This week three very different horror movies came out, one that centered on a convent, one that was about a late-night talk show gone wrong, and the other was the latest entry into the Ghost Busters franchise. None of them were amazing, but two of the three were enjoyable and worth seeing. Of course, the one not worth seeing was Ghost Busters, that was a total dud and a hard two hours to make it through, but it was a great weekend at the movies, both Immaculate and Interview with the Devil had solid crowds for their 7 o’clock showings, which is great because it shows that the support for horror is alive and well.
Sydney Sweeny, who has quickly become one of the biggest names in Hollywood stars in a religious horror, Immaculate. She is a nun, and she transfers into a convent in the Italian countryside. It is a beautiful place, but it becomes evident that something weird is going on there. Shortly after arriving, Sweeny’s character starts getting sick, and after tests have been run, it comes back that she is pregnant, which as a nun would not be good, but she is adamant that she has not had sex. So then they start to worship her as the second coming of the Virgin Mary, but it turns out something more sinister is afoot. The convent she is at has been trying to perfect the art of impregnating women without them having to have sex, so far it has resulted in many gross fetuses, but they think this time it is finally going to work, but now that Sweeny’s character knows the truth, she does not want to be a part of it.
Honestly, I was expecting Immaculate to be garbage, but it surprised me. Sweeny was able to carry the movie, which was much needed, because she was by far the main player in it. Nuns have become big players in the horror realm, in recently, there was The Conjuring 2, which had a prominent nun, and it got an off shoot with The Nun and The Nun II, which both stink, but their Nun is incredibly scary to look at, so they did that right.
There have also been more movies that are religion related, but they are more about how organized religion can be brainwashing instead of helping. People fall under the spell of faith, and they forgot that a religious leader might not be setting a good example of their faith. A nun movie that did this well was Benedetta, which came out a few years ago, but I watched it recently, and it was amazing, by far the best nun related movie I have seen. An old nun loses power at a convent to a young nun, but that nun is a lesbian in Medieval times, so despite her being the better leader, when her secret comes out, she literally gets set to burn at the stake. I highly recommend watching it. It is on Hulu!
There were times in Immaculate when it felt like not much was happening, which in a 90-minute movie is not great, but at the end Sweeny goes into the catacombs, and any movie that goes into the catacombs automatically gets extra points in my book, and she is being chased while going through her contractions. Then when she crawls out of the catacombs, she screams at the top of her lungs for like a minute straight, which was super impressive. Then she crushes her newly born baby with a giant rock. The end. The baby is never seen, but it is heard wheezing, and it does not sound healthy, thus alluding to another failed attempt. I think the ending was supposed to be the most literal version of prolife verses prochoice, and the whole thing was a weird allegory for it, but I am unsure. I guess interpretation is in the eye of the beholder. If there would ever be a time to get an abortion, it would be after the catholic church impregnates you without consent.
Late Night with the Devil kind of came out of nowhere. I saw a commercial for it a couple of weeks ago for the first time, and it did not even say when it was coming out, but I was looking forward to it so badly. It was not on the coming soon on my Regal app either, so I was very surprised when I pulled the app up on Friday, and it was there as now playing! So instead of waiting the extra day or two, I went to the movies twice on Friday. I went and saw Ghost Busters right after work, went home, ran, ate dinner, watched the new Road House, and then went back to the theater, and it was filled with people there to see this weird horror movie.
It literally takes place like a late-night show on Halloween. The only difference is on the commercial breaks, we get to stay with the host as he goes backstage, and the next segments get set up. For the Halloween show, he has a medium, who can talk to spirits, he has an illusionist, who can hypnotize people, and he has a young girl, who was the only survivor in an occult, and she is still possessed by a demon, and slowly the show goes off the rails in evil ways. The last ten minutes really are out there, but they landed the plane nicely with a disturbing ending.
This was very similar to Ghostwatch, except they played Ghostwatch on BBC as a prank, and they used actual BBC anchors to act in it, and people believed it was real, which is a cool story. So many people called in to BBC and complained when they found out that it was fake, and they complained that they were now disturbed, or their children were. One guy asked for money for his pants, that he pooped from being so frightened. It would have been so cool if this was with Jimmy Kimmel as the lead, and they aired it after the Oscars without warning people that it was fake. From the preview, I thought this was going to be more like We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, a movie where kids watch something weird, and it slowly starts to take over their lives in a negative way, but there was not a showing of people watching this, it was all just the actual show, which was an interesting way to go about doing it. I did not love it as much as I wanted to, but the 90 minutes flew by, and I really appreciated the swing. Worth checking out for sure!
The Ghost Busters movie was almost two hours long, and the bad guy did not get introduced in physical form until there was less than 30 minutes left. In the meantime, there was too much mediocre family drama. The special effects mostly looked good, except for the final ghost, he looked like he could have been from a PlayStation 3 video game. So really this was a victim of its poor pacing, and a lack of a payoff. Also the family strife just was not believable, so it was hard to buy in to any of it. The most recent one that came out a couple of years ago was at least fun, but this one lost its charm. Please stop making these. Also, if Ghosts are of people that have died, why are these ghosts monsters? Does that mean that monsters exist in this universe, and when they die, they really start to terrorize people? Or do people turn into these monsters when they die? So many questions about the rules.
So what were these movies trying to say? One: do not trust to much in religion, the ideas may have pure intentions, but often the people in charge do not, or maybe do not just blindly follow someone, because they present themselves as religious. It also was an odd allegory about how women should be in charge of their bodies, which is a good message, but crushing a baby with a rock at the end is quite the provocative way to demonstrate this. Two: It is not worth doing ANYTHING just to get views. If a person is willing to cross all sorts of lines to get views in the end, it is going to come back in bite them. In this case, that came in the form of a demon possession and literal hypnosis. Three: do not fall in love with a ghost, they are just trying to trick you. All very valuable lessons. So I guess if a nun, a late night talk show host, and a ghost buster were to walk into a bar, they would all share ghost stories, but the one that would have the lamest story is the ghost buster. Immaculate: 3 Stars, Late Night with the Devil: 3 Stars, and Ghost Busters Frozen Empire: 2 Stars.
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