BEFORE: Time for the old Halloween Round-up - I don't know what happened this year, but we only had about 10 trick-or-treaters swing by our house. Last year we got swamped by many waves of kids in costume, and we ran out of candy, had to turn the porch light off and pretend like we weren't home. This year I bought three big bulk bags of candy (OK, I know not everybody likes Tootsie Roll Pops, but I'm keeping the classics alive...) and I rushed home to unload it, but after 7 pm, nothing. Maybe it was the weather, it was windy and looked like it might rain, or maybe there was some big school or neighborhood party somewhere. Maybe parents finally realized that instead of spending $40 on a costume for their own kid and another $30 on candy to hand out at the door, it's cheaper to just give your kid $20 at the drug store and let them buy only candy they like best. It's safe, it's easy, and you don't have your kid complaining about getting a bunch of Tootsie Roll Pops from some weird rando.
This is the last of my "ShockTober" films, though the theme's going to leak a little in to next week - but more about next week in a bit. Sarah Paulson carries over from "Glass", and it's basically the last chance for some people to make my year-end rundown of who was in what - remember, it takes at least 3 films to make it to the countdown.
Here's the format breakdown for October - cable TV is still dominating, supplying more than half of October's films. But Netflix isn't going anywhere, even though I haven't added anything to my Netflix queue in months - maybe it's a dying platform, it's tough to say. Maybe they just aren't adding material that I'm interested in, maybe I'm going to turn out to be more of a Disney plus man - or maybe I've had access to so many Academy screeners in the past year that I haven't had to rely on Netflix as much as before. Wait, I watched NO Academy screeners in October? That's probably because I caught "Loving Vincent" on Hulu, and also my horror film choices were mostly available at home. I mostly played catch-up with horror films films from three or four years or ten years ago, with a few notable exceptions.
9 Movies watched on Cable (saved to DVD): Doom, Race to Witch Mountain, The Host, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Mary Shelley, Krampus, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, Let Me In, Alpha
3 Movies watched on Cable (not saved): Rampage, The Predator, Glass
6 Watched on Netflix: Coco, Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation, The Cloverfield Paradox, Velvet Buzzsaw, Dark Places, Bird Box
1 watched on Hulu: Loving Vincent
2 Watched in Theaters: Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Dark Phoenix
21 Total in October
Now, as I'm getting closer to the end of the year, with only eight films left, I'm pretty much on cruise control to get my Perfectly Linked Year. I'll watch three films next week - but first I'm going to take a couple days just to catch up on some TV, my DVR is still pretty full from me being out of town for all of last week. Once I get current on some TV, I'll watch only THREE (!!) films in November, and then I'm off for over a MONTH while I wait for "Star Wars: Episode IX". I've already got my ticket for opening day, which I think is December 20, and then it's just four more films from there to Christmas. Spending my time between November 6 and December 20 in a constructive manner is both difficult and encouraging - perhaps I should make a list of things I'd like to accomplish.
THE PLOT: Five years after an ominous unseen presence drives most of society to suicide, a mother and her two children make a desperate bid to reach safety.
AFTER: SPOILER ALERT if you don't have Netflix or haven't seen "Bird Box" at someone else's house - also, SPOILER ALERT for "A Quiet Place", because I can't talk about one without talking about the other.
On one level, this is a fine way to usher out my annual parade of horror films - perhaps it's even the scariest film I watched all month, especially when you consider I watched two animated films for kids, and several with comic or satirical elements, like "Velvet Buzzsaw" or "Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse". Something is affecting the human race, and causing everyone in certain parts of the world to go completely bonkers, and lose all regard for their own safety. In some cases this means people start to do bodily harm to themselves, like smash their heads into the wall, or lose control while driving, or stand in front of an oncoming vehicle. One person noticeably loses all self-control and starts supporting Marianne Williamson, but for most people, it's self-harm.
The film manages to be pretty enigmatic about what's happening - is this some kind of plague, or virus? Mass hysteria? Is it an attack by another country, like with radiation or chemical warfare? Or is the simpler answer that it's some kind of alien attack, which of course starts to call "A Quiet Place" to mind. That other film was fairly straight-forward by comparison - aliens land around the world, we think that maybe they're here "to serve man", but like in that classic Twilight Zone episode, they're only here "to serve man" for dinner! (Oh, my God, their book is a COOKBOOK! Who could have seen that twist coming?). Then we sort of flash-forward to months or years down the line, when humans are an endangered species, living out in the woods very quietly, because someone noticed that the aliens don't seem to have EYES and are tracking their food mainly by sound.
