Domestic – Page 3

Shining Vale (2022-23)

When I was a wee sprout, and the family hive mind turned to televisual entertainment options, I invariably lobbied for something “scary” or something “funny.”

My conservative-leaning, middle-class family would not have tolerated a moment of Shining Vale, and, truth be told, most of the adult humor would have been lost on me.

Shining Vale ran for two seasons on Starz, and was created by Jeff Astrof (The New Adventures of Old Christine, S#!* My Dad Says) and Sharon Horgan (Catastrophe, Bad Sisters). Over the course of 16 half-hour episodes, we get cozy with the Phelps family, possibly the most dysfunctional brood since the Bundys showed up on Fox in 1987.

Pat Phelps (Courteney Cox) is in a dark place. She wrote a tawdry, best-selling lady porn novel 14 years before, but the follow-up hasn’t been forthcoming, and her agent Kam (Merrin Dungey) is giving her an ultimatum: deliver the book or return the advance money.

When Pat has a torrid affair with a handyman, her stubbornly optimistic husband Terry (Greg Kinnear) packs the whole family off to a huge haunted house in rural Connecticut for a fresh start, much to the dismay of teenaged daughter Gaynor (Gus Birney).

“Mom boned some rando and now we have to move,” she grumbles. Though a freewheeling sexpot herself, Gaynor becomes the unwilling head of the household, after Mom and Dad lose their marbles.

Her younger brother Jake, a plus-sized introvert, is mostly concerned with gaining levels in his Virtual Reality game, and is slow to realize that change is afoot.

“Why did we move to a hotel?” he asks, upon arrival at the dilapidated Victorian mansion they will now call home.

Jake is also the butt of (fairly benign) fat kid jokes, but gets comic revenge by farting most foul at the worst possible moments. Seemingly an innocent, he gets his own demon adversary courtesy of VR.

Once the family is settled, Pat makes instant contact with the spirit of Rosemary (Mira Sorvino), the former owner of the house who went mad and hacked up her own family with an axe.

Rosemary does a little ghost-writing on Pat’s unfinished manuscript, and an uneasy partnership is formed when Kam digs the new, darker direction the book is taking.

This is all just tip of the iceberg stuff, as Pat, Terry, and the kids go through individual transformations of various magnitudes, while dealing with ghosts, cults, demonic possession, hereditary mental illness, and infidelity in a weird little town that features homegrown businesses like The Lucky Wiccan.

As for the title of the series, yes, there are many references to The Shining. For crying out loud, it’s about a writer trying her best not to chop everyone up with an axe.

For my money, Shining Vale is the funniest and finest-written domestic horror series since The Addams Family. The cast is flawless. You’re welcome.

But what happened to Season 3?

The Secret Of Crickley Hall (2012)

Sounds like a Hardy Boys Mystery that never made it to the editing stage, but The Secret Of Crickley Hall is a cracking good BBC miniseries (three one-hour episodes) based on the book by James Herbert.

Written and directed by Dr. Who alum Joe Ahearne, the story straddles past/present timelines, spilling the dramatic details of the Caleigh family, who are hoping for a fresh start in the North of England after the disappearance of their son.

The idea of turning the page on tragedy seems highly unlikely at this location, as Crickley Hall turns out to be a former orphanage that was overseen by seriously damaged WW I veteran Augustus Cribben (Douglas Henshall) and his seething sister Magda (Sarah Smart).

In keeping with the popular paranormal theory that those who’ve experienced loss are more sensitive to the plight of the deceased (The Changeling, et al), motivated mom Eve Caleigh (Suranne Jones), intuits that her still-missing child is somehow connected with the orphans who died in a flood at Crickley Hall during WW II.

This leads to a parallel narrative from the past about Nancy Linnet (Olivia Cooke), a determined young teacher hired to educate the wayward waifs of Crickley Hall. Instead, she uncovers terrible abuses visited upon the children by the cruel Cribben siblings, who unfortunately remain above suspicion in their community.

