SLIFF 2013: The House That Jack Built

2013 // USA // Henry Barrial // November 18, 2013 // Digital Theatrical Projection (Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema)

[Full Disclosure: I spoke briefly with director Henry Barrial both before and after the November 18, 2013 screening of The House That Jack Built at the St. Louis International Film Festival. The conversation was friendly, and generally positive about the film and his prior feature, Pig.]

There’s more than a little bit of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II in director Henry Barrial’s latest feature The House That Jack Built, and not merely because it concerns the intersection of family and crime in New York City. The House’s blend of slightly madcap family melodrama and gritty, street-level violence is virtually a tradition in American indie cinema, and certainly miles from the operatic tone of Francis Ford Coppola’s celebrated series. Yet The House is, in some ways, a complementary tale to The Godfather. Michael Corleone strives (and ultimately fails) to isolate his family from the violent malefactions of his Mafia empire, even as that business swells into a bloodstained, all-devouring behemoth. The protagonist of Barrial’s feature is similarly concerned with maintaining a sharp delineation between this illicit pursuits and his extended clan, but both Jack (Guiding Light star E. J. Bonilla) and the film around him are overwhelmingly focused on the family side of the equation.

For Caribbean-Latino Bronx native Jack, his modest business—commanding a cadre of streetcorner dope slingers, with a weary little bodega serving as his legitimate front—is but a means to an end. That goal is an unexpectedly warm-hearted one: to be the man who keeps his sprawling, chaotic family together and cared for in an apartment complex he owns. It’s a remarkably domestic, even conservative aim for a drug pusher. However, The House makes clear in its prelude and epilogue that Jack’s ideals have been informed by nostalgia for his childhood. In that gauzy era, motion and laughter were packed into his family’s flat as densely as the relatives. The House is therefore a film about a man with a sentimental vision for his life and the lives of his family members, and about how reality fails to conform to his burnished expectations. Although Jack’s territorial clashes with another, more powerful drug lord (Fidel Vicioso) are a pivotal component of the film’s story, The House is much more concerned with the unraveling of Jack’s soft-focus dream of familial bliss.

Given the temperament of Jack’s relatives, that dream was perhaps a delusional venture from the start. His father Carlos (Jack Herrera) is a belligerent drunk, and perpetually at war with his exasperated mother Martha (Saundra Santiago), who frets about the family’s standing in the neighborhood. Jack’s brother Richie (Leo Minaya) is a natural doormat, struggling in vain to keep his restless wife Rosa (Flor De Liz Perez) home with their newborn child. Brother Manny (Desmin Borges) is inexplicably perusing and stealing from brother Hector’s (Javier Muñoz) designer wardrobe. Much to Jack’s consternation, his semi-out sister Nadia (Rosal Colon) regularly has her girlfriend over for the night. Meanwhile, Jack’s own sweetheart Lily (Melissa Fumero) is talking marriage, which raises his hackles. Despite his devotion to family, Jack seems to have a kneejerk distaste for commitment. In short, every aspect of Jack’s fantasy is falling short in some respect, and The House is essentially a tragedy—albeit a humorous one—about his efforts to keep everything from falling apart. In addition to Coppola, there’s a bit of Shakespeare in there, not to mention Elia Kazan’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums, and Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married. 

For viewers familiar with director Barrial’s previous feature, the mind-bending science-fiction thriller Pig, The House will doubtlessly feel like an emphatic swing in a quite different direction. Barrial’s latest is as sincere, soapy, and character-driven as Pig was moody, enigmatic, and removed. The director has acknowledged that The House is shaped in part by his own early life as a Cuban-American in Miami, which can be observed in the film’s specific character details and in its broad portraiture of a close-knit but combative Latino clan. Doubtlessly, The House also owes a debt to the life experiences of the late indie filmmaker Joseph Vasquez, who originally penned the film’s screenplay some twenty years ago. The Puerto Rican Vasquez worked autobiographical details from his hard-bitten South Bronx childhood into many of his works, most famously in his 1991 "long night of the soul" comedy-drama, Hangin’ With the Homeboys. The House certainly feels indebted to Vasquez’s life story, although Barrial’s on location shooting in the Bronx and his use of local Caribbean-Latino actors are just as vital to the film’s vivid sense of place. (As in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Delicatessen, the apartment complex is not merely backdrop, but a motif and even a character in its own right.)

As with any film about a garrulous, dysfunctional family, The House flirts with cartoonishness in its depiction of Jack’s quirky, problem-ridden relatives. Moreover, in its determination to present the ugly consequences of Jack’s criminal activities, the film at times strays into histrionics and downright unbelievable plot swerves. Yet Barrial’s film rises above these flaws, in part due to the director’s capable juggling of the film’s myriad tones, but also thanks to the engaging presence of Bonilla. The actor's knee-weakening looks and swagger (the latter slightly tinged with diffidence) captivate whenever he is on screen. Bonilla’s performance and the film’s general preference for Jack’s point of view create a sharp portrait of a compromised but essentially benevolent man who is unable to accept that some things are beyond his control—and rather narcissistically denies the agency of his loved ones as a result. This tends to balance out the film’s comparatively thin characterization of the rest of Jack’s family, who are often distilled down to one or two traits. While there is nothing particularly revelatory in Barrial’s approach to storytelling or in Luca Del Puppo’s camera work, The House That Jack Built is still a rich slice of droll family drama, one that offers a compelling depiction of the breakdown and adjustment of a man’s sanguine expectations.

