ARRIVAL (US - 2016) Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Written by Eric Heisserer. Cast: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Tzi Ma, Mark O'Brien, Russell Yuen. (PG-13, 116 mins) It's easy to see the trailers and the advertising for ARRIVAL and write it off as another alien invasion sci-fi movie, but it has bigger goals in mind and is ultimately about something else entirely. Having said that, the path it takes to get to where it's going borrows from a variety of sources. You'll easily spot ideas from other movies--CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND and CONTACT immediately spring to mind, and the imagery of spacecrafts hovering over cities invokes INDEPENDENCE DAY and DISTRICT 9 among others, while its somber mood and its focus on the deconstruction and composition of language and communication takes things into an alien invasion PONTYPOOL realm. Though it's all a primer for a surprise third-act revelation that packs a wallop and shows ARRIVAL's true intent, even that has distinct echoes of both a no-budget cult classic from a decade or so ago as well as a certain '90s sci-fi mindbender, albeit with less apocalyptic implications.
Twelve shell-like spacecrafts appear at various points around the world, with one of them in Montana. Linguistics professor Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is brought in by the US Army's Col. Weber (Forest Whitaker) as a consultant to attempt to establish communication with the visitors and decipher their language. Largely withdrawn from the world following her 12-year-old daughter's death from a rare form of cancer, Louise immerses herself in her work and still has military security clearance from some translation work she did for a counterterrorism operation a few years earlier. She's joined by theoritical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) as they enter a gravity-free portal at the base of the "Shell" and very slowly open a line of communication from behind a giant glass divider in the ship with a pair of large, heptapod beings that they dub "Abbott & Costello." It's a slow process--too slow for Weber and irate CIA agent Halpern (Michael Stuhlbarg), whose main goal is to ascertain the threat level and who demonstrate little patience for the curiosity of linguistics, physics, and the wonder of scientific discovery, even though Abbott & Costello have done nothing aggressive. A growing sense of paranoia and too much of an Alex Jones-type right-wing TV pundit gets the better of a few renegade soldiers who try to blow up the shell while Louise and Ian are in it, their lives spared when Abbott & Costello use their gravitational powers to force them down the portal after unsuccessfully trying to warn them about the explosive device. They clearly mean no harm, but neither Louise nor Ian can convince Weber and Halpern of that, and the global operation goes south when paranoid Chinese military leader Gen. Shang (Tzi Ma) issues an ultimatum to the Shell over China, threatening to blow it up if they don't retreat. Various countries, working together, soon go off the grid and stop sharing information with one another as talks break down, humanity grows impatient and violent, and Louise is haunted by recurring dreams and visions of her dead daughter.
Quebecois INCENDIES director Denis Villeneuve, who crossed over into the mainstream with 2013's PRISONERS and 2015's SICARIO, isn't as commercial this time out, with one shot in particular a winking nod to his bizarre 2014 Cronenbergian indie ENEMY. With its chilly, cerebral tone, ARRIVAL occasionally has a Cronenberg feel to it, or at least looks a lot like what might've happened if an in-his-prime Atom Egoyan made an alien invasion movie. It's a film that's not particularly interested in accommodating those looking for action and special effects, but it's still accessible enough for the multiplex. Villeneuve and screenwriter Eric Heisserer (LIGHTS OUT), who adapted Ted Chiang's short story "Story of Your Life," don't seem to bother pretending to camouflage ARRIVAL's obvious influences, but it finds its own voice quite unexpectedly, and what initially appear to be plot holes, contrivances, and corner-cutting actually make sense once all is revealed. Whether that makes ARRIVAL legitimately clever or very smooth at pulling off some bullshit dei ex machina may be one of the many post-viewing discussion topics. Even with its unexpected late-film developments, ARRIVAL isn't quite the instant classic that many reviewers are making it out to be, but it manages to accomplish a lot more than most genre films that opt to travel down a road paved with the ideas of so many movies that preceded it.
DOG EAT DOG (US/UK - 2016) Directed by Paul Schrader. Written by Matthew Wilder. Cast: Nicolas Cage, Willem Dafoe, Christopher Matthew Cook, Paul Schrader, Omar Dorsey, Louisa Krause, Melissa Bolona, Rey Gallegos, Nicky Whelan, Chelcie Melton, Ali Wasdovich, Louis Anthony Perez, Magi Avila, Robert Maples. (Unrated, 93 mins) After a pair of misfires with the crowd-funded THE CANYONS and the disowned DYING OF THE LIGHT, Paul Schrader returns with the crime drama DOG EAT DOG. The now-70-year-old Schrader, best known for his numerous collaborations with Martin Scorsese (he wrote TAXI DRIVER and RAGING BULL, among others) and directing his own films like BLUE COLLAR, AMERICAN GIGOLO, and AFFLICTION, is a filmmaker who seems to seek out conflict, with his head-butting with the producers of DYING OF THE LIGHT a virtual replay of his battles over his EXORCIST prequel DOMINION a decade earlier. Still bitter over having DYING OF THE LIGHT taken away from him in post, Schrader had final cut worked into his deal on DOG EAT DOG, and for a while, it's his most inspired work in years. Working from a novel by ex-con Edward Bunker (who co-wrote RUNAWAY TRAIN and played Mr. Blue in RESERVOIR DOGS), adapted by Matthew Wilder, Schrader is unapologetically making the movie he wants to make with DOG EAT DOG, jettisoning the faux indie pretensions of THE CANYONS but really showing a lack of discipline and focus at times. It jumps all over the place stylistically, playing with color and black & white, framing shots in odd ways, and displaying a fair degree of surrealism. Its tics and flourishes at times recall Oliver Stone's NATURAL BORN KILLERS, but there's no real reason for it. He's trying to gussy up a talky, character-driven crime story, but in doing so, he undermines his actors. There's some terrific stuff in DOG EAT DOG, but it mostly comes off like a coked-up and frequently grotesque KILLING THEM SOFTLY.