With a few splashes of redemption, revenge, and romance, and featuring a realistically frightening ghost, The Secret Of Crickley Hall is well-above-average haunted house hoopla handled by a cast of top drawer talent that includes David Warner and Donald Sumpter in crucial character roles.

Ghosts may or may not be scarier in the English countryside, but their tales fit this bleak territory like a black glove.

Recommended!

Hush (2016)

Tonight! The War Between the Sexes! Right here on Pay Per View! Let’s give it up for Hush!

Writer-director Mike Flanagan (Haunting of Hill House, Fall of the House of Usher, Midnight Mass, Oculus) and his wife, writer-actress Kate Siegel constructed this lean, mean thriller about a deaf-mute author fighting for her life against a sadistic killer.

Hush also makes sense as an anxiety inducing metaphor about unwanted male attention, as Maddie Young (Siegel), a best-selling author, can’t even have a reasonable expectation of privacy IN THE MIDDLE OF A FRIGGIN’ FOREST!

Maddie lives in a nice house (with lots of doors and windows) somewhere in the deep woods. A bout with meningitis at age 13 has left her without speech and hearing, but she has a crafty writer’s brain that never stops ticking, as we squeamishly witness her reviewing potential escape options that never materialize.

The plucky scribe finds herself trapped in her bucolic hacienda by a masked madman (John Gallagher Jr) with a crossbow, who just recently finished an evisceration job on Maddie’s neighbor (Samantha Sloyan).

Who? Why? Not important. Perhaps Cupid’s in a real bad mood today. Flanagan and Siegel play the cat-mouse game to the hilt, which usually ends up plunging into someone’s neck or torso.

Nosey neighbors don’t fare well in Hush, but the timely arrival of a cat named Bitch provides Maddie with enough of a diversion to go on the offensive against toxic masculinity. The killer reminds Maddie that he’s enjoying himself, and that he can take her whenever he wants.

The maniac clearly derives grim pleasure in cutting off her limited means of communication (he also collects cell phones) and watching Maddie react to the mounting stressors he places upon her.

The entire movie is gaze-oriented. Maddie is either keeping track of her assailant roaming around in her yard (he makes no effort at stealth or concealing his identity, which makes the situation even more dire)—or the killer is feverishly observing Maddie as she tries to hide and barricade herself inside a house with too many access points.

As I mentioned, Hush is all killer, no filler. No competing storylines, no comedy relief, no shaky camera tomfoolery. Just two people (one of whom can’t call for help) airing their differences. To the death.

This is what happens when you don’t respect boundaries.

Out Of Darkness (2022)

If you have a craving for rugged terrain, Out Of Darkness is your oyster.

Otherwise, patience is required for this impressive-looking hero’s journey into the unknown against an unseen enemy.

About 45,000 years ago, a small tribe of prehistoric explorers wash up on a distant inhospitable shore, determined to carve out a future for themselves.

Fortunately they speak in subtitles or we’d be as lost as they are!

The group is led by alpha male Adem (Chuku Modu), an arrogant hothead long on bravery and short on common sense. When they determine that something is stalking them, their search for food and shelter takes on a sense of urgency, especially after Adem’s son Heron (Luna Mwezi) gets snatched away from the campfire.

As the not very tightly-knit unit comes unraveled, it’s up to Beyah (Safia Oakley-Green), a relative stranger among them, to figure out what nature of beast is decimating the tribe.

Shot in Scotland, the location scenery is the best thing about Out Of Darkness. The landscape is pure primeval desolation, and proves to be a mightier foe than the “demon” that’s assailing the company.

The atmosphere of hiding and hunting is fairly absorbing, but the pace is painfully slow and the ending is a tepid letdown that should rightfully inspire shouts of “What? That’s it?” from the home audience.

Out Of Darkness fails to live up to the potential of its savage setting—instead we get a fossilized lesson about living and dying by the sword. Or in this case, the spear.

Heretic (2024)

This is a different Hugh Grant, though there is a passing resemblance to the rom-com Don Juan with the aw-shucks manner.

