CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Daybreakers (2010)

I don't write these words lightly, but the 2010 vampire horror film Daybreakers boasts a premise worthy of Rod Serling and his famous creation, The Twilight Zone.

This film by the Spiereg brothers involves a "new world order" of the year 2019. A global pandemic has toppled humanity, transforming people everywhere into glowing-eyed blood-suckers. The world shuts down by daylight, and civilized society thrives by night.

But ironically, it's much the same world. Except that now the coffee shops serve blood. Otherwise, there's still cable news, international warfare, and conspicuous consumption. Big corporations (and Big Pharma, specifically) are still calling the shots.

A few remaining humans have resisted assimilation into the ranks of the undead and are now being "farmed" by the hungry vampire businesses for their precious blood. Meanwhile, human blood supplies run perilously, irrevocably low. There's just enough human blood left to feed the population for a month.

And when vampires can't drink blood, they physically and mentally devolve into monstrous, mindless bat-like things called "Subsiders." A threat to national security, these Subsiders are ruthlessly put down by the U.S. Military. (And if you think about it a little, the Subsiders are not just former vampires, but former humans too!)

Many aspects of this concept struck me as impressive. The first is that it relates to George A. Romero's artistic impetus for creating his Night of the Living Dead film franchise in the first place.

Decades ago, Romero wrote an unpublished story called "Anubis." In the opening gambit (which ultimately became the 1968 film) a zombie was chased and exterminated by armed human soldiers while fleeing over a hill. Then, during the last shocking scene of the story, another solitary figure ran across that same hill. But the social order had flipped. The pursuer was now the pursued. "We see it's an army of zombies, chasing a human with an injured, bleeding leg," Romero noted in The Zombies That Ate Pittsburgh, (Paul R. Gagne, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1987, page 24).

The tale was an allegory, Romero specifically suggested, one about shifting social orders. It was about how there was this massive change, this massive revolution. Yet in some very important ways, things remained absolutely the same. I should note too that Romero was also greatly inspired by Richard Matheson's 1954 vampire tale, I Am Legend, and Matheson's idea of a new social order and a lone human attempting to defy it.

Daybreakers represents a smart, high-tech, visually-adroit variation on this theme. It stakes out some original territory too, in part because the point of attack is different. Night involved the onset of the crisis point, the origination of a new, alien population in America and the scatter-shot, confused human response to this invasion. I Am Legend began at the end; when it was all over for mankind except the crying; when the lone human survivor, Neville, was but a Boogeyman, a night-time story used to scare vampire kiddies. But importantly, the book still adopted Neville's human perspective in his efforts to reverse the disease that turned humans into vampires.

Daybreakers doesn't begin with the pandemic that changes man into literal vampires; and it doesn't start with a human being fighting back, either. Instead, the movie opens with "the new normal," with the work-routine of a vampire hematologist, Edward (Ethan Hawke). He is working hard on a problem in his capacity as a scientist at Bromley Marks: creating a blood-substitute that can feed the starving vampire population of the world.

Interestingly, the meek Edward is depicted in the film as the equivalent of a human vegetarian. He "pities" the humans and doesn't drink their blood, believing instead that there is a synthetic alternative, so as to avoid a human holocaust. His all-business boss, Bromley (Sam Neill) isn't so certain. "There will always be those who are willing to pay a little extra for the real thing," he suggests.

The vampire dilemma in Daybreakers reflects our current situation in a clever fashion. In particular, the movie involves resources, and the way that our society uses them up without wide-spread thought of conservation, without thought of replacement. To survive the extinction of humans, the vampire culture in Daybreakers requires a paradigm shift to a new, sustainable way of life. In real life, most of us know about Peak Oil, we know our way of life is unsustainable, and yet -- like the vamps -- we don't change our behavior. The Spill Baby Spill crowd wants to keep gulping down the black blood of the Earth, certain it will last forever. And when it's mostly gone, the lucky rich folk can pay a little extra to gets what's left, and thereby maintain their affluent lifestyle, right? But what about the rest of us "Subsiders?"

Daybreakers is packed with social commentary like that. According to the back story, the vampire "revolution" occurred in 2008. Well now, America itself underwent a dramatic change in leadership in 2008 and the question we face today might be the same question raised in the film. How much, substantively, has changed? We still have talking heads arguing on cable TV, we still have war, and we still have big corporations calling the shots. Even the Subsiders, who can't afford the high-priced blood sold on the free market, seem like a metaphor for the less fortunate among us: the homeless, the poor, those who can't make it in a wealthy, technological society where real wages have been going down for a decade. When people can't get what they want and what they need, do they devolve into irrational monsters, or just Tea Baggers?

