The Endless

Cthulhu Hoops

The Endless
USA 2017
Directed by Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead
Arrow Blu Ray Zone 2

Warning: Some spoilers on this one, I guess.

Okay... so all I can say is that I’m really glad that I saw these two director’s movie Resolution (which I reviewed right here) before I saw this one. As it turns out, the low key approach that it shares a couple of characters and ideas with that earlier film is like saying The Empire Strikes Back shares some characters and ideas with the original Star Wars (resubtitled Episode IV: A New Hope for modern, post 1977 audiences). The Endless is less a shared universe movie and more a direct sequel to the original. The directors play the main protagonists in this one, who were minor characters in the first, using their own christian names as character names. However, the two main protagonists of the last film are seen in a sizeable sequence towards the end of this film too. This one also, kinda, explains what was happening to these two, how... or at least why... the artefacts that made up that story kept appearing and also, although set ten years or so after the first film, we get director Aaron Moorhead’s character Aaron watching the sequence we saw where Mike first arrives at the cabin in Resolution. Which will make more sense once you see The Endless.

Furthermore, although it’s a direct sequel, it’s a little bit like a rerun or almost a partial remake, in some ways, of the first and one wonders if the two directors are just reworking their ideas in a greater exploration of the Lovecraftian stew they concocted for Resolution. Indeed, The Endless starts right off the bat with a direct quote from writer H. P. Lovecraft, as though the two are instantly stating their alignment with the ideas, or at least style, of that writer for the audience... wearing their influences on their sleeve in pursuit of a more 'up front' movie than the first, perhaps.

The film starts in a very similar manner to the first but, in this instance, after escaping from a weird ‘UFO Death Cult’ ten years or so prior to the events in the film, Justin is sent some video tape footage which forces him to track down some old hardware to play it on at a local boot sale. I actually like the fact that the writing allows for the obsolescence of the technology to require effort to access it in the first place and I saw a similar ode to obsolescence played out in a scene in the combined Ringu/Ju On sequel Sadako VS Kayako a couple of years ago (which desperately needs a subtitled physical release in the UK instead of a stupid, corporate streaming version... my review of the Frightfest screening of the film can be found here). I also liked that buying the technology to access this means that Justin sacrificed the money saved for buying a new car battery and this will have consequences, or at least complicate things for the two characters, further on down the line.

After seeing footage of one of the people at the cult, Justin convinces Aaron to take them back for a visit and so the two go, only to find that all the people they used to know are somehow un-aged over time and with a, mostly, welcoming attitude. And there are some nice sequences in here...

Such as the felt (rather than seen) presence of some large, Cthulhuian monster roaming around the landscape and a tug of war game with, probably, the same creature. And the odd appearance of artefacts utilising what can only be likened to ‘missing time’ in the main characters. Also, it’s hard for our characters not to notice that there are now two moons in the sky in the area they’ve gone to... explained as a naturally occurring, mirage style phenomena by members of the cult. It’s nicely done, though and is possibly the most interesting effect in the whole movie. This is coupled with some cool design transitions every now and again focusing on circular shapes which hints at what is really going on here.

However, when those double moons I mentioned suddenly become three moons, things start to go wrong for our heroes, who have become separated from each other due to an argument and who are now wandering around the local landscape trying to find each other. However, what they find instead is... time loops created by the ‘ancient unspeakable presence’ that we glimpsed (or quite noticeably didn’t glimpse, in actual fact), at the end of the last movie. Loops where people are trying to break their personal cycles... whether they last months, seasons, years or, in one case, literally a few seconds, by killing themselves in various ways. Furthermore, the two central characters from the last movie are more than aware now they must be caught in one of these time loops and Aaron, kindly, doesn’t let Mike know that his wife, played once again by Emily Montague, is actually in the commune a mile or so away and very much in a kind of loop herself, one must assume.

