Keith

…

WARNING: Major spoilers if you have not already watched this film


Rating 2½


Directed by Todd Kessler

Written by Todd Kessler and David Zabel, based on a short story by Ron Carlson

Starring Elisabeth Harnois (Natalie), Jesse McCartney (Keith), Ignacio Serricchio (Rafael), Margo Harshman (Brooke) and Michael McGrady (Pete), Jennifer Grey (Caroline), Michael O’Keefe (Alan), Ethan Phillips (Mr Miles), Eric Parker (Travis), Jessy Schram (Courtney), Micah Henson (Shane), Tabitha Brownstone (Cynthia) and Sam Murphy (Zach)


Natalie Anderson is a popular and conscientious high school student who routinely gets good grades. She plays tennis at competitive level and works hard to maintain her ranking inside the top twenty to guarantee a scholarship that will allow her to attend the prestigious Duke University after graduation. Her boyfriend is Rafael, a good-looking and athletic transfer student. When Natalie is assigned Keith, a glib under-achiever who rarely attends school, as her AP Chemistry partner, she slowly starts to question her life and aspirations – and her carefully ordered existence begins to unravel.

…


I tried watching ‘Keith’ a while ago and stopped after the first ten minutes or so, suspicious that the film would irritate me and suddenly less than convinced that I really wanted to watch it. I did try again and this time I made it through the whole of the film.

I wonder if Elisabeth Harnois, whose professional acting career dates back nearly 25 years to 1985, gets tired of seemingly always being cast in roles playing teenagers? Here, she is playing a seventeen-year-old high school student. Harnois may possibly have a limited acting range ( I am in no position to judge, although she does seems to play very similar roles, at least in the films and television series I have seen), but she does have a distinctive acting style and I like her very much. Jesse McCartney was a member of a boy band called Dream Street (who I had never heard of before looking it up) and more recently co-wrote the song ‘Bleeding Love’, which, when recorded by the singer Leona Lewis, became the second biggest selling US single release of 2008 and received a Grammy award nomination for Record of the Year.

So, what of the film itself? Natalie is popular. She has high expectations and is working hard to achieve her goals. At the start of the film we see her get up at 5am and go to the tennis courts to practice hitting balls before starting school. When we first encounter Keith he is playing pool with someone who, although not stated, is clearly a counsellor of some kind. Keith is egotistical and arrogant and announces that he plans to “have fun” with a girl at school. From the moment Natalie and Keith first meet in the chemistry lab it is clear that beneath the surface irritation she is already intrigued by him. However, it is somewhat difficult to understand why, because he simply comes across as being insufferably smug.

This set-up is very familiar and very formulaic. It quickly becomes clear that Natalie’s tennis and her school performance will suffer because of the time she spends with Keith and the seeds of doubt he starts to sow.

At the start of the film we see her practicing on the tennis courts and we then see her win a match, with her proud father there to take photographs. Afterwards, he tells her she is ranked fourteenth and we learn that she must stay inside the top twenty to gain the scholarship she needs. Later on, she is lying on her back on the court in the early morning gloom when she should be practicing and she loses a match, much to the concern of her parents and her boyfriend – both Rafael and her mother react with some anger to the defeat and she becomes defensive, dismissing its importance. Her mother and father tell her she has dropped down fifteen places in the rankings and without the scholarship it is no longer possible to attend Duke, but it is now too late to apply to other universities. By this stage, Natalie has already started to question her plans for the future, coming to realise that they are the aspirations of her parents, not hers. The father, as we have already learned, played football at school, but not to any great level of skill, and unsuccessfully applied to attend Duke after graduation. He now has job he doesn’t like and his real passion, photography, is a largely sidelined pastime.

Similarly, early on in the film we see Natalie confidently completing a school test/exam before everyone else, smiling as she hands in the paper and leaves the room early, whereas later on during another test she is now struggling to complete the paper, while all the other students around her successfully finish theirs.

