This mini-essay, rant, what-have-you, has been in the works for quite some time, but has only really become a necessity once I watched a few horror movies recently. It's been bothering me for a while now, and I think I speak for almost everyone who watches and/or enjoys horror media when I say...
TWISTS ARE NOT NECESSARY FOR A MOVIE TO BE "DEEP" OR GOOD. You got that, Hollywood? Netflix? Literally everyone else who makes movies and wants money for them? Ok. Good.
Now. For context, the films I will be briefly touching on are:
"As Above, So Below",
"Before I Wake"
and
"Hereditary".
One of these films I absolutely loved and place in my top five, at least, but the other two, I don't.
Give you one guess as to which ones THOSE are.
Now, since these illustrate my point but aren't necessarily THE point of this mini-essay, I'll briefly go over each of them and why they made me upset and want to come back to this dead blog just to talk about it.
SPOILER ALERT(S), because, you know, I'll be summarizing them. Go watch them and form your own opinions first, or, if you don't care and hold my opinion in incredibly high regard (for some reason), take my word for it and continue.
"As Above, So Below" was a movie I really, really wanted to like, but it was too impossible to take seriously.
The acting was fine, the camera work was about average for a found-footage style film, the concept was really interesting, but...there were too many plot-holes, not enough calf muscles to back up the massive leaps of logic the writing attempted to take with its story, and the ending. Oh man. The ending made me want to projectile vomit, it was that bad.
Overall, the movie wasn't awful, just painfully average. It had some great ideas, some so-so execution, and very sub-par writing.
The best way to describe this movie was like "National Treasure" meets "Dante's Inferno" with a side of Wizard of Oz. And not in a good or fun way.
Now, about the ending. Why did I hate the ending so much?
Well, keep in mind the subject of this essay, and you might have an idea.
Spoilers ahead, last warning, peeps.
So basically a bunch of people in their DnD dungeoneering party start getting game-ended by evil visions of things they regret, and so the protagonist of this anime starts freaking out more and more, kicking her mad-genius brain into overdrive in order to make a massive leap of logic.
The Philosopher Stone they've been searching for and finally found needs to be replaced, and everyone needs to get rid of their regrets in order to fix everything that went wrong.
If you're wondering, yes, you heard that right, in a horror movie, something that we're supposed to take seriously and be frightened of, even, at points, they just tried to force the message down our throats that if we just ACCEPT our mistakes and say SORRY and MEAN it in our HEARTS, then everything will BE OK!
Shit belongs in a Rainbow Bright Valentine Special, not in a horror movie.
But that's not the worst part. The worst part is, it WORKS.
She uses the "power within herself" by adopting the slogan "As Above, So Below", mentioned as the basis for all magic, to bring someone back to life, heal everyone, and survive what seems like at least a 500-1,000 foot drop completely unscathed.
Within the span of 10 minutes, everything I loved about the movie vanished in a burst of flatulence from a script that was so far up its own ass it rolled like Sanic right around from being OK but dumb, to being a bit smart, to just being dumb again, and proceeded to get high enough off its own fumes that it thought it could get away with taking itself seriously.
What a twist.
The second movie I want to touch on briefly is "Before I Wake".
This movie is far better than the first, although it still tries WAY too hard to be "deep" and "serious" with little to no breadcrumbs to build up to it. This one's going to be a bit shorter, as I have a lot less mean things to say about it other than my main point.
So the movie is about this kid who has the ability to make things from his dreams into reality when he's sleeping. So what he does is he stays up with juice and sugary stuff and caffeinated beverages so he doesn't accidentally indirectly murder his family like he's done to every single other family.
Pretty interesting, right?
There's a lot of cool visuals, surreal scenes, and truly emotional moments in the movie, although those emotional moments sometimes come off as a bit forced and cold, more like a hallmark card than something you can actually get invested in. This is most likely due to the confused tone the movie gives off.
It tries really hard to be a big bad scary horror movie...but it has a PG-13 rating, and it really shows. It tried to be heartwarming, but does so after talking about how the kid basically murdered several families by accident because of this monster he calls the "Canker Man".
Well, to cut a long summary short, a bunch of creepy stuff happens, the mom tries to take advantage of the kid's powers to bring back her non-adopted son back from the dead (who apparently somehow died from drowning in the bathtub despite being far too old for that), the adopted kid's dreams get spooky, monster freaks them out, eventually killing the husband, and the social worker acts all angry with the mom and blames her for the kid being put in danger despite it obviously being an unprovoked and sudden attack.
The social worker also already knew about the kid's past and never told the parents about it, so honestly, she's kind of the real bad guy. Fuck her.