DOG EAT DOG centers on three ex-cons and low-level bottom-feeders in the Cleveland underworld: Troy (Nicolas Cage, reteaming with his DYING OF THE LIGHT director) has ambitions beyond Cleveland, but feels indebted to the deranged Mad Dog (Willem Dafoe, whose numerous teamings with Schrader include LIGHT SLEEPER and AUTO-FOCUS), who once saved him from an attack in the joint. The trio is rounded out by the hulking Diesel (Christopher Matthew Cook), who's loyal to Troy but can only take so much of Mad Dog. Bad-tempered junkie Mad Dog has just killed his girlfriend and her teenage daughter and is eager to nab a big score with Troy. They get it from mob middleman and fixer El Greco (Schrader, in some extremely ill-advised and self-indulgent stunt casting) when they're instructed to rob the stash house of one of his rivals, Moon Man (Omar Dorsey). That goes relatively smoothly and they get a nice payday that they immediately piss away on drugs and prostitutes, but Troy is bored with the Cleveland scene and wants something bigger. El Greco calls on them again when an associate, Chepe (Rey Gallegos) wants $4 million owed to him by white collar criminal Mike Brennan (Louis Anthony Perez). When Brennan won't pay up, Chepe proposes kidnapping Brennan's one-year-old son in exchange for a nice percentage of the ransom. Like almost any cinematic One Last Job, this completely goes to shit, thanks mostly to the impulsive, trigger-happy Mad Dog.
Somewhat free-flowing in its structure, DOG EAT DOG isn't paced like a typical film of this sort. Schrader is initially more interested in characters, their interactions, and their quirks, at least until he gets bored with it and completely loses his way. The whole opening act with Moon Man takes an interesting approach in that it lets us get to know the Troy/Mad Dog/Diesel dynamic but is really just an extended vignette that has nothing to do with the main Chepe plot. Likewise with the opening, a ten-minute sequence showing what leads Mad Dog to kill his girlfriend and her teenage daughter (in short, she won't give him her Chevron card after he leaves a porn site up on her laptop). There's some very dark humor throughout, some of it boldly offensive and inappropriate, and almost all of it supplied by Dafoe. He has one ad-libbed line involving the baby, delivered in total seriousness, that's just wrong on every level, and it's great fun watching him lose his shit over things like an Asian prostitute answering a text while giving him a handjob. Some of the humor is practically slapsticky, like El Greco supplying them with the world's least-convincing fake police car. But it's a manic Dafoe who commands all the attention in DOG EAT DOG, making potential throwaway lines come off as laugh-out-loud funny ("Taylor Swift? Who the fuck is that bitch?" asks a just-paroled and out-of-touch with pop culture Mad Dog), so much so that when he makes an abrupt exit, it just puts a spotlight on how little else is here. Even taking Dafoe's foaming-at-the-mouth performance into consideration, Cage is rather subdued here, his character a man out of time who adores old movies, dreams of running off to Nice and fancies himself an old-school 1940s gangster but really comes off like a film noir cosplayer who's really not that interesting. By the time the climax rolls around, Schrader's just making it up as he goes along, with a foggy, garishly lit, dream-like police chase and Cage's Troy suddenly talking and behaving like he's Humphrey Bogart. DOG EAT DOG works best when it's not being gimmicky and filling the screen with smoke & mirrors to hide how little is there. There's no denying it's entertaining to a point, with a permeating weirdness that almost guarantees at least minor cult status. But after about an hour, it just starts to feel like everyone, from Schrader on down, is just goofing off.
Note: in the interest of full disclosure, I was once Facebook friends with DOG EAT DOG screenwriter Matthew Wilder, until he unfriended and blocked me over my dislike of Jean-Luc Godard's FILM SOCIALISME, creating the hashtag #attackfilmsocialismeanddie. I have had no contact with him since.
HACKSAW RIDGE (US/China - 2016) Directed by Mel Gibson. Written by Robert Schenkkan and Andrew Knight. Cast: Andrew Garfield, Sam Worthington, Vince Vaughn, Luke Bracey, Teresa Palmer, Hugo Weaving, Rachel Griffiths, Richard Roxburgh, Nathaniel Buzolic, Matt Nable, Firass Dirani, Luke Pegler, Ben Mingay, Nico Cortez, Goran D. Kleut, Milo Gibson, Robert Morgan. (R, 139 mins) Directing his first film since 2006's APOCALYPTO, Mel Gibson shapes this biographical account of WWII hero Desmond Doss (1919-2006) into an unflinching, graphically violent look at one man taking a personal stand amidst the horrors of war. Co-written by Robert Schenkkan, who scripted several episodes of the HBO mini-series THE PACIFIC, HACKSAW RIDGE is also filled with the kind of epic suffering endured by Gibson protagonists, whether it's BRAVEHEART's William Wallace or THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST's Jesus, right down to some crucifixion and baptismal imagery in the climax, almost depicted as a resurrection of sorts. The first conscientious objector to be awarded the Medal of Honor, Desmond (Andrew Garfield) grew up in the hills of Lynchburg, VA, the son of drunken, bitter WWI vet Thomas (Hugo Weaving), who's still shell-shocked by his experiences and wracked with survivor's guilt after he was the only one of his friends to return home alive. A family of Seventh-Day Adventists, Thomas has instilled in Desmond and the rest of the family--wife Bertha (Rachel Griffiths) and their other son Hal (Nathaniel Buzolic)--a deep belief in non-violence and the idea there is no circumstance in which even touching a gun is justified. Thomas is enraged when Hal enlists, and despite his protests, Desmond enlists as well, feeling a sense of duty but vowing to stick to his anti-gun beliefs by volunteering to be a medic ("Instead of taking lives, I'll be saving them," he tells his father). Promising to marry his nurse girlfriend Dorothy (Teresa Palmer) during his first furlough, Desmond joins the Army and all goes well until he refuses to handle a weapon.
Of course, he's immediately branded as a coward by everyone from bullying fellow recruit and all-around alpha-male Smitty (Luke Bracey) to drill sergeant Howell (a miscast Vince Vaughn), and Captain Glover (Sam Worthington). It also doesn't help that his religion's Sabbath is on Saturday, a day in which Desmond refuses to train. Glover orders a psych evaluation for an easy Section 8 discharge, but when Desmond is deemed of sound mind, Howell is instructed to make his life hell. Desmond is routinely singled out for non-existent infractions, for which Howell punishes the entire group with 20-mile hikes and having their weekend passes revoked. Desmond is beaten by his fellow recruits and refuses to back down. He's eventually court-martialed, and it's decided--with some input from a high-ranking General who fought with Thomas--that Desmond can serve his country as a medic and do so without the protection of a weapon if he so desires. After marrying Dorothy, Desmond is shipped off with the others to Okinawa to take the Maeda Escarpment (recreated on location in Australia, where the entire film was shot), known as "Hacksaw Ridge." Many men are killed in seemingly endless battles with Japanese soldiers, and after Glover orders a retreat, Desmond remains atop Hacksaw Ridge, dragging surviving soldiers to the cliff and rappelling them down one by one. Working himself to the point of mental and physical exhaustion after seemingly answering a call from God, his hands raw and bleeding profusely from rope burns, Desmond single-handedly saved the lives of 75 men at Hacksaw Ridge.
