‘Batman’ comic book aficionados, who might have been expected to welcome the show, were aggrieved that it deviated from accepted “canon”. However, this tendency towards hostile reaction does seem to be a part and parcel of all comic-book superhero adaptations and probably was not an over-riding factor in the show’s early demise.

Ashley Scott, who had been one of the regular cast of the second season of John Cameron’s television series ‘Dark Angel’, was cast in the role of Helena Kyle, also known as Huntress, the metahuman daughter of Batman and Catwoman. A metahuman is a human possessed of superpowers.

She first learns of her true identity when her mother is murdered on the orders of the Joker. She is taken in by Barbara Gordon, also known as Oracle and previously Batgirl, who is now paralysed and confined to a wheelchair following a revenge shooting by the Joker. This character is played by genre fans favourite, Dina Meyer. Huntress and Oracle are a team, fighting the forces of darkness in New Gotham, several years after it has been abandoned by Batman.

Sixteen year old Dinah Redmond, played by Rachel Skarsten, is metahuman, like Huntress. She is drawn to New Gotham by precognitive dreams and is taken in by Barbara Gordon, so that she can continue her education, at the high school where Gordon teaches, and also learn to hone her telepathic powers.

Their main nemesis is Harley Quinn aka Dr Harleen Quinzel (played by Mia Sara), an accomplice of the Joker, who first appeared in Batman mythology in 1992 in ‘Batman: The Animated Series’.

The show was loosely based on the ‘Birds Of Prey’ comic book, which began in 1996, although it did not adhere strictly to the story told in that comic series and also incorporated elements of, amongst others, ‘The Killing Joke’, a 1988 comic book written by Alan Moore. I have virtually no interest in comic books and even less knowledge about them. This series was never broadcast on terrestrial television in Britain and would undoubtedly have passed me by altogether had it not been for the presence of Dina Meyer, who I like very much. She is the reason I first had an interest in watching it.

The show built up a small but faithful following, with at least one fan website continuing to be active for a couple of years after the last episode was broadcast. A DVD, containing the thirteen episodes, as well as the original unaired pilot, was released in 2008.

What makes ‘Birds Of Prey’ so hilariously bad (which is not to say it is not watchable and, indeed, enjoyable) is that, putting to one side its source material, it simply seems to be a hotchpotch of blatantly ripped-off elements from every other genre television show of the period.

The obvious place to start is ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, which one imagines WB wanted to find a replacement for, having allowed that show to move to UPN following the conclusion of the fifth season in May 2001. ‘Birds of Prey’ certainly takes some ideas and themes from it. For example. the character Dinah Redmond, a high school teenager, has the same clumsy wide-eyed geeky exuberance as Buffy’s younger sister Dawn. However, it is far too generic to be compared too closely to what might arguably be the most influential and innovative American television series of the last twelve years or so.

‘Buffy’ is the show that probably kick-started the renewed trend towards genre shows (acknowledging, also, the enormous influence of ‘The X Files’). ‘Buffy’ quite evidently was the catalyst that pathed the way for ‘Charmed’, ‘Dark Angel’, ‘Birds of Prey’, ‘Alias’ and others. However, it stands out as being very distinct from these other shows, and its own spin-off, ‘Angel’, for that matter, because of the influences it drew on.

Joss Whedon might be a fan (and a writer) of superhero comic books, but his trademark show was, in many ways, most influenced by the likes of ‘Beverly Hills 90210’, ‘Party of Five’ and, in particular, ‘My So-Called Life’. Also, the influence of the writer and subsequent executive producer Marti Noxon, who joined the show in the second season, should not be underestimated. Her own much maligned show ‘Point Pleasant’, like ‘Buffy’ before it, is another example of a genre show drawing its influences from soap opera and drama as much as, and often more so than, fantasy. Shows like ‘Birds of Prey’ and ‘Dark Angel’ did not do this and, for my tastes, this is to their detriment.

‘Birds Of Prey’ often plays like a hybrid of ‘Dark Angel’ and ‘Charmed’. Concentrating on the John Cameron show, it would be possible to replace Huntress and Oracle with Max Guevera and Logan Cale (the two main characters in ‘Dark Angel’) without the necessity of any other great changes. One of the main problems about ‘Dark Angel’ for me is the lack of heart and the absence of a sense of humour, which is not the same thing as employing comic moments within the show. ‘Birds of Prey’ also suffers from this.

‘Birds of Prey’ casts its net of influences much wider than just ‘Dark Angel’ and ‘Charmed’, a widely lambasted show that nonetheless built up a loyal and amenable fanbase and ran for eight seasons before coming to an end in May 2006. As examples, the basement bar No Man’s Land, a safe haven for metahumans, and its proprieter Gibson Kafka (Robert Patrick Benedict), is, effectively, a copy of the bar Caritas and character Lorne in ‘Angel’ (although, in fact, Gibson is probably more closely modelled on Xander Harris in ‘Buffy’). Equally, Detective Jesse Reese (Shemar Moore) in ‘Birds of Prey’ equates to Detective Kate Lockley, a recurring character featured in the first two seasons of ‘Angel’.

What ‘Birds Of Prey’ does is take elements from all of these various shows and throw them indiscriminately into the mix without ever quite managing to create an identity of its own. The storylines are determinedly simpleminded and it is possible to guess within the first few minutes exactly what is going to happen. The dialogue is often clunky and sometimes so risible as to make this viewer flinch with embarrassment.

On the plus side, the characters are not dislikeable and the cast is excellent. There is also some fun to be had from spotting exactly where various elements have been ripped-off from. For instance, the actor Christopher Wiehl appears in the episode ‘Reunion’, playing what is virtually an identical character, just older, to the one he portrayed in the first season ‘Buffy’ episode ‘Never Kill A Boy On The First Date’.

Speaking objectively, the show is verging on being truly bloody awful, but I quickly found myself enjoying it. I designed to watch one episode per evening and it was not long before I began to look forward to watching each one – and occasionally slipped in a second episode in the same evening. I don’t know if they would stand up to repeat viewing, but I imagine I will watch it again at some point. Potential viewers will already know from the synopsis whether or not this is a show that might piqué their interest.

Ashley Scott subsequently had a lead role in the television series ‘Jericho’, which ran for two seasons (the second one severely truncated) between September 2006 and March 2008. I have never seen it, but the premise sounds intriguing.



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Crazy Eights

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Rating 3


Directed by James Koya Jones

Written by Dan Deluca and James Koya Jones

Additional writing by Ji-un Kwon and Patrick Moses

Starring Traci Lords, Dina Meyer, George Newbern, Gabrielle Anwar, Dan Deluca and Frank Whaley


Six people, the remaining members of a group of childhood friends who called themselves the “Crazy Eights”, are brought together at the funeral of another one of the eight. Their deceased friend has left a series of clues that leads them first to a shocking discovery and then to an old derelict and condemned building in an isolated rural location. Once inside, they find themselves trapped and in deadly danger as they re-discover hidden truths from their shared past.

Allegedly, ‘Crazy Eights’ was inspired by Virginia Woolf’s experimental 1931 novel ‘The Waves’. Any similarities between the two are tenuous at best.

