Splice (2010)

Behold Frankenstein spliced with Pygmalion

Canadian director Vincenzo Natali is known mostly for his poverty row masterpiece Cube. Unbeknownst to many, he has directed three feature films since then: Cypher, Nothing and this, Splice, his most ambitious film to date. So ambitious that Natali had to cross the pond in order to find financing, the main reason being that the Americans were put off by the central sex scene featured in the early screenplay. Apparently, only the French could foresee the incredible beauty of this scene and so they contributed money, as well as the courageous Delphine Chanéac to the project, giving it wings to shock and surprise the world.

Long lost twins: Delphine Chanéac kisses a plush toy

representing an early incarnation of her character

Nature and nurture

The most striking feature of Splice is that it manages the uneasy mix of science-fiction and Shakespearian family drama (with all the tragic deaths that this involves). The interpenetration of the two genres is scary in that it suggests a total blurring of boundaries between the purely cartesian drive toward science and the usage of science to remedy personal ills. If the story owes a lot to Shelley and Whale's Frankenstein (including the names of the protagonists, Elsa and Clive), it doesn't pertain solely to the folly of man trying to mimic God. It talks also about the woes caused by the emotional involvement in the domain of science and how it pertains to the recent breakthroughs in human DNA patents. Specifically, it talks about parenting in our era of performance and the subsequent objectification of children. By focusing on an engineered child, a child object, Splice is thus a cautionary tale that warns us not against the excesses of science, but the practical uses thereof.

Did you know that two sterile people deciding to have a child in vitro run a high risk of "giving birth" to a handicapped baby? There's a very simple explanation for that: nature has made people sterile who shouldn't have children. Obviously, the issue is much more complex than that since you must also consider the exterior elements that can cause hormonal imbalances. But at any rate, sterility should be a natural detractor to child-rearing. I know this to be a very sad and very cruel fact of life. But it remains just that: a fact. What people are doing, and will continue doing with in vitro insemination and cloning is to reproduce themselves in ways that are not natural, ways that nature will eventually reject, ways with which we, as humans, are not equipped to deal. Instead of investing large sums of public money for fertility treatments that will ultimately go against nature, we should clean out our environment and encourage fertile people to procreate, first by raising their wealth, secondly by making family a social priority, and not merely an individual preference. Most of all, we should never let science become a simple alternative to sexual reproduction, for love, and most importantly, self-involvement will certainly be lost through the intermediary of machines.

The fake womb

Splice stars Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley as Clive and Elsa (named after the actors who portrayed Frakenstein and the bride of Frankenstein back in the 1930s), a couple of genius geneticists specialized in DNA-splicing. With funds from a very large pharmaceutical company, they have created a couple of turd-like hybrids from a compound of animal DNA, hoping to isolate a drug-producing gene within their creatures to allow the mass-production of cattle-healing products. Having perfected their splicing technique in the process, they are soon ready to undertake the next step in their work, namely the splicing of animal and human DNA. Apparently, the two scientists are initially driven by innovation and selflessness, but nothing is farther from the truth. Their true motivations for doing so remain unclear at first, although we can infer that Elsa wishes for an alternative to pregnancy.

The truth is that she fears motherhood, not only in its down-to-Earth, physical aspects (as exemplified by her wish to "break" male pregnancy in order to even the balance of nature), but also in the form of parenting (as exemplified by the hatred she feels toward her own mother and her subsequent fear of inadequacy). Thus, she injects a little of her DNA into the experiment, attempting to "reproduce" herself by way of sexless interaction. The creature she gives birth to is not merely a surrogate child, but a real child, at least in her fragile mind. But the primordial link between mother and daughter is severed here, and this primordial link is the umbilical cord, with which one is tied to her progeny in the most intimate, most self-sacrificing, and ultimately most beautiful relationship devised by nature. By displacing the womb outside the body, not only is the female scientist alienating her most sought-after, truly godly power of life, but she is disavowing the importance of the flesh in the process of child-rearing.

"It's alive, it's alive!": Elsa meets a diminutive iteration of herself

In their R&D lab, Clive and Elsa have access to an artificial womb named Betty. This is a swell little construct made of a thick rubber sack bathing in a pool of amniotic fluid surrounded by transparent "aquarium" walls. The thing is inseminated very much like a human womb, with some help from a cylindric metal syringe extended toward an ovum, which it imprints with customized genetic material. Once the baby is taking form, Betty is also able to monitor its heart rate, allowing the "parents" to artificially check in on its well-being. This provides suspense in one occasion during which the monitor flatlines, jeopardizing the experiment at hand as well as Elsa's mental well-being. It is also the first sign pointing to a problematic pregnancy. Scant days later, we see Betty overflowing, or "breaking her waters" as the Ferrari-fast cell multiplication process has already resulted in a ripe creature. Overwhelming with maternal joy, Elsa plunges her hand in the makeshift uterus, only to have it gripped by the creature inside. In a moment of panic, Clive smashes the aquarium walls and guts the rubber sack with a knife, in effect performing an unneeded Caesarean.

The very imagery selected to depict the birth of the creature entails many dark implications concerning science-assisted birth, paramount of which is the grotesque replication of nature. The human womb, be it a burden for self-seeking women or a man-humbling blessing, is much more than a baby oven, overreaching greatly its simple description with an endless array of psychoanalytical implications, whereas the artificial womb is exactly the sum of its parts. It can house a baby, but it cannot nurture it. It can provide warmth, but not loving warmth. Using a fake womb is the first of an endless series of substitutions performed by the two geneticists, which makes a mockery of parenthood as a scientific, or merely a cartesian endeavor. As the narrative evolves, it will become clearer and clearer how the drive to create a human being must be met with emotional maturity and selfless involvement, two things lacking in childish Clive and Elsa.

Family of Frankenstein
Thanks a nifty narrative twist, the development of their "baby" greatly exceeds the normal growth rate, turning from a grotesque tadpole into an androgynous humanoid in a matter of weeks. This provokes many setbacks for the emotionally retarded couple. At first, Clive doesn't want the child and he attempts to "abort" it by opening the gas valve in the lab. Later, he tries to drown her in a pool of ice water, being trumped after the deed by her amphibious lungs. All the while, Elsa is growing fond of her daughter, teaching her to read and write, and marveling at the rapid progress she is making. In turn, the little girl, named Dren, proves docile and easygoing, delighting her mother even more. But given her accelerated growth, she soon becomes an adolescent, and starts losing interest in her over-protecting mother, setting her sights on Clive instead. This is when things take a turn for the worst, where casual teenage rebellion creates bitter rivalries and eventually destroys the family.

Infanticidal rage: Clive tries to put an end to Elsa's dream

To Elsa, Dren is a source of pride and joy. Not only is she a smashing scientific success, but also an object on which to bestow the love she was refused as a child. I emphasized the word "object" because this is how Dren is treated by her surrogate mother, who wishes to correct the mistakes of the past but ends up repeating them instead, with even direr consequences. Because of her perverted drive to exorcize the demons from her childhood, Elsa fails to see her daughter as an individual, and not merely a copy meant to liberate her own mind. Her main shortcoming as a parent, and what reveals her objectification of Dren under the most unflattering light, is how she fails to acknowledge her daughter's rebellious inclinations as signs of normal adolescent behavior, punishing her for it with ritualistic scientific butchery.

When Dren attacks her mother after an emotionally heated confrontation, waving her stinger in the face of the "oppressor" as an act of violent self-assertion, Elsa counter-attacks. She drugs the creature, straps her to an operating table and severs the stinger, despite the heart-breaking moans coming from Dren's throat. In order to justify her actions, she states that the creature "had become unstable", which is a defining feature of adolescence widely recognized by every parent from every culture. In covering her anger and dissatisfaction under the mask of scientific rigor, she only points out to her lack of empathy and humanity necessary to raise a child.

As a society, we are prompt to "cure" problems without even attempting to find the cause thereof, just like Elsa does here. By removing a part of her child, not only is she doing violence against her, but she merely displaces the problem stemming from her own lack of parenting skills. To a certain extent, this is like giving pills to a child to correct behavioral problems grown at home. The instantaneous and convenient recourse to science as a way to remove problems without self-involvement is a symptom of our times crystallized in the film, along with other trends in bad parenting, such as overindulgence.

