On Blu-ray/DVD: THE LITTLE STRANGER (2018) and COLD SKIN (2018)

THE LITTLE STRANGER
(UK/Ireland - 2018)

Buried at the end of summer and released with little publicity, the gothic ghost story THE LITTLE STRANGER was a huge flop, opening in 23rd place and grossing $713,000 on just under 500 screens. Based on the 2009 novel by Sarah Waters and adapted by Lucinda Coxon (THE DANISH GIRL), the film was a momentum-killer for Oscar-nominated ROOM director Lenny Abrahamson, and while it succeeds in atmosphere with impeccable production design and a memorably foreboding haunted house, it's ultimately a chiller too distant and stand-offish for its own good. The house in question is Hundreds Hall, the home of the once-prominent Ayres family. But it's the late 1940s and the mansion and the family have seen better days. Scion Roderick (Will Poulter) is severely burn-scarred, disabled, and shell-shocked following his WWII heroics in the RAF, his mother Mrs. Ayres (Charlotte Rampling) still mourns the childhood death of her first-born daughter Susan, nicknamed "Suki," and other daughter Caroline (Ruth Wilson) is a spinster trying to hold what's left of her family together. Much of Hundreds Hall is closed off and they're down to one servant in clumsy teenager Betty (Liv Hill). It's Betty's bout with a cold that brings mild-mannered Dr. Faraday (Domhnall Gleeson) into their lives and begins a series of events that Roderick believes is being caused by a malevolent spirit residing in the house. Caroline's docile dog suddenly mauls a little girl with no provocation, Mrs. Ayres finds scribbling on a closet wall that seems to spell out "Suki," and an increasingly agitated Roderick sets fire to his room in an attempted suicidal self-immolation and is promptly carted off to an insane asylum. All the while, the perpetually gloomy Faraday grows fond of Caroline and starts aggressively pushing the idea of marriage, and is also dealing with his own issues that stem from a traumatic childhood visit to Hundreds Hall with his mother, who was once part of the servant staff.

There's some intriguing elements to THE LITTLE STRANGER, but the pace is so oppressively glacial that even fans of slow-burn horror will find it to be a patience-tester (Wilson has experience with this style, having starred in I AM THE PRETTY THING THAT LIVES IN THE HOUSE, the absolute slowest of all horror slow-burners). Abrahamson captures a mood of sustained dread, but he's so focused on that aspect that with the exception of one well-done sequence where Mrs. Ayers encounters something in an empty room, the scares never come and all you're left with is a frustratingly ambiguous final shot that's more likely to provoke dismissal than discussion. Well-intentioned and well-acted (Rampling is, as always, a treasure who elevates everything she's in), but this is a meandering, ponderous bore. (R, 112 mins)



COLD SKIN
(Spain/France - 2018)

Based on a novel by Albert Sanchez Pinol, the somewhat Lovecraftian COLD SKIN feels a lot like a throwback to those circa 2000-2003 Spanish-made Filmax/Fantastic Factory/Brian Yuzna productions. There's a definite DAGON influence here with its aquatic creatures and even some Stuart Gordon-like sexual transgression, and though French filmmaker Xavier Gens conveys it through sounds and implication, that artistic decision doesn't make it any less unsettling. Gens hasn't really lived up the promise of his 2007 feature debut FRONTIER(S), his contribution to the "New French Extreme" explosion from a decade and change ago. He had a miserable experience going Hollywood with HITMAN and while 2011's ultra-grim THE DIVIDE has some defenders, it's little more than an exploitative, post-apocalyptic SALO, or THE LAST BOMB SHELTER ON THE LEFT. He did some hired gun TV work before returning to the horror genre with 2017's barely-released and instantly-forgotten THE CRUCIFIXION, arguably the most pointless modern-era EXORCIST knockoff this side of THE VATICAN TAPES. Though not without its flaws and budgetary shortcomings, the ambitious and often surprisingly thoughtful COLD SKIN is Gens' best film since FRONTIER(S) simply by virtue of it not being awful. That said, things get off to a shaky start with that oft-used Nietzsche quote about gazing into the abyss and it gazing back at you, which at this point is pretty much the screenwriting equivalent of walking into a Guitar Center and showing off by playing the intro to "Stairway to Heaven."

Set in late 1914 just as the world is heading toward war, a nameless meteorologist (David Oakes) is set to spend a year in voluntary "solitude-like exile" by manning the weather outpost on an isolated island near the Antarctic Circle. It's a job no one really wants unless they want to be alone (even the boat captain dropping him off asks "What are you running from?"), and the island's only other inhabitant is Gruner (Ray Stevenson, who stepped in when Stellan Skarsgard bailed during pre-production), the drunken and grizzled-bordering-on-feral lighthouse keeper, who informs him that his predecessor died not long after arriving a year earlier. Hunkered down for a year of cataloging wind and weather patterns, the meteorologist, dubbed "Friend" by Gruner, is in for a rude awakening when his cabin is attacked on the first night by a horde of amphibious creatures--resembling a cross-breeding of Voldemort with the Crawlers from THE DESCENT--who emerge from the water and only attack at night. The cabin catches fire and burns down, forcing Friend to find refuge at the lighthouse--somewhat fortified by spikes and makeshift barriers that merely slow the creatures down rather than keep them out--with Gruner. Friend also finds another surprise: Gruner has captured one of the female creatures, Aneris (Aura Garrido), and uses her as a sex slave. Friend and Gruner tentatively agree to share the lighthouse, forced to team up every night to fight off the persistent creatures as Gruner goes increasingly off the rails, especially once Friend starts treating the frightened Aneris with dignity and compassion. Given his past work, Gens is surprisingly restrained here, especially considering a key plot point being the sexual abuse of Aneris by Gruner. The creatures are an inconsistent mix of practical makeup and CGI, and the greenscreen work is occasionally shoddy, sometimes taking you out of the scene with a sense of artifice that doesn't appear to be by design. The attacking creatures storm the lighthouse in a very WORLD WAR Z fashion that's a little wonky and cartoonish, but there's some creepily effective moments throughout, particularly when Friend finds the dead meteorologist's notebook filled with sketches of a violent and sexual nature, with random scribblings like "Darwin was wrong." Stevenson is very good in a performance that grows unexpectedly complex as the film goes on, and Gens pulls off a few nice effects-aided technical shots, like a slow pan across the beach that takes the story from summer to winter. COLD SKIN needed a bigger budget to realize its full potential, but after a decade of floundering, this is Gens' most accomplished work since FRONTIER(S). (Unrated, 107 mins)

