WNUF Halloween Special and John Erick Dowdle
New episode of Fruitless and also I can't tell if Dowdle is a hack or not
Good morning. This is, of course, Josiah’s media round-up, a newsletter about the media I’m producing, watching, reading, and listening to. I’m a bit tired this morning—I woke up naturally a few hours before I usually do and couldn’t get back to sleep. The trees out the window have changed into really nice fall colors over the week which is one of those little pleasures I sometimes forget to pay attention to when I’m caught up in work or, in the past, school.
New from me
I have new podcasts out! Finally! As I’ve mentioned the last few round-ups, Fruitless fell behind due to some scheduling difficulties, meaning I’ll be spamming everyone’s feed a bit over the next week or so. My goal is 4-5 episodes per month, and I’m still planning to try to meet that despite only having a week and a half left in the month.
On Monday, a new episode of The Good Apples dropped, discussing The Boston Strangler, both an SVU episode about the topic and the 1968 film about it. You can listen to that here. It’s part one of a two parter on the subject.
On Wednesday, I dropped the first spooky October episode of Fruitless featuring
. We discussed WNUF Halloween Special (2013) and the found footage genre—why most of it sucks, and why some of it is good. He also recently launched a blog about comics that you should check out.Films
I didn’t watch a lot of movies this week. I’ve honestly really failed at any attempt to watch a ton of horror movies this month.
Although, of course, for the Fruitless episode I watched WNUF Halloween Special. I don’t want to say too much about it because I don’t want to ruin the episode, however I do recommend the movie. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been streaming anywhere for the last year, so I had to purchase a blu-ray (actually from the filmmaker’s website), but it’s worth it.
While it’s technically a found footage movie, it breaks a lot of conventions to that genre. It’s also incredibly funny. It’s supposed to be a taped TV special, so half of the film is various fake late 80s commercials. In a lot of ways, this added sense of feeling like you’re actually watching a local television broadcast from the late 80s makes the horror that slowly unfolds in the final half hour incredibly unsettling—the reality the film does such a good job creating starts to fall apart because a part of you is wondering how this could have been aired on TV.
I watched through all the special features in preparation for the podcast, and I really enjoyed the two commentaries. There’s a really collaborative feel to the whole film. It’s a lot of what I love about low budget film.
Moving away from WNUF, I watched Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) last weekend. I really do feel like after Part 3, the franchise really finds it’s strive. I really liked Final Chapter, which has been really surprising me after being so lukewarm on the first two. I think it just took them a while to get the formula down.
Last night, I watched As Above, So Below (2014) which I enjoyed more than I was anticipating with only one real gripe: it’s a movie that does not need to be a found footage movie but is a found footage movie. It just really isn’t necessary in this film. And, in fact, I think you could have shot the film in almost the exact same way, with handheld cameras in tight spaces that move like a documentary crew or whatever. The cinematography is fine! But when you choose to make a film a “found footage” film it by definition needs to be about the medium, and I think that was unnecessary to telling this story.
John Erick Dowdle, who directed As Above, So Below, is someone I can’t quite decide what I think of. This is the third film I’ve seen from him—the other two are Devil (2010) and The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007). On the one hand, none of these movies are great. I think there’s a degree that Dowdle comes off as a hack to me. In more positive terms, perhaps a journeyman. I also know that he’s responsible for Quarantine (2008) which appears like an incredibly obvious [REC] (2007) rip-off.
On the other hand, he does seem to have some specific fixations. Both Devil and As Above So Below are strangely religious films. Both are films that posit that Christianity, and specifically a really medieval understanding of Christianity, is 100% true. Magic is real, demons and angels are real, the devil messes with people and tests their faith, Hell is literally underground, and you can only escape it through love and redemption. I don’t mean all this as disparaging against his worldview entirely, although it can come off a bit didactic. I do find something compelling about a reasonably well made movie that decides to emphasize a sort of Catholic grandma worldview—I mean this in a literal sense with Devil; the narrator that bookends the film bases his understanding of the devil off stories his grandma told him.
But the Poughkeepsie Tapes, on the other hand, has none of this moralistic, medieval worldview. It’s a nihilistic film, set in the serious mockumentary horror style you might know from films like Lake Mungo (2008) and Savageland (2015). Like these other horror mockumentaries, Poughkeepsie falls into the territory of movies that genuinely creep me out. I think the mockumentary formula tricks my brain into taking what I’m seeing more seriously which makes it all more upsetting. It’s the difference between watching a slasher and a snuff film—the sense of reality is what makes it more shocking. I’m gonna spoil Poughkeepsie in the next paragraph, so you can skip that if you want.
In particular, it’s this final scene of the film where a woman we’ve watched get tortured and abused psychologically, physically, etc. is finally free and speaking to the camera crew and is unable to get words out. Anytime she’s asked a question, she panics and says, “I don’t know what you want me to say.” She’s spent the whole period of time locked up, being harmed if she says something out of line, and being forced to say things she doesn’t believe. Finally, she speaks candidly for only a moment and says, “He loved me. They won’t let me say that, but it’s true.” The final thing we get, before learning she commits suicide shortly after the interview, is that her mind has been irreparably colonized by her torturer. This is what I mean by the film being truly bleak and nihilistic.
Poughkeepsie seems to be coming from an entirely different perspective than Devil or As Above, So Below. Perhaps they’re able to be reconciled if I watch more of his films. I’ve had annoyances with all three I’ve seen, but also I’ve ultimately liked all three, so perhaps he’s someone I should take more seriously. I don’t know.
Music
I’ve mostly been listening to a lot of the same stuff I talked about last week, and I don’t really have anything new to add, so here’s my top 20 tracks of the last four weeks according to statsforspotify.com
Drop - Turnstile
skin meadow - Home is Where
BLACKOUT - Turnstile
Cigarette Packet - Sorry
everyday feels like 9/11 - Home is Where
Good Time - The Dare
Counting Worms - Knocked Loose
Honeysuckle - The Pom Pom Squad
Wet Dream - Wet Leg
chris farley - Home is Where
I Don’t Want to Fall In Love - She Wants Revenge
Deep in the Willow - Knocked Loose
Speak in Tongues - Traitrs
AHHHH! - Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers
The Con - Tegan and Sara
Koniec - SPY
There Are Listed Buildings - Los Campesinos!
Starstruck - Sorry
Poe’s Law - The Nietzsche
Chaise Longue - Wet Leg
Reading
Being between books for the Fruitless bookclub (finished Late Victorian Holocausts but we haven’t done the episode to announce the next book yet!), I chiseled away at a few books I’ve been “reading” for a while but haven’t picked up in a good while. I made it through a few chapters of Europe in the High Middles Ages by William Chester Jordan and The Age of Revolution by Eric Hobsbawm. Once I finish one of them, I’m going to start up The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi.
Alright. See you all next week.