It is interesting to note that Clive has a very different outlook on immaculate conception than Elsa's, and this pertains both to his parenting preferences and self-referral. In his eyes, adolescent Dren (and not the grotesque tadpole from previous incarnations) is an unbridled version of Elsa, and thus he falls in love with her just as he did with Elsa back when she wasn't a frigid workaholic. What's more is that, contrary to his girlfriend, he doesn't see himself as a "parent", but as a craftsman. Hence, the reference to Pygmalion, the Cypriot sculptor who fell in love with one of his statues. Smitten by his creation, Clive is torn by wet dreams involving the whimsical creature. In one instance, where he is scanning the camera screens monitoring Dren's activities, he catches a glimpse of her swimming seductively in a water tank. As he touches the screen, so too does Dren touch the camera and they are instantly bound by unspeakable erotic attraction. Sexual tension between the two actually occupies a large part of screentime during the second part of the film, culminating in an eye-popping sex scene that should have people talking.

By passionately fucking Dren, Clive is also using her as an object through which he can fulfill secret desires. In this scene, she becomes a substitute for Elsa, for whom he entertains unfulfilled sexual fantasies. Funny thing is that he gives Dren an orgasm but fails to reach one himself for he catches a glimpse of his girlfriend on the threshold of the barn, looking in at the incestuous spectacle of treason orchestrated before her unbelieving eyes. At any rate, Clive never acts as a father to Dren, more like an overindulgent stepfather or a guy friend, proving his inadequacy as a parent by flirting with the young one and fulfilling her minute desires in a bid to acquire her love through softness. Contrary to Elsa, his failure stems not from his selfishness, but his joyous immaturity and lack of spine. He is the lenient half of the couple, trying to balance Elsa's rigid stance with equally negative laissez-faire, proving that two wrongs don't make a right.

More than anything else, it is the two scientists' clashing opinions in regards to the conception of Dren which causes their family to falter and die. And this proves another point in relation to the issue of parenting. Early in the film, Clive shares his desire to have a child with Elsa, who seems disgusted by the idea, stating that she would only consider it if science could crack male pregnancy. In other words, she sees pregnancy as a form of impairment, a handicap if you will, which is not the case for Clive, who sees it as a way to prove their commitment to each other and generate a real offspring. At this point, it becomes obvious how their unreconcilable discrepancy of opinions will jeopardize the growth of their common hybrid project. Their further involvement in the project merely widens the gap between their two diverging opinions. Whereas Clive sees the birth of Dren as a freak accident, Elsa sees it as a welcome alternative to what she considers fearsome involvement in the process of child-rearing. By injecting some of her DNA into a test tube and inseminating an ovum with it, she tries to evade the rigid demands of nature, unaware that such a shortcut will actually alienate her from the child. By failing to mention her involvement to Clive, she also alienates him from the whole process. So, what we got here is a child-object created by Elsa without the approval of her boyfriend, who secretly wishes it dead. What this complex web of lies and deceit goes to show is how child-rearing should never be an individual choice, but the concerted effort of two willing participants. The crux of tragedy hence lies in the addition of solitudes which comes to constitute the family of Clive and Elsa, for which Dren is but a third parallel strand running unattached to the first two. Not only should child-rearing be a mutual enterprise but it should also be a natural one, two things which it isn't here, thanks to the readily available "science" of procreation.

The death of femininity

The sex scene involving Clive and his "daughter" Dren is undoubtedly the highlight of the film. It is at once disturbing, due to the incestuous nature of the act, but also strangely enticing, considering the many delightful features that Dren has inherited from hybridity. Not only is she quadrumanous, but she also has wings that spread out of her arms while atop her lover as well as a severed stinger that regenerates when she climaxes in what can only be described as a female ejaculation. The fascinating interplay of Dren and Clive's bodies, the way they wrestle for position on the dirty wooden floor and passionately undress their partner make this scene way hotter than the previous sex scene featuring Clive and Elsa, wherein the two scientists clumsily and rapidly have at it, removing not even one article of clothing. This discrepancy helps us understand the attraction of engineered youth. As I mentioned earlier, Clive sees Dren as a younger, freer version of Elsa and thus he can transfer his love toward the creature with relative ease. Hence, the "real" femininity of Elsa dies in the hyper-femininity of her daughter, Dren.

Chloe and Black Swan, eat your heart out! This is the best sex

scene of the year!

I have already approached the question of hyper-femininity in an essay focusing on Major Motoko Kusanagi, the shapely protagonist from Ghost in the Shell. Using Jean Baudrillard's theories on the simulacrum, which perfectly complements the philosophical stance of the film, I suggested that femininity dies in its own image. In the works of Masamune Shirow and Mamoru Oshii, this means that the female cyberbody has killed the natural female form by becoming the only "real" point of reference. Here, my theory works equally well, given the interplay of mirror images permeating Natali's film. In the eyes of Clive, Elsa has died in Dren, an engineered image of her. Her brilliant, but frigid femininity is not enticing to Clive at this point. He would much rather give in to the sexual availability and warmth of Dren, who eventually becomes a referential model of femininity despite her hybrid nature. Dren is fragile, docile, fun-loving, and seductive, all ideal female traits for a nerdy, ill-assured man like Clive for which she also becomes the ideal lover. Ironically, it is Elsa who precipitates Dren's sexualization by applying makeup on her, makeup that she had kept from her days as a girl. In doing so, she transfers her own femininity into her daughter, effectively killing it in the process. The mirror, which has enticed Clive, has first absorbed Elsa.

Dren's femininity overwhelms that of her mother Elsa

Playing an hybrid

By portraying Dren as she does, Delphine Chanéac makes the most of a demanding role, not only managing to emulate the creature's awkward movement seamlessly but appearing as a dual character who is both a vulnerable child, and a seductive, commanding woman. During the course of the film, she manages to sadden you with her plight, and at the same time seduce you with a sort of enterprising candor in the realm of sex. Chanéac achieves all of this with mere noises tacked onto the soundtrack, limiting her output mostly to Dren's oft melancholy, oft cheerful facial expressions. More importantly, she bares it all for Natali's camera, and for the publicity stills from the international release. Her genitalia is conveniently concealed under a bent limb, but even so, congratulations are in order for this young woman, if not for her courage, then for her crucial contribution to the narrative and its weirdly seductive atmosphere. With a lesser actress, the film might've crumbled under the weight of its ambitious reconstruction of classic tales. But thanks to Chanéac's gloriously showcased androgynous beauty and savvy dosage of whimsical-cum-dramatic attitude, she launches it into orbit instead.

Our sympathy for Dren is a crucial tenet of the film's efficiency. It allows us to reflect on the actions of her parents with somber seriousness. At first sight, her lack of freedom and "monstrous" aspect liken her to the Frankenstein monster. But unlike Karloff's character, the most despicable abuse she is subjected to comes not from a reactionary mob, but from her own creators, and especially Elsa, for whom Dren is a daughter whenever she is docile and a test subject when she is rebellious. This abuse allows the film to hammer home its point about illegitimate parenting with a resounding bang. But it would not have been possible, had Chanéac's voiceless acting not been so affective.

Cyclical visions

According to author Vincenzo Natali, this film is meant as a Greek tragedy, a notion I have tackled by referring to Pygmalion and Shakespeare. But since the film is basically a reworking of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, it lends itself to mythological lore right from the start. As you know, Prometheus is the Titan who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to men, thus transferring the powers of gods unto humans. Frankenstein, just like Clive and Elsa, has stolen the secret of life from God and given it to humanity for its own selfish amusement. The dire fate of all three protagonists, the constant betrayals and murder attempts as well as the incestuous carnal acts comprised in Splice's narrative are further tenets of tragic construction. But in the end, such olden storytelling devices are meant to prove that history will constantly repeat itself, making man to perpetually be the instrument of his own suffering. If anticipation is herein tied to classicism, it is in telling the age-old story of human greed and selfishness. Pushing the envelope a little further, the film proposes a meditation not only on the unchanging nature of humanity, but on the topical re-contextualisation of the modern family in which it takes place, transposing the Athenian agoras into our own child-less homes by discussing the issue of parenting in very concrete terms. In telling the story of two unprepared and overworked parents confronted with sudden teenage rebellion, Natali crafts a universal tale of fear. In telling the story of child-object Dren, he crafts a soon-to-be universal tale of fear engineered by the cold selfishness of loveless reproduction. But in the end, he warns us that nature will always be a step ahead from humanity, whose fate is that which nature will choose.

3,5/5 A topical, yet universal science-fiction tragedy containing unforgettable imagery.

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Friday the 13th meets The Crying Game, with Martin Scorsese at the helm.

Written and directed by Robert Hiltzik, whose entire film career has been dedicated to the Sleepaway Camp franchise (a fifth sequel is currently in the works with Hiltzik at the helm), this surprising slasher film contains many singular elements, including sympathetic teenage characters and a genuine sense of humor.

