This variation on Roman Polanski's Chinatown promises viewers similar not-so-seemly, if not downright salacious stuff, this time with a tidy, happy ending. It even shares one of Chinatown's most poignant lines, "cherchez le femme."
On a more subliminal level, it also serves as infomercial for Wonder Woman 1984, which shares talents of executive producers Patty Jenkins and Chris Pine. India Eisley bravely portrays the icy protagonist, an innocent teenager in the 1960s trapped in confusing identities of race, sex, and family.
It gives us the creeps, but also a bit of history. A policeman named Steve Hodel suspected that his eccentric father, Dr. George Hodel, led a secret life apart from his lucrative gynecology practice that included flamboyant acts of sadistic mutilation inspired by famous surrealist artists.
Meanwhile, Dr. Hodel's incestuously conceived daughter/granddaughter, Fauna Hodel, wrote the memoir that I am the Night is based on. The prevailing version of events depicts Dr. Hodel secretly returning to Los Angeles after fleeing to Asia to avoid the infamy of the Black Dahlia and other murders.
This story carefully comments on how yellow journalism distracts America from the evils of the real world. Chris Pine's tragic, cocaine-addicted journalist Jay Singletary refuses to ignore truth and pays for his tenacity. Shellshock lingering from the Korean War also torments him.
Even more convincing is Singletary's salty editor, played with stone-faced grit by Leland Orser, who explains how journalists, like Galileo, know the world is round. Hodel's almost supernatural henchman and protégé, given eerie grotesqueness by Dylan Smith, emphasizes how evil lurks, but also how Hodel's evil is several notches above what even our most vivid imagination is capable of.
Dramatic fireworks were also on display from Golden Brooks as Fauna's bitter African American adoptive mother and Connie Nielsen, the droll but evil stepmother who dabbles in performance art. Even bit parts as good cop (Jay Paulson's Ohls) and bad cop (Yul Vasquez's Billis) help the twisted tale along.
As the Watts riots peel away an older layer of not just Los Angeles's racism, but its disturbing police corruption as well, Fauna bizarrely passes into an adulthood that appears to reset the familiar moral tone of television. Still, what better way for Fauna as a woman to counter Hodel's torture chamber than with quips as a naïve art critic?
Perhaps there is a limb I am crawling out on by endorsing I am the Night, with no pun intended in light of the thematic amputations of this story. In my own terms as a naïve art critic, America's stories are most compelling when facing truth no matter how morbid. Even simpler, I enjoyed it.
On a more subliminal level, it also serves as infomercial for Wonder Woman 1984, which shares talents of executive producers Patty Jenkins and Chris Pine. India Eisley bravely portrays the icy protagonist, an innocent teenager in the 1960s trapped in confusing identities of race, sex, and family.
It gives us the creeps, but also a bit of history. A policeman named Steve Hodel suspected that his eccentric father, Dr. George Hodel, led a secret life apart from his lucrative gynecology practice that included flamboyant acts of sadistic mutilation inspired by famous surrealist artists.
Meanwhile, Dr. Hodel's incestuously conceived daughter/granddaughter, Fauna Hodel, wrote the memoir that I am the Night is based on. The prevailing version of events depicts Dr. Hodel secretly returning to Los Angeles after fleeing to Asia to avoid the infamy of the Black Dahlia and other murders.
This story carefully comments on how yellow journalism distracts America from the evils of the real world. Chris Pine's tragic, cocaine-addicted journalist Jay Singletary refuses to ignore truth and pays for his tenacity. Shellshock lingering from the Korean War also torments him.
Even more convincing is Singletary's salty editor, played with stone-faced grit by Leland Orser, who explains how journalists, like Galileo, know the world is round. Hodel's almost supernatural henchman and protégé, given eerie grotesqueness by Dylan Smith, emphasizes how evil lurks, but also how Hodel's evil is several notches above what even our most vivid imagination is capable of.
Dramatic fireworks were also on display from Golden Brooks as Fauna's bitter African American adoptive mother and Connie Nielsen, the droll but evil stepmother who dabbles in performance art. Even bit parts as good cop (Jay Paulson's Ohls) and bad cop (Yul Vasquez's Billis) help the twisted tale along.
As the Watts riots peel away an older layer of not just Los Angeles's racism, but its disturbing police corruption as well, Fauna bizarrely passes into an adulthood that appears to reset the familiar moral tone of television. Still, what better way for Fauna as a woman to counter Hodel's torture chamber than with quips as a naïve art critic?
Perhaps there is a limb I am crawling out on by endorsing I am the Night, with no pun intended in light of the thematic amputations of this story. In my own terms as a naïve art critic, America's stories are most compelling when facing truth no matter how morbid. Even simpler, I enjoyed it.