BEFORE: The Atlanta Hawks beat the Brooklyn Nets last night, and I should know because I was there. Well, I was in the building, my new job is working concessions for the company that runs all the stands and restaurants there. My first shift, and they put me on the Craft Beer "Grab and Go" station, which means that either somebody knows me very well and my love of craft beer, or somebody has gone crazy and put the fox in charge of the hen house, so to speak. Working in a sports arena turns out to be much like working at a comic-con, only more so, but perhaps that's just the way I look at things, based on my experiences.
I took this gig to get more concessions experience, I was interviewing for theater manager positions and it got pointed out to me that my last concessions job was back in 1989, I avoided this when I worked a commercial theater in 2021 and it's not part of my current theater job, since that theater is run by a college and is not profit-oriented. The majority of a commercial theater's revenue comes from popcorn and candy (and alcohol in the newer theaters) because the mark-up is incredible, a box of popcorn costs under a dollar to make and package, and they'll sell it for $7 or $8 or more. Last night I was helping sports fans purchase beer at $17 a can, which kind of doesn't sit well with me, I'm used to paying $4 a can max. Plus I'll go to a beer festival and drink for four hours for under $30, that's more my style. So right now I can't even afford to drink a beer at my new job, I don't know how long I'll last there, but I'm hoping at least to get some work in late December and early January, when my primary job is shut down for winter break. That's the new plan, unless I can come up with something else.
Kyle Gallner carries over again from "Strange Darling".
THE PLOT: After witnessing a bizarre, traumatic incident involving a patient, a psychiatrist becomes increasingly convinced she is being threatened by an uncanny entity.
AFTER: Well, the chain sure has a way of making sure that the absolute CREEPIEST films end up where they should, which is on or just before Halloween. OK, last year that meant "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire", but in previous years it's been films like "Candyman" or "Bird Box" or "Pet Sematary". It's a sign that the process works, if I can't get a really scary one sometimes at least I get one where people are actively trick or treating...
Look, I don't ever regret programming a film, that would be stupid. A worse sin than scaring the bejeebus out of me would be NOT scaring me at all, because that would make a film very pointless indeed, especially around this time of year. So I guess if you're gonna do it, really DO IT - this is probably the scariest film I've seen since "It: Chapter Two", that's what I'm trying to say here. If you watched the ads and the trailer for this one, you might think, well, what's scary about a bunch of people smiling at you? Yeah, it's not just the smile, it's what they DO while they're smiling at you. This is enhanced by effects, of course, but also it demonstrates what I call the "Serial Killer" smile, and not everyone can do it. You have to make your eyes and your brain work in conjunction with your mouth - I can't remember which job, but I had a manager once who would ask me to do this smile, and then he regretted it.
This movie also poses the question, what if suicide was contagious, like a virus? One person here is having hallucinations of people with that sick, dead-eye smile, lots of different people - as if some entity has possessed them, or is disguising itself as different people, all with that smile and slowly getting closer and closer. She ends up in the psych ward, describing her problem to Dr. Rose Connor, who, you know, sees a lot of deranged or manic people, but nothing like this before. To make matters worse, the patient starts actively having the hallucinations in front of Dr. Connor, then while the doctor is calling for help, the patient stands up and is now smiling that smile herself. Well, that's a sign that something really bad is about to happen, and sure enough, the patient commits suicide.
This has an impact on Rose, as you might imagine. She herself has a family history of suicide, her mother apparently took her own life, and this new trauma causes the old trauma to re-surface, only worse than before. Rose had a bad sleep schedule before because of her job, and now that's worse too. Before long her job and relationship start to suffer, and she begins having hallucinations herself, of people at a moderate distance away from her, all smiling that same demented smile. Uh oh...
I don't want to give too much away here, but she turns to her ex-boyfriend, who's a cop, and since he has access to police reports, they are able to determine that her patient had previously been a witness to a suicide a week before, and THAT person had also witnessed a suicide a few days before that, and so on, and so on. So this can't be random, and it can't just be that each suicide had a psychological impact on the next person, and so on and so on. Perhaps it is some kind of demon working through different people, jumping from one to the next, trying to cause chaos and suffering in the world. What else could it be?
This is the new school of horror, mixing the supernatural with body horror, and taking a cue from viral videos and social media. Perhaps this is all a metaphor for fake news or misinformation, like how suddenly people eating Tide Pods became a thing, or doing the "gallon challenge", which was potentially just as deadly, as nobody is supposed to ever chug a whole gallon of milk at once. You can drown in milk just as easily as you can drown in water, which is also deadly if you drink too much of it. Anyway, what we're really seeing here is suicide spreading between people just as fast as bad ideas do. Well, four to seven days, at least.
Rose determines that there is one person who witnessed a suicide that managed to break the pattern, instead of killing himself he killed someone else, and is now in prison. She and her ex drive to Altoona to visit him, to figure out exactly what's going on and how to (maybe) stop it. Rose also figures she's on borrowed time, and thinks that maybe if she just spends the next few days by herself, maybe she can also break the pattern. So she travels to her old house, which is where her mother committed suicide, however she ends up getting more than she bargained for, is it possible that the suicide chain goes all the way back to her mother?
OK, no more plot-points, if you want more you're just going to have to watch the film, like I did, and get scared, like I did. Well, like I said, all that is seasonally appropriate, if you're not sleeping with the light on this time of year then maybe you're not doing it right. Happy (almost) Halloween!
Directed by Parker Finn
Also starring Sosie Bacon (last seen in "The Last Summer"), Jessie T. Usher (last seen in "Shaft" (2019)), Robin Weigert (last seen in "Things We Lost in the Fire"), Caitlin Stasey, Kal Penn (last seen in "The Namesake"), Rob Morgan (last seen in "The United States vs. Billie Holiday"), Gillian Zinser (last seen in "The Guilty"), Judy Reyes (last seen in "The Circle"), Jack Sochet, Nick Arapoglou (last seen in "Pain Hustlers"), Perry Strong, Matthew Lamb, Dora Kiss, Meghan Brown Pratt, Jared Johnston (last seen in "Wonderstruck"), Ura Yoana Sanchez, Vanessa Cozart, Shu Q, Shevy Gutierrez, Sara Kapner, Steven Strickland, Kevin Keppy, Marti Matulis (last seen in "Men in Black 3"), Felix Melendez Jr., Anne Schmalzigan
RATING: 7 out of 10 shocked birthday party guests
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