You will probably guess the identity of the killer in the first ten minutes, but the fun lies not in unmasking the perp but in discovering his motives. Besides, the film works better as a portrait of youth, sort of a coming-of-age film with darkly psychoanalytical implications, than a slasher film per se. And although psychoanalysis could be said to intrinsically characterize the sub-genre, it is never quite so emphasized as in this film. Since I mentioned The Crying Game in my opening statement, you may make an educated guess as to what I am implying... At any rate, no synopsis could truly do the film justice, save one that could magically infer all the sharp turns of phrase present and echo the obsessive hiss from the closing shot.

The good, the bad and the weird

Although the premise might sound atrociously dated (teenagers falling prey to a vengeful killer in a summer camp), Sleepaway Camp is much more than your average teenage slasher. It's a well-played (often without words), surprisingly involving and entirely cultish effort in narrative excess. It contains many unique characters and situations, the likes of which you couldn't even dream of seeing back at Camp Crystal Lake. There's a bevy of foul-mouthed campers who would put David Mamet to shame, a pedophile cook, an incongruous romance between a gorgeous young counselor and the aging owner of the camp, kids chopped to bits with an axe, and plenty of sexual hijinks revolving around a seriously messed-up protagonist. If none of this strikes your fancy, then you might as well return to the complacency of Friday the 13th. But if you like your slasher films with a psychoanalytical twist ending right out of giallos, Bosch-esque depictions of corpses à la Se7en and vigorous exchanges of words straight out of Goodfellas, then run to your nearest video store and find out why Eli Roth has put this film in his personal top five (along with Troll 2, Creepshow, Zombi 2 and Pieces).

For those who doubt the influence of Sleepaway Camp,

simply consider this colorful Japanese artwork

Sleepaway Camp is the story of Angela, a shy, introspective youth and her protective cousin Ricky. When Angela leaves town for a summer at camp Arawak, her whacked-out mother entrusts Ricky with her, then bids them farewell in a scene that could fast become a classic of over-acting. When the two teenagers reach camp, the good stuff keeps coming. Parked on the grass inbetween surging children, some of the most flamboyant characters from the cast are introduced. There's cigar-totting, murder-covering camp owner Mel (Mike Kellin), abnormally broad-shouldered beefcake and head counselor Ronnie (Paul DeAngelo), token black sous-chef Ben (Robert Earl Jones) and perverted chef Artie (Owen Hugues). The latter two share a brief exchange that should put you in a receptive mindset right away. As the children come rushing past him, the camera focuses on Artie, who makes a colorful remark to the effect that his mouth is watering with perverted anticipation. When Ben replies that none of the children are old enough to understand what's on his mind, Artie asserts that there's no such thing as too young, only too old. Ben then laughs at the joke even though it is no joke, acting as if his friend had commented on a busty broad instead of elementary school children. If this sort of political incorrectness doesn't make your brows raise instantly, then I don't know what can. For one, I was delighted. And luckily for me, this is the kind of deliciously refreshing plays on convention that ornate the entire film.

The horror of everyday life

When Artie is done drooling and the camera cuts back to Angela and Ricky, we see the latter being reacquainted with old friends Paul (a faithful buddy of his who will also become the tragic love interest of Angela) and Judy (an ex-girlfriend whose over-confidence and forked tongue have grown simultaneously with her breasts). Ricky then leaves Angela, who reaches the girls' cabin, where we are introduced to Meg (M-E-G, as spelled by the lovely Katherine Kamhi), a total bitch from frame 1 and a catalyst in the ensuing martyrdom of Angela. Thus, all the main players are revealed, and there begins what is essentially a slice of summer camp life caught on tape. Because although the narrative contains attempted molestation, child beating and gruesome executions, some of which featuring kids no older than twelve, its crux lies in the depiction of everyday events constituting camp life. Hence, we witness the rough-edged friendship of boys, lots of water-centered pranks, budding romances, healthy antagonisms stemming from sport practice, casual bullying and bitch fits among the girls, all depicted with colorful dialogue and involving interplays of bodies. All of these elements contribute to the appearance of normality that permeates the film and under which the roots of dissension are growing. Just like the outstretched arm extruding from the stagnant waters of a zombie lake, rippling the still surface with angry waves, so too must repressed individuality violently break down the wall of conformity. And this is what happens here, provoking a slew of "accident"-type murders perpetrated by a not-so mysterious assassin who manages to elude the suspicion of onscreen characters until the very (disturbing) last frame.

Meg is preparing for a hot date with camp owner Mel

Yuck...

In a distinctive fashion that helps validate its main point, the film noticeably breaks away from other slashers of the era by foregrounding the campers and not the vapid teenage counselors. Instead of focusing on nubile youths humping each other, the film chooses instead to tell the story of children on the arduous path to teenagehood and only in doing so does it become horrific. The horror here lies not in the murders, but in the social stigmatization which is the burden of Angela. The incessant taunting, the molestation attempts, the betrayal of friends and the low-flying qualifiers thrown her way, paramount of which is Judy's "carpenter's dream" remark, all concur to create a truly hostile environment that's palpable to anybody who's ever been, or has simply felt different. By showcasing the execution of creepy bullies, the film thus becomes a juvenile fantasy, a liberating dream from the shackles of overwhelming conformity. The materialization of vengeful feelings is much more tangible here than in other similar films because it derives from what's happening in the story, not merely what happened before the credits. The clash between difference and sameness, here is where the essence, and the unfathomable horror, of summer camps lie, as portrayed by Hiltzik with surprising flair.

Like many dramatic heroines before her, Angela is a victim of circumstances. She does absolutely nothing to deserve the punishments bestowed upon her. Actually, she does nothing at all, observing a vow of silence for the most part of the film, simply staring at people who grow increasingly annoyed with her. As exemplified by this narrative, it is not boastful arrogance which society has trouble accepting, but quiet observation. In a world where loudmouth malcontents run the show, it seems only fair that introspective subtlety should be marked and looked down upon. In this particular case, silence isolates Angela a great deal since all other characters are running their mouths like an army of Tommy Devitos and Ricky Romas. Shy, introspective, and unable to generate the sympathy of others, she is left with very limited modes of expression, including her empty gaze and some rare, meaningless chatter. Luckily, she soon finds an alternative way to assert herself, which I will let you discover for yourself.

Angela's stare is her only mode of expression. Or is it?

A sign of the ages

Much to my surprise, the film has garnered a lot of negative press from film critics at the time, only now being "rediscovered" as something more in-tune with popular tastes. During my research, I read a lot of catastrophic reviews containing marked annoyance protruding like a bloody knife out of the water. John Stanley called it a "weak-kneed slasher flick, without flair for gore". This being an extreme example, the consensus seems to lean toward plagiarism, earning the film such qualifiers as "run-of-the-mill" and "clone" of the inferior Friday the 13th, with which it shares almost only the main location and the stalker shots, which were already a staple of the giallo in the 60s. Seeing all this hatred directed at what is essentially an energetic film filled with enterprising actors, tasty dialogues and super-nasty kills, paramount of which involves a curling iron and a vagina (ouch!), I understood that history and only history can be the judge of such films. In other words, only time can tell what is run-of-the-mill and what isn't. This is called the test of time. And those who can withstand it are not always those you'd have first thought. Here, it is narrative excess that distinguishes the film, especially toward the end. And this feature distinguishes it not so much from other films of the era, but rather from the films made since. Clearly, a curling iron in the vagina, even if only implied, would have a hard time making it onscreen today. There's the pedophile aspect also and the teenage nudity, as well as the murder of kids that would also have a hard time passing by censors. That said, a film containing rarer acts of violence is not better de facto, but it certainly helps it stand out from the mass, which makes it a more prized item amongst aficionados.

More to the point, it shows the evolution of mentalities in matters of morality, which has now seemed to soften in terms of graphic violence (as exemplified by the rise of the torture porn sub-genre), but harden in terms of sex. If you simply look at how prude the remake of lurid The Wicker Man is, then you will be truly awakened to the contradictory state of current affairs, wherein sex sells, but only if packaged in pink aluminum wrappers. Standing out from the masses also means appealing to the most intrinsic and incongruous fears of the viewer. You may think me crazy, but I believe that the curling iron murder is a rare example of female-oriented events within horror films. If you think about it, the only affect it can create is amongst the girls in the audience. Who use curling irons? Girls. Who have vaginas? Girls. Thus, only them can possibly imagine what it could feel like to be raped with a red-hot iron bar. This singles them out as horror film enthusiasts, making them part of the family. And it talks directly to their own fears, maybe even traumatizing them a bit. The other murder scenes do not involve such extreme imagery; they focus instead on common fears such as drowning, bee stings and scalding. So, there's a little something for everybody here. And since the film freely alternates between the childish world of boys from Ricky's story and the cruel world of girls epitomized by the martyrdom of Angela, it tiptoes around the traps of phallocentrism, thus complicating its categorization and psycho-feminist dismissal.

