52 Pick-Up # 28 – Hunt For the Wilderpeople (2016)

Welcome back to another installment of 52 Pick--

Huh?

Oh. Right.

So, I should probably explain myself.

As anyone who's been following this week to week, or at least read last week's entry, might recall, the initial pick for this week's was going to be Takeshi Koike's Redline.

Let me be clear: that entry is still happening. The movie has been watched and the post is underway to go up next week.

So why the change-up?

Let's call this a special emergency episode for lack of a better way to put it. Or, if you prefer the less urgent, I can call this 'A Very Special Episode.'

By this point, chances are some of you have already figured out exactly where I'm going with this – for anyone who didn't: this was a late tag-in to commemorate the recent death of Sam Neill. Talking over his work, it came up that I had never seen this title before, and it felt like a fitting tribute, seeing as this is considered one of the best of his latter movies.

Initially I hadn't planned for this to be an entry, but hey, the more I thought about it, I liked the idea.

So, keep your engines idling for next week. Until then, time to discuss a great movie from an all around class act of a performer.

It was this or Possession. 
While I still plan to see that, I feel like this might be the nicer title to bid a farewell with.

With that, said, let's get to the pitch.

Hunt For the Wilderpeople introduces us to Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison), a child in foster care who is brought to what he is told is his home of last resort. There he meets Bella (Rima Te Wiata) and her husband Hector, aka Hec (Sam Neill). Bella is warm and outgoing and quickly helps Ricky feel at home, winning him over even as he comes in guarded. By comparison, Hector is gruff and quiet, and just wants to be left alone. Despite that, things seem to be going well...until Bella dies of a stroke. Wracked with grief, Hector disappears, first into his own pain, then into the woods. Not wanting to go back into the foster system, and quite likely juvenile detention, Ricky fakes his death and runs into the woods himself. What starts as a half-cocked plan to run away soon turns into him running into Hector again. After a rocky initial encounter (pun half intentional) the two develop a rapport, as Hector starts to open up about himself and Ricky begins to learn how to hold his own out in the wild. Back in civilization, however, the remains of Ricky's plan have been found and misinterpreted as a kidnapping plot. So the two now unlikely friends soon go from finding their way back to society to staying one step ahead of the law.

The kind of wholesome family adventure you come to expect from Taika Waititi.

I'll admit that I mainly intended to make this about praising Sam Neill, both in general and for this particular role. That will be the bulk of this, but there are other things I did want to point out first.

I'm now wondering if one could put together a retrospective
around Sam Neill playing grouches who learn to like
kids. I mean, even if it's just the two movies, it's one
Hell of a double feature.

First, as good as Neill is, he's not carrying the whole movie on his back. As the lead he plays off for most of the film, Dennison is a welcome presence. He plays Ricky with a level of teenager swagger that can either serve as expression of confidence or shield as the moment calls for it. It's a detail we don't see him fully shed and the way Dennison pivots it from scene to scene is a great touch that helps make Ricky endearing. While no one else gets quite the level of focus, the rest of the cast are all still delivering good work, with particular standouts going to Rhys Darby as an erratic, if harmless backwoods loner and Rachel House as the foster care agent whose dedication to her job helps the situation spiral from a runaway to a manhunt. The latter is another case of the movie knowing just how to balance a character, with House playing someone who could have been more explicitly villainous but instead is presented as just FAR too zealous about what she does to realize she's completely overdoing the situation (contrasted well with Oscar Kightley as an increasingly exasperated police officer.)

