House of Abraham: You Have the Right to Die, but not to Change Your Mind

If you ever wondered why some people oppose right-to-die legislation, “Abraham” will help explain it. Nobody would want the state to act like him. Frankly, he is not very Abrahamic. He runs a cult-like retreat for assisted suicide, with the emphasis on his assistance. Supposedly, you can change your mind at any time, but if you do, he and his assistant will change it back in Lisa Belcher’s House of Abraham, which releases today in New York.

Right from the start Dee seems a little different than the rest of the guests at Abraham’s latest final exit weekend workshop. For one thing, she brought a hidden camera. Abraham initially talks a good New Age game, but he can be a bit intrusive. Consequently, Victor, an otherwise sane senior gentleman suffering from a brain tumor, decides to leave. However, Dee suspects he never really left.

In fact, Abraham and his assistant Beatrice give off bad vibes and act conspicuously odd, but most of the guests let it go, because of their reason for coming. Yet, Dee suspects Shannon really wants to live. She only came to be with her suicidal husband, whom she does not think she can live without.

So maybe life is better than death? You think? Yet, House of Abraham will likely be ignored, at best, and perhaps even vilified for making that point. Furthermore, screenwriter Lukas Hassel’s massively creepy performance as Abraham suggests there is something very wrong with someone who takes so much satisfaction from watching death. Again, this hardly seems controversial.

Regardless, Hassel’s portrayal is deeply unsettling, partly because it seems so believable. Think of him as part Peter Stormare and part Lee Pace, with a little Jarod Leto thrown in. It is easy to envision him leading some kind of death cult out of a strip mall yoga salon.

Penny Dreadful: City of Angels

Fiorello La Guardia never whined in the media about Italianophobia. Instead, he was louder than anyone criticizing Mussolini. He even recorded propaganda radio broadcasts in Italian that were transmitted into the fascist country. Frankly, there really isn’t anyone notably following his example with respect to Islamic terrorism today, except Ayaan Hirsi Alli. La Guardia is also the reason why National Socialist agents of influence are operating in Los Angeles instead of New York, at least according to Lewis Michener, a cynical anti-fascist cop. He and his new Hispanic partner must investigate a racially-fraught murder case that has been further complicated by an evil supernatural entity in the first season of Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, which starts Sunday night on Showtime.

We silly mortals do not realize all our strife is really caused by the shape-shifting demon Magda to expose all of humanity’s hatred and pettiness to her rival, the crypto-Catholic cult deity Santa Muerte. The problem is Santa Muerte isn’t willing to help play defense. Instead, she is content to merely collect the souls murdered in Magda’s wake.

It starts when Michener and freshly promoted Mexican-American Detective Tiago Vega are assigned to the case of a rich Beverly Hills family ostensibly murdered by a Mexican cult. However, the flatfoots quickly deduce the over-the-top face-painting was really to draw suspicion away from the real killer. That leads Michener and Vega to the victim’s employer, a massive Evangelical ministry fronted by Sister Molly, an Aimee Semple McPherson-like figure.

Unfortunately, their investigation will be interrupted by a riot orchestrated by Magda, right in Vega’s back yard. Local activists were there to protest the motorway closeted Nazi-sympathizing Councilman Charlton Townsend rammed through the neighborhood. Much to his horror, Vega is forced to shoot his own trade unionist brother, after Magda possesses his body. To make matters worse, their youngest brother Mateo sees him do it. That drives the junior Vega into the arms of a Pachuco gang led by one of Magda’s personas.

Meanwhile, Michener pursues an active off-duty investigation of German agents with his old kvetching cronies. They are definitely outmanned and outgunned, so the cop will forge a risky alliance with Benny Berman, Meyer Lansky’s top lieutenant in LA. Dentist and local German-American Bund leader Dr. Peter Craft is not even on their radar yet, but Magda is playing with him big-time, in the guise of an abused German war-wife, whose plight fans his anti-Semitism.

