The Dark and the Wicked (2020)

Score: 4 / 5

Bryan Bertino's latest film surprises us yet again. And yet, while The Strangers and The Monster also featured dark and wicked things, primarily mental, both were manifested in the flesh. Home invasion and monster attacks are terrifying things on screen, but the way Bertino staged them (alone in the wilderness) and filmed them (earned scares with psychological depth) made them unique in the genre. Here, however, in his third major movie, he turns his attention to the horrors of the spirit. We never learn exactly what the dark and wicked malice is in this story, though hints abound, but we are keenly aware that it is nothing we could ever be prepared to handle.

The setting is a remote farm in Texas, and rarely has the state been filmed so coldly. A palpable chill exudes from cinematographer Tristan Nyby's images, and we know immediately that something is terribly wrong here. The family patriarch is dying, looked after though he is by his dutiful wife, and is filmed almost exclusively in close-ups, identifying his suffering as the locus of this movie's horror. We know, and so does his wife, that this will be his deathbed, despite his being hooked up to oxygen and the sudden arrival of their adult children, who have clearly been out of the picture for a long time.

Louise and Michael, after briefly reacquainting with each other, show up with almost unbearable-to-watch feelings of guilt and shame about having abandoned their family. It's heavy stuff, and would make for compelling drama if it weren't so tense with unspoken resentment and anxiety. Mother, which is her only identifier in the dialogue and credits, has been traumatized somehow; she's fixated on telling her children they should not have come, casts furtive glances at open air, and tries to calm her shell-shocked demeanor by singing (incorrectly) repeated lines from the hymn "What a Friend We Have in Jesus". Trials and temptations, indeed, Mother.

I made the very smart choice to watch this movie on a computer while wearing headphones, and I highly recommend that you do something similar. A bigger screen would have been more ideal, but the sensation of surround sound is key. The soundtrack has some music, but much of the score is made to sound like moaning winds and creaking wood, while many of the movie's sound effects (often also wind and creaks) feel like diegetic music. The way it moves around you feels immersive, and I can only imagine how harrowing this viewing experience would be in a cinema. This works in favor of the film, too, which forces us to admit by the halfway point that there are horrible things happening on this farm and within this family that exist outside of our sensory perception.

Tactile and auditory evidence notwithstanding, we're occasionally given access to the hallucinatory visions plaguing these characters, in addition to the herd of goats that are constantly on edge due to a shadowy being in their midst. But fear not, scaremongers! Or, rather, fear more, because unlike many psychological horror movies of late that embrace the unseen and uncanny, this movie packs more than a few genuine jump scares and gory shocks. In fact, the scare factor starts surprisingly early and doesn't let up, even as some of its more disturbing scenes are those that feel ripped from an arthouse response to The Exorcism of Emily Rose (one of my favorite genre movies that similarly works in the gap between flesh and spirit).

I don't think this movie will win any new fans of the genre, and even I occasionally had to shrug off my annoyance at characters who refuse to talk about what's happening to each other, even though their own sanity is clearly slipping and their lives are at stake. The beginning of the film sets up a slow-burner of diabolical proportions, and though the latter half spins through scare after scare like a scream park attraction, I couldn't help but wonder what the purpose behind the film could be. It hints briefly at parent-child relations, estranged sibling relations, and the psychological burden of learning to cope with death. In that way, it's not wholly unlike The Babadook, and you could view the supernatural horror as manifestations of the grief process or fear of losing your parent, but I'm not sure an extensive study of that would lead to much insight, psychologically or aesthetically.

Rather, I suspect that this film is mostly an exercise in unrelenting nihilism. A visiting priest and part-time visiting nurse indicate that the devil tormenting this family (I'm thinking lower-case here, because it doesn't really seem to be an incarnation of Satan) wants Father's soul, presumably due to his bitterness and grief over his children's abandonment of him. But the devil exhibits multiple times its ability to kill lots of other people around the family, which begs the question why he doesn't just kill Father. Maybe it's all about causing pain and fear in others before collecting the devil's due, something we've seen in Devil notably, or even in The Strangers, though that example is purely secular. Ultimately, the siblings, working through their own mental health, are indeed wrestling with their demons, but this time the demons come out on top. It's indeed a dark and wicked movie.