Stylistically, Daybreakers proves rather artistic and accomplished too. The world of the vampires is presented in a silvery-blue hue. This metallic color palette eschews depth, color and most importantly, warmth. That's the very quality the vampires lack too; warmth, compassion. By contrast, the human world depicted in the film is one of sun-washed gold and heat; of warmth and natural beauty. The visualizations make for a powerful and clear contrast, and reflect well the story's narrative,

Alas, as is often the case, Daybreakers can't seem to sustain itself on intriguing ideas and good visualizations for its entire running time. Eventually it devolves too, into chases, bloody vampire attacks, and action, action, action. The hackneyed ending is especially a let-down. Commendably, the movie doesn't end with typical Hollywood B.S. -- such as an absolute victory of humanity over the vampires.

But still, the film's final sequence revolves around familiar action cliches that you see coming from a mile away, and depends on pretentious "heroic" shots (in grandiose slow-motion, no less.) The film's final shot of an endless highway provides a good metaphor for the journey still not undertaken (the paradigm-shift towards sustainability just broached, perhaps) but comes after so many mock heroics, so many unbelievable moments, that it seems like too little too late.

In the age of Twilight, vampire movies require a paradigm-shift towards sustainability too, and Daybreakers nearly gets there. At the very least, it's a promising start.

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Blade Runner (1982)

Although released to decidedly mixed reviews in the summer of 1982, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner has since ascended to the pinnacle of the sci-fi cinema Valhalla.

In fact, the film is often mentioned in the same breath as Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) as, perhaps, the greatest sci-fi film yet produced.

Much of Blade Runner's sterling reputation arises from the film's meticulously-crafted, pioneering production design and dazzling visual presentation.

Yet Blade Runner's triumph isn't merely one of forward-thinking visualizations. The film assiduously echoes the up-to-the-minute worries of the era in which it was crafted (the 1980s), and seems to obsess on an issue that remains of great importance in our nation, even today: race.

Set in the future year of 2019 -- in a monolithic, blighted metropolis --Blade Runner presents a future world in which business and technology have ballooned to titanic proportions and dwarfed the human spirit.

Advertisements for Coca-Cola and other products stand several stories high, and as human dwellings reach closer to the sky itself, the more grand and opulent they appear. The lucky rich are literally awash in warm golden light, as though access to the sun is itself a perk of wealth. We see this fact visualized in the classic, clean lines of Tyrell's (Joe Turkel) sun-soaked penthouse apartment: a veritable Mount Olympus, and a home not just for a Man...but a God on Earth.

Meanwhile, far down below on street level...it's a roiling Hell of ugly industry, punk fashion, neon lights, steam and ubiquitous rain. The hungry and the poor toil there like mindless ants, mostly unnoticed by those living in luxury and wealth high above.

"If you're not a cop, you're little people," according to Blade Runner's screenplay.

And if you're not human, if you're a replicant, you aren't even little people. That's the core of the film's race-based argument. That mankind has played God by creating the Replicants but then steadfastly refused to acknowledge this creation, this child, with the very dignities we all cherish every day: equality and liberty.

Like all underclasses throughout history, the android replicants in Blade Runner are known by a derogatory slang term: skin-jobs. And replicants also have a built-in expiration date that make them seem less than fully human: they die four years after their "incept date."

As you may well imagine, this fact doesn't sit well with some of the Replicants, and that's what precipitates much of the action in the film. A cadre of Replicants return to Earth (from off-world) on a spiritual quest; on a search for more life that, in sub textual terms, might be interpreted as the search for racial equality.

Man Has Made His Match. Now It's His Problem.

Specifically, Blade Runner revolves around the hunt and pursuit of six renegade replicants. Yep, I said six, and that's according to Los Angeles' police chief, Bryant (M. Emmet Walsh) in explicitly stated dialogue. This number is important to note, especially according to one specific reading of the film. But more on that later.

The man doing the hunting is the laconic, hard-boiled and lonely Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former detective in a special police squad called Blade Runners. Blade Runners are famous for "retiring" skin jobs.

The quarry this time includes Leon (Brion James), Zhora (Joanna Cassidy), Pris (Daryl Hannah) and Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer). And yes, that's only four names, even though Bryant mentioned six replicants.

Over the course of his investigation, Deckard questions the latest model of Replicant, a new upgrade built by the Tyrell Corporation named Rachel (Sean Young). "More human than human" as the slogan goes, Rachel doesn't realize she's actually a machine. Rachel even boasts distinctive memories from her childhood. But these memories are really just clever implants; the memories of "Tyrell's niece."