Basically, it’s ‘The Big Chill’ meets ‘Beyond Bedlam’. The few reviews I have come across dismiss the film as an atrocious disaster, one of the worst horror films ever made. Dennis Harvey, reviewing the film for Variety, said, “Technically and otherwise, it’s beneath late-night cable standard.” I can only assume he has never watched the fare offered on HorrorZone.

One of the criticisms of ‘Crazy Eights’ is that it is so amateurish in every department that the experienced and well-known cast should surely have attempted to step in and help to remedy the situation before it was too late. Setting to one side the ludicrous nature of such a suggestion, this can only mean, as I see it, that those reviewers are not overly familiar with Dina Meyer’s other work. And I say this as a fan. ‘Crazy Eights’ is nowhere near as bad as the inexplicable ‘Unspeakable’ (never has a film been so appropriately titled) or as farcical as the admittedly strangely likeable ‘Decoys 2: Alien Seduction’.

It has also been suggested that ‘Crazy Eights’ has been severely butchered after the fact – presumably due to studio interference or in response to certification issues. This does not really hold up because the film was given an R rating, although I am not really sure why. I have seen plenty of PG13 horror films with more gore and containing ‘disturbing’ images of equal impact. I suspect the rating has more to do with the presence of the expletive “cunt” than with any scenes of violence.

The editing of various scenes does seem odd on first viewing; suggesting either abject incompetence (which I do not think is the case) or some retrospective meddling. The film appears to jump from one scene to the next, apparently with neither rhyme nor reason. This sometimes jerky editing is not entirely detrimental to the film. It adds to the sense that the individual characters might be slipping in and out of hallucinogenic states and are trapped in a kind of shared waking nightmare. I think this is deliberately intended. The film is very obviously influenced by J-horror films like ‘Ringu’ and ‘Ju-on: The Grudge’. Like those films, it shows us a lot less than it suggests, which is a style I prefer in general.

Having said this, despite brief exposition scenes at the start of the film that provide us with some clues about what is to come, instead of gelling as a group of friends, the six characters often act more as if they are strangers who have never met before. As the film progresses and hidden secrets and repressed memories are revealed there is not much attempt to explore the shared experiences of these people or what impact any of it has had on their lives.

This is clearly a very small budget independent film. As an example, Dan Deluca, as well as co-writing and producing the film and taking one of the lead roles, was also the second unit director.

My opinion towards it is undeniably biased because I like Dina Meyer very much and she has the lead role here (although Traci Lords gets top billing), but I rather enjoyed it, particularly on second viewing. For all of its faults, and there are plenty, it does create a genuine sense of creepiness. Dennis Harvey comments that, “Most deaths take place offscreen, an unforgivable crime to most horror fans.” The very fact that the film suggests more than it shows, allowing the imagination to fill in the gaps, works very well for me.

‘Crazy Eights’ might be worth checking out if you like any of the leading actors or if you have a liking for J-horror. Otherwise, you would probably want to give it a miss.



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The Movie Hero

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Rating 2¾


Written and directed by Brad T Gottfred

Starring Jeremy Sisto, Dina Meyer, Peter Stormare, Brian J White, Carlos Jacott, Marcia Strassman, Eric Pierpoint, Frances Bay and Alexis Arquette


Blake Gardner (Jeremy Sisto) believes his life is a movie in which he is the hero and his every move is watched by his own personal audience. He creates a plot, including a “Suspicious Character” (Peter Stormare, who was also one of the film’s executive producers) and a “Sidekick” (Brian J White).

He is sent for psychiatric evaluation and his novice therapist Elisabeth Orlando (Dina Meyer) becomes his “love interest” in his imaginary film. When Blake crosses over the boundaries of doctor/patient relations, Elisabeth’s fiancé Jonathan (Carlos Jacott), a successful novelist, tells him some painful home truths, correctly identifying that his delusions are substituting for his failed dreams of becoming a movie star.

A great many small-budget independent films tend to aim for quirky. Some end up being either very engaging and charming (for example, ‘Juno’), but many are painfully irritating (‘Brick’). The response of the viewer, one way or the other, will always be very subjective and individual. ‘The Movie Hero’ (which is also known as ‘Frame of Mind’) straddles a very fine line between the two. Initially, I found it leaning worryingly towards the irritating, but it gradually pulled me in and became more interesting, particularly during the middle part of the film when the stylised quirkiness began to give way to a slightly darker tone.

To all intents and purposes, this is a rom-com, although it also deals with reality and the nature of fame, as well as acting as a kind of love letter to the magic of films. It is, however, for all its quirks and pretensions, just as formulaic as any mainstream Hollywood rom-com.

The central message the film asks is whether happiness is a delusion. In one particularly wistful scene an elderly woman (Frances Bay) confides to Elisabeth that she hates shopping. As the conversation continues it becomes apparent she has just bought a new dress to wear at the funeral of her husband and is agonising if she has made the right choice. Suddenly, it occurs to her that the dress zips up at the back and tears well up in her eyes as she asks, “Who will zip me up now?”

The main flaw in the film for me is the painfully hammy performance of Peter Stormare. The “suspicious character” would seem to be the link between Blake’s delusional world and the real world as symbolised by his sessions with Elisabeth, but frankly I could not make any sense of what it was supposed to signify.

The film relies heavily on the central character being likeable and engaging rather than annoying and tiresome. Jeremy Sisto manages to achieve this. Sisto has an extensive portfolio of work, including films like ‘Clueless’, ‘Thirteen’ and ‘Wrong Turn’ and regular roles in television shows like ‘Six Feet Under’ and ‘Law & Order’.

In the end, the film is probably too whimsical and too knowingly clever, without actually being quite clever enough. For example, it is no match for Woody Allen’s 1985 film ‘The Purple Rose of Cairo’. Having said that, it has plenty of nice touches and if it doesn’t annoy you it will certainly entertain you.

‘The Movie Hero’ won several awards, including Best Supporting Actress for the ever-reliable Dina Meyer at the Dahlonega International Film Festival.



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Point Pleasant (introduction, characters and episodes)

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Created by Marti Noxon and John McLaughlin

Written by Marti Noxon, Andrea Newman, Jenny Lynn, Robert Doherty and others

Starring Elisabeth Harnois, Grant Show, Sam Page, Dina Meyer, Richard Burgi, Susan Walters, Aubrey Dollar, Cameron Richardson, Claire Carey, Brent Weber and Alex Carter


Point Pleasant looks like a nice place. And, on the surface, that’s exactly what it is - a nice, safe, sleepy costal enclave. It’s a place that carefully guards its sheen of respectability and hides away its secrets. That is, until the arrival of Christina Nickson, pulled out of the sea by Jesse Parker during a ferocious freak storm that suddenly hits the coastline without prior warning.

Christina is the “child of darkness”. She has a strange pull on those with genuine goodness in their hearts (Jesse, Judy Kramer) and repels those who harbour feelings of bad intent (Paula Hargrove, Terry Burke). Her emotions affect everyone around her, bringing out the worst in those who have secrets to hide. As these secrets start to manifest themselves the people in Christina’s immediate sphere of influence become increasingly aware of her strange power and they begin to reject her, withdrawing their love and faith and pushing her away. This rejection fuels her destructive power in an increasing and vicious cycle of mistrust, fear and hostility.