City of Angels is a follow-up in-name-only to the original Penny Dreadful, which was dramatically better in nearly every respect. To start with, the tropes of gothic horror are always going to be more fun than race wars and identity politics. More problematically, none of the supernatural business involving Magda and Santa Muerte is scary at all. Instead, it is just lame.

What works is Nathan Lane’s wise-cracking portrayal of Michener and his dogged pursuit of Nazi agents. His riveting interrogation work in episode six (1-6 were provided to reviewers) is really awards-worthy. Lane and Daniel Zovatto also bicker and banter effectively as the odd couple partners, but the latter looks understandably listless during scenes of Vega family drama.

The Grudge (2020): Because You Can’t Keep an Angry Ghost Down

It’s human-to-human transmission rate is minimal, but the site of Kayako Saeki’s violent angry death is 100% infectious. The death rate is nearly as high. It is time to go back to Tokyo circa 2004, where it all started for the American remake series. Instead of rebooting, the series branches off in a separate, simultaneous, but not so radically different direction in Nicolas Pesce’s The Grudge, which releases today on DVD.

Flashback to 2004: Fiona Landers is an expat social worker in Japan, who pays an inspection visit to the house of horrors that started it all. She subsequently returns home, taking Kayako and her grudge with her. Soon, tragedy strikes the Landers family, as evil become deeply rooted in their home. That means Saeki is quite an efficient multi-tasker, since she was simultaneously tormenting Sarah Michelle Gellar in The Grudge (2004).

For obvious reasons, the Landers House quickly develops an evil reputation. Det. Goodman still refuses to step foot inside it, which seems rather strange to his new partner, Det. Muldoon, since he ostensibly investigated the multiple homicides that occurred there. It wasn’t just the Landers who met untimely deaths. The realtors handling the sale of the property, Peter and pregnant Nina Spencer, met similar fates.

As is usually the case in horror movies, Muldoon relocated to exurban Pennsylvania hoping to find a safer, more stable environment to raise her son Burke after her husband’s devastating death from cancer. Needless to say, those plans go out the window once she enters the Landers house. From there on, she is in for the full Grudge treatment.

The Grudge 2020 is a respectable American installment in the franchise, but Pesce’s reputation as the indie auteur who helmed The Eyes of My Mother and Piercing will raise many fans expectations well above what the film delivers. We’ve seen just about all of it before, but Pesce does it with a surprisingly prestigious cast. There are two Oscar nominees in Grudge 2020: Demian Bichir, who is terrific as the devout but world-weary Goodman and Jacki Weaver, who helps humanize the thankless role of Lorna Moody, an assisted suicide activist, who pays an ill-fated visit to the current owners of the Landers house.

The Midnight Man: Robert Englund and Lin Shaye, Together Again

Can someone please explain where’s the fun in summoning a boogeyman, when you know it will be an ordeal to survive, if it ever shows up? Yet, kids seem to try it all the time, especially in horror movies. This sinister nocturnal visitor the latest in the dubious tradition of Candyman and the Bye Bye Man, but he seems to have a strange connection to Anna Luster and her family. Her granddaughter Alex is in for a heck of a long night in Travis Zariwny’s The Midnight Man (trailer here), which releases today on DVD.

According to the so-called “Midnight Game” Anna and her soon-to-be late brother played during the 1953 prologue, once you summon the Midnight Man, at 12:00, you must keep your personal candle burner or step inside a protective circle of salt until 3:33 AM, or the evil entity can get you. He doesn’t merely kill. The Midnight Man torments his victims to death, using visions of their greatest fears. He also cheats.

So yeah, super-fun game—yet for some reason Anna Luster kept playing it over the years. She is now rather infirm and mentally erratic. Frankly, she is lucky her granddaughter Alex took time off to care for her, but alas, that also means the twentysomething and her ambiguous guy pal Miles will inevitable stumble across the game (basically some candles and a vial of salt) in the attic. Of course, once they find the creepy rules, they inevitably start playing, for no conceivably rational reason.