Perhaps to cover up the fact that this film is very similar to "A Quiet Place", "Bird Box" is split into two timelines - one that starts just before the mass hysteria/alien attack/bio-warfare/whatever it is, and shows us the first effects on an American city, and the other one is five years later, when one of the survivors from the first timeline is trying to travel to (relative) safety with two young children. Then it toggles between the two timelines, back and forth, in order to maintain an element of suspense, and to keep the audience from figuring out exactly what's going on, as long as possible. This could mean that they couldn't come up with a M. Night Shyamalan-worthy twist, so it's delay, delay, delay, and any time it seems like anything concrete is about to be revealed, it's WHOOSH, back over to the other timeline. That's right, I'm on to your screenwriting tricks...
As a result, we're kept in the dark (literally and figuratively) about whether there are creatures out there, or people have just gone mad, for whatever reason. Hey, it's possible that global warming, combined with angst over the 2016 election combined with overexposure to social media all mixed somehow with the Zika virus and made something really nasty. That's not where I think this film was going, I'm just saying it's POSSIBLE. But at least "A Quiet Place" had the balls to (eventually) show me the aliens. If you're looking for a definite glimpse of what's really behind all this, you'd better get used to disappointment. The main conceit here seems to be that if people go outside and SEE the aliens/creatures/demons, or if they make eye contact with someone who's been infected, then they get infected too, and then it's only a matter of time before they bash their own head in or worse, somehow believe that standing in front of oncoming traffic is the place to be.
So, that's why all the blindfolds. Anyone leaving the house they're holed up in (and come on, really, how long before ALL the food spoils? I can't seem to keep milk in my own refrigerator longer than five days before it smells bad...) to get more food or supplies has to wear a blindfold, so they don't look at the thing they're not supposed to look at. So driving a car is a new challenge, you better REALLY trust that GPS. But seriously, how much protection is the blindfold in the end against the vicious whatever-they-ares? I was reminded of an alien creature mentioned in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" book called the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, a very vicious creature, but it was so stupid that it assumed that if you couldn't see it, it couldn't see you, so the best defense against it was to close your eyes, so it wouldn't attack you. But that's meant to be a JOKE.
So there's part of me that says, "Oh, yeah, it's so much better this way, because the menacing creatures are left enigmatic." and "A CGI creature would just give us one artist's interpretation of what the vicious aliens look like, it's better this way because each audience member can imagine their own horrible alien, and that's very powerful." Those arguments may hold some relevance, but then there's the cynical part of me that says, "You know, it's a lot cheaper to not show the aliens at all. They probably saved a bundle with this whole blindfold thing, they didn't have to pay for a creature shop, or a bunch of computer geeks to animate the creatures."
And that part of me is ALSO right - narratively and budget-wise, this was a big cop-out. And I know a "bait-and-switch" when I see one. I was promised a movie about creatures attacking humanity, and in the end, this just didn't deliver. You know what film delivered? "A Quiet Place", which made $188 million domestic and $340 million worldwide with a $17 million budget. I know box office isn't always a marker of fine storytelling or social importance, but perhaps there's a reason why one movie made so much money in theaters, and the other one premiered on Netflix. Maybe someone figured there would be angry protests by audiences who paid for tickets and then felt like they didn't get what they paid for? Imagine if you watched a whole season of "Stranger Things" and no Demogorgon, no Mind Flayer ever showed up - you'd be pissed, right? There simply can't be a build-up without some kind of payoff.
Sure, there are possible narrative explanations - maybe the creatures are invisible, or very tiny. Maybe this is just how they attack their prey, with psychological attacks that are triggered by sight. Maybe there are no creatures at all, and another explanation as mentioned above is really at play. But all of that feels like I'm making excuses for a film that took decided to be overly enigmatic, and then took some perverse pleasure in that. I'm willing to debate this point or entertain other alternatives, but right now it seems like the simplest explanation is the best, and someone took the easier and cheaper roads.
Also starring Sandra Bullock (last seen in "Ocean's Eight"), Trevante Rhodes (last seen in "The Predator"), Jacki Weaver (last seen in "Life of the Party"), John Malkovich (last seen in "Velvet Buzzaw") Rosa Salazar (last heard in "Epic"), Danielle MacDonald (last seen in "Lady Bird"), Lil Rel Howery (last seen in "Tag"), Tom Hollander (last heard in "Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle"), Machine Gun Kelly (last seen in "Nerve"), B.D. Wong (last heard in "Mulan 2"), Pruitt Taylor Vince (last seen in "Butter"), Vivien Lyra Blair, Julian Edwards, Parminder Nagra (last seen in "Ella Enchanted"), Rebecca Pidgeon (last seen in "RED"), Amy Gumenick, Taylor Handley (last seen in "Battle Los Angeles"), Happy Anderson (last seen in "Bright"), David Dastmalchian (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp"), Keith Jardine (last seen in "Only the Brave".
RATING: 5 out of 10 times that Malorie trips on something in the woods
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