It takes a little over an hour before the story gets to Hacksaw Ridge, and the carnage starts with an extremely effective jump scare more suited to horror movie. Dumping untold gallons of blood and hurling around more innards than an Italian cannibal movie, Gibson doesn't shy away from making combat look as raw and realistic as possible (naturally, some conservatively-used CGI splatter takes you out of the moment, but it's mostly practical effects). Bullets rip through flesh and skulls in ways that put this on par with the opening of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and the endless suffering of Jesus in THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST. While he'll always be a pariah to a certain degree, Gibson is clearly a complex and troubled man beset by frequently public demons. His efforts as a filmmaker have a shared vision, even his 1993 directing debut THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE, thus far Gibson's only directorial effort that didn't involve graphically gory feats of human endurance. Gibson's heroes are outsiders and rebels, either by choice or by fate. They are men who stick to their beliefs in the face of any and all adversity and are willing to endure whatever physical and psychological suffering to demonstrate that belief and prove their conviction. And when you see the frayed tensions in the Doss family and the things that led Desmond to take his stand, particularly in his relationship with his father, a man who loves his family but too often treats them horribly because he can't forgive himself for being the only one of his friends to come home from The Great War alive, one can't help but wonder how much of that applies to Desmond Doss and Mel Gibson. There's an argument that Gibson's complicated relationship with his own father, an on-the-record Holocaust denier who--and this is not to excuse Gibson's tabloid transgressions--undoubtedly planted the seeds for some of the beliefs that have led to so much turmoil in Gibson's life. On and off the battlefield--the graphic gore aside--it's easy to dismiss HACKSAW RIDGE as corny Americana and Garfield's performance as overly earnest. Of course, Desmond gets not one but two "I was wrong about you" mea culpas, one from Smitty and one from Glover, and Vaughn's Howell scaling the cliff and uttering "We're not in Kansas anymore" is a line that should've been axed at the first read-through. But it was a simpler era and a time of different values and Desmond Doss, who died in 2006 and is shown in an interview snippet at the very end, was a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy. To that end, HACKSAW RIDGE is a powerful film that both honors Desmond Doss and functions as another intensely personal look into the abyss for Mel Gibson.
Cpl. Desmond Doss receiving his Medal of Honor
from President Harry Truman in 1945
BURIAL GROUND aka THE NIGHTS OF TERROR (Italy - 1980; US release 1985) Directed by Andrea Bianchi. Written by Piero Regnoli. Cast: Karin Well, Gian Luigi Chirizzi, Maria Angela Giordan (Mariangela Giordano), Simone Mattioli, Antoinetta Antinori, Roberto Caporali, Peter Bark (Pietro Barzocchini), Claudio Zuchett, Anna Valente, Renato Barbieri. (Unrated, 85 mins) The success of George Romero's 1979 masterpiece DAWN OF THE DEAD led to an explosion of zombie knockoffs from Italy, where it was released as ZOMBI. This flood of the undead essentially helped establish the iconic status of Lucio Fulci, whose ZOMBI 2, aka ZOMBIE (1979), CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980), and THE BEYOND (1981) are arguably the greatest of all post-DAWN Italian zombie movies. Almost every journeyman Italian genre vet got a chance to crank out a cannibal zombie gutmuncher: Umberto Lenzi's NIGHTMARE CITY, aka CITY OF THE WALKING DEAD (1980); Marino Girolami's ZOMBI HOLOCAUST (1980), and its retooled 1982 American variant DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D.; and Bruno Mattei's HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD, aka NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES (1980) are just a few examples. BURIAL GROUND, one of the most memorable films from the early '80s Italian zombie craze, came from veteran sleaze merchant Andrea Bianchi, whose credits include the trashy 1975 giallo STRIP NUDE FOR YOUR KILLER, the grim western-themed 1976 polizia CRY OF A PROSTITUTE, and the softcore (or hardcore, depending which version you see) 1979 possession sexploitationer MALABIMBA, aka THE MALICIOUS WHORE. Anyone even remotely familiar with Bianchi's work knows to expect trash, but BURIAL GROUND is in another dimension altogether, hitting the ground running, introducing one nonsensical element after another. It settles into more familiar zombie territory in the middle, but then the third act comes along and just takes everything into total jawdropper territory, collapsing into all-out insanity by the climax, where you see exactly why a diminutive man in his 20s had to be cast as a little boy. There's no shortage of reasons BURIAL GROUND has become a cult classic, but young Michael is at the top of the list. Ask anyone who's seen BURIAL GROUND and they'll know exactly who and what you're talking about.
Filmed in 1979 but belatedly released in the US in the fall of 1985 by the short-lived Film Concept Group, a company co-owned by mobster-turned-Christian motivational speaker Michael Franzese, BURIAL GROUND has group of mostly unlikable assholes converging on a remote villa in the country. They're the guests of Professor Ayres (Renato Barbieri), a madman-bearded idiot who ventures into a crypt on the property and is promptly killed by some really decrepit-looking zombies. This happens despite his pleading with them "I'm your friend!" Even by walking dead standards, these zombies are a pretty sorry lot, looking like Blind Dead cosplayers and shambling about in subpar makeup and tattered clothing. But they're nevertheless resourceful, proving adept with makeshift weapons and having the wherewithal to find other entrances into the villa when the hapless heroes barricade themselves inside. Ayres' guests are a rather interchangeable lot, largely unconcerned with Ayres' mysterious absence and opting to get busy between the sheets. That's especially the case for MILF-y Evelyn (Mariangela Giordano) and her new husband George (Roberto Caporali), who are interrupted as soon as they're alone by Angela's son Michael, a creepy kid with his pants pulled up entirely too high and played by one Pietro Barzocchini, who will forever be immortalized under his Anglicized pseudonym "Peter Bark." Michael doesn't like George. In fact, he doesn't like any man around his mother. So in the midst of the undead carnage, Bianchi and screenwriter Piero Regnoli give us a skincrawling Oedipal nightmare scenario where impending doom at the hands of flesh-eating zombies means Michael may only have a short window to seduce his sultry mom. Bianchi's handling of the zombie mayhem has some intermittently effective moments, but it's mostly pretty standard and eventually repetitious, until the last five minutes which, once seen, can never be unseen. Frankly, as much as I love BURIAL GROUND, there's a much more interesting film that could've been made had the focus been on Evelyn and Michael. That's a backstory that needs telling.