Deckard soon falls in love with the winsome, confused Rachel and -- depending on which version of the film you see -- also experiences strange dreams of a unicorn in a primeval forest. After hunting down the last of the Replicants, Deckard must decide if he should pursue his relationship with a Replicant...

"I Think It Was Manufactured Locally:" 1980s Terrors Lurking in Los Angeles, 2019

Early in the 1980s, many citizens in the United States of America feared that the country had a new, powerful and sinister competitor: Japan.

At the time, that country excelled in industry, manufacturing, and the development of new technologies. Importantly, Japan was also the United States' main international creditor in this era and it benefited financially from a forty-to-fifty-billion dollar trade gap with the United States.

In particular, the Japanese auto industry seemed to be cleaning Detroit's clock. Seeing this, many World War II veterans who had fought in the Pacific and had witnessed the Draconian, brutal behavior of the Japanese in a time of conflict perceived a danger.

As a character in Die Hard (1988) knowingly jokes, "Pearl Harbor didn't work" so Japan was taking over the United States economically: with "VCRs." There were many Americans of the Greatest Generation who felt precisely that way in the early 1980s (and my beloved, now-deceased paternal grandfather was one of them. Never bought a Japanese car. )

Although structurally and visually a deliberate reprise of the 1940s film noir (an era, incidentally of actual rather than economic war with Japan), one of Blade Runner's many undercurrents involves this 1980s incursion of Japanese business interests in future America.

In particular, it appears that in 2019 American business (always ahead of the curve....), has assimilated Japanese business interests into its very structure so as to continue turning huge profits and remain on the top of the food chain.

Or, as authors Douglas Kellner, Flo Leibowitz and Michael Ryan wrote in their essay, Blade Runner: A Diagnostic Critique (Jump Cut, February 1985, pages 6-8):

"Crowds of people mill through rain-soaked streets, evoking common fears about overpopulation and "foreigners" overrunning future cities. On the East and West coasts of the U.S., for example, Japanese ramen and sushi cafes have replaced U.S. fast food chains, and visibly prominent are many Asian merchants and street people. The film here seems to articulate paranoia about Japanese capitalism "taking over" the United States. Nevertheless, the film’s city (Los Angeles) seems under the hegemony of U.S. capitalism, which now seems to have incorporated its rivals into its structure. The society’s economic structure combines small, street-merchant-style, "free enterprise" with paternalistic capitalist control. Most of the merchants in the film are Asian or European, whereas the corporate president and executives of the Tyrell Corporation are all North Americans."

So Blade Runner acknowledges the timely fear of a Japanese take-over in America, but puts a spin on it. Even the resourceful Japanese have become slaves to a Corporatist Nation in the future.

Similarly, Replicants -- constructed piece-meal in Mom/Dad, Asian-controlled shops such as the Eye Factory run by Chew (James Hong) -- are another symbol of Big Business gone amok in the future of Blade Runner; of the consumer culture of the 1980s carried to the next level. It's a world where human beings use other beings (androids) for pleasure, to fight wars, and to perform menial tasks that humans apparently no longer wish to do.

And yes, this description uncannily mirrors how immigrants are viewed in today's American society. Interestingly, the film suggests that Big Business will go along with a new influx of workers from other nations, and even co-opt that work force so to stay on "top," literally ,of the situation (living high, high above it, in palatial skyscrapers). If you look at the big companies hiring undocumented workers today, one detects that this speculation was not very far off the mark.

"Is This to Be An Empathy Test?" A Replicant Civil Rights Movement in Blade Runner

In an era of world war, a dedicated drive towards equality for all U.S. citizens was begun here at home.

The 1940s was the era of Roosevelt's Executive Order 8802, which opened up new job possibilities for African-Americans. It was also the era in which white-only primaries were judged unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

The noir era in film was also the age of Truman's National Committee on Civil Rights, CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), and the election of Chicago's William Dawson in the House of Representatives. There was still a long way to go, but the a long march towards equality was beginning.

Blade Runner explicitly discusses race and the history of race inequality in America. As I noted above, it speaks in the film language (noir) of the 1940s, an era when race was a concern in the United States as enumerated above.

More than that,the Replicants are described in historically racist terms, ones involving the nature of their skin, not the quality of their character. They are not "colored" or "negro," but "skin-jobs. Replicants are not considered "fully" human, and again, this reflects our history. In 1789, in the Constitution, African-Americans were considered 3/5s of a person...not the equivalent of a white person, in other words. If you see someone as being less than fully human, that makes it much easier to enslave them, to deny them basic human rights. In the film, Roy Batty acknowledges this and contextualizes his experience, and the experience of the Replicants, as slavery. He discusses with Deckard what "it is to be a slave."