Keith lies to Natalie about himself, creating a fantasy family of brothers and sisters. He disappears from school for weeks at a time. When she finally does track him down, having broken into his school locker in search of information and receiving a one week suspension as a consequence, she discovers that he is an only child living with his father, a mechanic. What Natalie does know is that Keith seems genuinely besotted with the old yellow truck he drives and that his one aspiration after graduation is to go to a classic truck festival in London, Ontario.

Although we do not learn the truth about Keith until very late in the film, it is easy to guess what is coming long before that. At the very beginning of the film it is clear that he has been receiving counselling, even if it is thinly disguised by the game of pool. Eventually, Natalie finds a bottle of pills, a morphine-based antidepressant, but this is no great revelation because by this time it is more than obvious that he has psychiatric problems. His fatalistic streak and refusal to admit to any future goals (other than the truck festival) makes it clear, even though we are not told so, that he can see no future. This is confirmed near to the end of the film when Natalie accidentally discovers that he has cancer, for which he has been receiving chemotherapy (explaining his constant absences from school). By this time, her perfectly ordered life has fallen apart, but the truth opens the final door that allows her to step into a new life, one of her own making.

The real life lesson here is, of course, learned by Keith rather than Natalie. He sets out to destroy her life out of malice, jealous that she has a perfectly mapped out future, while he, through cruel fate, has no future. However, she is stronger and more of a free spirit than he had imagined and there is one thing he does not plan for; he falls in love with her.

This is all fine and good and after the shaky first ten or fifteen minutes I did enjoy the film until the rather sickly-sweet and messy concluding scenes – Natalie in graduation robes, Natalie fitting a new carburettor in the yellow truck with the help of Keith’s father, Natalie driving the truck along a straight stretch of road in the direction of London, Ontario. The problem remains that everything is not only too neat, too easy to second-guess, but also rather hard to believe in and therefore hard to truly engage in. I got no sense that Natalie was stifled by her ordered existence or that this was genuinely forced on her against her will. Therefore, the ease with which Keith was able to manipulate her is not terribly credible. The film’s message becomes jumbled because there is nothing particularly wrong with the life Natalie has or the future she plans. There is some talk about the insincerity and snobbishness of her friends, but this doesn’t really come across – instead, we simply get a sense that the film represents a kind of jealous reaction to their relative privilege.

‘Keith’ plays out like a Lifetime television movie and there is nothing wrong with that, although I suspect it might aspire to more. There is nothing startlingly new here and the story joins all the dots in a very obvious way. Having said that, and perhaps contradicting my criticism of the film, it is well done.

Review posted 29 July 2009


Screencaps taken from elisabeth-online.com




…

Ten Inch Hero

...

Rating 1½


Directed by David Mackay

Written by Betsy Morris

Starring Elisabeth Harnois, Clea DuVall, Jensen Ackles, Sean Patrick Flanery, Danneel Harris, John Doe, Alice Krige Adair Tishler and Sean Wing


Piper (Elisabeth Harnois), a young aspiring artist, moves to Santa Cruz and answers an ad stating, “help wanted, normal people need not apply,” to get a job as a waitress at the City Beach Cafe, which is owned by an old hippie surfer called Trucker (John Doe, the one-time singer with the mercurial Los Angeles punk band X). Piper has come to Santa Cruz in search of the daughter she gave up for adoption as a teenager.

...


‘Ten Inch Hero’ was made in 2007 on a shoe-string budget and subsequently screened at a number of film festivals in the US, although it has never received a theatrical release. I first became aware of the film because of the cast and have been waiting for the opportunity to see it ever since. Sadly, it proved to be a somewhat disappointing experience. This might be the most cloyingly saccharine film I have ever willingly sat through. There is more treacle to be found here than in a sweet factory. It conforms to all the stereotypes of a typical low-budget independent feel-good movie, but whereas the characters are clearly intended to be quirky and likeable, too often the screenplay has them veer way too close to being simply annoying. The message the film seems to be trying to tell us is that beauty is not just skin deep, but far too often it almost borders on being offensive.