As to the tone balance, part of this also goes to Waititi as the writer and director. It was a little strange at first to watch this and remember that, while he had been working for over a decade, at this point he was only just breaking out on the success of his earlier What We Do in the Shadows. This came in without much of the expectation that would come to define much of Hollywood's drive for the man and his various projects and attempted projects that followed (I'm still hoping his attempt to adapt Jodorowsky's The Incal happens, because he feels like a good fit there.) Remembering how hard Hollywood went in for him following this period, there's something about the low-key warmth and charm of this that feels refreshing, even as this has many moments that skew darker in their humor. Okay, maybe darker isn't quite the right term for all of it. Perhaps grounded? In any case, it's that sense that in many moments this could have gone a lighter, more whimsical approach, especially in the movie's back half, but Waititi still opted to keep one foot planted in a reality of sorts.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to put this without spoilers. I think the best vague way I can put it goes into what I was saying about the escalation. The stakes Waititi sets as Ricky and Hec's journey on the lam goes on become on one hand funny in his style for how serious House's foster agent is taking this, but also leads to stakes that can't simply be wiped clean. In the end, Waititi finds a way to end it that feels believable while also keeping the movie from tilting into a full downer. It's a balancing act he accomplishes several times in the movie and it's impressive how it never seems to tip too far to one extreme or the other.

Okay. Now back to Sam Neill, the reason for this surprise addition.

I do want to anchor all of this in just this role, but first I want to say, like a lot of people, I have many good associations with this man's work over the years. Some of it I've already touched on here in previous years (such as during my earlier October franchise runs where I discussed his work in both The Final Conflict and In the Mouth of Madness.) In general, he was a constantly welcome presence, having a general demeanor that he could easily tilt from abrasive and prickly to calm and collected to genuine warmth, often in the same roles and to great effect. It made him a constantly welcome presence on screen, and from all reports, a genuinely warm, likable person off camera as well.

In the case of Wilderpeople, he plays the poles of prickly and warm off each other beautifully. Like Dennison with Ricky, his Hec is a guarded person who has been marked by his initial negative encounters with people. There's a great moment from Neill early on with this after Bella's death where Hec talks to Ricky about her. In explaining his relationship to her, he perfectly underscores that, for their differences, he and Ricky are at their core similar people: two people used to being hurt united by someone who took to them and showed them genuine care and love when it seemed like no one else would. It's the kind of moment that an actor could easily risk overplaying and making maudlin, but Neill comes to with the right level of restraint to make it land. That restraint also works into his growth as the two come to understand one another. We see Hec warming up to Ricky, but it's not in such a way that it feels like a light switch was flipped – he puts his trust in him and respects him, but we also see he still has moments of being frustrated with Ricky's stubbornness and sometimes rash choices. 

The final act of the movie represents this well with regards to my earlier comments about the situation escalating to the point they can't simply act like nothing happened. At the start of the movie, Hec is keeping himself distanced from Ricky. At first this reads as just him not being good with children, later being too caught up in his own grief before finally coming around. By the end, his attempts to distance from Ricky return, not out of a desire to be rid of the child, but simply from seeing things have become so out of hand that he can tell running is just going to make things worse. Again, as a performer, it's the kind of shift Neill can handle without it feeling forced or unearned, and still allowing the audience to care for this gruff old grouch of a man as we can see how conflicted he is even as he tries to make Ricky understand.

This really feels like a perfect choice movie for remembering Sam Neill. Yes, it's not as iconic as, say, Jurassic Park (I can't even pretend to lie and say that would have been a first for this,) but it's a perfect showcase of a lot of what made Neill so endearing and enduring as an actor. I know he had work after this, but if this had been his final performance, it would have made a perfect note to go out on – at times rough, funny, complicated, but under it all, full of heart.

Rest in peace, Sam, and thanks for all the great work.

So...yeah.

Next week. Redline. Till then,

In the Mouth of Madness (1994) – Once Again, Ending the World in Paperback

Greetings and a Happy Halloween to you all!

Once again, it's time to close up shop on another horror franchise of October. And in this case, we're not so much closing the shop as we're burning the whole thing to the ground.