I suppose there is no need to describe Deckard's hunt of the Replicants as a "high-tech lynching" but certainly, the Replicants are treated harshly as a matter of course in 2019. Deckard shoots Zhora in the back, exposing the ugly truth that Replicants have no legal rights in this society. They are not arrested and afforded due process of law. They are not innocent until proven guilty. Instead, Replicants are shot on sight because of what they are, not because of their conduct. This is the essential characteristic of institutional racism: denying people freedom not because of their behavior; but because of their origin, their skin color, their heritage. If you want to delve deeply into the visuals of Blade Runner, consider that Zhora is murdered while crashing through a series of invisible glass barriers, a metaphor, perhaps, for the oft-mentioned "glass ceiling" that keeps minorities from high level positions in society.

Leon attempts to kill Deckard and says to him, "painful to live in fear, isn't it?" And that too is part of the racial equation. For the Replicants, it's the knowledge that they can be shot and killed at anytime. For Latinos in Arizona today, it's the knowledge that you can be asked for your papers by armed police simply because of your skin color.

You can go pretty deep with this interpretation of the film, if that's your inclination. There's a test in Blade Runner for determining if a person is human or Replicant, and it is called a "Voigt-Kampff" Test. That name sounds uncomfortably like Hitler's manifesto Mein Kampf, doesn't it? And when we think of the Nazis, we think of the belief in racial purity, the subjugating of "lesser" races, right? The Voight-Kampf functions as a tool to identify one such lesser race, the Replicant.

And interestingly, what this test looks for is the "empathy" response in the iris, in the eyeball. As we know from President Obama's last Supreme Court battle, "empathy" is apparently a code word in America today. What Blade Runner doesn't make plain, however, is if Replicants possess a surfeit or lack of empathy in their iris responses.

But what's abundantly clear in Blade Runner is that Replicants are people too. They are, as the saying goes, more human than human.

They love, they mourn, and they want want all human beings want: more life (fucker!). In fact, the Replicants undergo a real spiritual quest in the film. They seek to find their God, Tyrell, and petition him for more life. They seek forgiveness from him too, at least after a fashion, for their methods of self-preservation. In answer, they are told by Tyrell, Corporate God, that they have done nothing "the God of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for."

Of course, the Replicants then kill God, but the relevant point is that Replicants, like humans, seek to understand their very nature, and turn to the divine for that knowledge.

Roy Batty does more than that, however. He not only seeks answers from his God, but, ultimately, shows mercy to his enemies, which is something you cannot say for the police in Blade Runner. Batty could kill Deckard...but choose to save his life instead.

In this beautiful and emotionally-wrenching climactic scene, Batty is depicted grasping a white dove -- a representation of the Holy Spirit in Christian Mythology -- and a symbolic signifier that Batty is truly one of God's creatures and, through his mercy, has earned the right to be considered such. When the dove flies Heavenward, released by Batty, the image visually suggests that Batty's soul has fled his body; that he was more than just a machine.

You've Done A Man's Job, or Less Human Than Human: The Deckard Equation

One of the key questions regarding Blade Runner involves its protagonist, Deckard. Director Ridley Scott has suggested that Deckard is, in fact, a Replicant himself. Harrison Ford has gone on record as saying he believes Deckard is human.

As in all great art, a case can probably be made either way.

If Deckard is a Replicant, then he is clearly "passing" as a human being, and that seems to fit in with the film's racial overtones.

Indeed, there are passages of dialogue in the film that hint at Deckard's Replicant nature. In particular, Gaff (Edward James Olmos) tells Deckard after Batty is dead that the blade runner performed a "man's job." In other words, a job worthy of a man, or a human being. So this description could be interpreted to mean that the replicant has performed as well as a human would under similar circumstances. It is thus a race-centric remark (Hey, you did good for a black guy!) and thus an acknowledgment of Deckard's genetic origin.

Also, Gaff leaves behind at Deckard's apartment a small origami Unicorn. And, in the director's cut of Blade Runner, Deckard dreams of a unicorn in the forest. If Gaff is aware that all Replicants are encoded with the unicorn dream as part of their unusual genetic make-up, then he has left behind the origami unicorn to let Deckard understand the truth about himself. If only Deckard can put it all together...

In the final battle at the Bradbury building, Batty also says to Deckard "let's see what you're made of," as if there is a question about Deckard truly is made of, genetically-speaking. Well, what is Deckard made of?

