It was inevitable that we’d get to this point. After working as part of the DisneyToon machine in the 2000s, and breaking out into the mainstream to properly embarrass Disney licenses in the 2010s, it was only a matter of time before Evan Spiliotopoulos stopped merely writing unnecessary stories and started directing his own. Admittedly, I wasn’t expecting that transition to take the form of a Raimi-produced horror film, but seeing him attached as director to a new movie still isn’t as shocking as it should be. What is quite shocking, however, is how much this film is already starting to sour in my memory less than an hour after watching it. And my thoughts on it weren’t exactly glowing to begin with.
Credit where it’s due in that, unlike the vast majority of the Spiliotopoulos oeuvre, there’s actually a germ of an idea at the heart of the thing, giving it a potential reason to exist beyond the almighty Shift+4. It’s the latest in the Conjuring-led resurgence of religious horror films, but the way it initially presents its story was surprisingly intriguing. The opening shot from the POV of a witch(?) being burned alive and getting a mask nailed onto her face, the recurring examinations of religious miracles in a ‘Fake News’ culture, notions of misplaced faith, even some nudging at the idea that the church might know more about certain tragedies than they’re letting on.
Shame the film does fuck-all with those ideas, though. In fact, it somehow does worse than fuck-all, as it manages to walk back a hefty amount of what it starts out with, to the point where I’m convinced that, for the finale, “Make room for Jesus” was all that was written down. It’s like watching a castrated version of Rupert Wainwright’s Stigmata, where any semblance of questioning the rigid structures of organised religion is hand-waved away just in case more religious viewers feel too threatened. It keeps talking about faith and doubt and miracles and Satan (yeah, the big bad isn’t even a witch, just a woman possessed; I literally just yawned reading that sentence back to myself), giving pretence that the story is a lot deeper and sharper than it actually is.
And yet the disappointment at all this isn’t the whole
story. There’s also how it just plain doesn’t work as a horror film. Craig
Wrobleski’s cinematography is occasionally pretty, but there’s zero atmosphere,
largely because the plot never even gives a chance for dread to build up about
what is behind the ‘miracles’ taking place in Generic Small Town, USA. Something’s
not right, we can tell right from the start, and there’s no tension because of
it. This isn't helped by how the effect for 'angelic' Mary is so goofy, I kept expecting the next cut to show the Teletubbies being crucified.
Then there’s the main attempts at scaring the audience, which mostly result in jump scares. And these are some of the most obnoxious, ‘Freddy Fazbear leaping at the screen’ jump scares I’ve seen in a horror movie, resorting to basically every cheap trick there is just to startle. The camera fixates on a single point, the audio goes quiet, push the exact same screamer image into the audience’s collective faces over and over again. Unless the sight of statues crying blood hasn’t been burned into your memory from just about every other horror film ever made, there’s not a lot here to get all sweaty about.
The fact that some small part of me is disappointed by this thing just makes me all the more irritated with it. The design for main spook Mary is interesting (and could’ve been excellent visual shorthand for the story of a much better movie), the actors try their best with bland material, and there’s whispers of proper thought-provoking ideas throughout. But the more I think back on all this, how incompetent the film craft is, how lazy the writing turns out, and how effortlessly it sucks up potential worth like Babylon the Great’s honeymoon tape, the more pissed off I get. It’s a cheap been-there-done-that horror film wearing the mask of something better; there’s some fucking visual shorthand for ya.
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