American Hustle

2013 // USA // David O. Russell // December 16, 2013 // Digital Theatrical Projection (Wehrenberg Des Peres 14 Cine)

With the possible exception of his first feature, the indie incest comedy Spanking the Monkey, director David O. Russell’s films tend to prioritize vivid, quickly sketched characters and an arch attitude over naturalism and emotional depth. On the positive side, this often lends the director’s works a rough-edged, even profane ebullience that leaves an indelible impression, as in Three Kings’ laparoscopic insert shots of oozing bile and collapsing lungs, or The Fighter’s Greek chorus of pug ugly, foul-mouthed sisters. Unfortunately, this preference for cheeky crackle over authenticity can also create an atmosphere of cynical ephemerality in Russell’s films. The director’s characters look and talk like real people, but one can’t quite shake the sensation that one is watching actors playing roles. A cinema of heightened artificiality can be an end to itself—see the works of Baz Luhrman, Tarsem, and the Wachowski siblings—but in Russell’s hands it often feels like a means to a poignancy or profundity that the director never quite gets around to conveying.

Russell’s latest feature, American Hustle, finds modest success where the director’s films have often stumbled. On the one hand, the film functions primarily as tall drink of period razzle-dazzle, fueled by a cluster of memorably lurid performances and gaudy 1970s-80s design. At the same time, the film harbors an unexpectedly delicate sadness, evincing a sensitivity that has not been found in Russell’s work since Monkey. Hustle achieves this in part by not leaning too earnestly on its themes. The director and his performers are focused principally on delivering a character-driven, blackly comical tragedy decked out in disco era glitter and gold. That Hustle also manages to be a sorrowful little tale of American ambition, ineptitude, and shattered idealism at the dawn of the Reagan years... well, that’s just a gratifying bonus.

Hustle is based very loosely on the story of Abscam, the real-world FBI anti-corruption operation which utilized a convicted con man and a phony Arab sheikh to entrap and indict over thirty government officials, including six congressmen and a U.S. senator. However, the film’s screenplay by Russell and Eric Singer is concerned less with the minutiae of public bribery than with a cluster of compelling if broadly loathsome characters. At the center of the film are New York con artists and lovers Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), two souls who share a passion for quick-and-dirty financial scams and 1940s-50s jazz. Irving has a window glass business and a chain of dry cleaning shops that serve as a legitimate front for his cons, as well as an acid-tongued wife (Jennifer Lawrence) and stepson in the suburbs to whom he is hopelessly committed. (Exhibiting the sort of dejected self-awareness that characterizes his outlook, Irving admits in voiceover that his wife Rosalyn has snookered him into financial and emotional fidelity, if not sexual faithfulness, and has therefore conned the conman.) Sydney is a bit more of a chameleon: a perpetual identity-swapper who adopts an English accent and flashes flirty looks at her marks, luring them into the snares that her man has devised. “She was so smart!,” Irving enthuses, and while this is the gushing of a besotted man, it’s obvious that Sydney is a woman of large appetites, larger ambitions, and an almost compulsive need to keep moving up and away. In this, she recalls another Bale film, Public Enemies, where John Dillinger confessed that what he desired was “everything, right now.”

The FBI eventually catches wind of Irving and Sydney’s cons, and in short order the pair find themselves in adjoining interrogation rooms being sweated by splendidly permed agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). Richie essentially blackmails the couple, offering immunity in exchange for their help in stinging public officials for corruption. Irving reluctantly accepts the deal, but his acquiescence creates a rift with Sydney, into which Richie rather effortlessly slides. In this way, the film sets up its dramatic nexus: the love triangle between Irving, Sydney, and Richie, and the ways in which their dysfunctional relationships threaten to devour the FBI operation. The wild card on the outside of this triad is Rosalyn, whose motormouth tendencies and tight grasp on Irving create a glaring potential for disaster in such a high-stakes scheme. (This is foreshadowed by not one but two kitchen fires that the culinarily inept and slightly wobbly Rosalyn triggers.)

The operation’s first target is the glad-handing, working man’s mayor of Camden, New Jersey, Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner). Once Carmine is hooked, he in turn begins to reel in various other members of the local, state, and federal government via a proposed economic redevelopment of Atlantic City. This is not sufficient for Richie, however, who yearns to be a rock star in the halls of the Bureau. That means that the scam escalates to luring in high-profile mafia targets, up to and including Victor Tellegio (Robert De Niro), lieutenant to notorious Jewish mobster Meyer Lansky. This proves to be all too much for Irving, who begins to panic at the possibility of losing his wife, son, and head if the mob unmasks their millionaire investor “sheikh” as a Puerto Rican FBI agent.