On the graphic power of pickled bodies

Like it did for Se7en, the after-the-fact revelation of murdered victims actually strengthens the spectacle thereof. Instead of showing knifes puncturing through rubber flesh with scarlet-colored blood gushing out in crude close-ups, we are treated to the sight of corpses at various stages of decay, most of which are more striking than the felled bimbos of lesser slashers, who disappear from the screen right after their death. Here, the depiction of death usually entails more than a quick knife to the throat, sometimes reaching near-brilliant levels of grotesquery. The grayish skin and dried-out wounds of one bloodless victim tells volumes about the circumstances of her death, driving a witness to murderous hysteria. As for the bloated arms and face of the scalded cook, I'm sure they will amaze and disgust you with the pulsating boils and scraps of peeled skin covering their reddened surface.

All in all, the kill count is fairly low here, but the quality thereof greatly outweighs the quantity. And if you follow the trail of corpses, you will unmask the killer in no time. What will prove hard to find is the motivation behind the kills, the unpredictable source of madness validated only by rare, slightly opaque flashbacks. That said, those flashbacks protrude only slightly from the smooth narrative surface, acting along with the murders as mere roadside attractions punctuating the linear trail followed by the plot. The highway-type narrative model works fine here because, as I mentioned earlier, the film's efficiency lies not in preserving mystery or generating shock, but in depicting the boring, mundane horror of teenagehood.

Artie is hotter than ever

Fishing for an audience

Sleepaway Camp is a film that demands rediscovery. For those who can appreciate it, the film contains many eye-catching elements: the flamboyant homoeroticism, the tight clothing worn by muscular cyborgs, the gruesome makeup covering the killer's mutilated victims, the devilish bitterness of teenage vamps and Mamet-ian tirades born out of hormonal fury, all of which are inscribed in a strikingly realistic framework. Its inclusion of oddball characters and touchy sexual material further help it become one of the under-appreciated gems of its time. The film's elusive cult status is surely due in part to the abysmal trailer and lackluster cover art featuring an impaled sneaker over a backgrounded letter handwritten in juvenile characters. Both elements make the film look like the Friday the 13th clone described by reviewers, which menaces to over-saturate the slasher sub-genre. But don't be fooled by such outside appearances. What's inside is much more interesting, and so is what lies underneath...

3/5 A gutsy, energetic and entirely distinctive entry in a saturated genre.

Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

It's been many, many, many years now since I first heard about the legendary Cannibal Holocaust. I must've been no more than twelve when I was introduced to enthusiastic reviews praising it as one of the most shocking, but also one of the most important horror films of all times. For long, it was inscribed on my wish list in golden, cursive letters and all of its nastier bits were imprinted in my mind like the hypothetical Christmas gifts of an over-imaginative child. Inspired only by vague descriptions, I had imagined the turtle scene and the emasculation scene in vivid details, making them an almost tangible part of my global film culture.

If it's been years since I've first heard about Cannibal Holocaust, it's been only days since I first saw it. Other than the film's relative rarity, the main reason why I had steered clear until now was Umberto Lenzi's Cannibal ferox (1981), which was (wrongfully) heralded as "the most violent movie ever made" and often considered a companion piece to Deodato's film (with which it shares a similar premise). Before I saw it, I was exalted with anticipation. I had even convinced a friend to watch it along, applauding myself for what I thought would gross him out of his mind. But soon after the film started, boredom was our only companion in the depths of the Amazonian jungle. This left a very bitter taste in my mouth, one that would grow into unjustified disdain for all Italian cannibal films.

This just goes to show that every film is in island, or an isolated entity. Even when bound by genre, one film can always surpass its kin by either creativity, intelligence or sheer passion. The truth of the matter is, Cannibal Holocaust not only surpasses ferox by a great margin, it also surpasses the majority of horror films from the 80s. It is a true classic. It grips your balls and it grips your mind while boasting a very relevant message about the nature of televisual images and the monstrosity of colonialism, a message not limited to the "pie-faced attempts at morality" contained in the dialogue but nestling rather in the brilliantly layered storytelling structure.

But despite all of these qualities, the most simple explanation for the film's success is the most visceral one, namely its showcasing of grippingly realistic images depicting extreme acts of cruelty, most notable of which is the live slaughter of a turtle whose head is severed, than all of its limbs and majestic shell. These are images that you will hardly be able to shake off from your feverish mind, let alone see again in a contemporary film. Here, and only here is where cinema shows you its raw, unmitigated power.

This here is real turtle flesh, folks. And believe me,

you've never seen it so raw...

Although many fans and naysayers alike tend to focus on the film's nastiness and its shock value, I found with great surprise that its relevance lied somewhere else entirely. I knew everything about the turtle scene and the re-cut version of the film wherein all animal cruelty has been excised (which is absurd considering the exploitative nature of the film and its intrinsic critique of the extremes of documentary cinema). I knew about the emasculation scene, the rape scene and even the un-filmed piranha scene, which are considered by many international observers to be the main staples of the film. Yet, I had never heard about the very worst scenes of the film, the ones containing extreme images of colonialist violence. You see, the film is an explicit critique of the sensationalist nature of contemporary media, but it is an even more potent critique of colonialism. Let us simply consider the synopsis of the film and its central opposition between the scholarly protagonist and the young documentarists whose work he is trying to reclaim from the jungle.

We are first introduced to the work of Alan Yates via a TV report informing us of his disappearance. It seems that Yates and his crew of fairly respected documentarists were attempting what no man has ever achieved with success, namely documenting the lives of "primitive" cannibals from the Amazonian region know as the Green Inferno, when they all disappeared without a trace. The TV report then proceeds to inform us that a new expedition is now being put together in order to find out what happened to Yates and crew. This expedition is to be led by New York anthropologist Harold Monroe (Robert Kerman), whom we are told has already been involved in the field study of many "primitive" races around the world.

The first half of the film chronicles the journey of Professor Monroe into the heart of the Green Inferno using an invisible cinematic apparatus. Although this section contains plenty of suspenseful moments pertaining to the uneasy relationship between Monroe, his two guides (a savvy, gun-totting, coke-snorting though guy and a Native youth) and the indigenous populations of cannibals, it constitutes the most conventional portion of the film. Eventually, Monroe finds a gruesome bone sculpture made with the remnants of Yates and crew. Not much later, he also finds their film canisters, neatly hung on a vine in the camp of the "tree people".

The second half of the film begins with the return of these canisters to New York, and from there begins the complex exposition of Alan Yates' crimes and those of media concerns wishing to use his footage to secure the spectatorship of thrill-seeking North Americans. Not unlike Michael Moore, Yates is more of a showman than a true documentarist. He is one to create the reality which he films instead of merely documenting it, or commenting on it. This is made explicit early in the second part when one of his producers shows Monroe footage of African army men shooting at blindfolded civilians, telling him that this was a set-up arranged by Yates. Obviously, the footage shot within the Green Inferno is likewise dishonest. More than dishonest, it is actually horrific. It shows the documentarists indulging in repulsive acts of colonialist violence, setting the huts of natives afire, killing their livestock, raping their women... What we find out from this material is not the barbarity of primitives, but the barbarity of contemporary men. We also find out that the deaths of Yates and crew is mere retribution for the heinous acts of which they are guilty. The unveiling of these acts is made under the gaze of Monroe and the TV producers who wish to broadcast the footage for mass entertainment and this leads to a heated debate about the irresponsible sensationalism of contemporary media.

Far from simply justifying the first act (wherein the goal is to bring home Yates' footage), the second act also manages to successfully superpose many levels of storytelling (the traditional exposition of Professor Monroe's actions shot with an invisible camera, the documentary-like interviews of the deceased's relatives shot with a TV camera and the the found footage from Yates' expedition, shot with two different hand-held cameras who constantly complement each other's work), creating in the process a supremely relevant, self-reflexive meditation on the nature of truth when crystalized by the camera. That said, the onscreen slaughter of a beautiful turtle is crucial in creating the affect necessary to make you question the boundaries of documentary filmmaking. As for the human deaths, the cinéma vérité style makes them more than carefully-staged events, closely likening them to snuff, which has furthered helped Cannibal Holocaust garner international attention and shake the belief systems of many serious critics, which is quite an achievement considering that this was originally intended as merely a grindhouse film.

