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Reviews
Masters of Horror: Jenifer (2005)
The Best that Can Be Said About It Is It's Derivative of Great Films
I haven't watched all 13 episodes (on DVD) of the Masters of Horror series, but I've seen many, and Jenifer is by far the worst of them ("Incident" is my favourite so far). From the acting to the editing to the writing to the score, everything about this production screams "amateur!" I'm not a fan of Argento, though I recognise he has rare moments of brilliance (the shot-through-the-keyhole sequence in Opera, for one), but even schlockfests like Goblin and Trauma are brilliant when compared to this torpid, lurid mess.
The first thing one encounters while watching Jenifer is the score; I have read many reviewers praising it for being atmospheric and distinctive, but - aside from the little-girl singsong la-la-la piece (which has been done already and to much greater effect by Jerry Goldsmith in Poltergeist) - the entire thing was a clunky, comedic ripoff of Bernard Herrman's Psycho soundtrack. Whenever Simonetti's music would play, I would just laugh.
Then there's the writing. I unfortunately did not catch this when it was an 8-page graphic story in Creepy magazine, but I can only assume it has lost much in the translation to film. As soon as the deranged man at the beginning says "you have no idea what she is," you know exactly how this is going to end. I am not against the cyclic, recursive morality tale out of hand - in fact, in the right hands, it can be quite chilling - but once you've watched this particular cycle play out, you'll find yourself wishing they had shown what happened to the deranged man at the beginning instead of the mishmash that is Steven Weber's story.
Everything about the story is implausible. When Weber first sees Jenifer, bound, disheveled, nearly naked, being dragged off by a cleaver-wielding madman, he waits two minutes before rushing to help her? (Oh, and she talks pretty good at this point - "NO, DON'T, HELP ME" - so where does all her speech go later?) Why would the deranged man write the creature's name (is it even her name, really?) on a piece of paper and keep it in his pocket? To help him keep straight in his head which of the nine mute, retarded, disfigured sexpots in his possession this one was? It's not even necessary for the plot to reveal her name this way, since the deranged man chokes out "Jenifer" in Weber's ear as he's dying (In fact, is it even necessary for her to have a name in the first place?). Then, when Weber goes to pick Jenifer up at the sanitarium, they bring HIM to HER while she's naked in the shower? Wouldn't happen.
And where are all the developmental scenes? Instead of showing Weber's slow descent into madness and destruction, he just suddenly starts drinking, stops working, and having sex with this creature. And don't get me started on the loose ends: what happened with the cut on Weber's hand? Same with the bite on his wife's mouth. And wouldn't the neighbours have been begging Weber for help finding their daughter, especially since he's a cop? And WHY is everyone so obsessed with this creature's body when it has no muscle tone and small, floppy tits? I don't get it.
These holes in the story are only made worse by incomprehensible editing. Many shots are cut super short, especially transitional ones, which you would expect to be longer. The commercial breaks are as painfully obvious as could possibly be (I was unaware of them in any other episode). And there's one scene, in which Weber drives to the country, that dissolves from a backseat view looking out onto a tree-lined rode in early afternoon...to a backseat view looking out onto a tree-lined road in early afternoon. No change in time, speed of car, position of occupants, or anything, just more of the same.
And then there's the insipid camera work. As I mention in the title, the only good bits to this piece are the ones stolen from other films, but even these are botched by everything I've already mentioned, plus uninspired frame composition. For example, when Jenifer comes upon the young neighbour girl throwing daisies in her yard pool (a clear homage to Frankenstein), the view is a full-body side-angle two shot, incredibly prosaic and boring. Why not have the camera high, looking down on the girl from behind, and let Jenifer come into camera from the bottom of the screen? A wasted opportunity, though good for a chuckle.
Finally, there's the acting. While in general it's much better than that of B-level "stars" like Adrienne Barbeau and Craig Wasson, the 12-year-old Linda Blair could have acted circles around these folks. Weber does a decent job, but it's pretty one-dimensional. We do see a bit of the revulsion/attraction conflict in his performance, but there's no chemistry between him and his "wife," and no sense of shame, embarrassment, or guilt over abandoning his family, and no hint at all as to what motivates him so strongly to help Jenifer in the first place (most cops are so inured to the sight of pitiable helplessness that they dismiss a case as soon as it's closed). A lot of the fault lies with the script...but then I guess that's what happens when you let a third-rate actor write it.
If you happen to catch this as a rerun on Bravo, go ahead and watch it - maybe you'll find something to like about it that I couldn't - but I definitely don't recommend buying the DVD, it's a waste of money...just like handing Dario Argento a movie-making contract.