Russell keeps all of this fizzing along quite nicely, while adeptly balancing a plethora of tones and moods. Although the film sometimes seems to be snickering at its characters—That hair! Those outfits! That unawareness of the incipient 1980s!—it discovers a measure of pathos in their stymied dreams. Every significant characters is allowed to plead for the viewer’s sympathies at some point, just as everyone is ultimately revealed to be a short-sighted fool in one respect or another. Richie in particular evolves quite a bit over the course of the film, from a smooth-talking foil to an awkward romantic rival to a coked-up rogue agent to a pitiable but richly deserving fall guy. What is probably the saddest moment in whole film flicks by almost unnoticed: After fielding a phone call from Sydney regarding a late-night assignation, Richie insists to his mother that “I’m running the show, I’m the quarterback, and I’m not going to settle for no one.” On this beat, he casts a furtive glance at his poor fiancé, seated across the kitchen table. Ouch.

It is Renner’s pompadoured, gregarious mayor who receives the rawest deal when the FBI’s noose tightens. Carmine is an impassioned and idealistic public servant, beloved by his constituents and genuinely focused on the economic rebirth of his town. His only flaw seems to be his willingness to deal with casino mobsters to get what he wants for Camden. In short, he is a potential political balm for America’s post-Watergate malaise: a stand-up, take-charge guy who loves his town and his people. Unfortunately, Richie thinks nothing of throwing Carmine to the wolves in his pursuit of bigger fish, which leaves Irving feeling sick with guilt. Unlike Sydney, who has a jittery need to reinvent herself, Irving secretly longs to be a local Big Man, a respected member of the community just like Carmine. During a boozy, bittersweet night out on the town with their wives, Irving even seems to lose track of the fact that he is conning Carmine at all. For a moment, he forgets that he is a fraud.

Hustle draws heavily from Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas and Casino for its themes and style, as well as Paul Thomas Anderson’s Scorsese homage, Boogie Nights. Russell is not at the level of either of those filmmakers, however, and Hustle’s worst traits exemplify the director’s irksome tendencies. These include a preference for cartoonish archetypes over characters, the loud declaration of ideas in place of simmering subtext, and a taste for pointless islands of weirdness. (A tossed-off moment where Rosalyn housecleans furiously while belting out “Live and Let Die” falls into the latter category.) Still, Hustle manages to be a genuinely sad film in spots, usually (and paradoxically) when the filmmaker and actors aren’t making a big hullabaloo about how sad everything is. Irving in particular evokes twinges of sorrowful sympathy. Despite his vanity and deceptions, he seems painfully aware that his life has been commandeered by the ego and greed of others.

While such psychological wrinkles provide the odd cerebral diversion, Hustle’s more visceral pleasures—the over-the-top performances, the design, the music, the queasy thrill of a con that is constantly threatening to unravel—are generally enough to keep the film afloat. One could pen an entire essay about Amy Adams’ morphing hairstyles and low-cut dresses, not to mention the curious magnetism of her translucent, blotchy skin. (As a fellow Person of Pale Persuasion, this writer is consistently taken by Adams’ willingness to appear naturally spotty on film rather than porcelain-perfect. More power to her.) None of this adds up to a great work of cinema, or even a particularly durable one, but American Hustle is still a pleasurable work of retro-themed pop entertainment. Moreover, there is something strangely gratifying about seeing Russell’s middlebrow and often frustrating auteurism finally discover a fitting vessel.

SLIFF 2013: 7 Boxes

2012 // Paraguay // Juan Carlos Maneglia and Tana Schembori // November 17, 2013 // Digital Theatrical Projection (Landmark Tivoli Theatre)

Momentum is essential to the success of 7 Boxes, a gritty, borderline farcical chase picture that unfolds over the course of a single day in Asunción, Paraguay. Directors Juan Carlos Maneglia and Tana Schembori set up the story’s premise with a minimum of delay: callow 17-year-old Victor (Celso Franco) makes a few guaraní hauling loads on his rickety wheelbarrow in the sprawling market-slum known as Mercado 4. One sweltering morning, following a run-in with rival barrow jockey Nelson (Víctor Sosa), Victor is offered an unusual delivery job by Gus (Roberto Cardozo), a butcher who has become exasperated with Nelson’s tardiness. Truthfully, it’s sort of an anti-delivery job. Victor’s wheelbarrow is hastily loaded with seven wooden crates, and the boy is instructed to steer the boxes around the market for the rest of the day, avoiding patrols by the slow-witted but thoroughly corrupt police. If Victor returns with the untampered containers at the end of day, Gus promises him one hundred American dollars, which will more than cover the cost of the new cell phone which the boy has been coveting.

