a cure for hubris

Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, in which 338,226 trapped soldiers were successfully evacuated from death or captivity, put forth the tag “survival is victory.” The late-great Tobe Hooper questioned this assertion, wondering what dodging death might leave behind. One could hardly be comforted by Marilyn Burns’ crazed laughter at the end of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or take comfort in Elizabeth Berridge’s long walk home at the end of The Funhouse. I think it’s also safe to argue that the Sawyers/Strakers are survivors as well, albeit perhaps not the quintessential models that we as a society would like to put forth as representations of our species’ bold harmonious resilience. The also late-great George Romero pondered the moral concessions of being left alive to simply evade and endure, often pondering the danger of other humans, reanimated or not, and what their natural propensity for prolongation might breed. The horror genre as well as movies themselves have been blessed with their perverse heirlooms, though far too often squandered by lazy homage or mere lip service. Their absence has been felt for far too long.

It Comes at Night ponders survival and human nature in the wake of a viral outbreak, that has ostensibly vanquished most of humanity. Our introduction to this world is callous and upsetting; a father takes his diseased father-in-law to the woods, puts a pillow over his face, shoots him, dumps him in a hole, pours gasoline over the body, and burns it. From there we are introduced to this family’s vigilant way of life, a regiment supervised by the aforementioned father; an apparent fusion of the writer/director’s stepdad and his deceased father. The father’s caution is reasonable, though many a cinematic family portrait would judge his panicky impulse to guard his flock as that same loving whim often gets in the way of his ability to nurture. I would imagine that all parents (of both humans and animals) can relate to this conundrum. The ignorantly blissful don’t seem to inherit this hopeless world.

When the remnants of the plagued world come barging in, the family must choose whether or not to harbor or kill. The man doing the late-night barging claims to have a starving wife and child a few miles away. They choose to accommodate, under the strength in numbers pretext though it’s fair to suspect that empathy – thanks largely to the presence of a helpless child – played a large part in this decision. Their empathy pays off for much of the rest of the film, as this fortified shelter becomes something like a home. During this section, we are privy to actual happiness and harmony while knowing damn well that Trey Edward Shults has something nasty up his sleeve. The survival here consists of more than just ducking and dodging contagions, there is also the business of providing food and water for sustenance, as well as chopping wood for warmth. The shelter itself requires upkeep, the kind that seek to keep potentially infected humans and animals out. For unspecified reasons, the dangers are believed to be worse at night.  

Eventually the shit hits the fan, bonds begin to fade giving way to the type of miserable self-preservation that we all sensed as soon as we saw the A24 logo. The finale is ridiculous, shoving its once practical characters into an unnerved hysteria, resulting in dismal mayhem. Shults betrays his own meticulously conjured character dispositions in leu of an apparatus unleashed to reaffirm very typical and boring toe-dipping horror hipster clichés. Maybe I’m out of step, but most of these artsy genre hype machines inherit the tired genetic traits and lack that sense of go-for-broke madness that Hooper and Romero put forth so beautifully. There is a lack of vulnerability about it all, something carefully measured and full of posturing. The ending is horrible and truly tragic, and yet somehow ineffective.

Similarly, Gore Verbinski’s latest spent $40 mil and 146 very long minutes trying to convince me that CGI eels ought to haunt my dreams. The story was written by Verbinski and condensed into a screenplay by Justin Haythe and entails a young malefactor sent to retrieve his CEO boss from a dubious spa treatment/sanitarium in the Swiss Alps where he, thanks to pesky meddling, quickly becomes a patient. The mere thought of being admitted and imprisoned whilst sane is scary enough, add the forced treatments which here include drilling into teeth without anesthesia (been there and done that) and other archaic healing techniques only add to the paranoia of walls closing in for good. Eventually, this young brash dupe is driven insane only to soon realize the truth behind the local lore of an insane incestuous baron who performed and killed local peasants. I forgot to mention that said baron was burnt alive in the reactionary fire set by the angry villagers 200 years prior to the events happening onscreen.

Personally, I enjoyed this part of the story because it kicks the otherwise stillborn plot into and unhinged and senseless motion. It’s clear that Verbinski is having fun dressing up and playing gothic in castle corridors, sadly this only constitutes about 15 minutes of his film. His influences are on clear display (Polanski, Scorsese, Kubrick, De Toth, Bava, Del Toro, Corman) so much so that his film ultimately gets buried beneath them. It has no purpose or identity and is thus ineffective at nearly every turn. Say what you will about his remake of The Ring, but not even its multiple twists and turns could slow it down. Here he’s simply a guy with too many tools at his disposal, a studio errand boy/talented artisan with 3.7 billion worth of box office cred to fund his every quirk. He and M. Night should hang out.