Lucas Boyd: “She’s the child of darkness, and she’s under His protection now. She’s His daughter.”
Kingston Nickson: “She’s also the daughter of a woman. That means she has a choice. And she takes after her mother… always has. She’ll never be what you want her to be, not as long as she has that good heart.”
Lucas Boyd: “Which is precisely why you have to let her go… see how long that good heart survives. Let the world have its way with her. Once it does I can guarantee you she will bring it to its knees.”

Okay, to start things off, let’s take a very brief look at the main cast of characters.

Christina Nickson is the mysterious girl who is rescued from drowning by Jesse Parker. When flooding on the roads prevents Jesse from getting to the local hospital, he takes Christina to the home of Dr Ben Kramer, who notices that she has a strange flaw in her right iris, something she describes as a birthmark. The Kramer family take her in while she recuperates from her ordeal. Christina claims that she accidentally fell overboard during an end-of-term excursion with other students from her exclusive New York private school. Her father spends most of his time out of the country on business and cannot be directly contacted. She has never known her mother.

Jesse Parker is the son of Sheriff Logan Parker and his wife Sarah, who works in the administration office at St Martin’s, a Catholic Church in nearby Orange Grove. Sarah refers to Jesse as a “miracle”. Jesse is a lifeguard at the beach during the summer recess. He’s an all-round really nice guy who finds himself inexplicably drawn to Christina from the very first moment he spots her out in water during the storm.

Judy Kramer is the daughter of Dr Ben Kramer and his wife Meg. She’s something of a loner who can’t wait to get out of Point Pleasant after she graduates. She is viewed with suspicion by the in-crowd, who dismiss her as a loser and a freak. The Kramer family has been in a prolonged period of mourning since the death of the other daughter Isobel in a surfing accident two years earlier. Judy sees Christina as a kindred spirit and persuades her parents to let her stay with them. Christina becomes a focus for the family and this initially seems to pull them out of the ennui caused by tragic events that have surrounded and consumed them.

Paula Hargrove is Jesse’s girlfriend. She is queen of the in-crowd. She takes after her mother and is used to always getting her own way. She displays immediate antipathy towards Christina because of Jesse’s attraction to her, but she is also the first person to realise that something about Christina’s presence will lead to dire consequences for all those around her.

“You won’t be happy until everyone worships you.”

Paula is the subject of one of my favourite lines of dialogue in the show. Christina expresses concern for her after she and Jesse split-up. Judy isn’t convinced.

Christina: “Maybe she’s really hurt.”
Judy: “Please! That girl’s too skinny to feel pain!”

Terry Burke has been Jesse’s best friend since they were little. His background is not as affluent as that of his friends. He has the burden of looking after his father, who is suffering from a terminal illness that has left him in a coma. Terry spends most of his time hitting on Paula behind Jesse’s back. He is honest enough to admit to himself that he is not a good person and he tells Paula she is just like him.

Lucas Boyd is an emissary of Christina’s “real father”. He comes to Point Pleasant to ensure that her destiny is fulfilled. As he reminds Kingston Nickson, they will both spend eternity being sodomised in the fiery pits of Hell if they fail. He manipulates those around Christina who are weakest of spirit and most easily bent to his will, although he also targets Sarah Parker because of her connection to the church.

Dr Ben Kramer is the father of Judy. He is a typical small-town doctor, viewed as a paragon of virtue. He would appear to think of himself as a knight in shining white armour, putting the needs of others above those of his own family. However, there is something amiss in his marriage, with suggestions that he has been less than truthful to his wife in the past, although it would appear that he genuinely loves his family and cares deeply about them.

Meg Kramer suffered an almost complete emotional shut down following the death of her daughter Isobel. She is only able to function ‘normally’ as a result of heavy doses of medication. The arrival of Christina gives her a new focus. Meg seems to increasingly view Christina as a substitute for her dead daughter. However, when Meg stops taking her medication she becomes afflicted by a series of frightening hallucinations.

Amber Hargrove is rich and successful, a powerful presence in local business. She is also a sexual predator, a fading prom queen. Lucas Boyd preys on her vanity and her obsessive need to always get what she wants and she becomes a key figure in his scheme to ensure that Point Pleasant plays its part in the prophecies foretelling the End of Days. Amber is Paula Hargrove’s mother.

Sheriff Logan Parker and Sarah Parker have long kept secret the cracks in their marriage caused by the fact that Logan is not the father of Jesse, something Jesse does not know, although he has a strained relationship with his dad. The cracks begin to come to the surface after the arrival of Lucas Boyd, who immediately targets Sarah. Logan is ostensibly a good man, but he is prone to feelings of extreme jealousy, broods over a life unfulfilled, for which he inwardly blames Sarah, and finds it increasingly difficult to control his temper. Sarah looks to the church and her faith to find strength and guidance.

Father Thomas is the trainee priest at St Martin’s. He knows something of the old religious storytelling and prophecies about a girl, the daughter of darkness, who will come to Point Pleasant and bring forth the End of Days. He believes Christina’s mother (“A Woman of God”) is the key to breaking the influence that her father has over her.

Christina has a small box containing a few artefacts that belonged to her mother, including a couple of old and faded photographs. Her mother, Anne Gibson, once sang in the choir at St Martin’s. She was a devoutly religious person whose father was the groundskeeper at the church. We discover that Christina was given to a group of mysterious men when she was born and it would seem that she has grown up in a lonely and entirely patriarchal environment. Kingston Nickson, the man she believes to be her father, was a distant figure in her life, constantly abroad on business. She was, to all intents and purposes, brought up by his ‘assistant’ Harland.

Lucas Boyd: “Do you have any idea how many signs and texts name that sleepy town as the greatest coming of evil since the Angels fell from Heaven? No, that place is her training ground. And then… we’ll unleash her on the rest of the world.”
Kingston Nickson: “You never told me that.”
Lucas Boyd: “Because her real father calls the shots… and I answer to him.”
Kingston Nickson: “These signs… did they say anything about Christina’s mother?”
Lucas Boyd: “Her mother was an innocent God-fearing… whatever. It’s unimportant. She’ll take after her father, I guarantee it.”
Kingston Nickson: “How has Christina shut out the darkness in her life all these years? There is something pure in her. If she finds Anne… really finds faith…”
Lucas Boyd: “Then we’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”


Episodes

1.1 Pilot
1.2 Human Nature
1.3 Who’s Your Daddy?
1.4 The Lonely Hunter
1.5 Last Dance
1.6 Secrets And Lies
1.7 Unravelling
1.8 Swimming With Boyd
1.9 Waking The Dead
1.10 Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman Choked
1.11 Missing
1.12 Mother’s Day
1.13 Let The War Commence



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Point Pleasant (review)

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The Grr in Girl:
Delving into the handbag of devils daughters The Man-Hating-One’s Radical Feminist Sisterhood of Devils Daughters in a Handbag Full of Hate


The writer Keith Topping once described an episode of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ that was written by Marti Noxon as a “handbag full of hate”, apparently identifying radical anti-male feminist propaganda within the storyline. I’ve often wondered what his thoughts on ‘Point Pleasant’ might be.

