Stalker

A little over ten years ago I watched Tarkovsky's Solaris, I rated it "three mysteriously reappeared wives out of five", but after all this time my memory of it is more two of five.

Anyway, I saw HBO recommending Stalker to me. Made seven years after Solaris, this film was Tarkovsky's last Soviet film, and it probably was the death of him. A couple of the actors and Tarkovsky all died of cancer and some people suspect chemical exposure from the filming locations used in Stalker. I started this film without realizing it was the same director as Solaris, which is good because I probably wouldn't have watched it at all if I had remembered.

The slow pace, and lingering shots are more of a match for Stalker than that other film. One can see thematic similarities, but this is much more about a journey and the psychological toll the trip takes on people than mysterious thing at the end of that journey. The alien intelligence in Solaris grants wishes, of a sort, apparently as a method of attempting communcation with humans. Here there's an unseen thing, possibly alien, in a "Room" at the heart of "The Zone" filling a similar grant wishes role.

Entering the Room at the heart of The Zone gets those wishes, which is why people try to get there. Armed guards protect the borders, and unseen threats apparently lurk within. This movie focuses on a guide (the "Stalker") who knows how to find a safe path to the Room and his two customers, Professor and Writer, who have reasons to visit the Room. Getting to the threshold is 95% of this 160 minute film.

If you're a fan of urbex photography, or Chernobyl Exclusion Zone nature taking over mankind's work, then the slow shots of beautiful decay and nature's reclaimation of industrial sites in Stalker are quite pretty and help alleviate the plodding plot. I watched it in two viewing sessions. There's a on-screen title indicating that an intermission was probably part of the original plan.

You can read a lot of allegory in this story, but ultimately it's hard to say what it really means. Nevertheless I think it is a lot better than reappearing wives above a roiling planet wide ocean. Call this four improvised trap detecting projectiles out of five.

Stalker at imdb
Stalker at wikipedia

Wikipedia has a link to it on youtube, but it is "unavailable" when I check there. I don't know if that's a region block thing or something else. I am not really well versed in youtube errors and restrictions. Also wikipedia: "an average shot length of more than one minute" while typical Hollywood films average a tenth of that.

Clothing that kills

Sometime in the last year I watched Slaxx. I thought I wrote about it at the time somewhere, but I don't find it in my blog here, archives of Usenet posts, or archives of forum posts. More recently I watched In Fabric. Both movies feature an article of clothing that is cursed and kills the people who wear it. That's probably about where the similarities end, but I couldn't stop making mental comparisons to Slaxx while watching In Fabric.

Slaxx at imdb (2020 Canadian comedy horror)
In Fabric at imdb (2018 British horror comedy)

Slaxx is an obvious low budget production for younger audiences that like horror. There's a nightmarish retail store and the staff in it are the first victims of a pair of unisex trousers that look good but also thirst for blood. In this movie you can see a puppet pair of jeans dance to a Bollywood music tune.

In Fabric is an arty piece where a shop with low budget 1980s comercials lures people in to sell a very red size 36 dress that seems to fit anyone who tries it on, but they all end up dead shortly thereafter. In this movie you will see a mannequin with pubic hair and a bleeding gash.

There's probably no cast in Slaxx that you've heard of, while In Fabric has a number of people who have done things, even if they aren't huge stars. Gwendoline "Brienne of Tarth" Christie makes an appearance, does not wear the dress, but is near it and survives an attack.

The source of the curse is very clearly explained in Slaxx and it follows typical horror curse logic right at home in, say, Chucky (Child's Play). Slaxx also has as much psychological horror from the retail working conditions as it has threats to humans by the bloodthirsty pants. This aspect gives me a good idea of the target audience.

The source of the curse In Fabric is not clearly explained, and follows the hinted at horrors I associate with A24 Films, like say Heriditary. (I don't think A24 had anything to do with this, and this is further towards the "art house" end of the film spectrum than their works.) Everyone working at the store that sells the dress is supremely odd and you get the impression that the killer dress serves them in some sort of black magic sex way.

Slaxx overall rating of one Instagram influencer out of four. (Or two out of four if cheesey horror is your cheese.)

In Fabric: four hellish sewing machines out of eight. (Five or more if mannequins are your fetish. In that case, see also The Duke of Burgundy by the same director, which is much more erotic but the mannequins are more minor characters.)

The Green Knight

This a two hour ten minute retelling of the Arthur Extended Universe story Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It's a slow and meditative movie, with several extended sequences lacking in dialog. Some of the lines that were spoken were hard to understand, so working well as silent film is a plus.

Without spoiling any of the story, let me recount a scene near the end. Having left the house of the mysterious Lord (most characters lack names) who played the game of exchanging winnings, Gawain makes his way to Green Chapel, arriving a day earlier than appointed time. He Sees the Green Knight sitting, eyes closed in a throne at the back of the broken down hall. Gawain places the axe down at the foot of the Knight and sits on the floor to wait. There's somewhere between two and five minutes of silent waiting, the camera lingering on the closed eyes of the Green Knight's face mixed with cuts to Gawain coming to terms with the fate ahead of him. This is used to show the passage of time until the next morning when the Green Knight awakens.

If you are stoned enough to find that deep or patient enough to tollerate that sort of slow moving story, this is a pretty entertaining retelling of the legend. If you'll be checking your phone when nothing happens for a while, stay away.

I think it helps to already know the story, and it also helps to be willing to accept some changes to the story. There's a fox in this version, for example, that is not in the one I read.

A six day journey out of ten.

The Green Knight at imdb

Also get ready for a bunch of different ways to pronounce "Gawain".

His House

Wanting something to watch, I skimmed a list of best movies on Netflix (that page gets monthly updates). First the gothic horror Crimson Peak suggested itself, due to Guillermo del Toro directing. But the story was so-so and the actors never really disappeared into the roles (with one exception noted below), so it was meh overall.

Then I found a different sort of ghost story horror movie, His House.

Superficially this reminds me of American Gods: people moving to a new place bring with them the gods of their old location. Only in this case it's refugees bringing a malevolent spirit with them to the UK from South Sudan. This brings several forms of horror into play.

There's the low-level bureaucratic horror of seeking asylum in a western country, the more cruel horror (in flashbacks) of the violence they are fleeing, and the traditional horror movie evil spirit.

The three are seemlessly blended in this film, succeeding at making you care for the characters and worry about their welfare in the asylum system while also giving you ghosts and a witch to torrment and provide both visceral threats and existensial threats to the asylum process.

There's one actor who (dis)appears in both His House and Crimson Peak: Javier Botet. He's a dead spirit in Crimson Peak and the witch in His House. Botet is noted for playing monsters due to physical appearance, Wikipedia gives his height at 6"7' (a hair over 2m) and his weight at 123 lbs (56kg). This extremely tall and thin figure lends itself to playing inhuman creatures. The viewer in both of these films can't easily tell if it is puppetry, computer manipulation of the graphics, or a practical effect made possible by Botet's unusual figure.

Ten "rat" holes in the walls out of twelve.

His House at imdb