The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976)
Restrained thriller better in memory than reality
I first saw this film on television when I was a 'tweener, and had very fond memories of it for its unhurried yet unrelenting pace, and its quiet, urbane horror (though, as many have correctly pointed out, this is a mystery/thriller, not a horror movie). So when I saw it was finally available on DVD, widescreen and uncut, I purchased it without hesitation. But, after watching it last night, thirty years older (and hopefully wiser), I have re-learned two lessons: one, anticipation usually far exceeds the actual event, and two, everything looks better through rose-coloured glasses (and nostalgia, my friends, is always rose coloured).
From the very first frame, which lurches on-screen with the title already visible (no black screen intro, no title fade-in) to the ludicrous "music by Christian Gaubert and Frederic Chopin" credit (for those of you whose memory is a little cloudy, Frederic Chopin died 130 years before this film was made) to the horridly intrusive wacka-wacka fuzz guitar soundtrack bits (sounding as if they were pulled from some lurid porno or an episode of Starsky & Hutch) to the constant, unsure use of the zoom, TLGWLDTL screams ABC Movie of the Week ineptness in its first seven minutes
and rarely rises above that level for the remainder of the film. While it does have its moments, including a memorable ending sequence that is just shy of brilliant for its understatement and restraint, TLGWLDTL as a whole is a movie just barely better than the sum of its parts
and there is a lot wrong with most of the parts.
Perhaps its primary weakness (aside from the aforementioned soundtrack, which reeks of cheese worse than a Kraft worker's farts) is the directing, which is amateurish and confusing. I frequently felt there was no intrinsic meaning to what the characters where saying and doing; instead, I was very aware that these were actors following the director's orders, whether it made sense to or not. Often, the characters seem like ping pong balls, bounced from one motivation to another as they reverse direction and intent according to the dictates of plot and script.
For example, when Rynn first meets Frank Hallet, Hallet spends five minutes "seducing" her, then suddenly switches gears and smacks her on the ass as he begins bouncing around the room claiming in a boisterous voice that it's his right, since it's her birthday. Then he suddenly shifts gears again and begins acting wary and frantic, as if he'll get caught, when having acted inappropriately with her from the very beginning he should have been wary all along. Or, later, when Rynn meets Mario and asks for help, she reads her lines first nonchalantly, then snobbishly, then pleadingly. Perhaps a more experienced actor could have pulled this off
but a more experienced actor would have played Rynn smart enough not to fall prey to the snotty impulses of a child half her age (and a better director would have kept her from playing it that way in the first place).
Along with this, the reading of many lines simply does not fit the action on-screen. For example, when Rynn, feigning agreeableness, asks Mrs. Hallet if she'd prefer Darjeeling or Earl Grey tea in a civil, even solicitous manner, Mrs. Hallet responds "I don't care for your tone." Then, when Rynn says she must apologise, Mrs. Hallet snarks that Rynn isn't like most other children from England, who are "so well behaved." Um, what? If offering tea and apologies isn't well behaved, what is?
Many of these problems stem from the movie's second greatest weakness, an inept script. While Laird Koenig wrote a great, chilling little novel, TLGWLDTL shows him to be far less talented at adapting his own work for the cinema. What Koenig took pages to do in the novel had to be accomplished in seconds on-screen, resulting in awkward bits of exposition and spin-on-a-dime changes in action and emotion. Worst of all, whereas the novel smartly maintained a consistent vision of Rynn as a cold, calculated survivor who only becomes stronger, like iron in a forge, the worse her situation gets, the script tries to have it both ways: Rynn as a victim of circumstance and her own overweening intelligence, with the deaths around her being accidents
and Rynn as a methodical, restrained Bad Seed, calculating the "erasures" of those who would disturb her idyllic retreat and operating without compunction or remorse.
Finally, the film misses so many opportunities to be more than a mystery thriller that it's almost criminal. For example, when Mrs. Hallet is killed and Rynn steps outside, she sees a carload of teenagers go by, carousing after winning an intramural football game. This would have been a perfect moment to expound upon the differences between a normal childhood and one burdened by isolation and a profound intellect
but the film does next to nothing with the moment. Or it could have made incisive socio-political statements about the powerlessness of youth, letting us sympathise with the problems of Rynn's plight while simultaneously rejecting her sociopathic solutions (much as we do with a certain Tony Soprano, or Vic Macky, or even Norman Bates). But TLGWLDTL merely lets Rynn talk about such issues, rather than showing them and making us empathise.
I really wanted to like this movie, having had such fond memories of it, but I just couldn't. And a sampling of the comments here clearly shows that the vast majority of users who do give it glowing reviews have not seen it since it first aired almost thirty years ago. Granted, it's much better than most of the Grand Guignol gorefests and histrionic thrillers Hollywood churns out today, but I felt I needed to be the voice of reason (rather than remembrance) in all this sea of nostalgia and point out that this emperor, while not totally without clothes, is not as finely arrayed as most here remember it to be.
(5 out of 10 stars.)