When in Rome...

At the heart of the film lies a clash of ideologies regarding the etiquette of world exploration. Whereas Monroe advocates quiet observation, then respectful emulation of his Amazonian hosts, acting like a deferent guest, the young documentarists rather see themselves as the masters in occupied land. The colonialist violence they thus perpetrate is what I consider to be the film's most horrific aspect.

Here are Cortezian conquerors irrupting into a village within the Green Inferno, the very same village wherein Monroe and his two guides first made contact with the locals, and scaring away the villagers with their rifles, kicking and shooting a small pig tethered to a pole, setting huts afire, forcing people inside at gunpoint and finally, fucking triumphantly on the charred remains. For one, I believe that the sex scene involving Alan and Faye was the most disturbing bit in the entire film for it perfectly exemplifies the unfathomable perversity of the conquering spirit. Fucking on the floor of a hut you have just torched in front of the natives you just made homeless: you can hardly do worse than that. Well... you can gang-rape a native girl and then laugh when you see her entire body impaled on a post.

While their awfulness fluctuates, all of these crimes are inscribed within the colonialist mindset warranted by the presupposition of superiority deriving from technological advancement. When Alan boasts that it is the law of the jungle that compels him and his crew to do violence on the "weaker" natives, he is merely drawing on the flawed logic of conquistadores to justify his genocidal rights. The film's critique of sensationalism in the media may be more explicit, but its critique of colonialism is much more poignant. The documentarists depicted here have not merely taken what they wanted out of the Amazonian people, they have ridiculed their culture and humiliated them in the process by displaying utterly excessive force. So when Professor Monroe utters the closing line of the film to the effect that we are the real cannibals, I took that as a condemnation of the colonialist spirit at work in Alan Yates' films, that is the strongly-held belief that civilized Whites are necessarily superior to other "races". As if tagging someone as primitive instantly gave you a right over his life. As if carrying weapons and technology that made you god-like in appearance actually gave you the rights of gods. We are the cannibals for colonialism is the ultimate act of savagery and we are all guilty of it, everyday. We may not have sinked machetes into their skulls and eaten their guts, but we have cannibalized many foreigners nonetheless. First and foremost, we did so by manipulating their image, making them out to be somewhat "lesser" than us, as exemplified here. Then, we have subsequently imposed our economic and cultural hegemony on the basis of that conclusion, validating our actions through an illusory superiority.

Other than Monroe's witty commentary, the final shot contains another element of interest to the acute observer: the logo on the great big truck passing behind the Professor is strangely similar to the tribal marking seen earlier on the neck of a native girl. This also goes to show that we too are barbaric in our insistence on graphic markings showing one's standing within society. Only ours our corporate logos with which we dress ourselves, content that we are to own such or such brand of clothing. This pertains also to our cannibalizing hegemony since these symbols of prestige are often generated by the labor of enslaved foreigners against which we do violence on a daily basis, even from the comfort and apparent normality of our homes. What if in turn, as Monroe suggests to a self-satisfied TV exec, the "primitives" would enter our homes and dictate their laws? The question is obvious, but what if the shoe was on the other foot? Could we consider slave drivers to be anything other than barbaric?

Alan Yates (Carl Gabriel Yorke) definitely makes it in my short list of

top film villains. Here, he justifies colonialist violence by alluding to

the law of the jungle

"We are the cannibals" also pertains to our devouring the misery of others as entertainment. This apparently simplistic assertion, which could be understood as a mere critique of macabre news briefs, actually reveals primordial concerns about the ethics of documentary filmmaking. That said, Cannibal Holocaust tackles two crucial questions that have obsessed film commentators since the days of Robert Flaherty: the question of non-intervention and that of "staged truth".

The former question pertains to the inaction of the documentarist who detaches himself from horrific events by hiding behind the camera. In the present film, we see Alan and crew witnessing the burial of a newborn baby and the execution of his mother. Is their inaction a form of complicity in the events depicted? If you won't even consider this question under the present circumstances, consider this: a war journalist catching the wounding of fellow soldiers on tape. Must he drop his camera to lend a hand or must he continue filming, burshing thus a fairer portrait of war? If he continues filming, isn't he cannibalizing his felled comrades, using their individual plights as mere episodes in the drama of war? If you consider that sensationalist footage necessarily involves some sort of live misfortune bestowed on fellow human beings, isn't the very essence of sensationalism questionable? And isn't our wanting to see sensationalist footage akin to a death sentence made in the name of entertainment? If we come back to the example of the war journalist, which is a classic example in the appraisal of documentary ethics, we find that non-intervention can actually benefit truth in the sense that slow, painful death is a truth of war that needs to be captured and exposed for what it is, namely an unspeakable horror that needs never be reproduced. But the problem with the doctrine of sensationalism is that it benefits only the immediate sensibility of viewers in a bid to keep them tuned in. Truth is merely instrumental in the process and this tends to devaluate human life a great deal. If the capture of live deaths does not help prevent further deaths, but rather exists only to give nihilistic North-Americans a kick, then we're in a shitty state of affairs is what the film is trying to say.

As for the question concerning the manipulation of truth, it is also tied to sensationalism insofar as it helps channel the interest and opinions of viewers through shock. The scene wherein we see African militaries executing civilians plainly exposes the unethical nature of documentary filmmaking with an agenda. Québécois filmmakers have coined the term "assumed subjectivity" to describe how documentaries necessary reflect their makers' preferences in terms of framing and editing. That said, every documentary necessarily reflect its maker's outlook on life. But it is one thing to interpret the material at hand. Staging events is quite another. One involves simply a passionate opinion, while the other involves lying. Of course, utilitarians will tell you that lying is acceptable insofar as it benefits a good cause. But such logic is quite dangerous if you consider that the definition of "a good cause" varies tremendously from one individual to the other. After all, even Hitler was fighting for the "good cause"... but it turns out that this good cause was the extermination of Jews.

Crude political analogies aside, documentary filmmaking should be akin to science. Like a scientist, a documentarist should not have a preconceived idea about the material he is about to film. Of course, he is entitled to an opinion, which is what everybody has in regards to every possible topic. What he shouldn't have are inflexible biases and foregone conclusions. If a scientist conducts a study, he should never disregard any results on the basis of personal bias. Likewise, the ideal documentarist is one who forges his opinion as reality slowly reveals its nature in front of his lens. He must approach reality with initial candor, and not force reality to fit his agenda.

Many of the American and Anglo-Canadian representatives of direct cinema believed the ideal of documentary filmmaking to be "fly on the wall"-type observation. No intervention, just observation. The rationale behind this is that truth will reveal itself to all individual viewers in many varied forms. Truth is polymorphous, not unique. Hence, it cannot fit an agenda. This is what these idealistic pioneers believed. And these people here find reflection in the character of Harold Monroe, who, contrarily to Yates, favors observation and quiet awe to boisterous intervention and opportunistic lies. As for Yates, he rather belongs with the showmen, or people using the documentary medium to help sell their own brand of truth. Most famous of them is Michael Moore, the leftist answer to the swarming conservative pundits, the Democratic Rush Limbaugh. Here is a man who makes a mockery of documentary filmmaking, especially in the sense that it was understood by the purists from the 50s and 60s.

Clearly, Moore is not a man of observation. He is a man of action. While that may be great for those who believe that the Left truly needs an impetuous strongman, it is not for those who cherish documentary cinema for what it is, namely a documentation of reality. Aside from cramming tear-inducing music, flamboyant theatrics and his own personal (and very effective) brand of fake whimsical candor into his films, he also disseminates half-truths and bare-faced lies... as if manipulation alone was not enough.

For one, I was fooled by Bowling for Columbine. But as soon as he crossed the border in Sicko, Moore brazenly entered familiar territory and that's when the mask fell off. I was appalled to see how he depicted health care in Canada. Health care in Canada, especially in Quebec, is hell! The system is grossly underfunded and incredibly understaffed despite the ample participation of every single taxpayer in the country. If you want to wait in the ER for 22 hours just to have three stitches done, then come to Quebec. Of course, this is the way we like it here. We like to know that we won't ruin ourselves if we get sick and we like to know that all of our neighbors share the same coverage. This is what Moore should've focused on. Instead, he decides to make Canada look like health care Heaven, which is a bold-faced lie.

I argued extensively with a friend about this issue but she wouldn't budge. According to her, the end justifies the means and thus lying is okay, as long as it conveys "the right message". Again, "the right message" is whatever anybody wants it to be. It can be mere spectacle, like the TV execs from Cannibal Holocaust wished. "The footage is unedited!", they tell Monroe as if such a consideration could justify the presentation of Yates' footage as documentary truth. What Deodato tells us here is that the news media have no use for the truth unless it is a by-product of agenda-setting and ratings-roofing sensationalism.