The Monster (2016)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Lizzy has had enough of her mother. During her times in Kathy's custody, she finds herself a victim of alcohol-fueled abuse and a nurse, cleaning up afterward and caring for sloppy mommy. We see episodic scenes from their life together that range from borderline tolerance to unmitigated loathing, when Kathy's intoxicated rage manifests in verbal and physical violence. A central scene comes to mind, in which Kathy lets out a string of expletives (August: Osage County-style) at Lizzy in the driveway before getting in her car and abandoning the child. At the beginning of this movie, however, it seems the two have reached a breaking point, and a hungover Kathy drives Lizzy home to her dad, for what may be a final time.

The family drama seems to come to a head when their car breaks down on a lonely stretch of forested road. Of course the deep of night and intermittent rainfall restricts the duo from exiting the vehicle, and their uncomfortable situation feels more oppressive by the second. The slow-drip of toxicity between the two is sure to reach a blistering climax. But just when we think we've pegged Kathy as the titular monster, the shadows beyond the headlights take on a sinister shape.

Writer/director Bryan Bertino (you may remember his seminal creation The Strangers in 2008) once again shows off his mad skills in The Monster, and though it falls short of his breakthrough film, this one is a beast of a different color. Deceptively simple, it marries isolation thriller with monster horror in a grim, meditative family drama that utilizes the narrative of myth or urban legend. It's "about" the survival of mother and daughter. It's "about" the nature of monstrosity in a postmodern world, where even those who come to help (a repair mechanic and an EMT team) are collateral damage. It's "about" feminist refusal to be victimized. It's "about" the monstrous effects of alcoholism.

Too many claims? Try again. It's not any old breakdown that stops our ladies' progress on the road: Their car strikes a wolf. How many times does that happen in fiction? Rocks, logs, nails, deer, cows, sure, but a wolf? Actually, I can only think of wolves stopping young women as living predators in extensions of the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Hell, even last week's Beauty and the Beast is a prime example of that. And while the wolf here fulfills its function in stopping the girls' journey in the woods, they also almost immediately kill it. A subtle subversion, but an important one. The wolf serves yet another purpose beyond plot and theme: foreshadowing. Its presence suggests a greater predator in the forest, one that might have left the deep wounds on its torso, and one that might return for dinner.

It's not a lengthy movie, but Bertino milks the suspense for every last chill. Much like our experience in The Blair Witch Project, we begin to see the monster well before it appears in every shadow and behind the atmospheric veil. When it does at last venture into the light, we see a beast that looks vaguely like Alien, its shiny, leathery skin stretched batlike between its muscled limbs and a nightmarish head riddled with enormous teeth. It's a grimy regurgitation of Kathy's alcoholism, a foul specter that is unmistakably an incarnation of brutish overindulgence.

Of course it's a blatant symbol for the monster Kathy must face to restore her bond with Lizzy, but before you criticize the heavyhanded storytelling, most cinematic horror does correspond to reality. Do your homework. More specifically here, the case could be made that the monster is little more than an extension of Kathy's psyche, a manifestation of the evil in the woods of her life preventing a loving connection with her family. Like in The Babadook or It Follows, like in The Brood or even The Exorcist, we are left questioning the parallels. Is the monster (visible or invisible, external or internal) a literal product of the characters' turmoil, a symbolic examination of the sins in question, or an unrelated external form of evil that incites the drama of the film? Could it be all in one? One might wonder if it even matters, but the lens through which we view any movie will change our interpretation of it as well as our reaction to it.

Zoe Kazan plays mother dear, and her performance is an awesome display of her talent. Bertino's screenplay daringly challenges our suppositions about addiction's power over even the primal bond between mother and daughter. More impressive, he's willing to work with Kazan to make Kathy just a terrible person. As a raging boozehound and old-fashioned scream queen, she electrifies the screen with her presence. Incredibly, she avoids playing into the extensive symbolism of the film, imbuing her character with gritty realism and grounded vulnerability. Bertino's daring screenplay depicts Kathy as a terrible person. Kazan ultimately plays a harrowing journey of truth, fighting for the life of her child in a fierce crawl to redemption against horrific odds. Earlier scenes of cruelty and hatred are switched for heartrending love as Kathy and Lizzy take turns protecting and comforting each other. Ella Ballentine is no less fabulous as the fierce Lizzy, wise and brave, unafraid of confrontation and determined to stand up for herself and eventually her mother.

Of course, it's also pretty cool that even when The Monster is thrilling and chilling us -- it's far more a mood piece than a rip-roar scare-fest -- it affirms its characters' humanity and our own investment in their redemption.

IMDb: The Monster