That ancient curse about living in interesting times becomes more and more relevant with each day that passes. If you’re reading this, then you have an interest in how the human organism metabolizes its fears and awareness of mortality into works of art, and with that in mind, we’re delving into the darker side of things. Our next Primal Stream installment will be comedy-emphasizing, ideally. But things are unpredictable, and you know that. So with this week’s recommended titles let’s embark upon a journey through different pathways by which to discharge that unease, like an emotional lightning rod, or getting drunk and playing Skee-Ball where there’s no danger of accidentally nailing someone in the side of the face with a reinforced plasticine ball. So have a mental margarita and take a trip through this column’s meander into chaos.
Glorious on Shudder
There are two stalls in the men’s room of this Mississippi rest stop. In one is Wes (True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten), fleeing the fallout from the catastrophic end of a relationship, now homeless and ready to start a new life bound only by the open road and his car. In the other stall is the elder god Ghatanothoa (voiced by J.K. Simmons), a shambling horror caught in a cosmic dilemma. Will there be shocking violence? Yes. Will we have a demonstration of what happens when foolish mortals gaze upon an eternal and undying thing? Also yes. Will we as an audience get a new spin on Lovecraftian horror that doesn’t overplay its hand or end up disappointing us? Most certainly. Glorious director Rebekah McKendry loves horror and has a gift for absurdist comedy, and those two impulses keep this film spry and spiky, like the many eldritch tentacles that keep this ghoulish engine turning.
Lord Shango via The Criterion Channel
A lesser-known Blaxploitation horror offering, this 1975 tale of Yoruba religion versus Christianity is notable for two distinguishing factors: It was shot in East Tennessee’s Friendsville, and it stars Marlene Clark, from Bill Gunn’s Ganja and Hess, as a mother who turns to other options besides the church after the tragic death of her daughter’s beloved. There’s a lot going on here, with strong characterization on the individual and community levels, and it dwells much more in the process of supernatural revenge than most films exploring that milieu do in their rush to splatter some walls. Clark is, as always, iconic in a role she gives 110 percent to, and the end result is a tidy, EC Comics-style narrative that feels somehow more affecting than one might expect. If nothing else, Lord Shango deserves a place in the pantheon of Tennessee horror. Note: Practitioners of Santeria, Obeah or Voodoo will likely be frustrated by the way the film picks and chooses aspects of each of those practices and makes an emotional coat of many colors out of them.
They/Them on Peacock
Arriving on the scene with the wittiest title for our current era, They/Them has been racking up a lot of online discourse, with a lot of people deeply angry at it. Writer-director John Logan (who wrote Penny Dreadful and Alien: Covenant, which are good, but also Star Trek: Nemesis) has ambition, tackling a slasher on the loose at a conversion camp for queer teens. It’s a concept that at its best should feel something like an unholy collision between But I’m a Cheerleader and Friday the 13th, and there are a few moments that scrape up against that — especially with OG Friday camper Kevin Bacon presiding here, running this mysterious place designed to kill children’s authentic selves and remake them as something acceptable to the outside world. The biggest plus is national treasure Carrie Preston, who finds the elegance in perfectly coiffed evil. The biggest minus is the scene toward the end that is exactly the point in which I said out loud, to the TV, “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” There are films to be made about the clash between reconciliation and retribution, but given how methodical They/Them is in laying out the dehumanizing process of unmaking someone, this isn’t the place for it.
Horror in the High Desert
Horror in the High Desert on Amazon Prime Video
Starts like Lake Mungo, ends like REC. Horror in the High Desert is not as fully amazing as that combo sounds, but it’s still a remarkable work of found footage that covers a lot of emotional ground. When a YouTube explorer disappears, his family, fans, friends and secret lovers try to figure out exactly what happened. The answer is this: Fucked-up stuff happened. Horror in the High Desert delivers sad wig moments and night vision shenanigans, and despite the mercenary sequel setup, I’m intrigued by what writer-director Dutch Marich is getting up to in the realm of found fiction and its variants.
Fall, now in theaters
If this movie had been in 3D, it would have had to have been rated NC-17. Not since 1990’s Arachnophobia at the old Lion’s Head theater or the next-to-last hurrah for 70 mm film at the Opry Mills IMAX with the Burj Khalifa sequence in Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol have I been this sweaty and terrified in my seat for no literal reason. But a good movie, or even an effective one, can do that. Just reach inside your mind with the interplay of sound and vision and shake the hippocampus until your own nightmares come out to play with whatever’s on screen. Fall features two friends, trapped at the top of a 2,000-foot broadcast tower — it’s shaky and woozy and terrifying and, honestly, about 20 minutes too long. There’s way too much backstory getting in the way of the existential terror — there are aspects of the 47 Meters Down template that can be jettisoned with nothing of value lost. Virginia Gardner (Starfish, Halloween 2018) is awesome as always as the live-wire best friend, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan has about three minutes of screen time, but he plays daddy very well in the literal and figurative sense. Grace Caroline Currey serves believable endurance as our lead. Even if you’re not acrophobic, in a theater, this film will likely fuck you up.
Incantation on Netflix
Here’s the deal. Incantation is awesome, but I don’t want to tell you why, because that would wreck some of the malign pleasures lurking within. I don’t even want to say what subgenre this film occupies for the same reason. Let’s just say, at this point, that this Taiwanese shocker is imaginative and freaky and will stick around in your subconscious. Don’t watch the English dub.
Last chance, ye who would avoid spoilers …
Incantation is like Sinister or The Empty Man, where the act of watching the film binds you to the mythos it presents and dooms the viewer. It is also like that exceptional teaser for 2007’s The Hills Have Eyes II, where it reveals that the film has already killed you before you even watched it. Incantation is a work of the cruelest genius that also incorporates passive peer pressure and the response to trypophobia in a way that you can’t help but be in awe of. Director and co-writer Kevin Ko is not playing games with this film, and he goes hard with unbridled terror herein.
