Halloween Suggestion: The Door

I love browsing through free movies available on Amazon Prime, but admittedly, there's a lot of junk on there, especially in the horror genre -- a lot of formulaic, low-budget, unimaginative schlock that isn't worth your time. Patrick McBrearty's The Door is definitely low budget, but "unimaginative schlock" it ain't. McBrearty uses his budgetary limitations and turns them into advantages, to create a quietly compelling, wholly original story.

    The movie opens in a cafe, where a superficial viewing might misinterpret the dialogue between Matt and Owen as equally superficial plot exposition. It's explicitly stated, for example, that Matt and Owen are best friends, that Owen is broke, and that he's worried by the fact that he doesn't have any money to buy his girlfriend a gift for her birthday party that night.

    But director/ writer McBrearty is sneaky at how he slips some character development in here. Matt's preoccupation with his cell phone in this scene isn't just another "kids and their phones these days!" scene, it illustrates how little Matt is interested in Owen's concerns. It's equally telling when the scene ends and Matt, acting magnanimous, says "I got this!" as he picks up the check. Well, yeah, Matt's the only one who ate anything, but that doesn't stop him from thinking he's awesome for picking up the check.

    Matt is not a good friend.

    Desperate for money, Owen seems to stumble on to good fortune when he breaks up a mugging, and the grateful would-be victim offers Owen a job as a reward.

    "I'm a very rich man!" the businessman explains matter-of-factly as he gives Owen a bundle of cash as an advance, and if the dialogue seems so on-the-nose that it strikes as lazy screenwriting, that's okay -- the businessman's odd behavior is actually an intentional clue that something's not quite right.

    Owen's new job is certainly an odd one, reminiscent of many of the "creepy-pastas" so popular online in the past several years. As IMDb explains Owen's job, "$500 a night. 5 nights a week. All Owen has to do is wear a security uniform, sit in a chair in an otherwise abandoned warehouse, and make sure that an ominous door is never opened."

    Nobody will tell Owen what's on the other side of the door, and when he asks "but what happens if the door does open?", the answer is always the same: "It won't." Owen's no fool, and recognizes a non-answer when he hears, one, and also quickly figures out that anybody willing to pay $500 a night to make sure a door doesn't open, isn't as confident as they claim to be when they keep assuring him that it will never happen. But $500 is $500.

    After Owen is repeatedly told that his entire job is to make sure that the door must not be opened under any circumstances, and repeatedly assured that he's got nothing to worry about because the door never does open, he is, of course, immediately presented with a variety of circumstances that require him to open the door. A mysterious delivery shows up in the dead of night, with Owen's co-workers insisting that they need to drop off the contents of the box behind the door. Owen gets permission from somebody on the phone, and the voice seems to be that of his employer, but is it? When the deliverymen/ security officers return from behind the mysterious door, they are bloodied and out of breath, and, of course, continue the new tradition of refusing to answer any of Owen's questions.

    The story is really set into motion when a group of Owen's friends show up, unannounced, uninvited, unwelcome, and in varying degrees of intoxication. Their first instinct of course, is to try to get behind the door despite the fact that they know damn well it might cost Owen his desperately needed job. His so-called "friends" dismiss his concerns, make empty promises about how he won't get in trouble, do everything they can to jeopardize his job, and act like he's the jerk when he asks them to leave. Forget about ghosts and goblins, this is a horror film about toxic relationships.

    And yet it's so much more. When the drunkest of the group, Mia, manages to accidentally lock herself behind the door, that's when the fun starts in earnest. In search of Mia behind the forbidden door, Owen and his friends explore an abandoned, dark, maze-like warehouse, and here's where McBrearty really starts to shine.

    "Is it haunted" someone asks at one point, and the warehouse very well may be, but if it is, it's no typical Hollywood haunting with jump scares or crazy visual effects. No, McBrearty is more interested in scaring you with mind games, and damned if he doesn't turn out to be a master. McBrearty and his audio team must have had a field day, filling the soundtrack with half-heard footsteps, shuffling, and whispers, and yet equally unexplained loud crashes.

    "Did you hear that?" people keep asking each other, and the answer is usually "no." If the friend next to you says he didn't hear quiet whispering, okay, that's creepy, but understandable. If there's a loud bang and he insists he didn't hear that either, that's damn near terrifying. What's going on here? Are Owen and his friends lying to each other for some inexplicable reason? Are they hallucinating these noises? What about the shadows? Are they hallucinatory or real, ominous, or simply a trick of the lighting?

    At the risk of a minor spoiler, one of my favorite aspects of McBrearty's constant mind games is the "crushed can scene." Olivia insists she saw Matt stomp on a soda can and crush it. Matt insists he didn't. Neither one of them has any apparent reason to lie about something so trivial. Is one of them lying anyway? If so, why? Did something that looked like Matt crush the can?