Now comes the twist, and this is what turned this movie from like a 7-8/10 to a 4/10.
Turns out the kid, since his memories weren't fully formed properly, was actually imagining his mother attacking everyone in an emaciated state due to CANCER. So the kid thought it was pronounced CANKER (even though a kid who can read should be able to remember this and realize this later). He thought some entity took her body over and made her evil? I guess? So the adoptive mom explained everything and things went back to normal.
The movie ends on a note nearly as sappy as the first one I reviewed, with the mom saying "who knows, if you really wish and think of stuff hard enough, your dreams could come TRUE!", and then you see shots of all the people the "Canker Man" took coming back to their families. Even though it was established that they only come back when the kid is sleeping or hallucinating due to lack of sleep. So apparently he just thinks about this stuff really hard all the time.
Yeesh. Can't imagine what the family's lives are like when his concentration lapses. "oopsie poopsie, guess the kid got his pee pee stuck in the toilet seat again. Uncle Chester, you will be missed."
But I'm going to cut this review short. I liked most of the movie, but once again, didn't like the ending.
And I didn't like the ending because it had a lame twist with very little to support it, which it did contortions for just to try and make it sorta work.
Now let's move on to Hereditary. I do not want to spoil this one, so this review will be even shorter.
For those who guessed this movie, congratulations, by process of elimination, you've just been validated by some rando on the Internet!
In all seriousness, you need to watch this movie. Fans of horror need to see it. I don't want to hype it any more than that, but if you've been as disappointed by modern horror movie trends as I have, then this movie will be a fucking breath of fresh air with a hint of febreeze in comparison to 99 percent of what Hollywood poops out nowadays.
Now, if the other two movies gave me the idea to write this mini-essay, then this movie carved it into stone. I've seen a lot of people hating on the ending of this movie and a lot of people not understand what the movie is about.
The thing is, there were several clues and hints not only to what the movie was about, but also what the underlying metaphor was. For those who have seen it and still don't know...consider this. Why is it that every time a character starts acting very strange/crazy, they get decapitated, or imagery foreshadowing this occurs?
I think it bears mentioning that this movie handled its twist ending very well. You know why? Because, in the end. it WASN'T A TWIST ENDING. There were clues hidden throughout the movie that, if you had a good eye, you could catch very quickly. Once Joanie was introduced, it all sort of came together and I was not surprised by the ending whatsoever, but felt it was truly a satisfying, if tragic, way to end things.
What makes a "twist ending" a twist is that all these strange oddities and clues left behind that you may have missed get a light shone on them and with a simple perspective change, or "twist", if I may, everything falls into place. You may not even see the clues after the light shines on them- it may go over your head, but that's OK, because a rewatch will reveal more of these to you, and the ending will make more and more sense with time.
Unlike the other two movies, where the more I think about them, the more a shotgun barrel sounds like a scrumptious treat and the more I question the point of human existence.
In conclusion, I hate most modern "twist" endings, because they aren't twists...they're sucker punches. And, nearly infallibly, they end with your head hurting and you wishing you never even encountered them in the first place.
Unfortunately, it seems like the modern trend of the "twist" ending is becoming, more and more, the norm in pop culture. As movie nuts and harsher critics become more vocal and platforms become more accessible for them, movies will try their damnedest to appeal to that demographic to make even a smidgen more money or get even the tiniest fragment more cred, more gasps of "how deep" or "wow, what a twist, never saw that coming".
People enjoy being surprised and enjoy feeling smart, so by spoon-feeding "deep" topics to them with the flimsiest plot setups and the shoddiest of Chechov's Guns, production companies and screenwriters are turning to this as a crutch for a weak idea or poor execution.
And the saddest part, is that audiences and, sometimes, even critics, are falling for it, hook, line and sinker.
Just look at how much "The Nun" made. It's a terrible film, but it made tons of money through good marketing, pure fan-service (apparently there was a collective wish to know more about the creepy nun from "The Conjuring 2"), and, you guessed it, shitty twists and turns that make no sense on paper, but make the common movie-goer gasp in awe and say "wow, I would have never thought that'd happen".
What's the solution?
Vote with your wallets. Use common sense. If you see the director of the newest Conjuring franchise film is someone unfamiliar and who never directed a good movie in their life according to their Imdb page, don't pay to go see it. Or if you see the preview and the preview looks very sparse or otherwise cheesy/full of stupid jumpscares, don't see it then, either.
Hollywood does NOT care about your opinions. At least, not unless you're a film critic with some clout behind you. So vote with your wallets and make the stuffy CEO's wish they never inherited Daddy's production company.