As protagonists go, Victor doesn’t do much to invite the viewer’s sympathy. He embodies everything interminable about the contemporary adolescent male: a self-absorbed and somewhat oblivious twerp whose horizons don’t extend much further than kung fu films and a generalized longing for wealth and celebrity. (Women don’t yet seem to be a part of the equation.) Still, as embodied by Franco, Victor has heartthrob charm and child’s soft-heartedness. He also possesses a prey animal’s quick-witted instinct for survival, which has enabled him to eke out half a living in a market crowded with older, tougher competitors. However, he still relies on the kindness of older sister Tamara (Nelly Davalos), a doting yet reproachful women who works in the kitchen of a local Chinese restaurant. She crosses paths with her brother several times over the course of the day, but she has her own preoccupations in the form of a very pregnant co-worker, a perpetually annoyed boss, and the latter’s lovelorn son. The one individual who sticks close to Victor during his odyssey is Liz (Lali Gonzalez), a grubby adolescent girl from the market who incessantly pesters him and has zero tolerance for his exasperated attempts to boss her around.

Victor’s antiheroic qualities are consistent with the 7 Boxes’ broader approach, which begins with an elementary thriller scenario and then gives it all sorts of unusual little twists. For example, while the violent, spiteful Nelson is the closest thing the film has to a pure villain, Maneglia, Schembori, and co-writer Tito Chamorro paint his circumstances as pitiable. Penniless and unable to procure medicine for his newborn child, Nelson slides into a dead-eyed desperation, where he is ready and willing to do anything for cash. Cutting his own deal with Gus’ superiors, the antsy Don Dario (Paletita) and irritated Luis (Nico García), Nelson calls in favors and gathers together an entire band of aggrieved barrow-pushers for one purpose: killing Victor and seizing his precious cargo. If a pack of tenpenny assassins steering wheelbarrows menacingly through a nocturnal marketplace seems a tad absurd, that’s because it is absurd. Consistent with the Coen Brothers’ thrillers and Djo Munga’s recent Congolese crime picture Viva Riva!, the occasional weirdness of 7 Boxes tends to enhance rather than detract from the film’s aura of uncanny menace.

Such forays into comedic territory don’t always pay dividends; 7 Boxes’ humor is at times too broad, simplistic, and predictable. When the film does take genuinely amusing swerves, they tend to be of the drier sort, such as when muggers snatch Don Dario and Luis’ cell phones, but overlook the duffel bag full of cash that the pair are carrying. The conflation of the cutting edge smartphone with status and power is a recurring motif in the film, as is the ever-fluctuating guaraní-dollar exchange rate. Such fixations suggest deeper ambitions on the part of Maneglia and Schembori, but they never amount to much. 7 Boxes certainly seems to have lots to say about wealth, fame, violence, capitalism, post-colonialism, and the like, but it never quite gets around to exploring such themes in any meaningful way.

Fortunately, 7 Boxes is still a pretty great chase film. The directors maintain an irresistible, jittery sense of forward inertia, while also keeping the viewer slightly off balance, such that the oncoming narrative turns are only glimpsed at the last minute. In these respects, the film borrows quite explicitly from Run, Lola, Run, although 7 Boxes lacks that feature’s formal daring. The film is much more sprawling than one might expect, given the centrality of Victor’s mission to the story. The film is continuously taking oddball detours, following almost every secondary character at one point or another, and cultivating an appreciation for the complexity and interconnectedness of Asunción street life. This is less about sociological observation than about creating a black comedy of errors that unfolds according to some sadistic cosmic playbook. Someone up there is having a laugh at Victor and everyone else involved in this sweaty, bloody fiasco. Only divine meddling (or pure dumb luck) can explain the collision of every narrative line in the final scenes of 7 Boxes. Some characters perish, some escape, and everything piles up into one big shambles of asinine mistakes, curdled schemes, and foolish nobility. Just another day in the market, in other words.

SLIFF 2013: Tales from the Organ Trade

2013 // USA // Ric Esther Bienstock // November 16, 2013 // Digital Theatrical Projection (Washington University Brown Hall)

Director Ric Esther Bienstock’s disquieting new documentary feature, Tales from the Organ Trade, is an uncommonly balanced and even-handed film, but this isn’t to say that it is bias-free. Bienstock conveys a broad disapproval for the status quo within the global kidney trade, and asserts that this black- and gray-market exchange is phenomenally unjust to the vast majority of participating individuals, save a handful of elite doctors and brokers. Ultimately, the film also leans towards the policy views espoused by a quasi-libertarian organ transplant activist, who advocates for the legalization of kidney sales and a government-regulated pool for these retail spare parts.

However, Tales does not possess the white-hot indignation common to many documentary features about Big, Important Issues. Rather, Beinstock’s ambition is to convey the complexity of the kidney market and the myriad pressures that push profits upward and coax people into agreements that would be unthinkable in different circumstances. Rather than provoking tongue-clucking disapproval, the filmmakers are more interested in emphasizing just how intractable the problems associated with the trade are, and in implying that anyone peddling glib “solutions” should be regarded with skepticism.