The film has the same stylistic traits of the previous, with small, almost imperceptible hand held camera movement a lot of the time and lots of light contrasting with a slightly subdued colour palette. There is actually a score for this one by Jimmy Lavalle although, a lot of the time, it’s kept quite minimal. The acting is all pretty great and, joining the directors along with Peter Cilella and Vinny Curran from Resolution, we have some good supporting cast such as Callie Hernandez and Tate Ellington doing some nice work here.

And... I don’t really have too much more  to say about it than that. It’s less subtle than the first movie, perhaps a little over the top at times with a run time which could maybe have been cut by 20 minutes or so once all the points have been made. Like the first one, however, it rambles along at its own pace and, although I have nothing against films that take their time, I did find this one dragging just a little towards the end. If you liked Resolution then you’re probably going to really like The Endless because, I think, despite it being a bit more overt with its portrayal of events, it’s a slightly better movie than the first. That being said, I definitely think you’ll have a far richer experience and appreciation of this film if you see Resolution first so, if you’ve not seen that one then I would definitely seek them out in chronological order. Both worth a watch for people who like low budget horror with a strong mystery element in the DNA of the films they are watching.

Sinister 2

Sin-Aesthetics

Sinister 2
2015 USA
Directed by Ciarán Foy
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Very slight spoilers on this one... I suppose.

You know, for a movie series which highlights a supernatural entity who sows terror by getting people to document brutal deaths and using the aesthetic properties of a specific medium such as film, music, radio etc to do it... and then hold that exact same thing up to the audience as a form of entertainment, reflecting the very method the sinister perpetrator of these films uses to perpetuate his own mythology in a post-modern, ironic manner... is really something that I should probably find very appealing, interesting and comforting within the context of a modern horror movie.

Alas, the Sinister films, it seems to me, take this promising premise and then just throw it away, ham-fistedly, in an attempt to chase a specific kind of horror audience which probably hasn’t existed in truly profitable numbers since maybe the late seventies or early eighties drive-ins. I honestly was hoping for more from the second part of this franchise but... this film delivers something far less palatable and, while it does still have a few nice things in it... I really would have been cursing the studio for turning out this film following the last one...at least if I’d have had more of a liking for the first movie which, luckily, I really don’t.

When I reviewed the first Sinister movie here, I pointed out that the only truly good things in it were the performances (including one by the always outstanding Ethan Hawke), Christopher Young’s score and a very surreal scene of ghost kids running around a house. These were pretty much the only things of any interest the first movie had going for it so... well... you might well ask why I bothered seeing the second one. And the answer to that, dear reader, is because I really didn’t think much of... Insidious.

I reviewed the first Insidious movie here and it really wasn’t anything to write home about. However, when I ended up seeing Insidious 2 (reviewed here) and Insidious Chapter 3 (reviewed here) I found both the sequels to be much more interesting movies than their original counterpart and so... I was kinda hoping the same effect would kick in with the Sinister franchise but... yeah, it seems not.

Sinister 2 doesn’t really have a lot going for it, it has to be said.

Like movies such as Jurassic Park (reviewed here) and Wild At Heart, Sinister 2 moves you straight into a traumatic event taking place. This opens with supernatural occurrences being visited on the audience straight away with both a ‘film’ of people being burned alive on crosses... followed by one of the film’s main child protagonists hanging out with a set of ghost kids. Unlike both Jurassic Park or Wild At Heart, however,  it doesn’t frighten you or set you up to feel really afraid of the possibility of certain things happening... it just makes everything feel a lot less creepy because there is no slow burn lurking terror to help along the ‘scary bits’... and the timing of those kinds of scenes and the way they are handled in this movie just makes them... well... they’re just not effective, you see them all coming and you certainly won’t be frightened of them. All the best scares in this movie were in the trailer and... they’re really not any scarier within the context of the movie as a whole.

