Three Films Make A Post: A Ghost Story

The Long Night aka The Coven (2022): This bit of would-be occult horror set in the South as directed by Rich Ragsdale is the second example of the cargo cult version of slow horror/A24 horror I’ve encountered this year, which probably means that this genre has finally arrived at its proper place high on the horror food chain. It also means we have to fight our way through films like this, that use some of the visual markers of the style but show none of the intelligence needed to use it for anything good. In fact, the script is so dire, I’d rather watch a Full Moon Production movie about stupid dolls murdering people between bad jokes; at least those films have a realistic view of their own nature.

This one, on the other hand, puts a lot of badly edited and staged scenes (look at the amateur hour that is Jeff Fahey’s death scene and weep) and deeply stupid scenes on screen that could have made for a fun little exploitation potboiler in better hands, but instead makes awkward gestures at depth and deep aesthetic involvement, without understanding of how to actually achieve these things.

Martyrs Lane (2021): While not completely to my taste, Ruth Platt’s film does clearly know why it wants to use the aesthetic markers of slow and ghostly folk horror – to take a child’s eye view on depression and grief and their expression through childish ritual that is often quite effective and complex. Kiera Thompson’s performance is certainly frighteningly accomplished coming from a child (who should by all rights not understand many of the nuances she’s asked to portray here), and Platt is a director quite capable of putting a mixture of the magical view of the world of childhood, and the nightmares that come with that as well as with certain realities, into very moving scenes.

Still, the film  doesn’t quite work for me as much as I’d like it to; I can see its artfulness, and I can certainly appreciate it on an abstract level. Yet there’s something I can’t quite put into words (which is rather apropos for this one) that left me untouched emotionally watching it even though it’s obvious this’ll bring the house down for people who are more on its wavelength.

Hellzapoppin’ (1941): But lets finish on a film that takes not being serious very seriously indeed, namely this adaptation of a Broadway revue featuring the comedians Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson directed by H.C. Potter. This thing’s so meta in so many aspects slapstick jokes actually become as subversive as the French fans of Jerry Lewis and Deano always said they were. The Fourth Wall is broken and then smashed into tiny little pieces; sight gags, which the people involved clearly understand as a visual form of the pun, become epically silly, deformed, reformed and then made fun of themselves. There are special effects based jokes you’d not have thought Hollywood at this stage to be able to even conceive of, much less realize this brilliantly.

All of this is presented with old-school Hollywood style and panache, like putting a fur coat around the shoulders of an improbable mutation with a trillion arms – some of whom are having a fist fight with each other. It’s a pretty damn wonderful movie, glossy and incredibly weird at the same time.