After a while I found myself going with the flow, but although it is not by any means entirely dislikeable, it did try my patience early on and only the likeable cast kept me watching to the end.

Review posted 14 April 2009



...

Strangers With Candy

…

Rating 3½


Directed by Paul Dinello

Written by Amy Sedaris, Stephen Colbert and Paul Dinello

Starring Amy Sedaris, Stephen Colbert, Paul Dinello, Matthew Broderick, Allison Janney, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Elisabeth Harnois, Chris Pratt, Gregory Hollimon, Maria Thayer, Carlo Alban, Dan Hedaya, Joseph Cross, Deborah Rush, Ian Holm and Sarah Jessica Parker


Jerri Blank (Amy Sederis), a 46-year-old drug addict and former prostitute, is released from prison and determines to go back to high school to make up for her lost years, hoping it will stir her father from his 32 year coma. She is befriended by science nerds Tammi (Maria Thayer) and Megawatti (Carlo Alban), but has a nemesis in form of Alpha girl Monica (Elisabeth Harnois). The story plays out against the backdrop of the upcoming Science Fair, which the incompetent and dishonest Principal Blackman (Gregory Hollimon) is determined his school will win, recruiting a ringer, science “genius” Roger Beekman (Matthew Broderick), to ensure it happens.

This bizarre, offbeat comedy started life as a television series on the Comedy Central network, running for three seasons between April 1999 and October 2000. The film version, which had a production budget of just $2 million, premiered at the Sundance Festival in June 2006. It received mixed reviews and has a 52% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes.

I was sitting on the fence for the first 10 or 15 minutes, not quite sure what to make of it, but once I was settled into the weird world of Flatpoint High School I found myself constantly laughing out loud. The humour is a bit scatter-shot and not all of it works, but the good stuff outweighs the bits that fall flat. It puts me in mind of a very silly, off-kilter version of ‘Mean Girls’ or ‘Election’. The television series ‘Square Pegs’ also comes to mind.

It certainly won’t be to all tastes, but if you find it funny, you are likely to find it very funny.



…

Cold Case: ‘Boy Crazy’

…

Warning: there are spoilers in this review.



Directed by Holly Dale

Written by Joanna Lovinger

Starring Kathryn Morris, Danny Pino, John Finn, Jeremy Ratchford, Thom Barry and Tracie Thoms – With Linsey Godfrey, Elisabeth Harnois, David Selby, Jonathan Keltz, Michael Constantine and Michael Oberlander


It is 1963. Samantha Randall, or Sam as she likes to be known, dresses “like a boy”. It is her first day in a new high school, having already been kicked out of two other schools because of her “alternative” behaviour. She is immediately bullied by her classmates and accused by the School Principal of inciting trouble because of her “anti-social” behaviour. She is later found dead by a nearby lake, wearing a dress. The cause of death is determined to have been suicide. Lilly Rush (Kathryn Morris, who seems to get paler and thinner with each passing season of the show) reopens the case some 44 years later when an old man, a former alcoholic hobo, claims to have been a witness to the body being dumped into the lake.

‘Boy Crazy’, the ninth episode of the fifth season of ‘Cold Case’, plays as a kind of mix of ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ and ‘Rebel Without a Cause’. It is not my intention to constantly review random episodes of ‘Cold Case’, but this one made me feel angry while I was watching it and I want to write down some of my thoughts about it.

It was not the episode itself that made me angry. That is a typical example of the long-established ‘Cold Case’ style, including tackling a “controversial” subject. It was the subject itself that caused my reaction. I did not know in advance what the subject matter was, although I did know it was set in the early 1960s and featured Elisabeth Harnois in a guest role. Harnois had the central role in what might just be my favourite television show, the short-lived ‘Point Pleasant’, and I like her very much in the handful of other things I have seen.

As the episode opens, Sam is seen nervously walking into a classroom and taking a seat. A group of teenage boys start to bully “him” and when one of them grabs at “him” and discovers, ooh-er missus, that “he” has breasts, the shock revelation is made that “he” is a “she”.