“The fact of the matter is a woman stands as tall as she makes you think she is. For example, I always thought Marti Noxon was four inches taller than she actually was.”
Joss Whedon: ‘In Focus’ interview 1 August 2005

‘Point Pleasant’ premiered on the Fox network on 19 January 2005. Marti Noxon and John McLaughlin created the show, with Noxon acting as the executive producer. It received generally negative reviews, some of the commentary verging on the savage. Fox cancelled it in March 2005 after eight of the thirteen episodes made had been broadcast.

I hope to concentrate here on the subtext at the heart of the show, the stuff that pushes it beyond straightforward entertainment and turns it into something that is constantly thought provoking. It is, in other words, a show that demands to be watched over and over again.

How much do I like ‘Point Pleasant’? I think it’s bloody brilliant. I will put it in a more forceful way. ‘Point Pleasant’ is every bit as good as ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, a show I absolutely adore! This is not in anyway a slight on the Joss Whedon show. It simply expresses how much I like the Marti Noxon show.

At one time I might have been inclined to conclude that ‘The Lonely Hunter’, the fourth ‘Point Pleasant’ episode, was probably the weakest of the thirteen. I absolutely love the opening three episodes, and although I had no problems with this fourth one, it did strike me as being a little flat in some places by comparison, despite several thrilling moments. This might simply have been because it got lost in the middle between my, “Wow, this show is actually really good,” initial impressions, and my subsequent, “Oh my God! This show is fantastic!” exhilaration.

When I first watched ‘The Lonely Hunter’ on television all the stuff that actually might have helped to make sense of the storyline had been removed from it by the TV channel censors. I had to try to fill in the gaps as best as I could.

As an example, and I appreciate that the detail will mean nothing to anyone who has not watched the show, when the hospital physician Dr Forrester is in the confession box he tells the young priest Father Thomas, “I’m seeing signs from God - - - What he wants me to do is unspeakable - - - He keeps telling me that I can serve him… my sickness can be a hammer in his hand. I’ve always thought about hurting girls, but lately it’s different… He’s chosen one.”

Father Thomas: “God would never ask you to do that.”
Dr Forrester: “What kind of a priest are you? I came to you to find strength to do His Will. God… is my council.”

It’s what Forrester says next, something he mumbles immediately before he disappears out of the confession box, that was missing from the edited version shown on television.“God wants mutilation.”

I already thought the confession box scene was creepy and unsettling, but this added a whole new dimension to the creepiness for me.For those who are put off by the concept of belief and the use of any religious imagery in such shows, the only reaction will probably be terror at the thought that the show was delving far too deeply into unconcealed, scary religious concepts. I am not an overtly religious person, but I find the suggestion that “God wants mutilation”, even if it is spoken by an unhinged psychopath, strangely disturbing. It should be remembered that this is a show in which God is a given and deeds are perpetrated at His bidding. The fact that Forrester is a psychopath does not necessarily mean that he is not hearing the actual Word of God.

This, of course, is another reason why I find the show so fascinating – the duality between good and evil represented in very murky and ambiguous terms by God and the Devil.

Moving forward in the episode, Forrester kidnaps a girl, drugging her, trussing her up and holding her captive in the trunk of his car. He confronts Christina (the show’s lead character, the daughter of darkness, played by Elisabeth Harnois) on a dark and lonely back road, where he offers her the girl as a token of his loyalty. He tells her, “I want to make this one hurt… for you.”

This is another line of dialogue that was cut and another decidedly disquieting moment. Talking of which, consider this exchange (that takes place at the beginning of the scene).Forrester: “Up close you look so… lovely.”Christina: “Stay away from me.”Forrester: “I can’t.”

The creepiness of this moment doesn’t really come across on the page like this, but there is some genuinely dark imagery in the way that Forrester speaks the words, and, indeed, in the episode as a whole.

In a show about the daughter of darkness one would expect moments when it is scary, spooky and evil. What happens in ‘The Lonely Hunter’ is that the whole thing is pervaded by an aura of uneasy, spine-chilling ickiness.

“I can’t deny a darker impulse -- which has something to do with the fact that women have been historically victimised by men only because our physical differences permit it. That Buffy can level the playing field -- or Evil Willow, or Faith -- is, to me, inherently satisfying and erotic. But in a “call my shrink” kind of way.”
Marti Noxon: ‘Break-up Girl’ interview 24 February 2000

This quote could, I think, be related to ‘Point Pleasant’. There are a number of occasions in the show when men are seen to ‘victimise’ women, whether it be in a physically abusive way (for example, Lucas Boyd, the emissary of Satan, choking his girlfriend Holly to death after she has been raped, or nearly choking his business associate Amber Hargrove to death as a “warning” to her) or in a psychological way.

I would identify the pathological jealousy of the local sheriff, Parker Logan, when he sees his wife Sarah talking to another man and the way that the doctor Ben Kramer controls his wife Meg through the use of a cocktail of medication as examples of this.Within this scenario, Christina becomes the Buffy figure, the female who can “level the playing field”, except of course that it isn’t quite as easy as all that.

Episode eight, ‘Swimming with Boyd’, is a good example of what I mean. Christina and Judy Kramer, the younger daughter of Ben and Meg, drug Boyd and hold him captive to interrogate him. It all goes horribly wrong when he breaks free, battering Christina and then grabbing Judy and pushing a knife up under her chin. Turning to Christina, he cruelly taunts her by asking, “Shall I gut her, boss? Should I wear her?”

In one of the shows most disturbing scenes, he forces a panic-stricken, terrified and hysterical Christina to beg him to spare Judy’s life, telling her, “You’re just a teenage girl. You’re scared and you’re weak. You disappoint me.”

Christina Nickson: “Don’t hurt her.”
Lucas Boyd: “Beg me.”
Christina Nickson: “Please… PLEASE!”
Lucas Boyd: “Damn Antichrist begging to save the organ grinder’s monkey. Tell me she’s the one you want. You only get one… Tell me this is the one you want.”
Christina Nickson: “Yes… YES…”
Lucas Boyd: “SAY IT!”
Christina Nickson: “SHE’S THE ONE I WANT!”
Lucas Boyd: “That’s going to be an expensive lesson.”

It is hardly anything new to have a drama exploring violence perpetrated by men against women, but ‘Point Pleasant’ has taken a lead from ‘Buffy’, within a genre that isn’t necessarily the most obvious medium for such things, and is exploring some very important themes (going beyond the simple concept of the ability of the strong to bully the weak). For example, Christina has the power to bring about the apocalypse but chooses to fight against it. She is constantly trying to understand and control a ferociously destructive power (which, I guess, is similar to the storyline involving Willow in the final two seasons of ‘Buffy’).

Everything in ‘Point Pleasant’ points to the power and strength of the female experience in the face of on-going oppression within the strictures of society. It’s apparent in all of the characters and the way in which we as viewers are able to judge them against each other – whether it is Meg and Ben, or Sarah and Parker, or Holly and Boyd. There are lots of little variations on this theme and to make it absolutely clear – there is no hidden man-hating agenda that I can identify, and the female characters do not come away from the show unblemished.

Quite clearly, I am very biased when I watch the show. The first and most important reason why I like ‘Point Pleasant’ so much should be obvious. It’s Marti Noxon. This is the reason I knew about the show in the first place and the reason why I decided to watch it. Let’s assume it was a show created by a person I had never heard of. The premise would still have interested me, but realistically it is much less likely that I would have tuned in.