    McBrearty has fun with presenting these weird questions and holding back on the answers as long as possible, causing Owen and his friends to alternately doubt each other's trustworthiness and their own sanity. It's a twist on the old "fear of the unknown," because what McBrearty is reveling in here is something more insidiously ill-defined, fear of uncertainty. Fear of the unknown has its limitations, because at least you can try to force yourself to accept that you don't know something. You know what's behind the door is a mystery, you know there's no way to predict what's around a corner or in a dark room. But . . . . what if you're not even sure of what you don't know and what you do? "I saw him crush the can, so I know he's lying" -- but then why is he so adamant that he didn't? "I know there's someone in the next room, because I heard someone banging around in there" -- but then why didn't anybody else hear it? And so on.

    Yes, the budget could be measured in the hundreds of dollars rather than in the millions. But don't let that scare you away from this unique (and scary!) exercise in creativity.

belated review: Under the Silver Lake

 

There's a scene late in Under the Silver Lake in which a character known only as "the Songwriter" plays a piano medley of songs he's written and attributed to other artists. He segues from classical pieces by Erik Satie to Gershwin and Berlin to the TV theme from Cheers so seamlessly you almost don't notice. When the medley starts to include piano versions of popular music from the 90s and modern day, the transitions become increasingly jarring, an effect the Songwriter is clearly intentionally striving for. This scene could easily be seen as a microcosm for the anomaly that is Under the Silver Lake.

    The story is set in motion when the protagonist, Sam (Andrew Garfield) meets Sarah, a beautiful new neighbor played by Riley Keough, and forms an instant connection with her one fun-filled night. They make plans to meet again the following day, only for Sam to find that Sarah, her roommates, and all of their possessions have mysteriously vanished from the apartment. The night wasn't Sam's imagination; the landlord agrees that Sarah and her roommates lived there, but sees absolutely nothing odd about their disappearance. They had pre-paid for the month, so as far as he's concerned, everything's copacetic. But over the course of the night, Sam had fallen in . . . . well, maybe not love, exactly, but deep like. He has to find out what happened to Sarah.

    What follows is, in some ways, a tribute to the film noir mysteries of classical Hollywood cinema. An intentionally retro score reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann (he who composed movie music for Hitchcock and Welles) plays as Sam's amateur investigation uncovers hidden codes, mysterious strangers, secret societies, a murdered millionaire, a grieving heiress, a mysterious, wealthy villain, and other tropes familiar to anyone who's watched a movie directed by Hitchcock or starring Bogie.

    But! This is no straight-forward pastiche. Director/ writer David Robert Mitchell packs this story with narrative and visual oddities that Hitchcock or Hawks never would have dreamed of: a dancer obsessed with balloons. A sexy, possibly supernatural serial killer who kills her victims while wearing nothing but an owl mask. Whereas detectives played by Humphrey Bogart or Jimmy Stewart might encounter a stalker dressed in a trench coat, the two mysterious strangers Sam keeps encountering are dressed as a pirate and a medieval king, respectively. Yes, other people see and even interact with the pirate. No, nobody but Sam notices that there's something odd about the fact that a man dressed as a pirate is wandering around the high society of Los Angeles.

    As for the time period the filmmaker's going for, that's intentionally all over the timeline, just like the Songwriter's alleged repertoire. The existence of Google and laptops firmly establishes the setting as modern day, but the protagonist dresses like he's in the early 80s, his favorite band is from the early 90s, and, as observed, the music score is made to sound like it's from the 40s or the 50s. When people in this movie listen to music, it's always on vinyl, never on CD or digital download. When they watch movies or TV, it's always from yesteryear -- early sixties at the most recent, but the 50s and 40s are also represented, and Sam even settles down to watch a silent film or two during his breaks from his investigation into Sarah's disappearance.

    Sam's investigation is fascinating as it unfolds, but equal parts maddening and satisfying for fans of the mystery genre. Much of his investigation follows a convoluted but undeniable logic as he goes from clue to clue, deciphering one code only for it to lead to another. Yet there are times when the ups and downs in Sam's life seem to depend entirely on coincidence. His mother obsesses over the films of Janet Gaynor, and when Sam passes out after binge drinking, he wakes up on Gaynor's grave. Not once but twice, Sam jumps through myriad hoops to learn of and gain access to a highly secret club, only for a couple of his friends to casually walk up to him once he's inside, and Sam chooses to accept this rather than rail at the unnecessary lengths he'd gone to. And coincidence, and coincidence, and so on, and so on.

    As for Sam himself, he's thoroughly believable, perhaps because, despite his own multiple quirks, he seems like the one normal person in contrast to the insanity all around him. He's unemployed, days away from being evicted, and he doesn't seem to care about or even register that those are bad things. He dresses so casually that he spends half of the film dressed in an undershirt and pajama pants, and yet even then finds a way to fit in at fancy cocktail parties and nightclubs, as in L.A., dressing fancy is respectable, but dressing differently is admirable.