The Lusters are also lucky her personal GP (and childhood friend), Dr. Harding and his physician’s assistant make house-calls during the dark of night—both of them. Of course, his spider sense tells him something is not right. Alex and Miles’ pal Kelly also joins the game, because she her goth lifestyle will give her special survival insights. Right, good luck with that.

Apparently, Midnight Man is a fairly faithful remake of an Irish film that was never released in America, so who knows, maybe it is a hidden horror gem. The main appeal of Zariwny’s film is the presence of horror legends Lin Shaye and Robert Englund. Unfortunately, Anna Luster is not such a flattering role for Shaye that really isn’t that much different from her character in the deliriously unhinged The Black Room.

On the other hand, Englund is wonderfully sly as Dr. Harding. His fame rests on his work playing iconic monsters like Freddy Krueger, but in recent years he has transitioned into something like a contemporary Peter Cushing in films like Nightworld and The Funhouse Massacre, which totally works for us. His scenes in Midnight Man at least ten times more entertaining than the rest of the film.

Gabrielle Haugh (as Alex) and the rest of the poor man’s Scooby-Doo Mystery Team are serviceable but never all that memorable. At least the spooky grand old house is all kinds of atmospheric. It is not great, but it reconfirms our well-placed confidence in Englund. Strictly for his hardcore fans, The Midnight Man releases today on DVD and BluRay.

Insidious: The Last Key

By now, Elise Rainer ought to rank as one of America’s most popular psychic paranormal investigators. Yet many fans probably just refer to her as Lin Shaye in the Insidious movies. Over $370 million in world-wide business makes the case pretty clearly. Even if the fourth and final instalment does Hangman level business, the Blumhouse-produced series will still be highly profitable overall. However, the latest shrewdly plays to the franchise’s strengths, focusing on the fan favorite actress and her demon-busting character. Rainer’s latest case hits uncomfortably close to home. In fact, she will be called to the house where she lived as miserable child in Adam Robitel’s Insidious: The Last Key (trailer here), which opens today across the country.

Rainer herself says the old domicile is a house, but it was never a home. Its proximity to a prison graveyard probably did not help. Rainer always had psychic powers, despite her psychotic father’s attempts to literally beat it out of her. It is hard to say which was more frightening to the young girl: his abusive rage or the swarms of spirits inhabiting their space. Eventually, things got so bad, Rainer ran away from home, never looking back, even though she left behind her equally terrified little brother Christian.

Decades later, but before the events of the first two Insidious films, Rainer gets a desperate call from the current resident, seeking her help as an exorcist. Despite her initial reluctance, Rainer duly heads back home, accompanied by her goofball assistants, Tucker and Specs. Her reunion with her brother does not go well, but her nieces are more welcoming, especially Imogen, who also has the shine. Naturally, the supernatural goings-on in the house are so bad, Rainer will once again have to venture into “The Further,” the demonic astral realm you really do not want to visit.

Last Key is the fourth Insidious film, but it is the second chronologically, in that typically confusing genre film kind of way. This time around, it is helmed by Adam Robitel, who directed the under-heralded, over-achieving The Taking of Deborah Logan. That film was distinguished by its eerie atmosphere and masterfully slow building tension, which is why it is so surprising to find Robitel so heavily relying on jump scares this time around.

On the other hand, he manages to capitalize on the film’s extensive mythology to deepen the atmosphere of dread, rather than getting hamstrung by it all. In fact, the first two acts are quite effective, thanks to the confined setting and the tangibly corrupting influence of the past. Alas, the showdown in the Further just descends into ridiculousness.

Nevertheless, Rainer is an appealing character and Shaye is a national treasure. She would probably be a Kennedy Center Honoree by now, if scruffy horror movies were not her specialty. Franchise screenwriter Leigh Wannel and Angus Sampson do their thing as Rainer’s sidekicks. As Caitlin Rainer, Caitlin Gerard also shows sufficient presence and wherewithal to withstand all the uncanny woo-woo stuff swirling around them. Plus, Kirk Acevedo really keeps viewers guessing as the current occupant who calls in Rainer.