The problem here is that Sam looks like a tomboy, but is very obviously female. I guess what we need to remember is that we are looking back to a time that would commonly be described as more innocent. The other teenage girls in the classroom conform to a very specific mode of dress and look as if they have just walked off the set of ‘Grease’ or ‘Pleasantville’. However, throughout the remainder of the episode I wasn’t sure if there was enough of a focus to the message the story was obviously hoping to convey, although maybe that was deliberate because prejudice about gender is still a serious issue today.

Sam, we learn, has a gender identity disorder. She is described as a “boy” living inside the outer shell of a “girl”. Her classmates call her a “lesbo”. In fact, she has a crush on her one and only friend, Dom (Jonathan Keltz), another outsider, but he reacts badly when she tries to kiss him and the attitudes towards gender issues become further confused. Although every other character in the episode at one point or another gives the impression of believing Sam suffered from a genuine “disorder”, she makes the point in one scene that she is not ill, is not insane, and is, as should be obvious for all to see, “normal”. It is an important moment in the story.

When Sam is kicked out of her latest high school her father Archie Randall (Michael Oberlander) reluctantly agrees to send her to a psychiatric institution where she will be “cured” of her “sickness”. When she refuses to bend to the authoritarian regime in the hospital she is forcibly given electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to such a severe degree that it effectively turns her into a zombie.

It was at this point that I began to feel angry and enraged – and also somehow helpless in the knowledge that although such barbaric “treatments” would not be permitted now, in many other ways our attitudes have still not changed very much.

Linsey Godfrey, who had a recurring role in the short-lived ‘Surface’, another show I enjoyed very much, is excellent as Sam. I also liked David Selby and Michael Constantine, playing the older Dom Barron and Archie Randall. Elisabeth Harnois has a relatively small role, playing Janey Davis, the spiteful girlfriend of one of the bullies. She acts as the “normal girl” to Sam’s “abnormal” character. What is perhaps most interesting is that Janey now (as played by Leigh Rose) is completely different and puts down her radical personality change to having, “lived through and experienced the women’s movement.” It is perhaps slightly heavy handed that in the closing montage she is discussing Joan of Arc with a classroom of high school students, but the message is received.

‘Cold Case’ is a product of Jerry Bruckheimer and we should not expect anything too hard hitting. However, it does genuinely tackle subjects that many people would consider to be controversial and even though it barely scratches at the surface of these issues, it does so in a generally responsible way. The very fact that I came away from ‘Boy Crazy’ feeling a sense of anger means, I think, that the episode successfully made its point.

Meredith Stiehm, who created ‘Cold Case’, was previously a writer and producer on ‘ER’, ‘NYPD Blues’ and ‘Beverly Hills 90210’. Joanna Lovinger, the writer of this episode, was the script co-ordinator on ‘Rome’ and ‘Six Feet Under’. Holly Dale, the director, has a long track record dating back into the mid 1970s, mostly on Canadian television.


Screencaps from cold-case.net
Elisabeth Harnois screencap from e-harnois.com



…

Solstice

...

Rating 3


Directed by Daniel Myrick

Written by Daniel Myrick, Ethan Erwin and Marty Musatov, based on the film ‘Midtsommer’ written by Rasmus Heisterberg

Starring Elisabeth Harnois, Amanda Seyfried, Hilarie Burton, Tyler Hoechlin, Shawn Ashmore, Matt O’Leary, R Lee Ermey and Jenna Hildebrand


Daniel Myrick, the director and co-writer of ‘Solstice’, was also the co-director/writer of ‘The Blair Witch Project’, a film I don’t think lives up to the hype, although it certainly made a huge impact at the time of its original release and has subsequently somewhat blighted the careers of its makers.