On Netflix: I AM THE PRETTY THING THAT LIVES IN THE HOUSE (2016)

I AM THE PRETTY THING 
THAT LIVES IN THE HOUSE
(US/Canada - 2016)

Written and directed by Osgood Perkins. Cast: Ruth Wilson, Paula Prentiss, Bob Balaban, Lucy Boynton, Erin Boyes, Brad Milne. (Unrated, 89 mins)

A cold, stark, slow-burning mood piece that received accolades at this year's Toronto Film Festival where it was acquired by Netflix, I AM THE PRETTY THING THAT LIVES IN THE HOUSE is the first released film by actor-turned writer/director Osgood Perkins (his first film, THE BLACKCOAT'S DAUGHTER, has been tied up in distribution limbo since 2015 and is due to be released in early 2017). The film feels very personal for Perkins, the son of legendary PSYCHO star Anthony Perkins and photographer Berry Berenson, and named after his actor grandfather Osgood Perkins, best known as the doomed mob boss toppled by Paul Muni's title character in the original 1932 version of SCARFACE. It's a story of lingering ghosts, both supernatural and psychological, and it's something that almost certainly carries emotional weight for Perkins after the traumatic loss of both of his parents, his father (to whom the film is dedicated), who died of AIDS in 1992, and his mother, who was on one of the planes flown into the World Trade Center on 9/11 nine years later. This is an uncompromising film that's unquestionably a singular, unique vision by its creator, made with no commercial consideration whatsoever. Unfortunately, that's also its downfall. From a plot perspective, you'll figure out the Shyamalanian twist five minutes in, unless you've never seen a movie before. That may be by design: Perkins doesn't seem particularly interested in telling a story as much as creating a mood and atmosphere. He succeeds for a while, but it makes for a hard sit, with 89 minutes feeling like four hours. This would've made a fine, eerie short film. As it is, it feels like about 15 minutes worth of material stretched out to an hour and a half, and ultimately, the emphasis on mood and the pervasive sense of dread only feels like stylistic smoke and mirrors, absurdly prolonging the obvious direction in which the flimsy narrative is headed at the most laborious pace imaginable.

Ruth Wilson (LUTHER, THE AFFAIR) stars as Lily, a hospice nurse hired by attorney Mr. Waxcap (Bob Balaban) to care for a client, famed horror novelist Iris Blum (the long-retired Paula Prentiss, who hasn't headlined a movie in over 30 years), who's in the latter stages of dementia. Arriving at Blum's isolated, rural Massachusetts home, the quiet, spinsterish Lily narrates the story and sets the dark tone by stating "I am 28 years old. I will never be 29." Early on, she makes a phone call and the phone cord is yanked by an unseen presence. 11 months go by and Lily has little to do but explore the old house as Iris sleeps most of the time, and when she's awake, constantly refers to Lily as "Polly." Lily assumes Polly is a long-absent daughter or loved one, but Waxcap says Iris has no children, and that Polly was the main character in her most famous novel, The Lady in the Walls. It's around this same time that Lily notices mold expanding over a spot on one of the walls as she begins reading the book, noticing strong parallels between the mindset of Polly and her own mental state after nearly a year in total seclusion from the outside world.

Perkins gives up the ghost--no pun intended--early on, with Lily's narration (done in a very exact, literary, and overly affected style by Wilson) stating "A house with a death in it can never be bought or sold...it can only be borrowed from the ghosts that have stayed behind," and "It's a terrible thing to look at oneself, and all the while see nothing." The voiceover is so omnipresent and the shots so photograph-still that PRETTY THING often feels like an audio book with visual accompaniment. The minimalist score (by Perkins' younger brother Elvis) and sound design showcase subtle rumblings and barely audible whispers that may or may not exist in Lily's head, and by the time Iris, in a moment of clarity, tells Lily "See yourself as others see you...even the prettiest things rot," the endgame is pretty apparent. Lily herself seems like an odd misfit lost in time, prone to exclamations like "Heavens to Betsy, no!" and chirpily talking to inanimate objects, like "There you are!" when she finds an old TV, and "Well! There's no need to be rude!" when it doesn't work. There's no middle ground with I AM THE PRETTY THING THAT LIVES IN THE HOUSE. The absolute slowest of the post-Ti West slow-burn horror films, people will either connect with its emphasis on establishing a distant chilliness with little to nothing happening or they'll quickly grow bored with its predictable story and exhausted with Lily's stilted, forced narration. I'm in the latter group, and while I appreciate what Perkins was doing and it's great to see Prentiss again after all these years (she and husband Richard Benjamin are longtime friends of the Perkins family), the approach is ultimately off-putting and the effect deadening after about 25 minutes.