He also warns us about the suggestive power of manipulative images by highlighting the difference between Alan Yates as framed by TV cameras and the real Alan Yates revealed by his own footage. According to the opening TV report, he is a nice, friendly guy, which is how all showmen appear to be, given a little help by the studio heads who want to cash in on their power of attraction. But this is not at all the real Alan Yates, it is merely the Alan Yates that the studio heads want us to see, in order to better sell his footage later on. At first, we are all fooled by these images and we immediately suspect foul play from the "primitives", not from Yates. Thus, we too become the victims of TV and its version of truth, which we mechanically believe through years of conditioning.

Whereas Harold Monroe is more akin to D.A. Pennebaker,

Alan Yates would be Michael Moore

Despite its obvious superiority to most films of its ilk, Cannibal Holocaust has garnered a lot of bad press throughout the years, most of it pertaining only to dubious moral appraisals thereof. One of the funny things about mainstream film critique is that while most exploitation films are systematically dismissed, overlooked or discredited for what they are, any successful title whose influence exceeds the third run circuit will get a fairly different treatment. It will immediately come under severe scrutiny by the very same critics who would have dismissed its existence had it been contrived to the grindhouse.

In order to become prey to criticism, the successful exploitation film is instantly interpreted as something more than what it is by nature. And thus, it is reviewed as a serious, A-list film. In the case of Cannibal Holocaust, many of its detractors have pointed out the dubious morality derived from its use of violence to condemn violence and they did so without even considering the inherent contradiction in critiquing the immorality of a film which is immoral in nature. Hence, people have wrongly tagged it as a moralistic film containing exploitative violence whereas it is actually an exploitative film containing a moral, which is completely different. Criticizing Cannibal Holocaust for its exploitative violence is just like criticizing a porno film for its explicit depiction of sexuality.

Cannibal Holocaust is an exploitation film. Plain and simple. It was originally made with the sole purpose of showing graphic violence and sexuality in the tradition of other low-budget Italian cannibal films that have gotten much less publicity despite similar M.O.s. The only thing that seems to distinguish Deodato's classic film is the presence of a moral, which is what has pissed people off the most. According to bourgeois sensibilities, films of this ilk shouldn't even aspire to higher moral ideals since filth is filth is filth. For one, I believe that if an exploitation film contains social criticism, this should be considered a plus. Here, it proves that Deodato went above and beyond the call of duty and into the territory of higher art. I just wish that the snooty reviewers who analyzed his films as they would've Citizen Kane (1941) would simply think about the absurdity of doing so. I mean, haven't the detractors of Cannibal Holocaust ever watched a porno? If so, I wonder if they were angered by the lack of morality therein... and I wonder if this prevented them from jerking off to it.

What further pisses me off is the double standard at work here. While pie-faced moralism is the norm in many other genres, it is considered de facto to be incompatible with the horror genre. A lot of people seem to believe that you cannot condemn violence by showing violence, which is untrue. Just think about it with calm: if a director tries to repulse you with violence, which is the goal of horror, then he is not advocating violence. He is showing it to be repulsive. What's more is that most of the violence in Cannibal Holocaust is contextualized. The maiming of animals is done either for nutritional purposes or for protection, while the violence exerted by the cannibals is either ritualistic or defensive. As for the repulsive acts perpetrated by Yates and crew, they constitute the centerpiece of narrative construction. They are slowly revealed, with inserted commentaries and debates as to their unethical nature.

If you can't stomach animal "cruelty", then I doubt you're part of the target audience to begin with. But if you want to complain, go right ahead. You might have an argument in saying that entertainment cannot possibly validate the brutal slaughter of animals. Conversely, I believe that the death of those animals actually strengthens the main point of the film concerning human deaths as source of entertainment. Besides, these deaths greatly help consolidate the overall realism of the film, which further helps validate that point. Although I don't agree, I must admit that the doctrine vying for the right to life of animals over the needs of cinema is perfectly sound. And to its advocates, Deodato has made amend, stating in a 2000 interview linked to the release of the Grindhouse DVD, that killing animals was a stupid mistake. Personally, I think this is one of those fortunate mistakes that have enlightened film history, such as the inclusion of the impromptu line, "Here's looking at you, kid" in the final cut of Casablanca. But seeing the intense heat under which the film has come throughout the years, I will paraphrase Leone in order to best explain the situation. After seeing the Italian premiere of the film, the famous director of Once Upon a Time in the West is reputed to have written Deodato a letter containing the following comment: "Dear Ruggero, what a movie! The second part is a masterpiece of cinematographic realism, but everything seems so real that I think you will get in trouble with all the world". As stated by Leone, realism has indeed put Deodato in trouble, but at the same time, it has given him international recognition, proving once more that history is made by the rebels who will not shy away from rattling the foundations of received ideas.

Cannibal Holocaust's Amazonian jungle is not a paper-

mâché construct with brown tap-water running through

No matter what bias you may entertain toward the film, I'm sure you can grant it certain obvious merits. Cannibal Holocaust was shot on location in the Amazonian Rainforest. This alone is a sizable achievement. It was shot using a large cast of natives, which is another sizable achievement. This points to some really dedicated filmmakers who literally braved death (in the many forms it takes near the Amazon) to bring you back the images contained in the film. These are no mere sets that you see around the protagonists. There are no leaves tacked to plywood, nor are there rubber snakes being dragged by wires. What you see is real and there is thus real danger within every shot, which greatly heightens the realism of the ensemble to the point where you can hardly distinguish what is true and what is false, allowing Deodato to hammer his main point home with a swing from the mace. The man has made every conceivable effort in the name of cinema, and for this we should celebrate him, not dismiss him on moral grounds. After all, Griffith's Birth of a Nation is still a classic...

There is no contradiction at the heart of Cannibal Holocaust. It is a simply a superior exploitation film that transcends the stream of Italian cannibal films by reflecting on the nature of filmed images. It is not a critique of violence. I repeat, it is not a critique of violence. It is a critique of sensationalism in the news media and of colonialism, two traits that do not characterize the film. The difference between the violence depicted in the film and the violence depicted in the film-within-a-film is that the latter is real. And only as such is it dangerous. You see, genre cinema is a form of entertainment whereas the news media are a source of information. What you see in genre films are thus not lies, they're stories made to thrill you. You can't accuse them of being dishonest. On the other hand, Yates' footage, for which the media are vying, is. By staging events, not only does he misinform the viewers, but he creates full-fledged myths, such as that of cannibals, which Deodato works to deconstruct, defusing in the process the media's hold on our consciousness.

4/5 An historical document, not only in its realism and self-reflexivity, but in the international resonance of its unique message.

Devil (2010)

There are those films that you simply have got to see, films for which you have waited in anticipation for months, even years, films that can't possibly disappoint you. For me, every new film by either Darren Aronofsky or David Cronenberg is an immediate must-see. It doesn't matter if the film gets panned by every possible critic or if it gets booed by every single festival-goer in the world. I will still be there on opening night with a ticket in my hand and a large smile on my face. But then, there are those films that you know you are going to hate, films for which the most reliable critics award 1 star or no stars at all, films tagged with such enticing epithets as "dull", "vain", or worst, "moralistic". These films can entice you just as much for you often end up convincing yourself that they can't possibly be as bad as people say they are. The worst the reviews, the greater the curiosity, which is precisely what drove me toward Devil. Personally, I think that the general hatred that has been directed at M. Night Shyamalan in recent years is wholly unjustified. Hell, The Happening (2008) wasn't so bad. At least, it wasn't nearly as bad as people described it. So I thought maybe, just maybe, Devil could prove itself to be a happy surprise. Truth is, I didn't really believe it. And although I wasn't completely pissed off with the film, I must say that it is every bit as bad as the most virulent critics said.