In terms of execution, Last Key is just okay, but it should be rewarding for horror fans to see Rainer get some closure (it shouldn’t be spoilery to imply she survives, since it is a prequel-sequel). Franchise fans can probably safely wait for VOD rather than slogging through the snow, but for diehards, it opens today in theaters across the City, including the AMC Empire and the Regal E-Walk across the street.

The Black Room: Natasha Henstridge Faces Temptation

How sad is it when people get possessed in Ouija movies just because they were playing a commercially produced board game? At least victims of the “us” demons (succubus and incubus) get a little gratification before damnation. That is the sort of entity that lurks in the basement of the Hemdales’ new home. They are in for a scorching hot time and it not just because of their overheating boiler in Rolfe Kanefsky’s ridiculously silly, shamelessly horny The Black Room (trailer here), which opens this Friday in Los Angeles.

As soon as Paul and Jennifer Hemdale move into their amazingly affordable new house, strange things start happening. You might ask what “strange” means in this context. Let’s just say when you see Natasha Henstridge orgasming from the vibrations of a demonically possessed washing machine, you know you haven’t walked into a long-lost Val Lewton film.

Apparently, the previous owner sacrificed herself to save her granddaughter from the demon lurking within the hidden room in the basement. Of course, why she would let the nubile teen sleep over knowing there was a sex demon barely contained downstairs is such a blindingly obvious question, we keep asking it throughout the film.

Before long, the entity is making the Hemdales all hot and bothered, while sowing dissension through their resulting misunderstandings. Soon, it flat out possesses Paul, just in time for the arrival of Jennifer’s obnoxious gothy, occulty little sister. She ought to realize something is off about Paul’s outrageously sexualized behavior. Unfortunately, Jennifer will have to face it on her own, with only the counsel of the still defiant grandmother’s spirit for help.

Every time you assume this film can’t possibly go any further over the top, it goes and does something even more nuts. Its spectacles of infernal orgies are neither erotic or scary, but they are a sight that must be seen to be believed. Forget logic, forget modesty, and just hang on and try to enjoy the ride as this train wreck of a film careens off the bridge.

Henstridge from Species still looks like a scream queen sex symbol, which is obviously why Kanefsky cast her. Somehow, she manages to stay relatively grounded and maintain the shreds of her dignity, washing machines notwithstanding. In contrast, Lukas Hassel understandably figures the only way out is to fight fire with fire. “Scenery chewing” doesn’t even begin to describe his outrageously flamboyant turn as Paul Hemdale. Apparently, the mania was contagious, because even the typically reliable horror film stalwart Lin Shaye sounds wacky and forced as Grandma Black. Oh and by the way, Tiffany Shepis plays Monica the realtor in what might be the film’s most restrained performance.

It is impossible to recommend a film like The Black Room, but if you see it now, you will reference it for years to come. It is just so weird and smarmy, it is hard to believe it actually exists—and yet it does. Words fail when The Black Room opens this Friday (4/28) at the Laemmle Music Hall in La La Land.

Bousman’s Abattoir

New Yorkers will need little convincing of the real estate industry’s evilness. However, the sort of flipping reporter Julia Talben uncovers will be a new one on them. A mysterious holding company is buying up crime scene houses and removing the murder rooms before re-selling cheap. The story gets personal for Talben when it happens to her late sister’s house. The trail leads her to the fixer-upper from Hell (more or less literally) in Darren Lynn Bousman’s Abattoir (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in Los Angeles.

Talben is understandably devastated when her sister, brother-in-law, and sickly nephew are murdered by a home invader, especially since the poor boy never really had a chance to enjoy life. To add salt to the wounds, the bank sells their house suspiciously, nearly impossibly quickly soon thereafter. It turns out the purchaser is a holding company with a record of these sort of transactions. Generally, the shady outfit only hangs onto properties long enough to somehow remove the rooms of infamy. It also happens to be registered in the same depressed [post-] industrial town that Talben traced her birth mother to, in hopes of finding a donor match for her nephew.