Written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, Heretic is another film set during a storm that makes the most of its few sets and small cast. Sister Paxton (Chloe East) and Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) are young Mormon missionaries on bicycles visiting the home of Mr. Reed (Grant), a seemingly absent-minded scholar with an interest in religion and spiritual knowledge.

An approaching deluge induces the girls to accept Mr. Reed’s hospitality and enter his surprisingly roomy cottage. He mentions that his wife is in the kitchen making blueberry pie!

The front door closes and the camera backtracks down the foot path that approaches the house. It seems like a long way from the road.

Trap sprung.

Mr. Reed proves to be a highly intelligent and extremely well-read individual, who goes from asking questions about Mormonism to lecturing the girls on his own personal quest for the “one true religion.”

At times, he is a professor impressively expounding on several subjects at once to a class of freshmen, and Barnes and Paxton soon find themselves in over their heads as the subject matter becomes increasingly uncomfortable.

The time passes in conversation and the smell of blueberry pie fills a cozy sitting room that begins to look suspiciously normal.

Beck and Woods do a masterful job of gradually goosing up the tension without turning Mr. Reed into Dracula. Can this old duffer even be considered a physical threat?

Reed mostly remains reasonable, but the red flags are starting to pile up. Cell phones don’t work and the front door is on a time lock that won’t open till morning (!), so if the girls want to leave (and they’re always welcome to), they’ll have to exit through the back of the house.

Credit must be given to Chloe West and Sophie Thatcher for instilling their characters with brains and backbones, the ability to think and reason even when their situation hits nightmare territory.

As for Grant, the charmingly awkward Brit with the hots for Andie McDowell is a faded lobby poster, but he can still badger and beguile a captive audience. The ingratiating tendencies and ability to spin complex thoughts into amusing, provocative word bubbles remains intact in Heretic, and Grant digs deep to reach a rich vein of menace.

Dr. Giggles (1992)

“Laughter is the best medicine.”

As played by a thoroughly committed Larry Drake (Benny Stowitz from L.A. Law!), this titular sawbones could have been a contender, worth at least two sequels, minimum.

Dr. Giggles is an early release from Dark Horse Comics, so no reason for there not to be a franchise.

As a child, Evan Rendell Jr. (Drake) watched the angry citizens of Moorehigh haul his father, the town doctor, out of his home office and stone him to death. Apparently, the locals were none-to-pleased with Rendell Senior’s research methods, which included killing seven patients in search of a healthy heart to transplant into his own dying wife.

Hey! You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

Young Rendell is institutionalized and grows up into an adult lunatic with a fixation on physicians. He escapes after dissecting his captors, and heads back to Moorehigh tittering like a freshly sprung Michael Myers.

Final Girl Jennifer Campbell (Holly Marie Combs, Piper from Charmed!) is an anxious high school student with heart valve problems set on a collision course with the hysterical healer, while a bunch of her friends and neighbors fall victim to Rendell’s house calls, dying horribly under the madman’s medical ministrations.

A hearty round of applause to Drake, who giggles and puns his way through the slaughter with verve and panache, a maniacal glint in his bulging eyes.

“Wait till you see my bill,” he crows after skewering another unlucky chump with his antique surgical implements.

Like any good doctor, Rendell is torn between his duty to the community (killing them), and carrying on his father’s quest to find a heart, in this case to “save” Jennifer.

The fact that he’s a self-taught surgeon doesn’t inspire much confidence, though. That’s why the patient needs to be strapped to the table—for her own good.

Dr. Giggles is premium slasher carnage punctuated with corny jokes. If it’s wrong, I don’t wanna be right.

The doctor will slay you now.

The Resident (2011)

It’s Hammer Time!

A release from the revived (and revered) Hammer Films imprint, The Resident traces its ancestry from gothic mysteries, slasher cinema, erotic thrillers, and Hitchcock’s Psycho.

It’s even got Christopher Lee in a supporting role! Doesn’t get more Hammer than that.