Narrated by fellow Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg, Tales flits across the globe to interview individuals involved in one or more aspects of the organ trade. Accordingly, the viewer is introduced to a remarkable array of real-life stories. A thirtysomething Toronto working mom is already experiencing kidney failure and nervously eyeing her own mother’s dialysis-deformed arms and ravaged health. Meanwhile, half a world away, a rural Philippine province is dense with adult men who have “donated” (sold) a kidney, although these transactions seem not to have improved the locals’ financial outlooks one bit.

These encounters are likes snapshots, incrementally expanding a ghastly urban legend into a highly detailed and multi-dimensional policy debate. In Tales’ primary through-line, the filmmakers flex their detective skills and track one kidney from its grateful recipient in Canada, through Israel, Turkey, Kosovo, and Moldova. This particular transplant seems dodgy on paper, but proves to have proceeded mostly above-board. Not so with most illegal surgeries, which are rife with medical malpractice, financial fraud, and outright criminal theft and assault,

A lesser documentary might have lingered on the more ghoulish medical twists or the awfulness of developing world poverty, creating a kind of misery porn inciting generalized outrage. Admittedly, the most immediate emotion that Tales provokes is self-centered First World relief. After hearing a Brazilian slum-dweller (and imminent kidney “donor”) yearn for a house where his children can stand without hunching beneath the low ceilings, one’s daily inconveniences seem a tad ridiculous.

While such moments are vivid and memorable, what truly impresses is Tales’ uncommon determination to eschew easy answers and to keep the numerous, contradictory aspects of its subject matter in full view. It’s the rare sort of documentary feature that serves as a potent work of sociopolitical consciousness-raising without descending into tiresome repetition, single-solution zealotry, or cuckoolander political fantasies. In short, it’s cinematic pedagoguery at its finest, leaving the viewer more knowledgeable, perturbed, and motivated with respect to a far-reaching and formerly obscure issue.

SLIFF 2013: Cold Comes the Night

2013 // USA // Tze Chun // November 15, 2013 // Digital Theatrical Projection (Landmark Tivoli Theatre)

One of the most appealing aspects of the noir genre is its sheer simplicity. Only a handful of vivid, well-worn character types are usually necessary: the world-weary antihero, the dame in distress, the icy killer-for-hire, the high-strung snitch, the underworld kingpin. The appearance of a single, destabilizing factor is often all that is needed to incite such fallen souls towards a unavoidable and usually lethal collision. That factor can be almost any unexpected element, such as a freshly unearthed secret or the sudden death of a keystone character. However, for his sophomore feature, writer-director Tze Chun employs the genre's most reliable wild card, a big pile of cash.

Elsewhere, Cold Comes the Night—and what a deliciously Chandler-esque title that is—pursues some intriguing variations on noir conventions. The screenplay by Chun, Oz Perkins and Nick Simon combines the down-and-out protagonist (usually male) and the enigmatic woman-in-need into a single character. That individual is motel manager and single mother Chloe (Alice Keys), a worn-out survivor in a slushy New York town battered by economic decline. Keys recently appeared in Star Trek Into Darkness, but fortunately, Cold Comes the Night permits her a more substantial role than a sex object for a leering Starfleet captain. Chloe is a compelling and conflicted protagonist, visibly enervated by a young life that is already heavy with hardship. Keys' portrayal leans too strongly on Chloe's ferocious, almost amoral devotion to her daughter Sophia (Ursula Parker) at the expense of a more rounded characterization. Still, working-class female antiheroes are enough of a novelty that it is intriguing just to watch Chloe react to familiar crime thriller scenarios.

Mother and daughter dwell in an apartment attached to a fleabag motel known as a nexus for prostitution and drug dealing. Between changing sheets and scrubbing toilets, Chloe spends her time sparring with Social Services and warding off her infatuated ex Billy (Logan Marshall-Green), a crooked local cop. Chloe's already-tough existence turns into a nightmarish ordeal when she crosses paths with Polish criminal Topo (Bryan Cranston), a bagman on his way to deliver a bundle of shrink-wrapped U.S. cash to a Québécois crime lord. Due to a series of misfortunes and Coen-worthy fuckups, the legally blind Topo has been stranded at Chloe's motel and stuck with a dead driver, impounded vehicle, and missing package. He decides that his least-bad option is to take Chloe hostage to provide a pair of eyes for his time-sensitive errand. The woman at first consents out of pure terror for her daughter's safety, but Chloe is accustomed to scraping and clawing for any narrow advantage she can find. Eventually she talks the stone-faced, ruthless Topo into giving up a slice of his fee in return for her assistance.