The locals are not exactly friendly. In fact, the sheriff keeps trying to run her off. Yet, he is probably the friendliest of the lot, except perhaps Allie, the proprietor of the world’s most available bed-and-breakfast, who shelters Talben until her on-and-off cop boyfriend Declan Grady arrives to back her up. It turns out the town is under the malevolent sway of demonic cult leader Jebidiah Crone, who is about as sinister as his name suggests.

Abattoir is set in the world of (but not adapted from) Bousman’s limited graphic novel series of the same name. It definitely helps having such a richly eerie backstory pre-established and ready to be applied. Although Bousman slightly loses sight of the human element during the big, woo-woo special effects climax, the film is mostly a character driven affair, which is why it gets so creepy.

Jessica Lowndes and Joe Anderson have surprisingly snappy chemistry together as Talben and Grady. However, the film really belongs to the crafty old timers. Lin Shaye’s Allie keeps viewer completely off-balance, whereas Dayton Callie chews the scenery with menacing authority as Crone. John McConnell adds further screwed-up small town color as the less than reassuring sheriff and Michael Paré even turns up briefly as the murderer of Talben’s family.

Granted, Abattoir falls apart at the end, but that is oh so typical of the genre. For at least eighty percent of the film, it is a first-class example of moody, suspenseful story-telling and intriguing dark fantasy world-building. Vastly superior to his Saw franchise installments and his Grand Guignol excesses, like Repo: The Genetic Opera, Abattoir is probably Bousman’s best film to-date. Recommended without caveats for horror fans, it opens tomorrow (12/9) at the Arena Cinelounge in LA and the AMC Westminster in Colorado.

Jack Goes Home: Lin Shaye Kills It

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross would have to create a whole new stage of grieving for Jack Thurlowe’s mother. It seems to mainly involve belittling her grown son. Returning for his father’s funeral would be difficult for the mopey twentysomething regardless, but there definitely seems to be some kind of evil influence in the air throughout Thomas Dekker’s Jack Goes Home (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Thurlowe’s hipster brooding is about to be interrupted by some terrible news. His father was killed in a car crash that also left his mother Theresa injured. After skyping his pregnant but not quite married girlfriend Cleo, Thurlowe leaves LA for a very Upstate New York looking Colorado to tend to his mother and handle his father’s arrangements. Viewers will quickly conclude the wrong parent died.

Theresa does not have much time for polite conventions and she no longer seems to care about Jack’s feelings. We soon get the sense there is something off about her, well beyond the expected stress. Essentially, a cold war develops between them, with several skirmishes fought over the family dog she evidently never liked. Things really get tense when Jack gets the urge to investigate his past, starting in the attic. Fortunately, Thurlowe’s life-long platonic lesbian pal Shanda also came home to provide moral support. She was always rather intimidated by Theresa, for reasons we can well understand.

Dekker (previously a teen actor recognizable from Fox’s Terminator: The Sarah Connors and Gregg Araki’s Kaboom) would have a much harder time slipping his big Shyamalan twist past the audience were it not for Lin Shaye’s ferocity as Theresa. Poor Rory Culkin is basically walking into a buzz saw, because he absolutely wilts under her stern glare. It might be Jack’s homecoming, but it is her movie.

Daveigh Chase also brings some earthy attitude as Shanda and Natasha Lyonne is quite memorable in her extended cameo. However, Britt Robertson mostly gets stuck with thankless skype scenes as the mega-preggers Cleo.

JGH is the sort of film you almost want to re-watch to see how each scene plays in light of the climatic game-changer. However, the film’s real attraction is Lin Shaye doing her darnedest Mommie Dearest act. This performance is everything lemming critics made out Meryl Streep to be in the (wrong kind of) horror show that was August: Osage County. Recommended for fans of psychological horror and thrillers, Jack Goes Home opens this Friday (10/14) in New York, at the Cinema Village.