BURIAL GROUND opening at a first-run theater
during a slow weekend in Toledo, OH on September 6, 1985
Bianchi gets some mileage out of his effective use of the ornate Villa Parisi, a frequently seen house in Italian genre fare, most notably 1974's BLOOD FOR DRACULA. He also has a game heroine in 42-year-old Giordano, a veteran C-lister with a career going back to the mid-1950s before she found a niche in post-HERCULES peplum of the early 1960s. Giordano was romantically involved with BURIAL GROUND producer Gabriele Crisanti at the time, and starred in several of his productions during their relationship. These included numerous sexually explicit horror outings like the aforementioned MALABIMBA (in which Giordano plays a nun who decides the best way to exorcise the demon possessing her niece to have some hot lesbian sex with her), 1979's GIALLO A VENEZIA, 1980's PATRICK STILL LIVES (where she was on the receiving end of a vile death-by-fireplace-poker), and 1982's SATAN'S BABY DOLL. Giordano and Crisanti would part ways soon after, and her most prominent post-BURIAL GROUND roles were in Michele Soavi's THE SECT, aka THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER (1991) and as a resurrected Bathory-like countess after the titular Spanish punk rock group in Jess Franco's KILLER BARBYS (1996). Bark's film career went nowhere and he fell into obscurity not long after BURIAL GROUND (there's a great YouTube clip of Bark as a backup dancer for singer Gena Gas on Italian TV in 1979), though he has been making some European festival appearances in recent years thanks to his Michael infamy. There's footage from one on Severin's new deluxe Blu-ray release of BURIAL GROUND, which is easily the best this shoddy film has ever looked. One of the greatest bad movies of all time, BURIAL GROUND is must-see Eurotrash of the highest order, with Michael and his ludicrous transgressions, the over-the-top gore, the gratuitous T&A, the careless continuity errors, the blipping and blooping synth score, the bad dubbing, the awkward dialogue ("Mother! This cloth...smells of death!"), and the misspelled on-screen text at the conclusion, a "profecy" warning of the "nigths" of terror.
THE EXORCIST III (US - 1990) Written and directed by William Peter Blatty. Cast: George C. Scott, Ed Flanders, Brad Dourif, Jason Miller, Scott Wilson, Nicol Williamson, George DiCenzo, Don Gordon, Lee Richardson, Grand L. Bush, Nancy Fish, Viveca Lindfors, Zohra Lampert, Barbara Baxley, Harry Carey Jr, Ken Lerner, Mary Jackson, Sherrie Wills, Tracy Thorne, Tyra Ferrell, Lois Foraker, Kevin Corrigan, Patrick Ewing, Samuel L. Jackson. (R, 110 mins)
LEGION (US - 1990/2016) Same credits minus Jason Miller and Nicol Williamson. (Unrated, 105 mins) Released in August of 1990 after a tumultuous production, THE EXORCIST III is tops among threequels that completely disregard the Part II's that preceded them, instead functioning as a direct sequel to the first film (see also HIGHLANDER: THE FINAL DIMENSION and the recent BLAIR WITCH, to name just two). William Peter Blatty, the author of The Exorcist who adapted his 1971 novel for William Friedkin's landmark 1973 classic, had nothing to do with John Boorman's insane box office bomb EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC (1977) and opted to write his own sequel, publishing the novel Legion in 1983. When it came time to make Legion into a film, Blatty adapted and directed it himself, but made the first of many compromises with Morgan Creek bosses James G. Robinson and Joe Roth when he agreed to include the word "Exorcist" in the title. Throughout production, no one could settle on a name: on-set footage of the clapboard shows it as EXORCIST 1990, and it was also called EXORCIST: LEGION and EXORCIST: 15 YEARS LATER at various points. Even before shooting wrapped, the signs of disconnect and a communication breakdown between Blatty and his backers were already glaringly apparent.
The focus here is on Lt. Bill Kinderman, the Georgetown detective who investigated the death of the movie director thrown out of possessed Regan MacNeil's bedroom window in the 1973 original. Kinderman had a much larger role in the novel but was mostly relegated to the sideline in Friedkin's film, where he's played by the great Lee J. Cobb. Cobb died in 1976, so Kinderman is played in THE EXORCIST III by George C. Scott, whose interpretation is much more sarcastic and blustery than Cobb's more soft-spoken and easygoing portrayal. The film also features the minor character of Father Dyer, played in Friedkin's film by church technical advisor Rev. William J. O'Malley, and here by Ed Flanders. The character of Father Damien Karras, the troubled priest who sacrifices himself by jumping out of Regan MacNeil's bedroom window and tumbling down the famous steps to his death, makes an improbable return in THE EXORCIST III. It was Blatty's initial wish to have his old friend Jason Miller, who received an Oscar nomination for his work in THE EXORCIST, reprise the role but for various reasons (more on that below), Miller was replaced by Brad Dourif. The plot has Kinderman investigating a string of brutal killings where the victims all have at least tenuous ties to the original exorcism of Linda Blair's Regan MacNeil. The methodology follows that of James Venamun, aka "The Gemini Killer," a Zodiac-like serial killer who was executed in the electric chair 15 years earlier, the same night of the MacNeil exorcism. Kinderman's investigation leads him to the locked-down psych ward of a local hospital, where he sees a patient who looks exactly like the long-dead Father Karras. The priest is possessed by the spirit of the Gemini Killer. Karras' soul was taken from his body at the moment of death by what Venamun describes as "The Master," who was angry about being exorcised from Regan MacNeil and decided to put the Gemini Killer's spirit into the body of Karras. After a decade and a half of rebuilding his strength inside Karras' body, the Gemini has been leaving Karras and possessing elderly folks in the dementia ward, who are then able to escape the hospital and continue his killing spree 15 years after his presumed death.