Oscar winner Hilary Swank portrays Juliet, a frazzled ER doctor on the fly from a failed relationship. In search of new lodgings, she chances upon an old building with a spectacular view of the Brooklyn Bridge, owned by Max (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a charming landlord who resides on the premises with his ailing grandfather August (Christopher Lee).

When Juliet flirts with and kisses Max, it seems perfectly natural. He and Juliet are both attractive and successful people, their mutual interest is a given. She’s also lonely and drinks too much wine.

Finnish writer-director Antti Jokinen infuses the standard melodrama in The Resident, with a willingness to get uncomfortably close to his characters. Juliet isn’t sleeping well and can’t shake the feeling that someone is invading her space.

It’s not much of a mystery, as we learn that Max, the guy who owns the building, is indeed a highly disturbed individual, but perhaps not unreasonably so. It could be argued that Juliet’s reckless behavior with the heart of an unstable suitor is the cause of all the misery.

“You kissed me first,” he reminds her. And when Juliet has the nerve to get back together with her asshole ex, the wheels really come off.

Jokinen’s use of floating and flying camerawork is absorbing, making a mostly single-set apartment appear to be filled with more passages and secret doors than the Vatican.

The Resident is better than it has a right to be, largely thanks to Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s impressively layered performance as Max, a tortured soul who maybe just wanted to meet a nice girl. And a doctor to boot!

Morgan isn’t shy about delving the creepier depths of Max’s obsession, whether it’s licking Juliet’s hand from beneath her bed while she sleeps, or having a little cuddle party with her clothes, he’s clearly an actor unafraid of committing to a role.

Anyone expecting an arrogant and antagonistic villain in the vein of The Walking Dead’s Negan will, I thnk, be surprised by Morgan’s ability to generate menace, revulsion, and sympathy—right up until the bloody nail-gun finale.

The Final Girls (2015)

It started with Back to the Future, of course, the idea that a troubled teen could fix the present by kicking ass in the past.

The Happy Death Day series introduces horror into the equation, and recent stabs at the genre include Totally Killer, a film reviewed here.

The Final Girls adds even more spice to the stew, as Max (Taissa Farmiga), grieving the death of her Scream Queen mother, Amanda Cartwright (Malin Ackerman), gets dumped into the early 1980s after a catastrophe at a screening of Mom’s most famous feature, Camp Bloodbath.

Director Todd Strauss-Schulson and writers Joshua John Miller and M.A. Fortin have a ball with a group of contemporary adolescents spun 40-plus years into the past to be fodder for a Jason Voorhees-style killing machine at a doomed summer camp.

Like the Scream franchise, the ability to adapt and survive by figuring out the “rules” of a slasher movie is the name of the game in The Final Girls, but the action also affords Max the chance to not only reconnect with her mother, but to act as a sort of spiritual advisor to a character carelessly described as “the shy girl with a guitar and a clipboard.”

Max and her friends travel even further back in time to witness the origin of the camp killer in the 1950s, and they all notice when the world around them is in black and white. One of them reckons she’s having a stroke because she’s suddenly colorblind!

The cinematography by Elle Smolkin also grabs our attention with a bevy of unbelievable shots, such as the killer, set ablaze, chasing the kids in slow motion. Or the apocalyptic purple sky during Max’s final battle.

There’s frightening fun in abundance, but there’s also inside jokes about lame movie stereotypes such as the airhead slut Tina (Angela Trimbur), who must be tied up to keep her from stripping off her clothes and summoning the killer.

Adam Devine from Workaholics delivers boffo laughs as Kurt, a one-dimensional stud from Hollywood’s disposable character drawer, who somehow makes his quest for endless nooky a righteous cause.

The Final Girls is an excellent example of a teen time-travel traumatic adventure. Maybe one of the best.

Beetlejuice (1988)

I found it inconceivable that Mrs. Sharky hadn’t seen Beetlejuice! I mean, if we go to the sequel, she’ll be lost!

