The Unholy, Based on a James Herbert Novel

Late horror novelist James Herbert was often dubbed by critics “the British Stephen King,” but his American publishers were never able to translate those comparisons into sales for their editions. Believe me—I was once involved with such efforts. At least the book was good. Six film adaptations did not push him onto U.S. bestseller lists either, even though several were quite well-made. It opened to little fanfare, but the archetypal horrors resonate surprisingly deeply in director-screenwriter Evan Spiliotopouplos’s The Unholy, produced by Sam Raimi and based on Herbert’s Shrine, which airs tomorrow for service personnel on American Forces Network.

Gerald Fenn is a lot like many journalists, but he got caught fabricating his fake news stories. Ten years into his disgrace, Fenn survives by reporting on questionable occult phenomenon for a tabloid. Although a reported cattle mutilation is too bogus even for his standards, he finds a potential consolation prize when he unearths a kern doll on the farmer’s land. Unwisely, he smashes the head to make it look creepier.

The next day, the deaf-mute orphan Alice Pagett is miraculously cured. She claims she heard the Virgin Mary speak to her and then channels her divine power to cure others. Soon, Banfield, MA appears on track to become the next Lourdes. Boston’s Bishop Gyles assumes control of the scene, while Monsignor Delgarde from the Vatican investigates whether the reported healings truly qualify as miracles.

However, her guardian-uncle, Father William Hagen has visions of a demonic figure standing behind Pagett. That would be a very different Mary. Mary Elnor is a witch-turned-demon, who sold her soul to Satan, before the Puritans sealed her into the Kern baby during the prologue. Fenn botched this assignment even worse, but he valiantly fights to make amends.

Spiliotopouplos’s adaptation of Herbert’s novel embraces big, cosmic themes of good and evil, taking direct inspiration from the Biblical commandment against worshipping false idols. It also reflects a current split in the Church, represented by the smooth Cardinal Gyles and the more conservative Monsignor Delgarde. Regardless, the good Father Hagan is indeed a good Father, who might have been the most sympathetic priest portrayed in film during the entire year of 2021.

The film’s second great strength is its cast of character actors, very definitely including William Sadler, whose portrayal of Father Hagan is often quite poignant. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is suitably rumpled as Fenn, who perhaps fittingly loses his cynicism when confronting the horrors that unfold. Diogo Morgado (best known for playing Jesus in multiple projects) is a forceful, reassuring presence as Monsignor Delgarde, who demonstrates faith and intellectual rigor are not mutually exclusive. Cary Elwes (playing according to type) is amusingly slick and wily as the shortsighted Bishop.

Neighborhood Watch, Starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan

Ed Deerman was the kind of tough campus security guard a lot of universities need these days. Unfortunately, his involuntary retirement has been tough on Deerman. Everything about life is tough for his neighbor, Simon McNally. Yet, when the mentally-agitated man witnesses an abduction, he tries to do the right thing, but only the skeptical Deerman listens, albeit reluctantly, in Duncan Skiles’ Neighborhood Watch, which opens today in New York.

McNally was de-institutionalized, but he remains tormented by hallucinations of his abusive father. In moments of elevated stress, his speech turns into a Tourette’s-like “word salad.” As a witness, he lacks credibility with the cops. Out of desperation, he turns to the unwelcoming Deerman.

Of course, Deerman is dismissive, but he is also bored and resentful of lazy cops. Deerman soon starts to suspect there might be something to McNally’s kidnapping story, especially when someone tries to kill them. However, coaching McNally through their amateur investigation is tricky business.

Together, they hit the economically depressed, formerly blue collar streets of Birmingham, Alabama, giving the film a distinctive texture and sense of place. Skiles very definitely opts for grit over flash. While the suspense never reaches white knuckle levels, Skiles and the cast keep viewers emotionally invested, from start to finish.

Frankly, this might be the best performance of Jack Quaid’s career. As McNally, he covers a lot of twitchy, neurotic ground, but his tic-iness is scrupulously realistic, rather than showy. Likewise, Jeffrey Dean Morgan is perfectly cast as Deerman. He makes his grouchiness weirdly sad and even poignant. They never act like “odd couple” buddies, which gives the film a great deal of credibility. Plus, Malin Akerman really helps ground the film as McNally’s long-suffering sister, DeeDee.