It's an admittedly hokey story that works because of the unique elements Blatty brings to the table. It plays like a supernatural police procedural, with plenty of Blatty's trademark eccentricity, dark humor, and verbose repartee, particularly in the spirited and sometimes oddball conversations ("The carp...") between Kinderman and Dyer (Cobb and Miller were able to bring a little of that to THE EXORCIST, but there's much more of it here) and the bizarre character quirks, like twitchy, chain-smoking Dr. Temple (Scott Wilson) having stacks of newspapers ("I like to read the science articles") and nudie mag pics plastered on his office wall. THE EXORCIST III is very dialogue-heavy and at times feels like more of a companion piece to Blatty's only other directing effort, the 1980 cult film THE NINTH CONFIGURATION, which also featured Miller, Flanders, Wilson, and George DiCenzo from this film. But when Blatty turned in his cut of LEGION (or whatever it was called at the time), the studio wasn't happy. Their biggest concern was that there was no exorcism, but they also didn't like the idea of Dourif in the role of Karras and insisted Miller be summoned to reshoot all scenes involving the character. That was Blatty's original intention, but as Dourif explains on Shout! Factory's new two-disc Blu-ray set, Miller was suffering from severe alcoholism at the time, with everyone agreeing that he wasn't up to the demands of the role. The idea of replacing Miller with Dourif wasn't too hard to fathom, especially since they already had Scott replacing Cobb and Flanders in place of O'Malley. Morgan Creek didn't budge. They wanted someone from the original EXORCIST, so Miller was brought in and Dourif was informed by Blatty that his entire performance was being scrapped. But, as Blatty feared, Miller started showing signs of not being up to the task, so a decision was made to reduce his workload by having Dourif return to essay the role of just the Gemini Killer, instead of both Karras and the Gemini-possessed Karras. So in what was ultimately released as THE EXORCIST III, when Kinderman sees Karras, the priest is played by Miller, but when Karras is overtaken by the talkative, ranting Gemini Killer, the audience sees Dourif, who returned to reshoot half of his scenes, meeting the demand of the producers that Miller play Father Karras and satisfying Blatty's wish that Dourif still be in the film. It's an initially jarring effect, but it works for the most part. Nicol Williamson was cast as Father Morning, a character exclusive to the reshoots, who arrives for a climactic exorcism that comes out of nowhere and looks like a hastily tacked-on afterthought even to those not in the know about the film's troubled production. For starters, Karras is suddenly possessed by the devil for the climax (the uncredited voice provided by Scott's two-time ex-wife Colleen Dewhurst), which is filled with loud, gory special effects (Morning's skin peeling off as he unsticks himself from the ceiling) that are completely at odds with the serious, understated tone of the first 95 minutes of the film.
THE EXORCIST III opened to middling reviews but its reputation has improved over time. It remains a flawed mess but has so many effective moments throughout that the good far outweighs the not-as-good. The long, static hallway shot of the nurses' station culminates in one of the greatest jump scares in horror movie history. The nature of the Gemini Killer's murders and Kinderman's investigation ("the victim had an ingot driven into each of his eyes, then the killer cut off his head and crucified him on a pair of rowing oars") are profoundly disturbing and get under your skin in ways that prefigure the likes of David Fincher's SE7EN and help make this film as terrifying as THE EXORCIST in its own way. It's worth noting that all of these creepy scenes and the incredible hallway jump scare were in the LEGION cut, which built up a mystique over the years, with rumors always swirling that Blatty wanted to assemble a director's cut. But extensive searches yielded little and the footage was never found, leaving LEGION a title regularly mentioned with other Holy Grails of lost films, like the never-to-be-assembled original cuts of Erich von Stroheim's GREED (1924) or Orson Welles' THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (1942). The original prints of LEGION have been lost to time for now, but we've got the next best thing on Shout!'s Blu-ray: in addition to the theatrical version, there's a composite assembling of Blatty's original vision using VHS dailies combined with footage from THE EXORCIST III that remained from the original cut of LEGION. Because they were part of the studio-mandated reshoots, neither Miller nor Williamson are in LEGION, so other than incidental bits (like shots of photographs) reinstated to indicate that Dourif was indeed playing Father Karras, most of the big differences start around 50 minutes in when Kinderman first visits Karras' cell and Karras is only being played by Dourif. The cell is different in LEGION, which was shot at the DEG Studios in Wilmington, NC, while the reshoots were done in Los Angeles on a different set, which necessitated Dourif filming his scenes a second time. It's easy to see why Robinson and Roth were unhappy with LEGION. As brilliant as it is at times, it's got one of the most abrupt and anti-climactic endings you'll ever see. Dourif's memorable performance is more hammy and his voice electronically altered a bit in THE EXORCIST III, but the actor prefers his slightly more restrained LEGION interpretation and remains dissatisfied with the released version.
As incongruous as the exorcism is in a film called THE EXORCIST III, it's the best of two imperfect ways to end the movie, and it's the only cut that includes Scott's incredible "I believe!" speech, which wasn't in LEGION. Even with Blatty's original version now newly-assembled for fans to finally see, it still doesn't explain the inconsistencies with the 1973 film. The biggest of these is Scott's Kinderman repeatedly referring to Karras as his "best friend," when, going by their relationship in the first film, they had one testy but generally good-natured conversation before Karras' death. When did they have a chance to pose for a happy photo on what looks like a fishing trip? Kinderman's friendship with Father Dyer makes sense, especially considering the reinstated ending on the 2000 "Version You've Never Seen," where Cobb's Kinderman and O'Malley's Dyer walk away from the MacNeil house with Kinderman quoting CASABLANCA's "beautiful friendship" line (faithful to Blatty's novel, but unnecessary in the film). And it's still hard to accept that a detective as observant as Kinderman, even in a state of concern over his friend Father Dyer being hospitalized, would fail to notice a headless statue right in front of him by the elevator. Also, in LEGION, Dourif's possessed Karras has an ability to mimic sounds, like roars and train whistles, a concept that was wisely dropped for THE EXORCIST III. Another key difference is that the closing scene of THE EXORCIST III--Kinderman and cop Atkins (Grand L. Bush) standing over the grave of Father Karras--actually comes much earlier in LEGION, when they're exhuming Karras and discover the remains of Brother Fain, an elderly Jesuit who vanished in 1975. In LEGION, the Gemini Killer reveals that Fain was tending to the burial of Karras when the possessed-by-the-Gemini Killer priest awoke and crawled out of his coffin, inducing a heart attack and scaring Fain to death. The explanation is also in THE EXORCIST III, but it makes little sense without Fain's backstory and the exhuming of Karras' remains.