By 1994, John Carpenter had been to the Apocalypse Trilogy twice. The Thing left the fate of the world ambiguously saved – the creature may be frozen, it may not. Prince of Darkness edged closer to the brink, offering a tease of an averted crisis before suggesting that the end was merely altered rather than prevented. Proving third time pays for all, Carpenter finally sealed humanity's doom with the Lovecraftian In the Mouth of Madness.

Like I said last time, this is a movie that has a pretty good standing among horror fans now. At the risk of making this a bit personal, I'm actually really happy for that. When I was first introduced to this movie by a friend, it was barely a blip on a lot of the horror community radars. Its most prominent placing was in lists of H.P. Lovecraft/Lovecraft inspired movies, and even then, it was often filling in the rest of the list behind heavies like Re-Animator and From Beyond.

I'm still not even sure exactly when or how its image rehabilitation began, but somewhere over the past ten years, the horror community has begun to take more of a shine to this dark piece of meta-horror, and, like the condemnation and later redemption of Halloween III: Season of the Witch, I'm pleased to see how the court of public opinion has reversed its ruling.

Okay, personal thoughts about this movie's comeback story aside, let's get into what it's bringing to the table.

...somehow, trying to find a single amusing caption for this
almost feels like dressing it up more than the image needs.

This is the first time in a while I've watched this movie as a part of the larger thematic cycle it takes part in instead of just on its own merits. I bring this up in part because, after discussing the tight, tense structure of The Thing and the looser, conceptually headier feel of Prince of Darkness, In the Mouth of Madness feels like it lands in something of a sweet spot between the two. The movie's ideas about belief and the fluid nature of reality are definitely from the side of Carpenter that gave us good and evil as quantum energy in PoD, but it also weds it to the tighter, more structured narrative of his early work with The Thing. While it never quite surpasses either of its predecessors in those particular fields, its ability to meld the two sensibilities serves it well in its own regard.

Those themes in particular are the part of the movie that sticks with me more over the years. When I first saw this in what was either the late 90s or early aughts, the movie's somewhat outlandish view of reality – the idea that of it as a sort of tenuous force held together by belief, that could be effectively shattered by the right sort of mass delusion was something I had never expected to see in a horror film. It was a big part of why it made such an impression on me, even before getting to the movie's bleak finale that takes the movie...well, it says right on the box. Looking at it now in the cold light of the past few years, there's something that feels especially chilling about the idea the movie is proposing – that enough people choosing to believe in ostensible fictions could potentially upend every notion of a sane, reasonable world as people know it.

I'm not going to go down this rabbit hole too far now, but I will say up front, I have toyed off and on with going into a full write-up of how sadly prescient this movie would prove to be the altogether toxic relationship with conspiracy culture that has become a prominent force over the past few years. I told myself up front I wasn't going to make that the central thrust of this piece, but I still had to give it a nod. As a full deep dive, I'm not taking this one off the table, either.

Anyway, back to the movie.

Fun fact for those watching at home - on the right is Carpenter 

regular Peter Jason, AKA Dr. Leahy from previously
covered Prince of Darkness. This would make him one of the only 

cast members to be in more than one  part of the Trilogy.

Looked at on paper, the ideas Carpenter is playing with here are a daunting list. Besides the idea of malleable reality, he also ties in elements of meta-fiction, wedding that with Lovecraft's ideas as a way to explore the idea of being utterly powerless and at the mercy of ancient, malevolent forces beyond human reckoning. As the ideas of Lovecraft go, it's one of the trickier to properly pull off in a a live action film– which makes it interesting that of the aspects he plays with from the mythos, this is the one Carpenter manages to nail the most effectively.

As far as the execution of the rest of the movie goes, it has held up well for itself.