The Possession: Continuing the Jewish Legacy of Horror Films

Here is a quick question for all the haters demonstrating on college campuses: do you enjoy horror films? They would hardly exist as we know them without Jewish artists and creators. Yiddish films like The Golem and silent German movies such as [Jewish director] Paul Leni’s Waxworks largely created the genre. Horror became commercially viable thanks to Universal Studio boss Carl Laemmle and Karl Freund, the cinematographer or director of many classic Universal Monster movies. Since then, filmmakers like William Friedkin, Sam Raimi, Lloyd Kaufman, and Eli Roth substantially contributed to the horror genre’s evolution. Recently, several horror films have re-embraced horror’s Jewish roots. The Raimi-produced The Possession led the pack, featuring the child-snatching demon Abyzou a decade prior to Oliver Lake’s The Offering. Danish filmmaker Ole Bornedal’s Possession deserves a second look when it airs Friday on the Movies! Network.

College basketball coach Clyde Brenek is somewhat separated from his wife Stephanie, but she is extremely separated from him. Their daughters Hannah and Emily are stuck in the middle. During their weekend with dad, Emily acquires a mysterious box with Hebrew inscriptions at an estate sale. She quickly becomes weirdly attached to it. Soon thereafter, she starts lashing out and even tries to frame her father for abuse.

After consulting with a campus folklorist, Brenek realizes his daughter released the demon held captive in a dybbuk box. He seeks help from the Brooklyn Hassidic establishment, but they are too scared to help. However, the chief rabbi’s young, rebellious son, Rabbi Tzadok Shapir believes he is bound by his faith and duty to help the desperate Brenek family. Indeed, things get so bad while Brenek is in Brooklyn, his ex and their teen daughter are willing to listen to him when he returns with a strange rabbi.

Juliet Snowden & Stiles White’s screenplay is based on a non-fiction article chronicling the checkered history of the real-life dybbuk box now in the possession (so to speak) of Zak Bagans. Many of the demonic elements will feel familiar, but the film still fruitfully taps into deep archetypal themes. It is also not as graphic as many horror films, having successfully appealed its way down to a PG-13 rating.

The Postcard Killings: Oscar-Winning Danis Tanovic Takes on James Patterson

They carefully select their victims, but they still manage to pick the daughter of an experienced serial killer hunting police detective. Unfortunately, it takes forever for the kneejerk anti-American Euro cops to take his advice seriously. People will die in the interim, but dogged Jacob Kanon will never stop hunting his daughters’ murderers in Danis Tanovic’s The Postcard Killings, based on the co-authored James Patterson novel, which opens tomorrow in New York.

It was Det. Kanon who bought the London honeymoon for his daughter and her newlywed husband, so he takes the grotesque circumstances of their murder especially hard. Some unknown perpetrator posed them in a grisly manner that resembles a famous painting. Actually, identifying the artistic sources of their inspiration will be one of the insights Kanon brings to the investigation.

Of course, the British copper in charge of the case initially tries to keep him at arm’s length, but the particularly public nature of the border-crossing killing spree makes it increasingly difficult for the multi-nation task force to refuse his specialized expertise. Before each killing, a local journalist is sent a cryptic postcard and afterwards they receive a horrific photo of the crime scene. It is unclear how the journalists are selected. None of them regularly cover the crime beat, but expat human interest-writer Dessie Leonard would like to transfer to harder news, so she agrees to work with Kanon to get the inside track on the story.

It might surprise some film snobs that Bosnian filmmaker Danis Tanovic, who won the best Foreign Language Oscar (as it was then called) for No Man’s Land, would helm a straight-up serial killer thriller. Yet, this is the same Tanovic who directed the Pakistan-set whistleblower expose Tigers, so he clearly has an affinity for transnational drama. In fact, he executes the lurid crimes with operatic flair.

However, the story itself is rather standard issue stuff. Generally speaking, Patterson’s collaborations features two types of co-authors, up-and-coming crime novelists, which should include Swedish Postcard co-author Liza Marklund (who co-adapted their novel with Andrew Stern), and inconsequential hacks (like a nobody named Bill Clinton, whoever that might be). Maybe something was lost in the page-to-screen transfer, but we have seen everything here many times before.

Solace: Sir Anthony Hopkins Pursues a Serial Killer

Even though the Marvel Comics villain Destiny had precognitive powers, the X-Men still usually defeated her and the Brotherhood of [Evil] Mutants, although often under rather pyrrhic terms. Sometimes knowing the future just isn’t enough. Retired police doctor John Clancy has limited powers of prescience, yet he was still unable to prevent his daughter’s death from leukemia. He is still handy to have around during an investigation. Unfortunately, the serial killer he will investigate has the same powers, except they are even stronger in Afonso Poyart’s long-awaited Solace (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Special Agent Joe Merriweather is so frustrated in his hunt for an elusive serial killer, he tries to lure his former colleague Clancy back as a consultant. Frankly, it is sort of impressive Merriweather even picked up on the clues linking the cases. Naturally, Clancy is reluctant but something about the cases stimulates his Spidey sense. As to be expected, he initially clashes with Merriweather’s headshrinker partner, Agent Katherine Cowles, but she warms to him when she realizes he is the real deal. He also takes a liking to her, which makes his visions of her potential murder rather upsetting.