Is this very subjective reasoning on my part? Well, of course it is. I came to the show wanting to like it and expecting to like it and I wasn’t disappointed. My approach to the show and the way I reacted and responded to what I saw has obviously been influenced beforehand. Having said that, had the show been as appalling as some would have us believe I think I might have noticed and been unbiased enough to admit it.

“You know the darkness is coming; we will turn her towards it! DRAMATIC MUSIC. It just needed a Mwhahahahaha at the end.”
Comment on a posting board: 29 July 2005

I have quoted this sarcastic posting board comment about the show because it is useful to illustrate a point I particularly want to make. The criticism is probably not entirely unjustified. I have to be able to accept that not everyone is going to feel the same way as I do. In fact, I have to accept that very few people feel the same way as I do on this occasion!

The specific comment I have quoted here is really all about interpretation. I would actually agree that this did happen in the show. However, the remark seems to suggest that it was an all-too-frequent feature of the episodes: that this rather simple-minded, clichéd dramatic device is all that ever happened and there was nothing else to back it up or make anything more substantial out of the format.

There is, I have to say, a classic moment in ‘Missing’, the eleventh episode of ‘Point Pleasant’, immediately prior to the opening credits, that almost exactly conforms to what is describes. It’s all about the way a scene has been cut and the use of some stirring music by Robert Duncan (composer of the music for the final season of ‘Buffy’). The point is, in general terms, what some identify as being hackneyed and clichéd, I think is great fun and exactly what the show needs at that particular moment. The difference is that I like the show and they don’t. Therefore, I interpret and respond to specific aspects of it quite differently.

Was ‘Point Pleasant’ consistently hackneyed and did it relentlessly employ join-the-dots clichés? Yes, it does have its clichéd moments and yes it does conform to tried and tested formulas. All TV shows could be accused of this. I will happily accept and ignore the flaws in it. There are standard formats that are employed, even in something as (at the time) groundbreaking as ‘Twin Peaks’ or ‘The X Files’. Joss Whedon employs standard formulas and formats in all of his work. These are the basis of good writing, film and TV making. Without them, everything else falls apart. That’s why Joss Whedon spent four years at Wesleyan studying for a degree in Film Studies. By odd coincidence, Elisabeth Harnois also attended Wesleyan, where she also studied Films Studies. It’s also why Marti Noxon took a degree in Film Studies at UC Santa Cruz.

I appreciate that it’s what you do with the ‘formula’ that’s important. The question becomes whether or not ‘Point Pleasant’ ever managed to rise above the mediocre and clichéd. Many people think it didn’t. In fact, it would seem that they don’t even think it reached the level of mediocrity! This is where I am something of a lonely voice and quite clearly my relentless defence of the show must be viewed with a certain amount of suspicion.

‘Point Pleasant’ does have its occasional by-the-numbers moments. There are imperfections. There are holes in the plot. It sometimes has the feel of a show that is still finding its feet, or a show that is throwing endless ideas into the pot in an effort to stave off the inevitable! I love the show so much that I don’t care about any of this. I came to it wanting to like it and expecting to do so, even after reading the damning criticism it had received, and I was not in any way disappointed. Quite the contrary, actually, because the show turned out to be much better than even I had hoped for.

I am 100% biased and I freely admit that. However, as I have already mentioned, if it really was the appalling catastrophe that has sometimes been claimed, I would like to think that I might have noticed. I don’t think it’s as hackneyed as some have suggested, although I most certainly accept that it isn’t breaking any new ground - unless one counts the introduction of feminist ideology in the subtext as being something worthwhile and still quite unusual, even in these post-‘Buffy’ times.

Maybe it is crap, in which case it’s crap that I really like. I am prepared to accept that. My opinion is undoubtedly prejudiced by my admiration of Marti Noxon, but I still believe the show was never given a fair chance. It’s a pity.

“Where Sarah Michelle Gellar was capable of bottomless reserves of wit, spunk and emotion, her demonic surrogate had nothing beyond a peachy complexion.”
Jonathan Bernstein: Aerial View From America (The Guardian) 16 July 2005

Elisabeth Harnois came in for quite a lot of stick. I guess that is to be expected. As the star of the show, she was always going to be the focus of attention.I had not previously seen Elisabeth Harnois in anything apart from ‘Point Pleasant’, so I could only judge her acting based on that one role. I actually have absolutely no idea if her acting is any good or not. I can understand why some people didn’t like her performance. All I can say is that, having watched the various episodes of ‘Point Pleasant’ several times, her acting works perfectly well for me in capturing what happens to Christina, her growing realisation of what she is and the changes this brings about in her. I have also subsequently seen her in the film ‘Pretty Persuasion’ and she is excellent in that.

When she is in ‘moo–eyes’ mode in the early episodes she is so cutesy-sweet that too much exposure to her would probably to rot your teeth. I have no problems with this, but I can understand how it might irritate some viewers. When the darkness inside her starts to manifest she is superb. She’s very good at projecting Christina’s growing awareness of (and subsequent ability – and occasional inability - to control) this power, as well as the increasing danger and likelihood that it will consume her. She is also tremendous at portraying overwrought emotion. This is where she is at her very best.

By way of an example, there is a scene in ‘Who’s Your Daddy’, the show’s third episode, in which Christina is cast adrift by the man she always believed was her father. She is all gangly and awkward and she is devastated because of the hopelessness and betrayal and utter despair she feels. I defy anyone to watch the scene and then tell me that Harnois can’t act.

Christina Nickson: “You have to help me! I need you to tell me what I am. I need you to be my father!”
Kingston Nickson: “I can’t. I can’t be that for you. That’s what I came to tell you… You need to grow up now… Chris, don’t fight it. You’ll get hurt. Lots of people will if you try to stop it.”
Christina Nickson: “No! You can’t just kick me out of your life.”
Kingston Nickson: “You’ll never want for money. I’ve taken care of that.”
Christina Nickson: “I don’t want your money!”
Kingston Nickson: “It’s the only thing I can give you.”
Christina Nickson: “Daddy, please!”
Kingston Nickson: “I’m sorry.”

The show is so bloody brilliant and it really does mystify me why so few people could see that. Oh well.

The show has very definite feminist leanings, even if these are not necessarily always apparent on the surface. The conversations between Lucas Boyd and Kingston Nickson, Christina’s surrogate father, in the first two episodes make it fairly obvious where the show is headed.

Lucas Boyd: “She’s the child of darkness, and she’s under His protection now. She’s His daughter.”
Kingston Nickson: “She’s also the daughter of a woman. That means she has a choice. And she takes after her mother… always has. She’ll never be what you want her to be, not as long as she has that good heart.”
Lucas Boyd: “Which is precisely why you have to let her go… see how long that good heart survives. Let the world have its way with her. Once it does I can guarantee you she will bring it to its knees.”