    Yeah, that distinction is a fine line, but this whole movie is about establishing fine lines and then boldly walking over them. The contradictions run fast and furious here. Sam is a charming loser, a thoroughly irresponsible young man who has admirable tenacity when he sets his mind to something, capable of being at once flummoxed by his situation and easily adaptable to it. The movie is inherently fun and goofy and deadly serious about it. The sum of all those contradictions is that, like most films, this certainly isn't for everyone. As for me, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, and whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone who wants to see something new and creative and different.

R.I.P. T.J. Byrd

 The murder of Thomas Jefferson Byrd is a tragedy beyond the simple loss of a talented actor, but we all have our own tiny frames of reference for any celebrity we don’t know on a personal level, so I must limit my observations to the two performances of Byrd’s with which I am most familiar. And it’s telling that the combination of these mere two performances are enough to convey just how deeply talented Thomas Jefferson Byrd was as an actor.

Like everyone else (except those lucky enough to catch his early stage work) my first exposure to Byrd was his performance as Errol Barnes in Spike Lee’s Clockers.

Clockers works on many levels, one of them as a study of two contrasting forms of evil. The first and most central form of evil is the kind that masquerades as a force of good. This form of evil is embodied by local drug lord Rodney Little (Delroy Lindo), who treats his employees as if he’s one part employer, one part friend, and three parts surrogate father. He gets to know the street dealers who work for him, and for much of the film, he seems to be doing this out of a sincere love for them and misguided but earnest care for their well being. That’s precisely why his later eruption of both emotional and physical violence is so shocking to both the audience and the protagonist. We’re getting a hard look at Rodney’s true self, a true self so well masked that we can’t be blamed for not suspecting it.

Rodney’s enforcer is Errol Barnes, who is ostensibly an odd choice. Errol isn’t particularly muscular or skilled in the art of weaponry. He’s got a gun, but so do half the people on this street, or so Lee makes it seem.  If anything, Errol initially comes across as almost pathetic, his own body obviously half wrecked by the very drugs his crew peddles. So why in the world would a shrewd business man like Rodney pick Errol, of all people, to be his enforcer?

Because it works. What Errol lacks in musculature, he makes up for in attitude. A man built like a bouncer may seem intimidating at first, but what good are muscles, really, when you and all your enemies have guns? Errol is the type of guy who will actually, happily use his gun. He’s just eagerly waiting for the green light from Rodney, and he is all too eager to convey he might not even wait that long, if he feels the need for blood.

Byrd communicates this ruthlessness, this sliminess, this cold-hearted “”I don’t give a flying fuck” attitude not just with his words, but with his every inflection of those words that drip out of his mouth like sewage. Byrd depicts Errol as a man for whom kind words are few, far between, and unerringly disingenuous. He oozes danger and evil with every look he casts, every syllable he utters.

It is far too easy and oversimplified to argue that Lee just found someone who naturally emits waves of malevolent energy, and for proof that isn't the case at all, compare Errol to Evan Thomas, Sr., Byrd’s remarkably different character from Get on the Bus.

Nearly every character of this movie gets his own subplot, and Evan’s is that his son is a criminal who has been granted temporary parole furlough so that he can attend the Million Man March — on the condition that Junior remains handcuffed to his father the whole time, to prevent Junior’s escape. The uncomfortable, unintentional, symbolic irony of a young black man attending the march in chains is not intended by the filmmakers to be subtle, and it is openly discussed by the characters of the film.

There’s a lot going on here, and the dynamic of a stereotypical father and rebellious son relationship is presented with all its usual tropes, but pushed beyond that stereotype by the extreme situation. Senior may be disappointed by his son’s choices that had led to a life of crime, but he’s equally disappointed in his own failure to serve as a better role model.

How much blame does Evan Senior truly deserve? For our purposes in this discussion, it doesn’t matter, the point is that he feels equal parts pride and shame, that he communicates it all to the audience, not always just with his words, but with his very being. Whereas Errol was the embodiment of evil, Byrd presents Evan as the embodiment of fatherhood. The fact that Evan’s own experience of fatherhood is presented as something very specific takes nothing away from his status as Father with a capital F.

Key to this aspect of Byrd’s performance is that underneath the disappointment, pride, shame, and even underneath the harsh words Evan has for his son, there is a constant, mostly unspoken, affection for Evan Junior. This is eventually made explicit in the dialogue, but for the most part, director Spike Lee depends entirely on Byrd’s performance to convey this aspect of the character. Just listen to the way Evan Senior says the words “my son.” The love there is palpable even when Senior is using them in the context of an angry lecture. There’s a lot of anger and disappointment and perplexity, but every time Evan Senior says the phrase “my son,” you hear beyond the words. 

It takes a fine and skilled actor to hear the unspoken truth behind the spoken words. Thomas Jefferson Byrd will be missed.