‘Solstice’, which is based on the 2003 Danish/Swedish film ‘Midtsommer’, was released direct to DVD. I cannot pretend to know what criteria is used to decide these things, but I would imagine that for many films it is simply a matter of luck if they are given a cinema release, go direct to DVD, or even get released at all. There is no obvious reason I can think of why, for example, ‘Darkness Falls’ and ‘Wrong Turn’ should have been released into cinemas when this film was not. At the same time, this is not a film that is crying out for a cinema run, although I believe films like this are usually quite popular with teenage American cinemagoers.

The film tells the story of a group of high school friends who spend their senior year break in an isolated house in the Louisiana swamps, shortly after the suicide of Sophie, the twin sister of Megan (played by Elisabeth Harnois) and the girlfriend of Christian (Shawn Ashmore).

Megan starts to believe her sister is sending her messages from beyond the grave. She is convinced Sophie is trying to tell her why she killed herself, although her friends put her behaviour down to her sense of loss and grief. She also succumbs to her feelings for Christian, although she then quickly turns to Nick (Tyler Hoechlin), who works in a local provisions store, because of his open mind towards the mystical and unexplained. The friends have a number of unsettling encounters with Leonard (R Lee Ermey), an old recluse who lives on a dilapidated farm across the lake from the house they are staying in. Slowly, it becomes all too evident that they are being stalked by something sinister.

The film adheres to tried and tested generic templates, in terms of both characterisation and storyline. Plot developments do not surprise and the setting allows for nebulous references to Creole customs and beliefs, although these are never particularly central to the story.

Myrick seems overly fond of having the camera follow his main character as she walks (painfully) slowly towards a closed door or some other location of potential threat. Just for a change, it would be nice to see these characters walk at a normal pace. It would still be perfectly possible to create the aura of fear and pending danger.

I lost count of the number of times Zoë (played by Amanda Seyfried) turned to her friends to mouth some silent exclamation. Sometimes it seemed as if this were all she was required to do, but I thought Seyfried was very good in ‘Mean Girls’ and I was glad of this opportunity to see her in another role.

Elisabeth Harnois is an actress I like very much. I thought she was great in the unfairly maligned ‘Point Pleasant’. She does have a bobbly-head thing going on that is almost as extreme as the English singer-songwriter David Gray. I guess this could be distracting for some viewers, and I cannot pretend it is something I haven’t noticed, but she is in virtually every scene here and carries the film convincingly enough. I would say she is easily as successful, probably more so, as Kate Hudson and Hilary Swank were in ‘The Skeleton Key’ and ‘The Reaping’, two films that came to my mind while I was watching ‘Solstice’.

I am not entirely clear how old the main characters are supposed to be, although I assume if they are about to graduate from high school it would make them 18 years old. The actors are all somewhat older than this. Harnois, for example, is in her late twenties, although she seems to be persistently cast as a teenager, both on television and in films. This is nothing unusual for films of this type. In fact, it seems almost de rigueur for films and TV shows set in high school (or similar) to be populated by actors much older than their characters. For example, I didn’t bat an eyelid at the sight of 28-year-old Rebecca Gayheart playing a 17-year-old in ‘Jawbreaker’, even though she was clearly too old for the role. This might be one of the reasons why Claire Danes made such an impact in ‘My So-Called Life’, because it was so unusual to see someone playing a 15-year-old who was actually younger than her character.

I mention this because I recently watched ‘Suburban Girl’ and it constantly struck me that Sarah Michelle Gellar, who is thirty, was obviously too old for the character she was playing, a 24-year-old. To some extent, this kept on pulling me out of the film and somehow it was more blatant and noticeable than Harnois playing a teenager, ten years her junior.

For anyone who enjoys teen horror, or any of the other horror films I have mentioned in the course of this review, and doesn’t require that they come with a supersize serving of gratuitous gore, ‘Solstice’ is a decent addition to the genre. It doesn’t offer anything new, but it provides an enjoyable hour and a half of entertainment that passes without any great deal of hardship.

I was looking forward to watching it. I wasn’t disappointed and I’ll certainly watch it again.


...

Point Pleasant (introduction, characters and episodes)

...

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



...

Point Pleasant (review)

...

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.



...