Another thing is that the majority of the characters are just not in any way sympathetic... I’ll get to the ones who are in a minute. The two kids are not someone you’re really invested in saving from the possibility of their horrible fate and the abusive father figure in this film is really just setting you up so it’s okay by you if he dies a gruesome death... even if the end result of that particular scene completely contradicts the opening of the movie. Yeah... so there’s no logic in this movie anymore because they jettison it in the final act. Really, there were very few characters who I wanted to see survive this movie anyway and since, as it turns out, they’re going to show us that things we’ve already seen really weren’t as were presented and then alter how the events turned out then, by that point, I really don’t care anymore.

Thirdly, the murders committed by the various children in this are brutal to the point of just making for a really mean spirited film. I really don’t enjoy seeing the documentation of atrocities such as the ones on display here and it smacks of just being gruesome for the sake of it... rather than feeding into what could have been a great, supernatural movie.They even use the old medieval torture of having a live rat gnaw its way through someone’s body to escape a heated prison trick... except they do it to five people in one hit here and this, along with a couple of the other murder variants in this story, make the movie really uncomfortable to watch and, though that’s probably the point, the irony of the central premise becomes lost because it’s really no fun to see this stuff shot and presented the way it is here. This is meant to horrify and it does... but that very literal interpretation of what a horror movie should be doing really does harm/cancel out the supernatural dread which the film is, obviously, also trying... and frankly, failing... to create for the audience.

Fourthly... they’ve tried to expand on the eerie ghost kids sequence in the first movie way too much and ultimately, the whole scariness of that is shot down right from the word go, here. It’s like half the movie is trying to be a less effective version of that scene and, really, it doesn’t work even once... especially at the end where we get the POV scenes of characters who can’t actually see the kids reacting to what are presumably, to them, poltergeist like disturbances. This obviously completely erodes any logic of having the main antagonists having to use living people to do their killing in the first place. Seriously... what is the point?

I said there were a couple of good things in this too. Well the unnamed deputy character played by James Ransone who was so good in the first film returns in a much larger, main protagonist role as the equally unnamed ex-deputy character from the first film... and he, for some reason, has some great lines and seems incredibly well fleshed out compared to everyone else in the movie... even though we still don’t know anything much about him. His scene with a character called Dr. Stromberg, played by Tate Ellington, which links things more back to the first film, is the standout scene here... mixing genuine spookiness with some great one liners, relying very much on Ransone’s comic timing. And most of the way through the film... you will be rooting for him until the dreary miasma of general nastiness dulls everything down, leaving this particular audience member weary and uncaring.

Similarly, the main female lead played by Shannyn Sossamon, is equally interesting and works really well with Ransone’s character. She’s not quite as well written as him and, at the end, when she really does metamorphose from being a strong, resilient character to a full bodied damsel in distress... well, I kinda gave up on her too, to be honest.

Tomandandy’s score to the movie is serviceable, highlights a certain creeping dread and does what all good modern combinations of atonal stinger and ‘lurking in the realms of sound design’ horror scores do... but it’s trying to imbibe the movie with a certain amount of terror which, alas, the film just really doesn’t have in abundance. I’d listen to it away from the movie... and probably will if it comes out on CD as opposed to a stupid electronic download... but it really seems to be trying to score a film the director and producers wanted to make, as opposed to the one they ended up with. At least it feels like that to me.

So that’s that, I think. Unless any future sequels... and given the box office take on this so far that’s possibly in doubt now... are actually great works of art, then this is the last time I’ll ever have to watch Sinister 2 and, really, I’m not unhappy about that. If you go to see horror films to see demented goriness which makes no sense and which pales in effect due to the way its presented... then this is for you. If, however, you go to horror films to see how the director can both use and bend the rules of the horror film to evoke an emotional response in the viewer and to see if anything new or interesting can be brought to the table... well... Sinister 2 is definitely something you can miss out on. The only sinister thing about this one is how they could manage to make a sequel worse than the first movie.