Lucas Boyd: “Do you have any idea how many signs and texts name that sleepy town as the greatest coming of evil since the Angels fell from Heaven? No, that place is her training ground. And then… we’ll unleash her on the rest of the world.”
Kingston Nickson: “You never told me that.”
Lucas Boyd: “Because her real father calls the shots… and I answer to him.”
Kingston Nickson: “These signs… did they say anything about Christina’s mother?”
Lucas Boyd: “Her mother was an innocent God-fearing… whatever. It’s unimportant. She’ll take after her father, I guarantee it.”
Kingston Nickson: “How has Christina shut out the darkness in her life all these years? There is something pure in her. If she finds Anne… really finds faith…”
Lucas Boyd: “Then we’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Clearly, we can take it that Nickson is suggesting that if Christina (the daughter of the Devil) follows in the footsteps of her mother and finds faith in God it will give her the strength she needs to fight against her destiny and the evil contained within her. In the episodes that follow, Father Thomas says much the same thing. He tells her, “Talk to God. Don’t shut him out.” He also claims to have felt the presence of God inside Christina. This works perfectly well as it is and makes a lot of sense. What I have been struggling to try to reconcile is how Marti Noxon was dealing with the theme of belief in God (and the religious overtones this generates in the show) in relation to the clear feminist message.

It has occurred to me that the two things are running in parallel and don’t necessarily need to be (strictly) equated together to make them work. In fact, when reference is made to “faith” this could actually be interpreted as meaning “feminism” or “the strength of the female experience”. In other words, when Kingston Nickson says, “If she finds Anne… really finds faith…” we might take this to mean if Christina is able to locate her mother and draw on the strength of (the female) community and experience, it will allow her to break free of the shackles of the patriarchal authority she has known all of her life.

To lend some support to this, consider what Boyd says in the episode ‘Swimming With Boyd’:

Lucas Boyd: “You may not have had a mother to love you, but you had plenty of fathers – and we wanted the world for you.”
Christina Nickson: “Then you must know where she is.”
Lucas Boyd: “No. We used her and then we walked away. Sad, I know. You girls and your babbling mothers!”

I tend to concentrate on Christina when trying to explain my interpretation of the subtext, but as way of a change of pace, I’ll take a look at Meg and Ben, and the ‘Stepford Wives’ storyline.The Kramer family, Dr Ben Kramer, his wife Meg and daughter Judy, live in a big house next to the beach. When Jesse Logan, the son of Sarah and Parker, pulls Christina out of the sea during the freak storm the roads are flooded and treacherous, preventing him from getting her to the hospital. Therefore, he takes her to Dr Kramer. Christina ends up staying with the Kramer family.

The family suffered a tragedy two years earlier when the eldest sister Isobel died in a “surfing accident”. Since then they have become trapped in a state of ennui. Meg has shut down completely. Having suffered from severe hallucinations immediately following the death, she is now kept stable by a constant diet of medication. This maintains her emotions in a very passive, but also largely inoperative, state. Judy is something of a loner who dreams of getting out of Point Pleasant when she graduates. One of the Alpha Girls describes her as a “loser”. Christina quickly becomes Judy’s best friend. She also becomes a focus for Meg, who stops taking her medication, pouring her various pills down the garbage disposal, much to Ben’s concern.

At first, everything seems to be okay. Meg begins to involve herself in social activities and there is a marked improvement in her general state of mind. However, she also begins to have the “hallucinations” again. Eventually, of course, Meg realises what Christina is and she also realises that the hallucinations are real. They are warnings from Isobel about what is going to happen. Judy also discovers the truth about Christina. Ben is the only person who is unable to see what is happening around him, and he clings onto the notion that Meg is sick. At first he simply persuades her to go back on the medication. However, at the end of the eleventh episode, ‘Missing’, just when Christina really needs her, Ben has Meg forcibly dragged out of the house, to be taken to the psychiatric ward at the local hospital. It’s a fairly harrowing scene, with Judy screaming and trying to pull her mom away from Ben and the doctor who has come to the house to assist him. It’s not exactly a happy family moment.

This all sounds fairly straightforward. However, there are complications to take into account and the main thing to bear in mind is that Ben is acting out of genuine concern, not through some perverse desire to control his wife, although clearly this is what the subtext is suggesting he is doing.Everything goes back to the death of Isobel. She did not die in a surfing accident. She committed suicide. She also left a suicide note, in the form of a video.

“Hi, daddy… mom… Jude. I’m making you this tape because… I’m going to die today. Please know that this is what I want. I’ve seen what’s coming… for all of us. I know what’s going to happen and… I can’t be here. I’m not strong enough. I won’t feel any pain, so… I hope that brings you some comfort… Please don’t be mad at me… I love you.”

It isn’t, as such, important to the point I am trying to make here to mention that the video cannot be destroyed. The point is; Ben keeps the video a secret. He has also kept the truth about Isobel’s death a secret. He blames himself for not seeing the symptoms of Isobel’s “mental illness” soon enough to save her. Subsequently, he has observed the same behaviour in Meg (the hallucinations, for example) and he is determined not to make the same mistake again. He does this out of love, but he is actually causing Meg serious harm through his actions.

Meg comes into possession of the video and she realises what Ben has done. He tries to explain his motivation for his actions.

Meg Kramer: “Ben, Isobel made that tape for you. She was trying to show you what I can already see.”
Ben Kramer: “Isobel was sick! Like you are sick!”
Meg Kramer: “Stop it!”
Ben Kramer: “That’s what you should be getting from the tape. That’s why she killed herself. We didn’t know in time. I didn’t see it. I didn’t get her the treatment that could have helped. I’m not going to let that happen to you.”

This is what I love about the show. It is not just a case of showing us a one-dimensional depiction of a husband controlling his wife in some psychological manner. Consider what is happening to Ben and how he is being eaten away inside by his conviction that he should have been able to save his daughter. In a genre show of this type it is quite unusual to do something like this. That’s why I think ‘Point Pleasant’ is comparable to ‘Buffy’, because it has learned lessons from that show.

Ben makes his decision to take action to have Meg committed when he becomes concerned that she is starting to convince Judy to believe her delusions. He tries to explain to Judy that he is worried.

Ben Kramer: “Judy, can I talk to you a second?”
Judy Kramer: “Sure.”
Ben Kramer: “Sweetie… your mom’s getting worse. She needs some help.”
Judy Kramer: “Actually, I think she’s doing a lot better.”
Ben Kramer: “I know how tough this must be on you. She’s your mom… and it must be really hard to let yourself believe that something’s really wrong.”
Judy Kramer: “Maybe you should listen to her for a change, instead of just shutting her down.”
Ben Kramer: “Judy… what she’s saying…”
Judy Kramer: “MOM’S NOT CRAZY! OKAY?”

It’s a great storyline that fits in perfectly with the supernatural theme of the show and the way the narrative is being developed. It also allows for some interesting sub-textual interpretations that fit in nicely with other apparent clues in the storyline.



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Saw I, II and III

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Saw : Directed by James Wan : Written by James Wan and Leigh Whannell : Starring Cary Elwes, Leigh Whannell, Danny Glover, Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith and Dina Meyer

Saw II : Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman : Written by Leigh Whannell and Darren Lynn Bousman : Starring Tobin Bell, Donnie Wahlberg, Shawnee Smith and Dina Meyer

Saw III : Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman : Written by James Wan and Leigh Whannell : Starring Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, Bahar Soomekh, Donnie Wahlberg and Dina Meyer


The ‘Saw’ films have been an extremely successful franchise to date, grossing over $400 million at the worldwide box office against a combined production budget less than the fee per film for the average “A-list” (male) star. Combined American DVD and television revenue has been estimated at something close to $300 million. There is no reason to assume that the fourth film will not be equally as successful. Apparently, Tobin Bell is already signed on to appear in ‘Saw V’ and ‘Saw VI’.