The original Beetlejuice holds up extremely well, and it’s a shiny example of filmmaker Tim Burton at his most creatively unfettered, before the weight of pleasing soulless studio executives damaged his goods.

The man who gave the world Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Edward Scissorhands, and Sleepy Hollow was firing on all cylinders, as yet unburdened with hallucinatory tasks like unsuccessfully updating Alice in Wonderland and Charley and the Chocolate Factory for new generations.

Burton casts a wild net in Beetlejuice, introducing us to Barbara Maitland (Geena Davis) and her husband Adam (Alec Baldwin), a recently deceased “normal” couple, who end up trying to haunt their own house to scare away the obnoxious family that moves in after their funeral.

The incoming Deetz family is fronted by brash, no-talent artist Deelia (Catherine O’Hara, who is wonderful),along with her fretful yuppie husband Charles (Jeffrey Jones), and darkling daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder), who has the ability to see the Maitlands and sympathizes with their plight.

The fledgling ghosts, after failing to frighten away the interlopers, summon the titular evil spirit (Michael Keaton) to handle the eviction process. Keaton is the the straw that stirs the drink, a Pu-Pu platter of perversion and patter, rightfully stealing every scene in sight.

In a movie about the importance of family—chosen and blood—we get three levels of domestic possibilities. The Maitlands, though dead, represent the most nurturing option for Lydia, while her parents are usually too distracted with their own devices to pay any attention.

But even the Deetz clan is preferable to Beetlejuice and his quest to take Lydia for his child bride so he can return to the land of the living. Yikes!

Burton earns an advanced degree in visual arts with his depiction of the afterlife, an impenetrable bureaucracy with frazzled, overworked caseworkers like Juno (Sylvia Sydney), in charge of crowded offices filled with confused corpses in various stages of dumbfounded decay.

The contrast between an increasingly bizarre real world, brought on by the arrival of the Deetz family and their awful Boho sensibilities, with a limbo full of mud-colored, take-a-number waiting rooms, helped to establish Burton’s outré credentials.

He also shows an uncanny eye for fashion, giving Lydia striking looks in both black and red. Burton definitely had a hand in Ryder’s ascent as a teen icon that learned to act and stayed forever.

The Vincent Price-loving Burton has honed a visual aesthetic of fascinating grotesquerie much like spiritual forefathers Edward Gorey and Charles Addams. And Beetlejuice is his master’s thesis, a riotous dark comedy that’s still cherished five decades later.

OK, bring on the sequel.

The Skeleton Key (2005)

Yes, the ending of The Skeleton Key is kind of a bummer. Think of it as social justice from beyond the grave.

The luminous Kate Hudson headlines as Caroline, a big-hearted hospice care worker hired to look after catatonic Ben Devereaux (John Hurt), a senior citizen sucking his last few breaths in a decaying plantation house somewhere in the Louisiana bayou.

Caroline’s routine is not made any easier by the presence of Ben’s overbearing wife Grace (Gena Rowlands), who rules the swampy mansion with an iron will in service to an arcane agenda.

Director Iain Softley (Hackers, Backbeat) and writer Ehren Kruger (The Ring, Scream 3) successfully stitch-up a scary Southern gothic, placing the very curious Caroline smack-dab in the middle of a mystery that will test her to the limits, and then some.

Softley deftly guides his camera through keyholes and tumbling tumblers as Caroline unlocks the secrets of a blighted house, mostly kept in the attic. It could be argued that she makes a few too many discoveries for her own good.

John Hurt has no dialogue, yet his face is required to reveal multiple layers of unexpressed anguish, as a man who literally hasn’t a clue how he got here. Gena Rowlands, who recently passed away, is highly animated as a mad matriarch wielding sorcerous formulas to prolong her already very long life.

As previously noted, the finale of The Skeleton Key is decidedly downbeat—until we consider the context of the tragic events that caused the curse. Then, maybe, it’s not so bad.

While you sort out your feelings, please enjoy this crackerjack feature.