The David Gordon Green-ified first part of a trilogy requeling The Exorcist officially opened today. It avoided the Swift-pocalypse. I realize these are horrible sentences with awful words for anyone to be writing or reading, so thank you for bearing with me.
I want you to know that I came close to liking The Exorcist: Believer, but it had way too many weaknesses.
It’s still better than Exorcist: The Beginning though. SPOILERS
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I was there in 1999 for the theatrical release of The Version You’ve Never Seen Before (a version of The Exorcist that, as I explain here, I didn’t care for and still don’t). Until today, that was the first and only time I’ve seen the movie in theaters.
The 50th Anniversary of the movie is being celebrated this October with a theatrical re-release, and a new Blumhouse/David Gordon Green sequel is premiering in four days. Fans are perhaps rightfully apprehensive about Exorcist: Believer, featuring the return of Ellen Burstyn as Chris McNeil. I myself have a surprising, almost overwhelming love for 75% of the Exorcist “franchise”, so stay tuned to this blog for my thoughts on this new chapter.
The version I saw this afternoon is something called “The Extended Director’s Cut,” and if I’m not mistaken, it’s a print that’s even further from “The Director’s Cut,” which takes elements from “The Version You’ve Never Seen” but excludes the worst parts of that one, such as the cheap, worthless CGI morphs slapped all over the place.
For me it was definitely a new experience of watching The Exorcist. Here’s why (spoilers for “The Extended Director’s Cut”}:
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Amidst a horde of pink-garbed Barbie celebrants in a south Salt Lake Valley Megaplex, I attended a preview screening of the Australian Talk To Me. A24 can now add another notch to its horror cult classic belt.
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Let’s make this a short one. Consecration should have been my happy place: violent nuns, folk horror, and possession. But it was only muddled and confusing. There are positives – elegant acting by leads Jena Malone, Janet Suzman and Danny Huston, and some lovely, awe inspiring scenery in Scotland. The plot weaves childhood abuse, an ancient pagan cult countered by an order of pseudo-Knights Templar, and an occult possession mystery around the suicide of Jena Malone’s priest brother. As Marya E. Gates of RogerEbert.com notes, the nods to nunsploitation weakly cue Ken Russell’s The Devils. Ultimately, there exists some sort of commentary about religion, but nothing of substance comes through.
Of all the 2023 horrors I’ve taken in to date, why did it have to be the nunsploitation one that left me unimpressed?
Now click on the image below and do your shopping on Amazon to support my blog, or it’s a rap on the knuckles….
In 2020, right before the start of the pandemic, Brandon Cronenberg made me ill. Possessor, his excellent second directorial feature, bored its way into my brain as surely as the fictional device its corporate assassins used on their victims. Its protagonist un-mothered, shed her skin, and become something fully stripped of anything close to human.
Similar, if not parallel, trajectories awaited Alexander Skaarsgard’s character in Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool.
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I’ve yet to read a novel by Paul Tremblay, and that’s something I plan to correct very soon. I have however seen plenty of films by M. Night Shyamalan, and the director is no point of contention for me. I think his work is just fine. I’ve enjoyed many of his movies, disliked one or two others, and landed somewhere in the middle on a third set.
But I will always love and appreciate his commitment to the paranormal thriller genre and his ever contentious “twists,” of which….
SPOILERS………
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There exists on our earthly plane that slightly bizarre mutant offspring of “the devil movie” – or “satanic cinema” – that is a bit hard to define and place in a neat box.
It’s Biblically apocalyptic but not exactly a straightforward Omen narrative involving The Antichrist.
It’s not usually as hateful as the writings of Paul Jenkins and Timothy LaHaye. It will usually involve angels from Judeo Christian mythology, and they won’t always be benevolent. And it will most likely mutate the Book of Revelations into some bizarre convoluted paths.
Well, 2023’s The Devil Conspiracy is the mutanty mutant mutation of the mutant cousin of this horror subgenre. So mutated, it makes the X-Men look like clean-cut Young Republicans with no super powers whatsoever. But the thing to know is, this movie’s thematic ambition is A-M-B-I-T-I-O-N. And despite the messy looniness, I can only applaud and celebrate its bizarre flexes.
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My friend and frequent podcast collaborator once said, “never get in a car with someone who’s been in Girls.” Sage advise perhaps for the young girl who co-stars with Allison Williams in M3gan. Then again, this latest Blumhouse horror joint depends heavily on Williams’s absolute lack of desire to be a parent. It is right for the sake of this story for us to get in her car have her take us on this ride.
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Welcome to Chillerpop’s inaugural Halloween 2021 Trick or Treat! For this project I asked friends far and…well, far…to pick a movie for me to cover in a blog post.
My friend Allan was the second person to reply to my prompt, but he’s going first! “Chef Al,” as he’s known on the excellent podcast Kiss The Goat, is armed with exceptional culinary skills and a vicious wit aimed straight at the throat of nasty-ass consumerist chain restaurant food.
Chef Al would like you to listen to the podcast Decoding the Gurus, for anyone needing to navigate or vet any “guru” they’re considering following or trusting – which is a fit for the film he chose, the 2016 horror comedy Another Evil.
“If you’re not averse to going low key,” he added.
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2021 has been quite a year thus far for all the things that get me. Netflix aired the documentary “Sons of Sam” which leans into the satanic panic conspiracy theories espoused by Maury Terry in his book “The Ultimate Evil.” And then, the forces behind the theatrical juggernaut Conjuring-verse have resuscitated the “Devil Made Me Do It” case, which loomed large in my 80’s Connecticut-based childhood.
I’ve waxed plenty nostalgic about it here, and though I want to avoid rehashing what I’ve already said countless of times ad infinitum, I will need to revisit the trial of Arne Johnson, Gerald Brittle’s rotten book “The Devil in Connecticut,” and our sainted paladins of the paranormal, Ed and Lorraine Warren.
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