Wednesday, June 25, 2003
Yesterday was Spooky's birthday and we spent it doing nonstressful, non-writery, birthday sorts of stuff. I read her Anne Sexton and we baked a cake. We went out for sushi. It was a calm, good day.
After dinner, we stopped by Blockbuster for a DVD. We were both in the mood for a silly horror film, nothing actually scary, nothing with ambition, nothing with any actual substance. Not a exactly stinker, but something that wasn't actually very good, either. From what I'd heard, Robert Harmon 's They was just what we had in mind. I'd read little but ill words about this movie since its theatrical release back in November. Which will teach me to skip films based on the opinions of others. To our surprise, They is a wonderfully creepy film, despite the fact that much of the first thirty or so minutes is terribly formulaic and seem to have sprung from the exact same shooting script as the less artful Darkness Falls. If you haven't seen They, ignore the clamour of critics and horror-movie geeks. Nothing much frightens those people, anyway. I found They genuinely spooky, in large part because the filmmakers wisely chose to keep the gore to a minimum, and rely on suspense and atmosphere for effect. The film's malformed, scampering creatures, the creepist monster design I've seen since Pitch Black, are kept mostly in shadow or always moving much too quickly for us to get a good look at them. And thus, "they" never lose their punch. The viewer is never given an opportunity to form a clear image of them in his or her head and so cannot say, "Okay, that's not so bad. I've seen worse than that. It's just more CGI." They is not a brilliant film, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it beats most contemporary horror films hands down. The script could have been smarter, and I suspect it probably started out that way. Laura Regan was a little wooden, though she possesses a certain willowy vulnerability which made her physically perfect for her role. But the movie's strongest point is its ending, which I won't give away. But it's not Hollywood, and it's not what you'll expect. It isn't terror, and it isn't relief through a predictable action scene, and it isn't all about setting up a sequel. It's what Joseph Conrad had in mind when he used the word "horror." It's exquisitely bleak. The DVD includes an alternate ending which is even bleaker and, in fact, can be watched immediately as sort of an extended ending, the theatrical ending acting as a false bottom leading directly to the more disturbing "alternate." I don't usually go on here about movies, but I feel They hasn't gotten a fair shake and I strongly urge you to have a look at it.
I think I have found the route back into Murder of Angels. Sometimes I become so utterly lost in a book, so turned around (and mired in the aforementioned second-guessing), and I have to climb out of it, way up high where I can look down on all of the thing at a single glance and find perspective again. Sometimes that means abandoning what I thought was the plot for something entirely different.
We started up the Cat Crutches Auction again. The unbound galley (hand-corrected) of Low Red Moon, which I promised to have Spooky and Jennifer list ages ago, is finally up, along with the usual stuff. I'm going to try to get some sets of The Dreaming up soon (but "soon" in Caitish can be a somewhat long time). Your patronage is, as always, appreciated.
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