Rating: D+
Director: Ti West
Stars: Jocelin Donahue, Tom Noonan, Greta Garwig, AJ Bowen
This one goes straight onto my “most overrated horror films” list, likely somewhere between Scream and It Follows. There are movies I don’t like, yet can understand their appeal. Then there are films like this, where I am left genuinely wondering if I had watched the same thing. I mean, I was informed (and I won’t be linking to the review): “This is one of the best horror movies ever made. It just has everything that makes the horror genre wonderful.” What. The. Actual. Shit? I mean, it’s largely watching an annoying college student wander round a house, eat pizza and make phone calls, in a faux-eighties environment. Whoop di fucking doo.
The set-up sees said student Sam Hughes (Donahue) rent an apartment from a suspiciously enthusiastic landlady, played by Dee Wallace. [Don’t worry, it’s irrelevant] Never mind that Sam can’t afford it, and her reaction to the realization involves going into the dorm bathroom, turning on all the taps, and moping in a stall. Her ideas to address the situation begin and end with… a babysitting job. Couldn’t she become a stripper, like other impecunious students? She pounces on an offer from Mr. Ulman (Noonan), although on arrival, learns the job involves sitting for his mother. He ups the offered fee, until it will cover her entire first month’s rent. Sam accepts, despite the qualms of her best friend and ride, Megan (Garwig – ironic to see the future Barbie director playing a blonde bimbo).
And, then? Nothing. Outside of one rather cheap jump-scare – “You’re not the babysitter?” – West seems to think watching his heroine meandering around is a slow-burn, and that trotting out eighties clichés in the 21st century, stops them from being clichés. He is wrong on both counts. A slow-burn needs to have some mechanism to ratchet up the tension. Here, it is painfully obvious something bad is going to happen to Sam, from the moment she and Barbie Megan pull up. It just takes way to long to be delivered, and you’re left watching a babysitter without a baby to sit. It’s as interesting as watching me on my lunch break, until things suddenly explode, with a Satanic cult whose incompetence suggests they’re the Church of Larry, Curly and Moe.
West does nail the vintage aesthetic on the visual side, and Donahue looks like she came straight off the set of Suspiria. So what’s the point? If I wished to do so, there are plenty of movies genuinely from the period: good, bad or indifferent. Why would I bother with one trying to cosplay cinematically as a bygone era? The desperation goes all the way down to the bullshit “based on true events” caption at the start. Spoiler: it, in fact, is not. This retrospective approach seems to be West’s thing. At least the likes of Pearl had Mia Goth. Here, we get Mary Woronov as Mrs. Ulman, and reportedly, her reaction to the film was, “Let’s just pretend that never happened.” #I’mWithHer