The premise of Devil is intriguing. Handled differently, it could've resulted in a worthy film. The main plotline takes place almost entirely in camera as five "sinners" are trapped in an elevator wherein the Devil lurks, disguised as a human and hellbent on torturing his carefully-selected victims prior to dragging their souls to the Lake of Fire. This would be a fine set-up if psychological insight had been used to characterize the cunning outsider and to forward the narrative instead of crude morality, which drives and hampers the film at the same time. But none is so lucky as to find an inkling of subtlety in this film. The subplot involves a disillusioned police detective slowly recovering from the murder of his wife and child as well as a handful of supporting characters, each more expandable than the last, all of them watching helplessly as the prisoners are offed one by one. Just like every other character in the film, the detective is a mere symbol pertaining to a moral lesson. Narratively, he is purely instrumental, being just competent enough to gather intel that merely validates what the voice-over has made abundantly clear, namely that the entrapped characters are all guilty of a crime punishable by the Devil, while at the same time being just incompetent enough to misinterpret a detail and thus validate the atrocious twist pertaining to the Devil's identity. In the end, what the film teaches you is that, like the characters in the film, humans are mere pawns in a game of chess between God and the Devil. And the only thing we can do to save our souls is abide by God's laws. Contrarily to the apparent mandate of The Night Chronicles (of which Devil is the first of three chapters), which is to set supernatural thrillers in contemporary urban milieux, what we have here is a dated moral fable that would feel more at home in illuminated Medieval tomes.

Only by abiding to God's laws can we set the world straight

Where to begin? What's the single worst thing about Devil? Is it the annoying voice-over that explicitly foreshadows every event in the film, rendering all narrative development useless? Is it the constant recourse to divine intervention as a way to instantly justify any logical implausibility? Is it the voluntary slimming of narrative possibilities imposed by the main set? Is it the film's infuriating sense of morality? The atrocious twist ending? The erratic pace? The suspiciously lenient PG-13 rating? Honestly, I find it hard to summarize my complaints about this film. It seems that nothing is worthy of any praise here but the decent production values. Narratively, Devil is more than anemic, it is completely self-defeating. There is no real suspense to speak of, but tiny little bits thereof intercut with lengthy and entirely useless scenes of dreary police investigation. Not only is the film suffocatingly moralistic, but its very morality is highly dubious in nature. As for the ending, it merely pushes the film an extra mile down the narrow pit in which it started falling from frame one.

Speaking of frame one, you couldn't do worse in terms of see-through symbolism. This frame shows the skyline of downtime Philadelphia but in reverse. Actually, the entire credits are made up of skyscrapers pointing toward the ground, illustrating how our modern society is corrupt and hell-bound. But despite all this, despite the generalized decay of the moral fabric of society, only five people will be punished for it, five people selected to cover the entire range of crimes against God: the thief, the whore, the liar, the brute and the murderer. And although it would seem unfair to torture five sinners in a place where sin is endemic, simply consider this: God works in mysterious ways, that is by allowing the five sacrificial victims to get trapped in an elevator and be picked off one by one by the Devil. Personally, I believe that the existence of the Devil doesn't prove the existence of God, but rather disproves it, as do all forms of non-human evil. Metaphysics aside, divinities here have complete control over the narrative, and this gives ample justification for the screenwriters to revel in their apathy. You see, it is the Devil who has trapped the five sinners and it is He who decides their fate in accordance with the folktale narrated during the opening voice-over. Everything is written in advance and thus, the trials and tribulations of the firemen and detectives trying to rescue them are completely meaningless. What's worse is that the film explicitly insists on the meaninglessness of their actions. By constantly resorting to dreary voice-overs exposing the Devil's omnipotence, the screenwriters effectively defuse every plot point and every set piece they have toiled to create. There is a scene in which firemen are brought in to try and force the elevator doors and saw through the concrete walls surrounding the shaft. And right when they begin to set up, we are informed by "God's voice" (voice-over narration) that the Devil will never allow force to undermine his plans. So, we immediately know for a fact that the firemen's actions are useless. No suspense, no guessing, no sense either in showing us lengthy scenes wherein they tear through concrete with large circular saws. No sense elsewhere than in exposing and insisting on the omnipotence of the Devil and his divine insight as to what constitutes crimes punishable by psychological torture and death. Narratively, this is incredibly convenient as there is no need to explain how a virtual army of policemen and firemen can fail to force open an elevator door, to rewire the electrical current or even slide down the wires in the shaft onto the top of the cabin. "The Devil" explains it all. Hence, narrative depth is not only needless, it is impossible. What results is an excruciatingly boring, self-spoiling film in which nothing is relevant but the dubious central moral that preaches repentance to purse-snatchers and murderers alike, leaving only the latter alive because they are able to shed more tears in the face of death.

Hopefully, I won't spoil any enjoyment you might hypothetically have in watching the film when I tell you that the murderer in the group is spared by the Devil at the last minute in a typically Shyamalan-esque twist that will have you tightening your fist and grinding your teeth. You see, the murderous character is the last one standing and he must thus face the Devil. The Dark One, characterized only by oil-black retinas, towers above him and announces both their imminent departure toward the pits of Hell, at which point the criminal suddenly becomes repentant, shedding tears and begging for forgiveness. When he finally confesses his crimes to the police over the C.B., the Devil has no other choice than to let him live for he has atoned and his soul is now cleansed of the burden of sin. As a viewer, the Devil's lenience is really hard to swallow since the murderer's "good deed" is strangely akin to a deathbed confession, i.e. one you make solely out of fear of dying. However "sincere" this confession may be, what worth can it possibly have considering the circumstances under which it was made? The worth it does have is strictly determined by supernatural forces, and thus the rule of law becomes irrelevant and so too become the higher human values of forgiveness, understanding and compassion. By giving the gods an unconditional moral superiority, the film ends up relegating humanity once more to the cavern of ignorance and helplessness wherein the preachers of orthodoxy would like their followers to remain till the end of days. According to the tagline, "bad things happen for a reason", but that kind of logic is very problematic as well because although I understand why criminals need to be confronted with their crimes, this presupposes divine interference in the affairs of men, whom have invented law and social sciences to insure a basic, non-moral understanding of criminality. More importantly though, it presupposes that the good samaritans killed in the process of judging the sinners are necessary casualties... which is bullshit! I mean, where was God when the elevator mechanic and aging security guard who selflessly tried to lend a hand met with horrible deaths? Honestly, it takes a seriously twisted person to pretend that "bad things happen for a reason", unless they're speaking of a purely extraterrestrial reason, such as the self-enjoyment of divinities who laugh at humans and restrict us to rigid codes of conduct without taking anything else than our most reproachable acts into consideration. For one, I believe that drama is born out of human emotions, deeply ingrained emotions which can seep through the screen, page or canvas and into the hearts of the viewers or readers. Christian morality has no place in any form of drama for it is entirely extraterrestrial and completely out of touch with the true emotional concerns of human beings. Trying to sort individuals according to their various degrees of decency is like trying to fit square pegs in round holes; it doesn't take into account the full gamut of human emotions and the many circumstances leading to crime. All in all, the recourse to divinity as an all-encompassing explanation for the events onscreen reveals not only the screenwriters' complacency and laziness, but also their contempt for the idea of humanity as a self-defining, willful and free race.

The Devil's omnipotence is the tube of Crazy glue that

holds the screenplay together like broken china

Being a whodunit at heart, Devil is also impaired by the restrictive elevator set. Let me just ask a question here: how do you manage to hide the identity of a killer whose crimes are committed within a few feet of five people? The answer is: you can't, at least not without using some very cheap narrative gymnastics pertaining also to the overwhelming influence of divinity within the scenario. You see, the Devil can do anything he pleases, least of which is to magically turn off the ceiling lights of an elevator. Yep, you read that correctly: right before every murder, the lights flicker and the cabin is suddenly plunged in darkness. Right before every murder. Then, you hear screams and muffled sounds meant to let you know that "something nasty is going on", the nature of which remains unclear until you witness the aftermath. Personally, I couldn't believe my eyes when I realized that this would be a recurring M.O.. I was left aghast by the screenwriters' lack of imagination. I mean, I'm not talking of a single occurrence here, I'm talking systematic lights out whenever a crime is about to take place. This only makes the narrative even more predictable and frankly dishonest toward the viewer, who should at least be given decent clues in order to try and decipher the mystery of the Devil's identity. What this brought me to realize is that it takes some really efficient writing, and some highly competent acting, to manage a successful thriller contained in camera, especially if it is a whodunit! It takes subtle psychological insight and a rare sense of mise-en-scène, which is found to be completely lacking here. By using the cheapest, most crude way of turning the five victims against one another, that is by piling up corpses killed in the most illogical, unpredictable ways possible, the screenwriters end up brushing away the most interesting aspects of the Devil's persona, namely his overwhelming power of suggestion and ruthless cunning. In order words, they could've had the Devil using his forked tongue in order to manipulate the characters toward murder. This would have added some much-needed psychological depth to the scenario and kept the action out in the open, instead of covering it up with convenient shadows, which would have further warranted the in camera setting. By instead choosing the Devil's omnipotence as his distinctive feature and using this feature to glue the entire narrative together, the screenwriters have chosen the easy way out, ruining the efficiency of psychological tension and making puppets out of all the human characters and human viewers assembled to watch helplessly as their fellowmen are tried and sentenced outside of all socially established norms and regulations. Again, Devil is not simply a lazy film, it is a deeply offensive film for anybody who believes in the freedom of the human spirit.