It turns out, all the victims had fatal diseases that were mostly undiagnosed, but on the verge of taking a horribly painful turn. Before long, Dr. Clancy realizes they are hunting someone much like himself, but more powerful, engaged in a spree of “mercy” killings. Things get really complicated when the adversaries start using their powers to get the drop on each other.

The good news is Solace is way better than you might have heard—truly legitimately so and not just as a function of low expectations. Reportedly, Solace was originally developed as a sequel to Se7en, but it is hard to see that lineage in the final film, aside from both having serial killer plots in common. Frankly, that is just as well. Solace is much more life-affirming film and often surprisingly clever. Arguably, it is miraculously cohesive considering how many screenwriters had a hand in its screenplay, including some pretty prestigious but uncredited scribes.

Of course, the commercial potential of a serial killer movie starring Sir Anthony Hopkins is self-evident. Although worlds removed from Hannibal Lecter (who nonetheless haunts the film like a ghost in the attic), Hopkins is terrific as the world-weary Clancy. He makes the woo-woo believable and gives a rousing third act defense of life should raise the hair on the back of everyone’s neck and ought to earn the film a robust following with pro-life, anti-euthanasia activists.

Once again, Jeffrey Dean Morgan proves he is one of the most under-rated actors working today, despite his high-profile work in Walking Dead, Watchmen, and dozens of other shows and films. As Merriweather, he gives the film a human grounding and develops a genuine sense of camaraderie with Hopkins. Colin Farrell takes his time showing up, but he makes the most of it when he does, creeping the scene up and chewing the scenery as the psychic killer, Charles Ambrose. He and Hopkins have some electric scenes together, sizing each other up and trying to out-brain each other. Australian rapper Abbie Cornish basically tries to get by on distant reserve as Cowles and she mostly gets away with it, because all eyes are really on Hopkins and Farrell.

Poyart really has a fitting sensibility for Solace, which is stylistically similar to his breakout Brazilian calling card 2 Rabbits, except this film features dizzying visions of possible futures, whereas his previous film was dominated by super-kinetic context-supplying rewinds. It all comes together, thanks in large measure to Sir Anthony. Recommended without reservation for fans of serial killer thrillers, Solace opens this Friday (12/16) in New York, at the Cinema Village (but screening times are limited).

Shanghai: Gong Li Lights Up the Foreign Concessions

We tend to forget Japan fought with the Allies in WWI. Afterward, British and American interests were just as determined to exploit the Foreign Concession system as their Japanese counterparts. Yet, Shanghai’s complicated and contradictory multinational governance made it one of only two completely open safe harbors for Jewish refugees during the so-called “Solitary Island” period. Obviously, the city is the perfect place to conduct espionage. Unfortunately, one of America’s best agents has just been murdered, but his friend and colleague intends is out to find the killer and make him pay in Mikael Håfström’s Shanghai (trailer here), which opens this Friday in select theaters.

Paul Soames has assumed the cover of a National Socialist-sympathizing journalist, but he is really a democracy and freedom loving Naval Intelligence officer. However, his friend Conner was the true idealist. Yet, his prescient warnings about National Socialist and Imperial Japanese aggression were routinely ignored. Soames soon deduces Conner seduced Sumiko, the opium-addicted mistress of Tanaka, the police captain of the Japanese Concession and more importantly the local intelligence chief. Now suspiciously missing, Tanaka is turning the city inside out looking for her.

Soames’ search for Sumiko brings him into the orbit of gentleman gangster Anthony Lan-Ting and his society wife Anna. Lan-Ting has accepted an alliance with the Japanese for the sake of business, but his wife has secretly risen through the ranks of the resistance. Soames ingratiates himself with both Lan-Tings when he saves Anthony from an attack on Japanese officers organized by his wife, but executed without the surgical precision she had expected. She genuinely loves Lan-Ting, but like the wife of the local German military contractor, she finds Soames jolly fun to flirt with. Yet, as Tanaka cranks up the pressure, the attraction shared by her and Soames becomes more seriously ambiguous.

If you watch Shanghai soon after Zhang Yimou’s Coming Home, you will be astonished by Gong Li’s range. While she just rips viewers’ hearts out as the achingly tragic mother in Zhang’s literary masterwork, she plays Håfström’s noir heroine with all the va-va-voom you could ever hope for. She makes the screen smolder, even opposite a little twerp like John Cusack. Yet, she also compellingly projects the inner turmoil of a woman whose loyalties are divided between her husband and her country. It is a big, juicy, psychologically complex role, but Gong has the skills to pull it off.