While not adhering to the tone or style of Friedkin's 1973 classic, LEGION is a film that still gets under your skin, demonstrating some distinct similarities to MR. FROST, a little-seen and now-forgotten 1990 supernatural thriller that was also released not long after THE EXORCIST III, with Alan Bates as a cop dealing with chatty serial killer Jeff Goldblum, who claims to be Satan. EXORCIST sequels seem to be a doomed lot, as shown again 14 years later when Paul Schrader's EXORCIST prequel DOMINION was shelved entirely for EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING, a completely reshot version directed by Renny Harlin, with both starring Stellan Skarsgard as a young Father Merrin, Max von Sydow's character from the original. Similar to LEGION in that it was a thoughtful look at the nature of evil rather than a conventional, head-spinning and green-barfing possession movie, DOMINION eventually got a limited release before appearing on DVD. but was further evidence that no one was sure what they really wanted out of an EXORCIST movie. Still, even with its problems, THE EXORCIST III is easily the best of the bunch after Friedkin's original trailblazer. Shout!'s Blu-ray is packed with extensive vintage and new supplemental material, including an audio interview--played over the LEGION cut as a commentary track--with the now-88-year-old Blatty who, not surprisingly, hasn't directed a film since.
Since he first appeared on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE in 1980, Eddie Murphy's career has been filled with so many ups and downs that he's tallied about as many comebacks as John Travolta. His meteoric success in the '80s is probably unknown to a certain age group that probably just thinks of him first and foremost as the voice of Donkey in the SHREK movies. For every box office success like THE NUTTY PROFESSOR, DR. DOLITTLE, or BOWFINGER, there's three or four VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYNs, HOLY MANs, and THE ADVENTURES OF PLUTO NASHs. He seemed to reinvent himself as a family-friendly comedy star in the early 2000s, and his Oscar-nominated turn in 2006's DREAMGIRLS failed to reignite his career, with the combined two-fer of ditching the ceremony after he lost to Alan Arkin in LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE and following DREAMGIRLS with NORBIT not doing him any favors. 2011's TOWER HEIST was the first glimpse of vintage Eddie Murphy that moviegoers saw in quite some time, but again, it just led to an extended sabbatical (2012's A THOUSAND WORDS was released after TOWER HEIST, but was completed in 2008). MR. CHURCH finds Murphy in a rare dramatic role, but even its distributor didn't care: Lionsgate released it on just 354 screens for a gross of $685,000, relegating it to their "CodeBlack" niche division that markets titles to African-American audiences, like Kevin Hart's earlier concert films, WOMAN, THOU ART LOOSED, and ADDICTED. It's also the lowest-budgeted film Murphy's ever starred in, one that can't even afford to license the original recordings of The Bellamy Brothers' "Let Your Love Flow," or Jefferson Starship's "With Your Love," instead going with distractingly inferior cover versions for a high school prom taking place in 1977.
MR. CHURCH isn't a very good movie, but Murphy, in a role originally intended for Samuel L. Jackson, is absolutely terrific in it. In an understated performance, Murphy is the title character, a cook who ends up working for single mom Marie (Natascha McElhone) and her young daughter Charlie (Natalie Coughlin) in 1971 Los Angeles. Marie was the mistress of Mr. Church's recently-deceased and very wealthy boss, who made a deal with Church that he'd be granted a salary for life if he took care of Marie and Charlie for six months. Why six months? Because Marie has breast cancer and has been given six months to live, and Charlie doesn't know it. Mr. Church bonds with Marie and Charlie, preparing their meals and getting young Charlie enthused about literary classics, but he's intensely private and is adamant about his personal time being his own. Marie beats the odds and lives for another six years, during which time Mr. Church dutifully remains their cook and caregiver, though they still don't even know his first name (the only thing Charlie can coax out of him other than his love of literature is that THE MALTESE FALCON is his favorite movie). Marie dies, and Charlie (now played by Britt Robertson) goes off to college in Boston after having her heart broken by high school boyfriend Owen (Xavier Samuel). She returns to L.A. a few years later, pregnant and a college dropout, and Mr. Church takes her in, becoming a father figure to her own child, Izzy (McKenna Grace).
