Ten Days of Terror!: The Blackcoat's Daughter

Film: The Blackcoat’s Daughter
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on the new portable.

There is a trend in horror movies that perhaps has been around for longer than I’ve been aware of it. I’ve noticed it several times in the past, and someone is welcome to bring up a movie from before the last decade that follows this pattern, but it’s one I’ve really only noticed in movies from the past 10 years or so. That trend or common element is a movie that spends about two acts developing an atmosphere of dread or at least something disturbing and then going completely off the rails bonkers in the third act. Starry Eyes did this, as did Kill List and Honeymoon. I’m not specifically talking about a plot twist—I’m talking about a movie building up to something that turns out to be fully insane. That’s exactly what I experienced with The Blackcoat’s Daughter.

This isn’t to say that there isn’t a twist in this movie; there is, and it’s a big one. Naturally, this means that I won’t be spoiling it when we get there. The movie has three interweaving storylines. Two of these are clearly entwined, while the third connects with the others eventually. More or less, we figure that it’s got to be connected in some way because it’s a part of the same movie.

Faerie Tale

Film: Gretel & Hansel
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on the new portable.

I’ve liked the two films Oz Perkins has directed that I’ve seen. There is a sense that he is very much trying to tap into something deeper with his horror movies, something more than just the surface level jump scare and gross-out moments that are the mainstay of cheap horror films. While perhaps not as high profile as some of the other new horror directors, Perkins has an interesting voice and style. And so it was a disappointment to me that Gretel & Hansel appeared in many ways to be Perkins attempting to riff on Ari Aster.

Clearly, Gretel & Hansel is a riff on the Hansel and Gretel story. You remember the one—two kids are kicked out of their house by their stepmother because of terrible famine. The children wander through the woods until they come to a house that appears to be made out of sweets. Famished, the kids nibble on the house until the owner, a witch, arrives and brings them in. Of course, the witch is cannibalistic and plans to fatten the children up and eat them, but is ultimately outwitted by Gretel. The children find the witch’s treasure and return home with the aid of a swan to discover that their evil stepmother has died, and the live “happily ever after” with their father.

Wednesday Horror: I am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House

Film: I am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

A great deal of modern horror is about putting as much blood on the screen as it will take. I’m not generally a fan of gore for its own sake. When it is used well as a legitimate part of the story, it can be extremely effective. When it shows up just for shock value or as fan service, I think that it generally fails. Because of this, I find it really interesting when a film takes the opposite path. The epically-named I am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House is a movie of the second stripe. The goal here is to produce an atmosphere of dread without covering the screen in blood.

We are presented with hospice nurse Lily Saylor (Ruth Wilson), who has just been hired on as the live-in help of horror author Iris Blum (Paula Prentiss), who is slowly descending into dementia. The house in which the two live is old and, as befits the genre, both creepy and gifted with a strange, mysterious history. The original owners of the house never lived in it; they vanished on their wedding day. Iris has lived in the house for ages, and as Lily continues to live there, she begins to suspect that at least one of Iris’s books may have been relayed to her by a ghost that resides in the house.