Although it is rarely mentioned, the saga began in 2003 with a short film made in Australia, written by Leigh Whannell and directed by James Wan, in which a hospital orderly tells the terrifying tale of being kidnapped and forced to play a horrifying game of survival.

In the first proper film two strangers find themselves in a derelict bathroom of some description. Both are chained to the wall by shackles around one ankle, on opposite sides of the room. In the middle of the room lies a body, seemingly dead, with a severe head injury. They don’t know where they are and they don’t know why they are there.

The strangers are played by Cary Elwes, who is probably best known from a six-episode story arc in season nine of ‘The X Files’, and Leigh Whannell, the co-writer of the film with director James Wan.

As the film unfolds they each discover small clues to explain the situation they find themselves in. Elsewhere, the police have a serial killer on their hands, one whose operandi modus is to have his victims kill themselves in a variety of horrendously inventive and brutal ways. The killer is given the nickname “Jigsaw” because he carves the shape of a small jigsaw piece into the flesh of his victims. His catchphrase is, “I want to play a game.”

The detective leading the case, played by Danny Glover, eventually drives himself insane in pursuit of “Jigsaw” and is dismissed from the police force, becoming increasingly deranged as he continues to pursue the killer on his own.

The most “famous” scene in the film, one that was parodied in ‘Scary Movie 3’, has Cary Elwes’ character saw off his own foot with a hacksaw to free himself from the shackle around his ankle.

The film is gory, although perhaps not as gory as might be imagined. However, it is unpleasant. The premise is quite inventive and Wan makes the most of his zero-budget. The main problem is the acting, which in places is decidedly poor. The pacing of the film is also plodding, quickly becoming borderline tedious.

‘Saw’ was released in the UK first, on 1 October 2004, and then in America, on 29 October 2004, one week after ‘The Grudge’. Although it took less money than that film, both at the cinema and, I believe, subsequently on DVD, it was the point at which the change in trends within the horror genre occurred. Films like ‘Saw’, ‘The Devil’s Rejects’ and ‘Hostel’ were a direct reaction to the remakes of “J-Horror” films that had dominated for a couple of years.

Ultimately, we were taken from ‘The Ring’, an intelligent and well-made remake of a fascinating Japanese horror film that used the imaginations of its audience to create the scares, to ‘Captivity’, a film that would seem, at best, to be a repugnant cesspool of misogynistic twaddle.

‘Saw II’ doesn’t have the surprise factor of the first film. We already know what is happening and who is responsible, even if we don’t initially know why Jigsaw has chosen this particular group of victims. None of this is of any great relevance because, whether or not there was ever any intention to make some kind of statement about the fragility of life, the premise is simply a set-up to wheel out a succession of elaborate medieval-type torture/death contraptions.

The various deaths are gruesome, with extravagant use of offal and fake blood. One character is cooked and then burnt alive inside an old crematorium furnace, which made my stomach churn, but even more sickening is the hand trap with blades that cut into the wrists and arms of the victim.

The deaths of the male characters are brutal and gratuitous, but I can’t shift the notion that the camera lingers rather longer on the torture of the female characters, creating an abstractedly sexual connotation. Possibly I am being overly sensitive and reading too much into the imagery, but it does trouble me.

Although the second film can no longer claim the inventive premise of the first one, it is better constructed and is probably a better film. It is actually a re-interpretation of a film called ‘The Desperate’ that had been hawked around Hollywood by its writer and director Darren Lynn Bousman without success. The script was re-written by Leigh Whannell to fit the ‘Saw’ template and Bousman was hired to direct it.

This time around Donnie Wahlberg plays the police detective in charge of the case. He does what he is there to do, but principally he simply proves that he doesn’t quite possess the acting chops and screen presence of his younger brother Mark. Dina Meyer, who made a fleeting appearance in the first film, reprises her role here and although she doesn’t have a great deal to do she is given a lot more screen time. I think it would be fair to say that, in keeping with much of her career, Meyer’s talents are wasted, but she is very popular with the loyal fanbase of the franchise.

Tobin Bell is very effective in the role of Jigsaw and he seems to be developing the same kind of reputation that Robert Englund once enjoyed because of the ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ films. Back in 2000 Tobin appeared in ‘Brand X’, a season seven episode of ‘The X Files’, playing a character called Ashman who shares some similarities with Jigsaw. I have never seen any mention of this elsewhere, but I would not be surprised if it were not just coincidental.

Shawnee Smith also returns from the first film. She plays Amanda, a drug addict who was the single victim of one of Jigsaw’s games to actually survive the ordeal. Smith is an actress who seems to have been around forever, having made her film debut back in 1982 playing a bit part in ‘Annie’. By coincidence, or possibly not, she was in a season two episode of ‘The X Files’ (‘Firewalker’), playing a character whose personality is not entirely dissimilar to that of Amanda. James Wan has said the character Amanda was specifically written with Smith in mind.

By the end of ‘Saw II’ we discover that Amanda has become Jigsaw’s protégé.

This brings me to ‘Saw III’, which opens as a direct continuation of the second film. Detective Kerry (Dina Meyer) makes a third appearance, but becomes an early victim of Jigsaw and Amanda. She is suspended off the floor and locked into a contraption in which metal pins pierce her skin and hook around her ribs. The key to unlock this torture device is dropped into the bottom of a large jar full of highly corrosive acid. She is given one minute to retrieve the key and unlock the contraption, before spring mechanisms release the pins, ripping her ribcage open and allowing her internal organs to spill out.

The third film is another succession of grisly and shocking brutality. This time around there is a subplot about the strange relationship that develops between Jigsaw and Amanda, who is becoming increasingly deranged, unstable and psychotic. It has been suggested that Amanda suffers from Stockholm syndrome, although this is not referenced in the films. There are, however, allusions to an abusive childhood, a predisposition towards self-harm, as well, of course, as her addiction to heroin. Whether or not this is sufficient to explain her participation in Jigsaw’s sick games, I don’t know. Maybe there doesn’t need to be an explanation.

‘Saw III’ contains a scene of horrendous brutality near to the beginning of the film. A man has a dozen chains attached to his body by large metal rings piercing his flesh. He has to rip out the rings with his bare hands, tearing the flesh apart, to free himself from the chains and reach an explosive device to stop the countdown.

It cannot be denied that it has a visceral impact, but basically it’s just revolting.

In a later scene, a young woman is locked inside a walk-in freezer (like a meat store), suspended off the floor by her wrists. She is sprayed with freezing water from a number of hoses, building up a covering of ice across the length of her body until she becomes entirely frozen and dies. In the original script the victim was male and clothed. However, it was decided that for it to be visually effective the victim should be female and naked. Bizarrely, the makers of the film have claimed that showing the female victim naked avoids the trap of making the scene too sexual.