It's a maudlin tearjerker that works on occasion, thanks to the poignant moments provided by Murphy. But as good as he is (there would be some Oscar buzz for him if this was a better movie), he's no match for the woefully predictable story arcs in the script by Susan McMartin, whose writing credits include the TV series TWO AND A HALF MEN and MOM. As the story goes from 1971 to 1986, it seems Charlie can't leave the house without running into someone she knew years ago: troubled high-school kid Landon (Christian Madsen) happens to be right there when she nearly miscarries after a collision with a skateboarder. Why? Because he was on his way to kill himself. See? She thinks Landon saved her and unborn Izzy, but they saved him! And when an aging Mr. Church finally goes to see a doctor about a persistent cough, the doctor just happens to be...a grown-up Owen! And dialogue doesn't get much worse than when Charlie has a disastrous reunion with her now rich and materialistic childhood best friend Poppy (Lucy Fry), culminating in an argument that actually requires Robertson to utter the line "Izzy's my diamond, Poppy...I'm sorry if she doesn't sparkle enough for you!" Through it all, Murphy brings a stoical dignity that commands respect (Charlie expects to be judged over her pregnancy, and when she asks if he wants to know what happened, Mr. Church simply replies "I know how girls get pregnant, Charlie," and leaves it at that), even in Mr. Church's weaker moments when Charlie hears him coming home drunk after a night at the bar, a secret neither of them ever mention. Director Bruce Beresford is mining similar territory as his Oscar-winning DRIVING MISS DAISY, with Mr. Church not that far removed from Morgan Freeman's dutiful Hoke Colburn, and Murphy is so good here that you really want MR. CHURCH to work better than it does. It's shamelessly sappy and manipulative in a way that will probably work with easy weepers, but there's an unspoken darkness to Mr. Church that a stronger, edgier film would've explored, and one that Murphy likely would've been willing to pursue. (PG-13, 105 mins)
SKIPTRACE
(China - 2016)
Boasting some of the biggest names 2002 had to offer, the Chinese-made buddy-action-comedy SKIPTRACE manages to go nearly two hours with zero laughs, no chemistry between its stars, bland action, and embarrassingly bad CGI and crummy greenscreen before ending with a reaction shot from several alpacas. Understandably less inclined to do the insane stunt work of his past, 62-year-old Jackie Chan is Bennie Chan, a Hong Kong cop who's spent the last decade trying to avenge the death of his partner Yung (Eric Tsang) at the hands of a nefarious underworld crime figure known as "The Matador." Bennie believes The Matador is actually prominent businessman Victor Wong (Winston Chao), and when a botched raid goes south, his uptight captain Tang (Michael Wong) threatens to suspend him if he doesn't back off Wong. Bennie has become a father figure to Yung's now-grown orphaned daughter Samantha (Fan Bingbing), who works at a Macau casino owned by Wong and is duped out of a huge chunk of cash by on-the-run American con artist Connor Watts (Johnny Knoxville). Watts has witnessed a murder committed by Wong and is about to make himself disappear when he's abducted by the goons of Russian mobster Dima (Mikhail Gorevoy), who's furious that Watts has gotten his daughter pregnant. Bennie tracks Watts down in Russia and the two are forced to work together to get back to Hong Kong, get Samantha out of trouble, and take down The Matador once and for all...if they don't kill each other first!
A bargain-basement De Niro and Grodin on a midnight stumble, Chan and Knoxville are more grating than funny, and the film tries to tug the heartstrings and score emotional points it never earns after a climax set--to no one's surprise--at an abandoned shipyard. And when they aren't ripping off MIDNIGHT RUN, they borrow some PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES for a scene where Bennie and Watts wake up spooning to the delight of shocked tourists snapping photos ("My hands are kinda warm," Watts says in lieu of "Those aren't pillows!"). Much of the action is given an unconvincing digital assist, with an aging, slower Chan doubled pretty frequently. Again, the guy's got nothing to prove to anyone when it comes to action movies, but it just makes SKIPTRACE all the more depressing to see him fumbling through one dull set piece after another and leading a group of Mongolian villagers in a rendition of Adele's "Rolling in the Deep." You'd think you'd get better given the experience that DIE HARD 2, CLIFFHANGER, and THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT director Renny Harlin (yes, that Renny Harlin) brings to the table, but honestly, he hasn't made a good movie since 1999's DEEP BLUE SEA and even that hasn't aged well. Casting a dark cloud over the whole misbegotten endeavor is the knowledge that veteran camera operator Chan Kwok Hung drowned when a motorized sampan capsized while shooting a sequence on some rough waters. The only winner in this Lionsgate VOD dumpjob is Seann William Scott, who was originally cast as Watts before bailing during pre-production. Is it a bad omen when even a 40-year-old Stifler has better things to do? (PG-13, 108 mins)
CARNAGE PARK (US - 2016)
In the last couple of years, the prolific, 26-year-old Mickey Keating has become the indie horror hipster scene's new auteur du jour for those who think 36-year-old Ti West is an emeritus elder statesman. Since 2015, Keating has directed POD, an homage to the 1978 version of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS; DARLING, an homage to Roman Polanski's 1965 classic REPULSION; and now CARNAGE PARK, where he seems to throw everything against the wall to see what sticks, like spaghetti western-inspired opening credits for a movie that has nothing to do with spaghetti westerns. He may as well have done fake 007 credits. The problem with Keating is that he's all homage. In theory, it's not much different from how Quentin Tarantino established himself, but where Tarantino is a great writer, Keating is content to make his CARNAGE PARK characters sound like they're in a Tarantino movie. He even takes a FROM DUSK TILL DAWN approach by switching gears part way through the movie, opening as a RESERVOIR DOGS knockoff set in a desolate California desert county (and in 1978, for no reason at all other than pandering for grindhouse cred), with escaped cons Scorpion Joe (James Landry Hebert) and Lenny (Michael Villar) botching a bank robbery and fleeing the scene. Lenny's been shot in the gut and is in the backseat bleeding out as Scorpion Joe tries to keep him calm, just like the first scene of RESERVOIR DOGS. But Lenny dies and Scorpion Joe turns down a dirt road and gets his hostage, Vivian (THE LAST EXORCISM's Ashley Bell) out of the trunk. Then he's shot in the head from a distance. The shooter is Wyatt Moss (COMPLIANCE's Pat Healy), a deranged, Bible-quoting Vietnam vet who owns a huge swath of land in the desert and has it surrounded by an electric fence. He lures hitchhikers and back roads travelers into this MOST DANGEROUS GAME-esque amusement park and hunts them, often taunting them unseen over a loudspeaker system. Moss' estranged brother is the sheriff (Alan Ruck), who's been looking the other way regarding his brother's homicidal hobbies but is forced to intervene when it's reported that Vivian, the daughter of a prominent regional farming family, is missing. Vivian fights to survive as Moss pursues her, across the land and down into an abandoned mine shaft, sporting a miner's helmet to make sure you catch that he's referencing 1981's MY BLOODY VALENTINE.