Unforeseen developments and old-fashioned bad luck seem to stymie Chloe and Topo at every turn, as tends to occur in fiasco-rich crime fables of this sort. The pair eventually discovers that Billy has swiped the money and stashed it in his own home, which complicates things, given that the corrupt cop still has a throbbing (and misogynistic) obsession with Chloe. The story is ugly, savage stuff. Whatever criticisms one has of the film, Cold Comes the Night does not pull any punches. The one sacrosanct character in the tale is Sophia, who is threatened by Topo but not subjected to direct, overt violence. Depending on how one looks at it, this either indicates that Chun and his co-writers have at least a shred of humanity, or that they lack the courage to tell a truly scorched-earth story of moral depravity.

Cold Comes the Night has one glaring narrative problem, and it comes slamming to the forefront in the third act, not coincidentally when Marshall-Green's portrayal of Billy veers from "charming but volatile asshole" to "bug-eyed, rambling lunatic." Although there is a rationale within the story for the character's sudden breakdown, the switch is so jarring and Marshall-Green's performance is so over-the-top that the entire film is dragged kicking and screaming into unintentional hilarity.

Although this is an unfortunate and terribly distracting flaw, it's not one that defeats Cold Comes the Night. In most respects, the film is quite a viscerally engrossing and formally polished work. Cinematographer Noah Rosenthal and production designer Laurie Hicks capture the environs of wintery New York state in all its gray, sodden glory, and the score by Jeff Grace conveys a fitting, doleful mood with a slightly embittered edge. However, the motel setting feels like a missed opportunity: the filmmakers fail to exploit the spatial potential of the the dingy, adjoining, nearly-identical rooms as was done so effectively in the likes of Psycho and No Country for Old Men. In fact, the action that occurs at the motel rarely strays beyond Chloe's apartment.

Holding the proceedings together is the pairing of Keys and Cranston, who quickly establish the dynamic of a fearful prisoner and cruel warden, and then work for the remainder of the film to twist the relationship this way and that. Cranston is not doing anything he hasn't done before, but he does it with an unexpected restraint and cold-bloodedness in this film. (There is barely a whisper of Walter White's boiling resentment in Topo.) Most crucially, while the gangster is more textured and sympathetic than the standard Bad Guy, both the screenplay and Chun's direction make it clear that Cold Comes the Night is Chloe's tale. Ultimately, the questions that concern the viewer are whether she will survive the film's bloody events, and, if so, how battered she will be in body and spirit when she escapes into the night.

Insidious: Chapter 2

2013 // USA // James Wan // September 14, 2013 // Digital Theatrical Projection (AMC West Olive 16)

[Note: This post contains spoilers for both Insidious and Insidious: Chapter 2.]

Director James Wan’s unexpectedly distinctive and skin-crawling 2010 feature Insidious established one of the high-water marks of mainstream American horror cinema in recent years. It did so not by creating anything especially original, but by assembling a cluster of familiar genre elements and narrative beats into a nonetheless unnerving and memorable ghost story. Most essentially, Insidious is just a damn creepy film, packed to its cobweb-cloaked rafters with uncommonly effective jump-scares, unsettling (if not terribly surprising) plot reveals, and a pall of dread that descends like a clockwork death-trap.

Insidious’ potency derives most conspicuously from Wan’s facility for crafting old-fashioned scares, which also owe a significant debt to the razor-sharp editing by the director and Kirk M. Morri, as well as the production design by veteran concept artist Aaron Sims. Sims’ work in the film generally foregrounds simple but striking characters and objects over fussy, Burton-esque phantasmagorical window dressing. Singular details such as the searing crimson visage of the Lipstick-Faced Demon (Joseph Bishara) or the gasmask-like contraption donned by medium Elise (Lin Shaye) prove more indelible than the somewhat anonymous houses (one musty, one modern) where the film’s ghostly events unfold. This bent to the design ends up dovetailing quite gratifyingly with the narrative focus on personalities and birthrights rather than the genre's usual emphasis on the voodoo of place.

Insidious also accomplishes a lamentably rare feat in the annals of horror filmmaking, in that it depicts characters who generally behave as actual people might when confronted with events of escalating supernatural bugfuckery. The spectral campaign of terror waged on the Lambert family by the entities that cluster around oldest son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) might unfold according to head-scratching haunted house logic, but the Lamberts and their allies are recognizably human in their responses. Wan and scripter Leigh Whannell mostly confine the film’s comic relief to ghost hunters Tucker (Angus Sampson) and Specs (Whannell himself). This allows the rest of the cast to play their reactions straight, albeit with a dose of horror flick hamminess in the cases of Shaye as Elise and Barbara Hershey as grandmother Lorraine. The effect is dire but darkly satisfying, like a funhouse drained of its escapist sense of mirth. Unlike William Castle or Sam Raimi, Wan doesn’t betray his relish for the viewer’s screams, which isn’t a Bad Thing by any stretch. Horror cinema needs more filmmakers who can acknowledge the hackish qualities of the genre and fulfill the fundamental money-for-scares exchange without necessarily winking at the audience.