Devil is less of a psychological thriller than a whodunit,

which is why it falls flat on its face

If at least the action would've been kept within the boundaries of the cabin, without any cut to other locales and the meaningless actions occurring therein, the film could've at least managed to create some tension. But as it is, every time the tempers flare, every time you feel that something exciting is about to happen, the film cuts from inside the cabin to a shot of some people observing the scene. Tension is immediately defused at the profit of irrelevant exposition. And that's your cue, folks: it's time to get up, get another beer. No need to pause the film, just get up and walk slowly to the kitchen, open the fridge, maybe scratch your ass a bit, consider the contents of the fridge. Then you can take a peek in the pantry; maybe there are some leftover cereals in there. Oh yes! And don't forget the beer! Believe me, you're gonna need that beer... Of course, you can also turn off your DVD player and indulge in another activity, which is what I would recommend. Make love instead, read a book, clean the living room: use your imagination, which isn't something you will be able to achieve by watching Devil. Personally, when I first read the film's synopsis, I was convinced that the entrapment of the five characters would be the cornerstone of tension-building and narrative development. I hadn't even thought that there could be a police investigation tacked on or any form of meddling with the purity of the claustrophobic thriller, which needs to be self-sustained lest it risks losing all of its power. Here, the reason for the entrapment is made overly explicit and the characters are exposed from outside, making the crux of the narrative lie elsewhere than in the immediate environment of these characters. This completely undermines the sense of immediacy inherent to in camera narratives. For those who know the film Cube (1997), I propose the following analogy: what if the scenes wherein the characters in the cube discuss their fate were intercut with scenes outside the cube. What would that do for you? Would it lessen tension? Imagine worse. Imagine that there was a military man monitoring the activities within the cube, to whom the film would cut whenever tension rose too feverishly between the entrapped characters. What would that do for you? What if that military man would reveal the entire purpose of the cube within the opening voice-over? What if Leaven and company were revealed as a bunch of criminals punished by a higher moral authority? Any combination of such occurrences would ruin the film. And every time Devil cut from the elevator cabin to the control room, I felt I was watching Cube and its architect was suddenly revealed, at the thought of which I narrowly choked on an imaginary plastic button.

What if Cube had had a control room wherein Benthamian observers

could exchange platitudes while Quentin was brutalizing Worth?

Another thing that bugged me about the film is its rating. Why is the film rated PG-13 when it shows slashed throats, impaled jugulars, twisted heads, and burned-out faces whereas Clerks (1994) and Office Space (1999) get NC-17 and R ratings respectively for some naughty language and sexual references? Is this the fruit of God's intervention? Is God protecting Devil because it encourages sinners to confess? For one, I believe that God is truly at work here, manifesting Himself through his minions at the MPAA who would soon prefer exposing youths to violence, especially if that violence is warranted by a Christian moral, than to foul language, which risks turning them into rebellious teens liable to hurt God's ears with biting profanity. The most twisted aspect of such censorship is that it displays a dangerously anachronistic sense of morality. Whereas Devil merely preaches the olden principles of a religion completely out of synch with modernity, Clerks and Office Space both convey equally wholesome, but entirely more relevant messages about self-responsibility and about love. Their outlook on life is not a sterile affair of stagnant moral values, but rather a lively dialogue about what makes humans tick and how they can better themselves. If these films contain foul language and sexual allusions, it is precisely because sex and profanity are a crucial part of human existence. Hence, their protagonists are much more realistic than the boring, overdetermined archetypes from Devil and only as such are they able to convey relevant moral lessons applicable in everyday life. The muzzling of these films merely proves the outdated philosophy of Jack Valenti's obscurantist legions. Now, I know this rant to be futile, but then again, I won't miss an opportunity to point out how wacky the American rating system is and how maddening it is to see that the complaining power of American interest groups overwhelms even the most basic common sense.

Let me tell you a story that I find relevant in trying to explain my intrinsic opposition to the flawed morality of Devil. And believe me, this is no silly folktale. It's about my late grandfather, may he never be forgotten. He was a calm and generous man who never gave in to anger, instead accepting his ploy with resignation and philosophy, working hard to provide food and shelter for his seven children. My entire family loved him very dearly and we all share fond memories of him. Nobody loved the man more than we did. When I learned of his death, a sharp pain struck my heart like a dagger laced with venom and bitter tears rushed out my eyelids. Soon, there was a pool of salty sorrow inbetween my feet and I could barely formulate words without sobbing. I was vacationing in NYC at the time, and my grandfather had just died back in Joliette. I couldn't forgive myself for not being at his bedside when he passed on... and I never will forgive myself. There was so much I wanted to say to him, so many loving words with which I would've wanted to leave him... It was all a personal tragedy, and I still bear it like a scar on my heart. Needless to say, I cut my vacation short and bought the first ticket back home to Montreal. On my way to the bus station on 42nd street, I broke down in tears. I had to ride all the way from 128th to 42nd street sobbing, much to the disinterest of the crowd surrounding me. My pain was mine alone and although it was bathed in New York indifference, it felt very real and very immediate to me. Upon getting back to Montreal, I immediately got to working on some farewell words to say during the funerals. I wanted to insist on the memories that me and my cousins could share about my grandfather, making him out to be the pleasant, loving man that made all of our childhoods so bright and sunny. For me, the funeral was an occasion for my family to gather together in mourning and share the good memories we had about a great man because although he had vanished, he would still live in our hearts. This moment was meant for us, the living, imperfect people who felt pain and sorrow, people through which our patriarch could live forever. But then, during the eulogy, the despicable priest behind the pulpit, that lowly Catholic swindler who doesn't know the first thing about family comes in and tells us that our grandfather has "now joined his true family up in Heaven". What the fuck did he mean, "true family"? Weren't we, the people physically amassed in painful mourning his only true family? The priest could've spat in our faces and it wouldn't have been worse than the hateful crime he committed against all of us, living, breathing humans with the ability to feel love, pain, anger, sadness and despair, telling us we aren't true, but that the hazy concept of Heaven is! To this day, I still remember my grandfather vividly and I remember just as vividly the insult proffered by that priest on that day. The point of this story is to show just how religion tends to systematically dwarf humans emotions into nothingness by focusing on the overwhelming presence of sterile divinities. Which is precisely why Devil fails miserably in its bid to create affect. While I earlier deplored the lack of psychological finesse within the film, I now understand that it was never about psychology, nor was it about emotion, pain, sorrow, about, love, hate or guilt. Devil is not even about humanity. It is about divinity and its superiority to us. Devil is about omnipotent deities and human puppets with no choice but to follow, as sheep would. It pertains to the betterment of humanity only in its relationship with God. Thus, you will find that the film contains no actual dialogue between the characters as to what constitutes sin, and in what measure sin is punishable by death, and not by the justice system put in place by humans. Everything here is revealed through monologues, as if the characters were speaking not to their fellowmen, but to the Almighty Himself when they appraised the value of each others' lives. Hence, repentance and forgiveness herein exist only as absolute moral values, not as elements within a dialogue, which tends to sterilize any attempt at a true understanding of the very values foregrounded by the film. Gandhi once said "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind", which is one of the great truths of this world. But to that, I would like to add: "eyeing only Heaven will make you blind to the whole world".

To conclude, I will not talk about Devil. I will simply cross the pond and marvel at a much more adult, more relevant film about repentance and forgiveness. That film is Andrea Arnold's Red Road (2006). Although prudes might argue otherwise, the two films are companion pieces. Both involve a killer who has killed in the same circumstances. Both involve a victim whose life is broken until bliss is found in forgiveness. Finally, both involve mystery and quiet observation within an investigative framework. But whereas the former film claims the omnipotence of absolute morality over sinful humans, the latter points out to the fragility, but overwhelming goodness of the human spirit. Although both films share the same basic message, one conveys it with the Medieval menace of fire and brimstone, while the other focuses on what's important, namely our lives on Earth, which we can all better if we stop and consider others for what they are, not for what they have done. If anything, Red Road is the perfect remedy to the poisonous Devil.

0,5/5 A self-defeating, narratively inept and terminally anachronistic moral fable that manages to insult both the viewer's intelligence and his dignity. If this is any indication of things to come, then you can already close the book on The Night Chronicles and Shyamalan's career.