The following fight scene suggests that our hero is made of much the same stuff as Batty. Notice that in the ensuing fight, Scott's camera catches both Deckard and Batty mending damaged hands at roughly same time, through the art of cross-cutting, This could be a subtle, visual connection. Both men share something in common: an injury. On one level this could simply be an indication that a Replicant boasts the same survival instinct as a human does. On another level, it could mean that these men share a different kind of "kinship," - Replicant-hood, if that's a word. Also, it's important to note that both Batty and Deckard are slaves, though in service of different masters. But this too could be interpreted either way. To demonstrate, perhaps, that the gulf between human and Replicant is not so wide; or more pointedly, to sub-textually suggest that both men are Replicants.

Lastly, remember that Bryant discussed six free replicants, yet the movie reveals depicts four Replicants, and notes that one (the fifth?) was killed attempting to cross a border, a fence (which again, reeks of racial connotations). That leaves one replicant, right? So who is the sixth and final Replicant? Deckard? It can't be Rachel, because when Bryant tells the story of the six replicants to Deckard, Rachel has not yet left the custodianship of Tyrell.

Finally, the very form that Blade Runner utilizes -- the film noir detective story -- suggests Deckard's heritage. In the best film noir movies, the investigation by a detective leads, inevitably, to some shattering personal revelation. Consider Johnny Favorite's journey of self-discovery in a Blade Runner contemporary, Angel Heart (1987). Or the revelation by Faye Dunaway's character in Polanski's Chinatown (1974). In noir, we must conclude that the ultimate discovery is not who-did-it. Rather, it is "who am I?," the discovery or assertion of identity. If Deckard is indeed a replicant, than the film adheres more closely to the noir format. That's ultimately why I favor this interpretation; it's encoded in the film's very DNA.

On the other side of the equation, if Deckard is not a replicant, then, at the very least the film's racial overtones carry an optimistic message to go out on. If even a Blade Runner can fall in love with a Replicant, as Deckard does here, then there is hope yet for the human race. There is some hope of future equality for these artifical people.

But whether Deckard is a Replicant or a human, Blade Runner remains a brilliantly-conceived and wonderfully executed motion picture. By using the film noir approach, Ridley Scott's film creates not only a daring vision of the future, but subconsciously evokes a time period in America when racism was more up-front than it is today (Arizona notwithstanding). The film noir approach grants some breathing room for the film to contextualize the Replicant experience of 2019 in historical terms that we all understand and recognize.

Blade Runner is so packed with fascinating ideas and subtexts (like the quest for immortality; for example), that it's almost impossible to do the film any sort of justice in one blog post. So this review is hardly the last (or even second-to-last) word on the production.

As critic Rita Kempley wrote in The Washington Post (back in 1992): "Every viewing of "Blade Runner" brings new discoveries..."

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: The Uninvited (2009)

The Uninvited (2009) is one of those horror movies that Hollywood seems to specialize in a lot lately.

You know the type I'm talking about: everything about the production looks so damned good that you're almost distracted from the fact that the plot doesn't make a lick of sense. You're almost oblivious to the fact that all the ingredients in the film are derivative and overly-familiar.

Almost.

Directed by the Guard Brothers, The Uninvited is a remake of a 2003 Korean film called A Tale of Two Sisters. I have not seen that film, so I'm not in a position to make comparisons between productions.

However, I can note that The Uninvited certainly boasts the familiar flavor of Asian horror as we've come to understand the form during the last decade, or at least since the remake of The Ring (2002). What that boils down to here is the presence of a long-haired, crouching ghost that skulks across the floor, head down, body contorted. And naturally, the ghost is angry about some transgression in the past.

The Uninvited's narrative revolves around a teenage girl named Anna, a character played with entrancing innocence by young Emily Browning. Anna has been living in a mental asylum for nearly a year now following the accidental death of her sick mother. As the film commences, Anna is released from custody and brought home by her Dad (David Straithairn), a successful author.

But Anna is not happy to learn that good old Dad is already shacking up with the lovely Rachel (Elizabeth Banks), Mom's home-care nurse. Anna is also disturbed by the fact that she still has memory gaps surrounding the night Mom died and the boathouse exploded.

Once at home, Anna experiences ghostly visions of her Mom; visions that suggest the sick woman was actually murdered by Rachel. Anna informs her older sister Alex (Arielle Kebbel) about this vision and her suspicions, and together they begin to investigate Rachel's history. They quickly learn that Rachel is living under an alias.

Then Anna's would-be-boyfriend, Matt confides in Anna that he "saw what happened" the night of her Mother's accident. But before Matt can explain further, he inconveniently dies under mysterious and tragic circumstances...

To reveal any further detail about the plot would no doubt ruin the film's many surprises. But suffice it to say that The Uninvited features a third-act twist that the experienced horror fan will see coming from a mile away.

Actually, that's not quite precise. The intrepid viewer need not know horror well. He or she just needs to understand in general how movies are structured. If you think about that, it's easy to correctly guess which character is really behind Mom's "accident."