The shift from a getaway thriller into a TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE/Rob Zombie-type hicksploitation horror outing comes pretty early, and while Bell is a convincing heroine, CARNAGE PARK (the title likely a play on Peter Watkins' 1971 faux docudrama PUNISHMENT PARK, also a variant of the MOST DANGEROUS GAME scenario revamped as a Vietnam protest film) has very little to offer. Keating spends so much time emulating the movies in his VHS collection that he never establishes his own voice or his own style. Every few minutes, he's ripping off another movie and the recognition of such is supposed to be the reward in and of itself for the audience, along with the required-by-law cameo by Larry Fessenden, the Zelig of indie horror movies. Like so many of today's alleged "Masters of Horror," Keating is probably a lot of fun to hang out with and watching horror movies with him would be a blast, but didn't we hold our genre trailblazers to a higher standard once upon a time? Nearly a quarter century after the game-changing arrival of Tarantino, filmmakers still don't understand why he was a game-changer. They get the homage part, but that's all they get. Keating obviously has talent and knows how to direct a movie. The dusty, desert setting is effective and, until he starts using it too much, Moss' hectoring and cackling over the loudspeaker is unnerving. Keating doesn't really make a bad directorial decision until he sets the climax in the total darkness of the mine shaft, making it impossible to tell what's going on. But just on a creative level in his screenplay, there's about as much here as a Friedberg/Seltzer spoof movie. He doesn't even really take advantage of the 1978 setting other than to repeatedly include a joke 1978 copyright date in the credits. CARNAGE PARK doesn't overstay its welcome. It moves fast and it's not boring. It isn't terrible. But it sure isn't good. It just is. It makes references and says "Hey, did you get that reference?" C'mon. Try harder. (Unrated, 81 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
INFERNO (US - 2016) Directed by Ron Howard. Written by David Koepp. Cast: Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones, Irrfan Khan, Ben Foster, Omar Sy, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Ana Ularu, Ida Darvish, Paul Ritter, Paolo Antonio Simioni, Fausto Maria Sciarappa, Gabor Urmai. (PG-13, 122 mins) We're pretty far removed from the publishing phenomenon of Dan Brown's breakout 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code, the second installment in his series of Robert Langdon adventures. A world-renowned symbology professor and expert in religious and cultural iconography, Langdon is the hero of four Brown novels and three big-screen adaptations directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks: 2006's THE DA VINCI CODE, 2009's ANGELS & DEMONS (based on the first Langdon saga, published in 2000), and, seven years later, the belated INFERNO, from Brown's 2013 novel. While Inferno was the top-selling book of its year, it sold six million copies compared to the 80 million that Da Vinci moved a decade earlier. Likewise, interest in the cinematic Langdon has waned, with the $75 million budget a 50% slashing from the $150 million it took to make ANGELS & DEMONS seven years ago, the corner-cutting apparent in some cut-rate CGI work throughout. Everything about INFERNO feels like a contractual obligation. Howard does a serviceable job directing, and at least this is better than last year's bomb IN THE HEART OF THE SEA, but Hanks just doesn't seem very into this and was probably lured more by the prospect of a working vacation in Italy than any burning desire to go through the motions as Langdon one more time. Even in films that don't work, Hanks is one of the most effortlessly charismatic actors that the movies have ever offered. He was never the right choice to play Langdon but he made it work in the past. In INFERNO, he comes off as irritated and even a little tired, as if he really didn't want to do this, but was afraid he'd look like a dick if he said no.
In a set-up that couldn't be any more staggeringly silly if they'd ditched Langdon and had Hanks play David S. Pumpkins instead, INFERNO opens with a bloodied, amnesiac Langdon waking up in a Florence hospital with no recollection of what happened or how he got there. He escapes with ER doc Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones) when assassin Vayentha (Ana Ularu) arrives dressed as a Carabinieri and starts shooting. Struggling to piece together the fragments of his short-term memory, Langdon discovers a small Faraday pointer/projector in a small biohazard tube in his jacket pocket. In it is an image of the Dante's Inferno-inspired Map of Hell painting by Botticelli. But the painting has been reworked, filled with letters and a cryptic message referencing billionaire American bioengineer Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster), who committed suicide three days earlier. Prior to his death, Zobrist achieved a prophet-like following among his cult of admirers with his warnings that the world was suffering from overpopulation and that the herd needed thinning. With French agents led by Christoph Bouchard (Omar Sy) and World Health Organization honcho and Langdon ex Dr, Elizabeth Sinskey (THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY's Sidse Babett Knudsen) in pursuit, along with the mysterious Harry Sims (Irrfan Khan), a freelance "facilitator" hired by Zobrist but concluding that his employer had a screw loose, Langdon and Sienna venture from Florence to Venice to Turkey in search of a virus created by the deranged Zobrist, designed to infect 95% of the world's population and wipe out at least four billion people in the first week of its global exposure.
The kind of movie where a character in Florence announcing "We need to go to Venice," is followed immediately by an establishing shot of canals filled with gondolas accompanied by the caption "Venice, Italy," INFERNO, like its predecessors, has to constantly stop the action to drop tons of exposition that the characters should already know for the benefit of the audience. You could almost make a drinking game out of Hanks' Langdon exclaiming "Of course!" followed by something obvious to him that requires a paragraph of explanation to keep the audience in the game (and his emphatic "I need to get to a library...fast!" from DA VINCI is equaled here when he gasps "My God! This is a labyrinth!"). It's stilted and awkward and, as in DA VINCI and ANGELS, Howard and his screenwriter (in this case, veteran journeyman David Koepp, fresh off his MORTDECAI triumph) don't have enough faith in the audience to keep up on their own. It's hard to pick the most guffaw-inducing moment. It could be Langdon analyzing a recording of himself slurring an apology just after his head was injured, concluding "Of course! I wasn't saying 'very sorry'...I was saying 'Vasari!'" But it's the whole tangent with the Dante death mask that's probably where INFERNO completely falls apart, asking the audience to buy that a heavily-guarded museum could go an entire day without any visitors, curators or security personnel noticing that one of its key attractions has been stolen, and that it's been stolen by Langdon (who doesn't remember stealing it) and an associate named Ignazio (Gabor Urmai), who's promptly forgotten about and never mentioned again. This is a ridiculously dumb movie but it's got some scattered positives, with a game, scene-stealing Khan seeing this for the junk that it is and having more fun than any of his co-stars, and Romanian actress Ularu has some standout moments as the driven, ferocious Vayentha and would probably impress if given her own action thriller to headline. The best thing about INFERNO is the catchy, synth-driven score by Hans Zimmer that may sound like leftover cues from his brilliant work on INTERSTELLAR, but he does more to give this some energy and distinct flavor than anyone else except Khan and Ularu. Zimmer's score almost has a retro John Carpenter-meets-Philip Glass by way of Italian horror quality that's quite effective given the predominantly Italian setting. But at the end of the day, there's just no point to this coming out now, years after the Da Vinci Code craze has died and with a visibly disinterested Hanks just wanting to get to the vacation part of the package deal before starting work on SULLY, which was shot after INFERNO but released first.
