The Canal

So...I'm not crazy about The Canal. I really want to stick to writing about movies I like as much as I can, even if I have issues with them, because, well, I don't want to be a dick. Every movie is someone's favorite movie and I'd never want to try to talk someone out of loving something. Also, I'm not even remotely a critic and I feel no responsibility to write about anything unless I want to. So there.

But The Canal a) does a a lot right and b) it's faults are interesting enough to warrant a discussion. Look, the movie is crazy well directed. And well acted. The issues are all in the script, and I think they mostly center around lack of characterization. The movie is supposed to be about David's (Rupert Evans) descent into madness after the death of his cheating wife, maybe or maybe not prompted by a ghost. But we never really see him act, you know, happy or like a well-adjusted human being, so it doesn't feel like that much of a descent.

I mean, the only thing we know about him is that he likes Cat People. We don't even know for sure which Cat People (though context clues point to the Val Lewton one. If you're interested). His entire character is: a grieving husband who might be going crazy. I don't know, I guess it's kind of a pet peeve of mine, but I have a hard time caring when a character's entire personality seems to exist solely for the story and everything we know them relates to plot. Does that makes sense? I need to feel like a character exists outside of the frame to get fully invested.

There's a moment fairly early on when David flings a folder of crime scene photographs at the door to his bedroom, not realizing that the live-in nanny he's hired to take care of his son is standing there. He hits her with the photos AND HE DOESN'T APOLOGIZE. I mean, okay, I get it, he's supposed to be totally out of it and consumed by grief, but if he's that weird that early on, it doesn't feel like there's a huge journey to go on.

The other thing that bugged me, the one that completely lost me, is really spoiler-y. So skip the next paragraph if you haven't seen the movie.

About, I don't know, maybe a week or two after the police dredge Claire's (Antonia Campbell Hughes) body from the canal, the detective shows up again and says that they found a hammer in the canal with David's fingerprints on it. I immediately stopped paying attention to the story because I was totally consumed with trying to figure out how/why they found this hammer. Did they keep dredging the canal? For, like, a week? For...fun? Maybe they were paid up on the dredger rental for another week, so why the hell not. And, okay, fine, but Claire's body showed no bruising, no signs of a struggle, much less evidence of being hit with a hammer. So...the hammer is weird. Suspicious, even. But I have no idea how it would constitute a reason to re-open the case. Does the detective just have nothing better to do? And that's what I was thinking about for the following ten minutes or so.



Like I said, the movie is incredibly well directed and some of the scary scenes are scary as shit. It just bums me out, because I feel like it wouldn't have taken that much work to make a much stronger movie – mostly, just give us some more first act. Let us see David and Claire happy, or at least happier, so we have a sense of what's been lost. Let David have interests and friends (more than one) so that his obsession is consuming his life rather than just seemingly taking up residence as the only thing in a fairly empty existence. Ugh. Sorry. I'm totally being a dick, which is exactly what I don't want to be. It just bums me out when a movie is ALMOST one of my favorites, but the shortcomings are so sever and specific that they ruin the whole damn thing for me instead. I don't know. Maybe you'll love it; plenty of people do!

Why I Think Kristy Is Kind Of The Shit

Kristy is on Netflix. You should go watch it, because it's awesome.

The short version: it's about a poor college student, Justine, who can't afford a flight home for the Thanksgiving break, so she stays on campus. She borrows her roommate's BMW to go get some groceries at a convenience store and, while there, she has a weird run-in with a woman named Violet who turns out to be part of some sort of vaguely Satanic cult. Violet and her three co-cult-members follow Justine back to her dorm and hunt her around campus.

It's a straightforward setup, and it's a straightforward movie. But the details are what make the movie, like, totally super cool, and to talk about them, I have to get into at least minor spoilers. The spoiler free version: I thought the writing, especially the character work, was incredibly smart and subtle. It's one of those movies where most of the background is revealed through subtext rather than text, which I suspect might be why a lot of people don't care for Kristy; if you're checking your phone or whatever and only catching the broad strokes of the movie, it will feel a lot more rote than it actually is.

Small spoilers ahead. You've been warned.

I've heard complaints that the whole cult element was undercooked and it's true that we never really get much background on them, but I kind of loved that: I got the impression that the religious aspect of the killing was just a loose framework which gave a bunch of sociopathic meth-heads with low self-esteem an excuse to go kill rich girls who, in their eyes, have everything they (the sociopathic meth-heads with low self-esteem) do not. Justine was ultimately targeted because she was driving a BMW. If she'd shown up to the gas station in a beat up, dirty 1994 Honda Civic (I miss my car), then Violet probably would have left her alone. And, worse, she offered to buy something for Violet. That rich bitch!

But anyway, that idea (religion as a loose framework entitling the devotees to do what they want) is really to me. True believers in a vast, underground, Satanic cult seems a little far-fetched to me, but people who just want to find a cause that will vindicate their desire to kill people who make them feel bad about themselves and then post videos of said murder online? That feels uncomfortably plausible.

I also loved the journey that Justine goes on. Yeah, it's from victim to fighter which, sure, not exactly plumbing the depths of originality. But she's interesting, smart and resourceful from the beginning and that goes pretty damn far for me. It's really only her level of aggressiveness that changes, and the shift is really specific. There's a moment toward the middle of the movie when something horrible happens in front of Justine and she starts repeating the word no, chanting it, unable to do anything else with the situation presented to her, and the word acts as a sort of pivot point. Her delivery of the word shifts with each repetition until she's gone from helpless to pissed. Now, she's going to kill these motherfuckers.

**End Spoilers**

It's also just really simply and beautifully shot and cut, which is something I've become increasingly appreciative of as I get older. I'm not terribly interested in flashy camera work any more and I really like directors that let the writing and the acting do a lot of the heavy lifting vis a vis storytelling.

Look, to some extent, the movie is what it is, but it kind of hits all of my sweet spots: deceptively complex villains, character development through action, a smart, capable protagonist and a slasher-y premise. Your mileage could certainly vary, but I really dig Kristy.

How BAM Can Take All of Your Money Next Month

This is a PSA: if you live in NYC, Brooklyn Academy of Music is doing a Michael Mann retrospective during the first half of February and following that with a series of witch movies during the second half, in honor of the release of The Witch, a festival darling from last year which is supposed to be absolutely terrifying. Do you know what this means!? Heat and Suspiria will both be screening on 35mm at BAM in February!

They're also screening pretty much everything Michael Mann's made, including his masterpiece, Miami Vice. Not kidding, I fucking love that movie.

Other notables: The Witch, The City of the Dead (not to be confused with Fulci's City of the Living Dead), Blair Witch, The Wicker Man, The Witches, The Craft, and Viy, the first horror movie from the Soviet Union. I haven't seen Viy, but from what I've heard, it was either a big influence on The Evil Dead or there were some very strange coincidences (e.g., the floating, Demon POV camera). Either way, I'm really curious.

Anyway, here are the links:

http://www.bam.org/film/2016/michael-mann

http://www.bam.org/film/2016/witches-brew

I'm super excited! Everyone should go!