A little hint: a horror movie like this is never, strictly-speaking, totally straight-forward (not even if it runs under 90 minutes). If a horror movie starts out by pointing the finger at one particular character, that character is, inevitably, not going to be the guilty party. He or she is a red herring. But you knew that already.

Unfortunately, The Uninvited doesn't quite plays fair with its last act revelation. I like and admire Elizabeth Banks a great deal, but she's really and truly lost here. Frankly, I don't see how some of Rachel's behavior and actions (particularly involving a hypodermic needle) can be interpreted in two ways, as the screenplay ultimately demands.

Furthermore, if we are to believe The Uninvited, ghosts apparently displace water when they go swimming...

There's also the not inconsiderable matter of the film's closing lines. Someone says something along the lines of "I'm finishing what I started." This declaration is supposed to be ominous and a bit ironic.

Yet, a careful watching of the film -- and particularly the revelatory flashback -- calls the remark's accuracy into question. Strictly speaking, this character didn't really start "the thing" she's referring to. And, oppositely, "the thing" the character did start, is actually left unfinished at the end of the movie, especially considering the sole survivor left alive and free. And yes, I realize this paragraph probably reads as maddeningly vague. Sorry.

The funny thing about The Uninvited is that no expense has been spared on the production. Anna's house (in Maine) must be a million dollar house, conservatively-speaking. The location, the structure, the interior everything -- it's all absolutely gorgeous. The ghost effects are handled well too and there's even one honest-to-goodness, jump-out-of-your seat jolt moment involving a kitchen stove. The actors all do their best, and occasionally rise above the material.

So it's easy to sit back, look at all these admirable surface qualities and then be lulled into believing that you're seeing a good horror movie.

In fact, you're seeing warmed-up leftovers from approximately a dozen recent and not-so-recent films. Though audacious, the story resolution here just doesn't make any sense. It depends on a weird coincidence involving jewelry. It depends on a convenient memory gap. It depends on the whole movie being interpreted as a "point of view" when the film itself doesn't embody or express a particular point of view.

The Uninvited's last moment is a total deal killer. It reveals that an important character knew all along -- from the first scene -- that the very conspiracy she was investigating was a fiction. In other words, even if the only way to "read" The Uninvited is as the crazy delusion of an insane mind, the movie is still inconsistent with itself.

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Blade (1998)

Based on a disco-decade comic-book written by Marv Wolfman and illustrated by Gene Colan, Stephen Norrington’s Blade (1998) is an underrated and action-packed gem of its era.

This late-nineties film highlights several effective horror movie-style jolts and blazing martial arts sequences, but remains notable and noble today for its dedicated attempts to re-contextualize the vampire and vampire lore for millennial audiences. More than that -- and from the perspective of a decade later -- Norrington film seems a treatise on issues of race in modern America.

In Blade, the vampires are not the romantic, Byron-esque, "tragic" breed of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire (1994) or Forever Knight (1992-1996). Nor are they the pack hunters, savages and desert bugs of From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) and John Carpenter’s Vampires (1998). Rather, the vampires of Blade appear as a purposeful reflection of the decade's conspiracy-phobia, and under-the-surface fear of an unseen, rich cabal pulling the strings in America.

Blade commences in 1967, at the dawn of the counter-culture era in American history. A baby is born to an African-American woman (Sanaa Lathan) who has been bitten by a vampire.

Some thirty years later, the counter-culture movement is dead, Big Business reigns during the "dot-com boom" and that child, that orphan is a man called Blade (Wesley Snipes). This vampire-human hybrid is also known as "The Daywalker" in some circles because of his human ability to survive in sunlight. With the help of his mentor and friend, Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), Blade now wages a war against the undead scourge infesting Los Angeles.

After interrupting a vampire rave called "Bloodbath," Blade rescues a hematologist named Karen (N'Bushe Wright) from a vampire gangster, and then begins to investigate the latest scheme of vampire warlord, Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff). Frost is attempting to bring about a brand of undead Armageddon by raising an ancient vampire God,: La Magra. This attempted resurrection not only raises Blade's ire, but disturbs the leader of the status-quo-seeking Vampire Nation, Dragonetti (Udo Kier). Finally, Frost attempts to use Blade's very blood to bring about La Magra's ascension....

The character of Blade -- for all intents and purposes a superhero -- first came to life in Marvel's The Tomb of Dracula, issue # 10 in 1972. Originally, he was a tough-talking, shade-wearing representation of the blaxploitation era of filmmaking. In the comic, Blade's enemy was an elder, white-haired vamp, Deacon Frost, not the young rebel and upstart of the film who shares his name. Also, in the comic books Blade was raised by Jamal Afari, a vampire hunter.