Narratively speaking, Insidious has one serious speed bump. Prompted by a plea for help from a desperate and plainly guilt-wracked Lorraine, Elise arrives during the film’s second act to explicate both the family's hidden backstory and the rather twisty supernatural mythology that Wan and Whannell have devised for their tale. It’s an arguably essential pitstop on the route to Josh’s (Patrick Wilson) climactic rescue of his son from the spirit world (sorry, “the Further”), but it seriously disrupts the rhythm of the film, notwithstanding the presence of two exceptionally frightening scenes during this stretch of the story. (Those would would be Elise’s scribbled vision of the Lipstick-Faced Demon and the subsequent nerve-wracking seance sequence). It’s a bit like the toll that the viewer has to pay in return for preceding sixty minutes of boo!-packed craziness, which is terrifying in part due to its inexplicable character. This isn’t to say that the later exposition robs the film of its power, as the conventional wisdom about Insidious seems to have unfortunately concluded. If anything, the revelation that there is an otherworldly logic to the film’s occurrences makes for a much more absorbing story, but there’s no way around the fact Lorraine and Elise’s long-winded monologues disrupt Insidious’ cinematic momentum.

Which brings us to Insidious: Chapter 2, a work that was not in any sense necessary or inevitable given the first film’s bleak, smash-cut ending. Lo and behold, however, Chapter 2 proves to be quite a pleasure, both as a compelling continuation of the Lambert family’s story and as a damn fine horror feature in its own right. The sequel’s screenplay is a solo effort from Whannell, although he shares a story credit with Wan, and it’s a solid step up from the first chapter for one conspicuous reason: the absence of that dreaded late-film break to explain what the hell is going on. Granted, Chapter 2 still has its share of exposition, but Whannell sprinkles it more evenly through the film, ensuring that the viewer’s understanding of events is being advanced even as the scenes of horror unfold. Over on the left side of this spookhouse ride, long-suffering mom Renai (Rose Byrne) and to a lesser degree Dalton are terrorized by malevolent forces from the Further. To the right, Lorraine, Tucker, Specs, and Elie’s old confidant Carl (Steve Coulter) scurry around performing supernatural detective work. It’s not quite that clear-cut in practice, as some of the film’s best scares involve the latter group, and Renai’s ethereal encounters hold some vital clues. However, it’s a helpful way to conceive of the film’s structure.

Let’s back up: the prelude to Chapter 2 takes place some 24 years before the events of the first film, and depicts events to which Lorraine and Elise previously alluded. Responding to a fearful nocturnal appeal from fellow medium Carl (Hank Harris), Elise (Lindsay Seim) arrives at the home of doctor and single mom Lorraine (Jocelin Donahue) and her supernaturally sensitive son Josh (Garrett Ryan) in order to sniff out the ghostly presence that seems to have attached itself to the child. Once Elise puts Josh into a hypnotic trance, the boy guides her to the parasitic spirit, which proves so malevolent that Elise hastily concludes that the only safeguard against it is to completely mind-wipe Josh’s prodigious skill at astral projection. The Chapter 2 prelude is appropriately creepy, although far less elegant than the simple, mysterious roaming-through-a-dark-house sequence that opens the first film. Nonetheless, it establishes the sequel’s overall approach, which builds on the events of the original Insidious with remarkable fidelity, doggedness, and eccentricity. It’s an uncommon thing to witness in the realms of horror cinema, which is fairly notorious for sequels that arbitrarily disregard franchise continuity. The exception to this principle is the Saw series that Wan and Whannell themselves initiated and was eventually devoured by its own ridiculously convoluted plot.

The now two-film Insidious franchise has so far avoided this fate, in part by relentlessly foregrounding the first rule of horror cinema: Be Scary. Fortunately, Chapter 2 is just as chilling as its predecessor, and, if anything, is much more relentless about its rhythm of ominous lulls and white-knuckle shocks. The slow burn of the first film was a part of its pleasure, but it would have made little sense to attempt to replicate it in Chapter 2. Both the characters and the returning viewer understand the rules of the Further and are keenly aware of the malicious spirits that lurk there, so a different approach is needed, one that creates another level of esoteric lore in which to wade.

Chapter 2 picks up on the same night on which the preceding feature left off. The sequel’s first present-day scene consists of a slow zoom in on an police interrogation room, as a incredulous detective (Michael Beach) questions Renai about the events that left Elise strangled to death in the Lambert family’s living room. It’s an immensely gratifying shot, perfectly in keeping with the franchise’s sensibility of horror-tropes-plus-realism. It’s also arguably Byrne’s best scene in the whole film. Her tearful, exhausted manner is far more effective at taking the viewer back to that night than the flashback that elaborates unnecessarily on what exactly happened in the thirty seconds or so after Insidious’ concluding smash-cut. Eventually the Lambert family is released from custody, and the whole clan moves in with Grandma Lorraine until the police allow them back into their house.