As part of his 90s return to the horror genre, Sam Neill (welcome back for another October) is well suited to playing the movie's lead, a cynic cursed with a front row seat to watching the rest of the world go mad, casually flip about the worst in people, but ultimately unprepared to actually face the true worst when it is unleashed. As his counterpoint, the enigmatic author Sutter Cane, veteran character actor Jurgen Prochnow is unsettling in how calm he is in the face of humanity's utter desolation – unlike Neill, he has accepted his role as the herald of the end, and the decision to play it as a sort of detached amusement causes the character to resonate more than if he'd been played as an over the top madman. Rounding the out leads as the thematic bridge between the two, Julie Carmen's arc is one I've come to enjoy more on repeat viewing – at first, presented purely as a supporter of Cane and his work, she seems completely on board when it's all fiction. It's only as the movie unfolds and the prospect of what is being written becomes more real that she begins to genuinely fear what might be happening, and by the time she is fully aware of her role in it, it's too late to escape.

The movie is inspired by Lovecraft, and Cane's popularity is clearly 

modeled on Stephen King. Having said that, I'm still wondering 

if Jurgen Prochnow's appearance in this movie is deliberate 

Neil Gaiman cosplay or just a very happy accident.

Visually, the movie's effects work – including early work by Greg Nicotero – has largely held up well. I have to admit, I'm a bit of two minds about the otherworldly beings that are unleashed in the film's final act. Taken on their own, they're fairly well made monsters, and some designs do stand out nicely. The problem is, unfortunately, one that is a common refrain with Lovecraft-based cinema: for beings that are supposed to be completely beyond the realm of human comprehension as an ancient evil, they fall short. Nice to look at, but underwhelming compared to the horror they represent.

On the reverse of that, however, the make-up effects the movie applies in its later acts as humans are slowly taken over and corrupted by cosmic evil holds up very well. In this case, much of it is a case of 'less is more' working well, distorting the otherwise normal human form just enough to be disturbing but still recognizable. Like with The Thing, there were parts of this I went into intentionally trying to be more critical – with focus on one particular effect involving a contorted human form. To my pleasant relief, even on Blu-Ray, the effect still looks fairly well done.

"Nah, don't worry. It's cool. Just a little banged up.
I'll go home and sleep it off. It's fine."

In closing this trilogy, there's a part of me that's genuinely impressed Carpenter got to make this, particularly when he did. Just on its own nowadays it doesn't seem that shocking, but looked at at the time - when his reputation with the studio heads had seen better days - to take on an idea as ambitious as this one, playing with concepts of perception, belief, and existential horror with a generous dash of inspiration from an author whose work hadn't quite become fully mainstream at the time, and to play it out in a film that ends with the entire world succumbing to darkness as what may be humanity's last survivor weeps in despair is one Hell of a trick to pull off in a major studio movie.

It also doesn't make it too surprising to realize that the movie was met with generally middling reviews at the time, with people having issues in particular with the story. That the story is now considered one of the big reasons it has the following it does really helps cement this as a spiritual sibling with The Thing, both as examples where time would ultimately acquit Carpenter.

With that strangely upbeat note set to the extinction of humanity, it is time once again to close up operations for this October. There will be more work ahead soon, life has been hectic, but I'm finally starting to get things sorted out again, and doing these theme dives reminds me why I've missed this.

Until then, see you guys around and once again, have a Happy Halloween!

The OctOmen- The Final Conflict (But..Not Really)

Welcome back to the Third Row for this, our continuing installments in tracking the weird, wild path of the cinematic Antichrist that is The OctOmen.

We last left things in the wake of teenage Damien coming into his own at the end of the second movie, with all obstacles out of his way and the most powerful company in the world now in his hands. Things onscreen are looking pretty good for the old son of a jackal. Offscreen, it was a bit of a different story - the sequel opened to mixed reviews, and while it made its budget back, the box office compared to its predecessor was a sizable step down - less than half what the previous made.

Flash forward three more years as Harvey Bernhard brings the story of Damien Thorn to a close with The Final Conflict. It's worth noting upfront that this was the official title it was marketed under. While the taglines made it clearer it was part of the Omen series, it wasn't originally labeled as such, to the point where even the movie itself still bears that original, implicit standalone title.

Told ya...