Over the years, Blade appeared in comics including Nightstalkers (where he teamed up with the slayer Hannibal King) and even Dr. Strange. But it took more than two decades for the character to come to the big screen. But when he finally arrived, Blade certainly did so with a (bloody...) splash. Genre historians often credit Bryan Singer's The X-Men (2000) for revitalizing the superhero in the cinema, but Blade was actually one of the first such genre films to follow the disastrous Batman & Robin (1997) and accrue overwhelming box-office success.

You Gotta Understand, They're Everywhere: The Secret History of the Vampire Nation

The vampires of Blade are truly frightening creatures: they're lawyers.

Seriously, in Norrington's film the vampire overlords are presented as perfectly-groomed but predatory businessmen in Armani suits.

As the movie's dialogue suggests, these wealthy individuals "own the police." Equally worrisome, this Old World cabal relies on high-tech tools, secret back-room alliances with human political conspirators, plus a smug sense of racial superiority to lord it over less desirable half-castes. Yep these vampires quite literally mean business. Big business.

Importantly, Blade himself notes that these corporate monsters “have got their claws” into all walks of human life…from finance to real-estate. The vampires own “half of downtown” Los Angeles in point of fact. And, when the Vampire Nation meets mid-way through the film's narrative, the discussion of most-importance concerns not literal blood sucking, but the status of “off-shore accounts.”

Thus the vampiric ruling class of Blade serves as a metaphor for the “One World” movement often mentioned (and feared) in conspiracy circles. Such theorists believe that the Rockefeller family, large banks, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission secretly run the United States and the world itself.

In other words, the ruling class of the globe is a Rich, White Boy’s Club of Bankers and politicians, one that metaphorically “feeds” on the rest of us.

Blade just makes that blood-sucking literal.

This idea carried a lot of relevance in the decade of the 1990s, because on September 11, 1990, President George H.W. Bush announced in a televised speech his dream for a "A New World Order." Some suspicious-minded folks believed that this grandiose-sounding turn of phrase was actually a coded message to let the take-over by the Conspiracy begin. Adding fuel to the fire, Bush had once been a member of the Trilateral Commission. Similarly, the passage of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) in the mid-1990s was supported by both Presidents Bush and Clinton, and was believed by many to be the gateway to an expanded America that would soon incorporate Mexico and Canada. You still hear a lot of this conspiracy stuff today, especially if you watch Glenn Beck.

In fascinating terms, Deacon Frost, Blade's central villain, is an outsider to this Secret Boy's Club as much as Blade is. But importantly, Frost views himself as a victim of race and of a hierarchy that refuses to accept him because of it. You see, Frost was merely “turned” into a vampire, not a “pure blood” of noble (vampiric) birth. The other vampires, including board CEO-type Dragonetti use this impure origin as a way to demean and control Frost. He may serve the cause, but he will never be one of the Chosen. Outside of race, and going back to the Conspiracy theory for a moment, one might see this relationship as a metaphor for the way The Trilateral Commission and Zbigniew Brzezinski viewed Jimmy Carter in 1976. He wasn't one of their own, but he was useful and could be trained.

The wholesale derision of Frost by the Vampire Nation is like the Old Rich deriding the Nouveau Rich; or an exclusive white man’s club refusing to accept a black man of great accomplishment. Blade proves clever, however, in orchestrating Frost’s revenge. It is clearly a racial revenge, a kind of supernatural brand of affirmative action (another hot-button issue of the 1990s).

Specifically, Frost attempts to bring to life an ancient Vampire blood god called La Magra who will render all such genetic differences like "impure" or "pure blood" moot. Once La Magra rules "all will serve" the cause as equals. Deacon's selected utopia, oddly enough, involves the total erasure of class and race lines.

Thus, much of Blade involves the concept of racial identity. Blade himself is genetically half-vampire/half-man and an African-American to boot. But he rejects his vampire heritage by utilizing drugs to suppress is hunger for blood. At film’s conclusion, however, Blade realizes that he can never be at home amongst the human race, either. Dr. Jensen offers him a cure for his vampirism, but this medical solution (a signifier for cultural assimilation?) will rob him of his strength, speed and other vampire-enhanced qualities. Blade realizes that this is an impossible accommodation since the war with the vampires still rages. By necessity he must remain what he is: an outsider in two worlds; the one and only “Daywalker.”