Naturally, eerie phenomena start happening the moment that the family is settled, with most of the stranger sights and sounds seemingly focused on Renai, although pretty much everyone has a hard time of things. Lorraine spots spectral figures lurking in the halls, Dalton’s dreams are bedeviled by taunting voices and corpse brides, and Josh starts talking to himself and generally acting super-creepy. Meanwhile Tucker and Specs begin going through Elise’s personal effects, which leads them and a suddenly resurfaced Carl along a trail of breadcrumbs, and eventually to a disturbed (and long-deceased) man named Parker (Tom Fitzpatrick).

To their credit, the characters all suspect fairly quickly what has happened: the thing that returned from the Further in Josh’s body is not Josh at all, but the veiled crone that has haunted him since his childhood. This entity didn’t receive much attention in the first film, which featured a bevy of strange spirits but ultimately centered on Dalton’s entrapment by the Lipstick-Faced Demon. To a significant extent, the entirety of Chapter 2 plays out as Whannell’s response to the inevitable question, “Hey, what was the deal with that old lady?” Using this as the launching point for an whole film might seem a bit wobbly, if not an outright instance of authorial wankery. However, Wan and his performers do a fine job of keeping the tone and mood consistent with the previous chapter, and thereby heightening the sense that this is an actual sequel and not just a riff or a tangent. That said, there’s a gratifying bit of punk anger to the whole thing, as though Chapter 2 were a middle finger to viewers who found Insidious’ unanswered questions nagging. The filmmakers essentially pick one mystery from the first chapter and follow it down the rabbit hole, ultimately unearthing more questions than answers. Whether the individual viewer will find this fascinating or maddening may ultimately be a matter of personal taste, but the filmmakers certainly can’t be accused of coasting on or retreading their prior work.

This isn’t the same as completely disregarding what has gone before, of course, and Chapter 2 revisits quite a few elements from the first film. These aren’t so much callbacks as reminders of plot points that the viewer may have forgotten. Oh, that’s right: Renai is a pianist and composer. Oh, that’s right: Dalton is not just an astral projector like his father, but really goddamn good at it.  Horror cinema has set a pretty low bar in this respect, making it strangely fulfilling to see a sequel where the filmmakers plainly re-read the earlier script before setting down to pen a new one. (What a concept!) The only truly indulgent callback is the sequence where a Further-delving Josh intrudes unseen on a scene from the original film, Back to the Future Part II-style. This unnecessarily soft-pedals a twist that any sensible viewer can puzzle out based on other clues—Josh can visit different times through the Further—and it adds nothing of value to the original scene.

Undoubtedly, touching upon a few familiar landmarks has value given that Chapter 2’s plot goes off in such a daft and knotty direction. The revelation that the veiled old woman that has tormented Josh for over two decades is actually the ghost of cross-dressing serial murderer Parker is fairly left-field, recalling The Exorcist III’s shoehorning of the Gemini Killer between the lines of the 1973 original. Just as weird is the disclosure that Chapter 2’s real villain is not Parker at all, but his unbalanced and hilariously manic mother, who forced a female identity on him as a child and ultimately goaded him into his crimes from beyond the grave. It’s hard to say whether all of this amounts to a cunning homage to Psycho, Sleepaway Camp, and Mommy Dearest, or just trans-exploitation (or both!), but it’s sure as hell isn’t typical.

The strange trajectory to its story notwithstanding, Chapter 2 ultimately sinks or swims on its merits as a device for delivering scares, and in this respect it’s arguably superior to its predecessor. Insidious has an intensely moody first half, but it does dawdle here and there on the domestic drama of the Lambert household. This isn’t a flaw per se in the original film, as characterization and scene-setting is theoretically needed before the oogie-boogie nuttiness really kicks in.  Still, when the films are laid alongside one another, it’s apparent that Chapter 2 is comparatively remorseless with its shocks, hitting its stride early and keeping up a steady stream of subtle shadowplay, spine-tingling tension, and full-bore, shrieking madness.

If nothing else, Chapter 2 allows Patrick Wilson to descend into seething, menacing Jack Torrence mode. The Parker-possessed iteration of Josh is downright unsettling, and far afield from the faintly thick-witted Josh of the first film (“Me?”) or the weepy, sideburned Ed Warren of Wan’s tedious The Conjuring from earlier this year. The seriously nasty, teakettle-chucking, door-bashing brawl between Josh and the rest of the Lamberts is one of Chapter 2’s highlights, and a example of how the franchise approaches horror conventions from a slightly more gritty, believable angle. Just as stellar is Josh’s hair-raising confrontation with Carl, who with stomach-flopping dread rolls his spirit-talking dice to divine what object the other man is holding behind his back.  The viewer (and Carl) knows exactly what letters are going to come up on that roll (K-N-I-F-E), and yet the moment is one of almost unbearable tension. It’s emblematic of all that the Insidious films get right: we know what is coming, we fear it, and we can’t look away.

[Post-Script: Overblown accusations of glaring plot-holes are already flying against Chapter 2, but here's the only one I can't really shake: Why did the forensics not reveal that Josh was the one who strangled Elise? It's an ineffective bit of misdirection, and as far as I can recall, the film never follows up on it.]