Cusack just is not right for a Rick Blaine-ish romantic role, but fortunately, his gee whiz, fish-out-of-water persona works well enough for most of his solo scenes navigating the various intrigues. Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays Conner with characteristic intensity in his flashbacks (too bad he wasn’t the one paired up with Gong), but the ever-reliable David Morse is grossly under-employed as Soames’ embassy contact.

Of course, Gong owns the film, but Ken Watanabe basically walks away with every scene she is not in. He is hardly another Captain Renault, but he is no Maj. Strasser either. Watanabe rather keeps us guessing, humanizing Tanaka, while playing his extremes to the hilt. Strangely, Chow Yun-fat is the one most conspicuously short-changed for screen time, but you can rectify that by watching The Last Tycoon, a natural companion film that focuses on a similar gangster-turned reluctant patriot. Unfortunately, Rinko Kikuchi is just squandered as the seldom seen Sumiko.

Attentive eyes will also spot future-star-in-the-making Andy On as one of Anna Lan-Ting’s comrades-in-arms. His appearances are brief, but his screen presence and action chops still come through loud-and-clear. Also look for Benedict Wong, who is quite good in the small but significant role of Juso Kita, Soames’ informer.

Håfström shifts gears from big historical set pieces to noir intimacy relatively adroitly. Hossein Amini’s screenplay intelligently incorporates the circumstances of the Foreign Concessions, as well as the events leading up to Pearl Harbor. Although he is clearly riffing on Casablanca, he wisely avoids paralleling the Bogart classic beat-for-beat. As a result, it all works quite well, in a pleasingly old fashioned kind of way.

Frankly, it is rather baffling why Shanghai’s release has been so long-deferred. In the intervening time, On’s star has risen, but Cusack’s has fallen, yet Gong remains on top of her game. She is more than enough reason to see Shanghai, along with Julie Weiss’s elegant costuming, Watanabe’s slyly villainous turn, and an unusual deep and accomplished supporting cast (blink and you miss Downton’s Hugh Bonneville). Recommended for fans of historical espionage thrillers, Shanghai opens this Friday (10/2) in key markets.

Based on True Crimes: Texas Killing Fields

They like their justice swift in the Lone Star State (and God bless them for it), but it will take a transplanted New York cop to break open a heinous serial killer case. Inspired by the gruesome history of the marshland outside Texas City, TX, a notorious dumping ground for corpses, a somewhat fictionalized pair of lawmen show their grit, warts-and-all, in Ami Canaan Mann’s Texas Killing Fields (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Nobody wants to face up to what goes on in that swamp, least of all the Texas City police officers charged with investigated it. However, Brian Heigh is new around these parts. Out of a reasonable sense of duty, he agrees to help Pam Stall, a cop from a neighboring jurisdiction, investigate a series of disappearances linked to the marsh.

His tightly wound partner Mike Souder advises against getting pulled into an open-ended morass. It also hardly helps that Stall is his ex. Heigh and Souder have very different approaches to their job, but eventually they get on the same page. Unfortunately, by that point time is running out for the latest abductee, whom the cops have a particularly personal interest in.

Frankly, the procedural element to Fields is fairly standard stuff. A bit messy, the screenplay leaves a major side-plot largely unresolved. However, the two leads really deliver the goods. Indeed, based on his work here and in The Debt, it is time to forget the big awful blockbusters like Avatar and become a believer in Sam Worthington. He is fantastic as Souder, viscerally intense and unpredictable as a live wire. While he plays the easy-going understated cop (isn’t that usually a Southern thing?), Jeffrey Dean Morgan is genuinely compelling as the slow-burning Heigh. Though largely underutilized, at least Jessica Chastain’s Stall has a cool interrogation scene (that not surprisingly has been released as a teaser).

Mann (yes, the daughter of Fields producer Michael Mann) nicely exploits the lonesome Texas backdrop and cranks up the tension down the stretch like an old pro. Yet, one thing that really distinguishes the film is its sympathetic portrayal of Heigh’s Catholicism. As the body count mounts, he has something of a crisis of faith, but not in a way that leads him to question his beliefs. Rather, he struggles to find his proper path amid the chaos or what his wife suggests might be his calling. Not only does this humanize Heigh, it provides some light in a very dark film. 

Nobody will mistake Fields for a buddy-cop movie, but Worthington and Morgan are compulsively watchable as they dispense some justice. Recommended rather enthusiastically for those who want strong character studies in their crime dramas, Fields opens this Friday (10/14) in New York at the IFC Center.