I have been quite critical of the three films. The first one is quite clever and the next two are very well made, playing to the strengths of the franchise. They are repulsive in places, but this isn’t something that should take viewers by surprise. I would be a fool were I to pretend not have expected an overabundance of gore. They are not blatantly misogynistic, at least not as I interpret them, but the second and third films do fall into the trap that snares a lot of horror films (especially from the “slasher” genre) and I think there is at least the suggestion of a misogynist undertow that becomes much more noticeable with each film.

Tobin Bell, Dina Meyer and Shawnee Smith are very good. The films are not to be avoided at all costs, but they did open the door that seems to have allowed a whole lot of shit to come flooding through. Having said that, it’s quite conceivable that even if Leigh Whannell and James Wan had not made their original film the likes of Eli Roth would still have found an audience for the stuff that followed.

Is there any need for films like ‘Saw’? Are they actually harmful?

These are hard questions to answer. There is obviously an audience for them. Ultimately, however, I think they are, or can be, harmful because they lend a certain validation to a particular mindset. Having said that, I am not trying to suggest that everyone who watches these films turns into a psychotic serial killer.

The problem is that even the suggestion of a misogynist undertow, be it intentional or not, sends out a dangerous message.



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Decoys 2: Alien Seduction

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Rating 2½


Directed by Jeffery Scott Lando

Written by Miguel Tejada-Flores from a story by Tom Berry

Starring Corey Sevier, Kailin See, Tyler Johnston, Dina Meyer and Tobin Bell


I told myself even I wasn’t sad enough to watch this film, but my resolve was slowly but surely broken down. It’s a Dina Meyer film – and I just like Dina Meyer.

This is the synopsis of the film at Wikipedia.

“Sam, a college student in a small Northwestern town, reluctantly joins his roommates in a contest to see who can hook up with the most gorgeous co-eds by the end of the semester. But when men slowly start disappearing around town, he and his friends learn that when it comes to beautiful women, it’s what’s inside that really matters.”

Here is the opening paragraph from a review of the film by Travis Mackenzie Hoover at Film Freak Central.

“Sometimes a symptomatic reading is the only thing keeping a critic from hurling himself out a window in the contemplation of drivel. Frustrating when it’s not simply banal (and often both at once), Decoys 2: Alien Seduction (promotional title: Decoys: The Second Seduction) is one of those times. As with the first Decoys, it’s loaded with revelations about the Canadian fear of sex and the national stereotype of the snivelling, eternally discouraged male. Good thing, too, because it’s almost completely intolerable in every other particular. I defy even the most devoted B-fancier to sit through its tiresome sophomore humour and lame attempts to get the girls’ kits off. That it embodies Canuck cynicism towards male-female relationships is pretty much its only point of interest.”

This is not exactly the best film ever made and in many ways it is exactly as bad as the Wikipedia synopsis and Film Freak review suggests. Having said that, the first thing I noticed was that the acting is much better and the production values are much higher than I had anticipated. This is, after all, a cheap cash-in direct-to-DVD sequel to a 1994 low-budget Canadian horror film that managed a hardly word-shattering gross of just under $85,000 at the box office.

‘Decoys 2’ was filmed in and around Alberta University in Edmonton. I’ve got a bit of a thing about very wintery and snowy settings, which I guess made me just about biased enough to give it more of a chance than perhaps it really deserves.

Dina Meyer’s role in the film is bigger than I had expected, although it is of little real consequence to the events in general. She is not an entirely convincing psychiatrist, especially when she is encumbered with a ham-fisted and half-hearted storyline demanding that her character be somewhat ambiguous –- is she or is she not one of the aliens? Meyer plays the role in full-on “soap opera” mode.

Tobin Bell, famous these days as a result of the ‘Saw’ franchise, is also featured, as a rather splendid professor of evolutionary biology at the university. After a handful of brief scenes, suggesting he could have a role in the film not entirely dissimilar to that of David Duchovny in ‘Evolution’, he simply disappears from the narrative, perhaps indicating that the filmmakers could only afford to hire him for a brief time during the production.

Two actors return from the first film, which I haven’t seen. I am not familiar with either Kim Poirier or Corey Sevier.

As far as I can make out, the first film is a kind of cut-price version of ‘Species’, with a bit of ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ thrown into the mix. The sequel is played more for laughs, although it is not clear if this is actually intentional or not. It comes across as a kind of horror version of ‘American Pie’.

A group of male students who share a dorm room have a competition to see how many female students they can sleep with before the end of the semester. There’s the sensitive one who actually has a female friend, making him the odd one in the gang. There’s the geek who’s a computer genius and has therefore probably never actually spoken to a girl. There’s the one who pretends to the others that he’s a “stud” –- and they are naïve enough to believe him. There’s the one who might even have had sex. Finally, there’s the one who will never ever get to sleep with anyone, no matter that he is deluded enough to think he is God’s gift to women.

So far, so stereotyped, although I think we’ve all met (or been) people like this at one time or another in our lives.

And now we come to our first problem. The sensitive one, Sam Compton, is, in many ways, just as frightened of women as the rest of the group. He does, at least, have enough gumption to realise the others are sad, deluded, sexist losers –- and he tries to keep a distance from the game.

As I have already mentioned, Sam has a female friend, Stephanie Baxter. She’s smart and sincere and obviously genuinely likes him. However, we know she isn’t a “hottie” because she has glasses and she’s not a “fashionista”.

Stephanie’s feelings for Sam extend beyond just being friends, because as we all know, men and women can never just be friends. To get him to notice her, she has a major makeover, turning up at an end of semester party in her new guise. The glasses have been discarded and, it would seem, she has borrowed Shirley Temple’s hair! She has also suddenly become aggressive, as opposed to the quiet confidence of her previous persona.

One implication is that all of these characters are, when it comes down to it, only interested in one thing –- sex. This is not an entirely unreasonable suggestion. After all, these are young people experiencing the first flush of adult life and the freedom of having left home. However, the film inhabits a very simplistic universe and I’m not sure what message this actually sends out.

There is also the point that Stephanie is far more interesting and appealing in her original guise than when she gets the glam treatment. These things are, of course, admittedly subjective.

To get back to the plot, the last survivors of a species of alien beings, whose gene pool has been destroyed, assume the visual appearance of teenage boys’ female fantasies in order to ensnare their male victims and impregnate them.

A post-graduate student called Luke Callahan is the sole survivor of the first film. He is now keeping regular appointments with the university hospital psychiatrist and is prescribed medication to control his “hallucinations”. When he spots the leader of the aliens, now posing as a doctor in the hospital, he teams up with Sam, Stephanie and Sam’s surviving friends in a race against time to track down and kill the alien invaders.

In a nutshell, it’s ‘The Faculty’ with a touch of ‘American Pie’ style teenage sex. To be entirely accurate, there is no actual sex. Only the aliens show anything other than contempt in response to the sad attempts by the boys to “get laid” and they do grotesque things to them with lots of flailing tentacles.

It’s a strange film. It starts out as a juvenile teen sex horror flick, but having taken a turn towards more of a traditional sci-fi/horror hybrid, it eventually veers off into almost slapstick comedy.

Had it done this right from the start it could have entered the same kind of territory as ‘Slither’. As it is, for saddos like me with a soft spot for cheapo non-gore horror b-movies it’s not all that bad. Given that parts of it are infantile and tacky, it has some fun moments, although its tedious dead spots are very tedious.



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