Interestingly, neither race -- vampire or human -- accepts Blade. The human world sees him as a law-breaker by and large, a man who needs to be stopped. The Vampire Nation also views Blade as an enemy who must be destroyed. It is Frost, however, who is most disappointed in Blade because he clearly senses that they have much in common. They are both derided by the vampire establishment; they are both rebels. But Frost also finds it mystifying that Blade should protect human beings, the equivalent of cattle in his eyes. “Spare me the Uncle Tom routine,” he barks at Blade in their first face-to-face meeting, thus contextualizing their shared experiences explicitly in racial terms. Frost pretends to serve a master, "the Vampire Nation," while actually plotting an overthrow so he finds it baffling that Blade should allow the beliefs of the human world (compassion, etc.) to be his "master."

Bloodbath: The Veneer of a "Sugar Coated Topping"

Blade's racial sub-text and 1990s obsession over conspiracies are fascinating components of the film, but to many viewers it is the movie’s aggressive and colorful style that ultimately makes it so memorable.

For instance, at several points in the film, the movie incorporates fast-motion photography of Blade’s metropolis transitioning from safe daylight to dangerous darkness. The shift is rapid so that the shadows themselves seem to crawl and creep up glass skyscrapers. These shadows take on a life of their own (not entirely unlike Dracula’s creeping silhouette in Bram Stoker’s Dracula [1992], or the earliest vision of screen vampires, the silent Nosferatu).

But the transitional technique (of fast-motion photograph) also reflects an essential characteristic of the vampire world (and the vampire conspiracy). This world is unmoving, patient and seemingly eternal, a direct contrast to the speedy human "march of days:" a never-ending procession from night to day and back to night. Indeed, this is how the mortal realm might very well look to an immortal creature of the night.

In addition to a hyper-kinetic sense of pace set in what The New York Post termed a "techno-styled urban landscape" (Rod Dreher, August 21, 1998, page 57), Blade offers breath-taking vistas of extreme and stylish violence. The opening set piece, a pulse-pounding, party or "rave" for vampires, starts the film off in blistering fashion. A sexy woman (secretly a vampire) leading an unsuspecting human male into the crowded subterranean party. But before long, the real "underneath" is revealed as overhead sprinklers douse the gyrating revelers in gallons of human blood. Rapidly, the human realizes he’s surrounded by vampires,and that he's the only mortal in attendance. As vampires sensuously rub blood all over their bodies, the color palette of the film morphs from cold metallic blue to hot, lurid red.

Down on all fours -- a position exposing his position in the food chain in this hidden world -- our imperiled human reveler crawls for safety until he comes upon an immovable object: Blade, making his stunning arrival in the film. The vampires back-away in horror at the sight of the Daywalker, and Snipes remains frozen in the frame, literally a stone.

That the vampires retreat (and retreat quickly) and that Blade does not move at all (at least at first...) provides a visual cue about who is dominant in this situation. The framing and choice of blocking asserts the Daywalker's “power” over his vampire prey.

What quickly follows this stellar introduction is a furious action scene. This bload-soaked battle between Blade and scores of vampires is a tour-de-force of choreography, stunt work, scoring, and editing. And Snipes himself is poetry in motion. Gene Seymour at the Los Angeles Times describes the actor as "the movie's biggest asset." The reviewer added, "He may snarl, hiss and twitch in ways that are often disorienting, but you can't take your eyes off of him." (August 21, 1998, page 4). Indeed, it's a star performance.

To some extent, the film’s final battle between a possessed Frost and the wounded Blade in the temple of La Magra can’t match the pure exhilaration of that vigorous, red-blooded opening fight scene. Yet Blade still impresses with its sub-textual commentary on a conspiracy of the rich preying on the weak and poor, and with its impressive sense of visual style.

As many critics suggested, the Norrington film is also part "Oedipal Drama" (Justine Elias, The Village Voice, September 1, 1998), since Blade must in the course of his battle and heroic journey face down his own mother, now a twisted, perverted "assimilated" vampire. Momma Vanessa (Lathan) offers Blade belonging, succor and even sexual comfort. On the latter front, it is noted, quite literally, that Blade, Vanessa and Frost can be one "big happy fucking family." But Blade understands that his Mother has bought into the sick values Deacon Frost and resists the proffered family ties. By breaking the human taboo of incest, Blade understands that he is playing into Frost's chosen method of domination: erasure of "traditional" cultural barriers and differences.

Watching Blade today, and looking past some of the superficial 1990s cliches (a hero garbed in black leather finding his destiny), one senses a genre film grappling with big, intriguing ideas. Blade, the Daywalker, navigates the knife's edge between two cultures that want to own him; but to which he doesn't, and can't ever, truly belong. Today we've had two sequels and even a Blade TV series (which aired on Spike), but in some ways, this first, blazing journey into Blade's world remains the most satisfying and artistic.

In Blade, the "world we live in is just a sugar-coated topping." Beneath that topping is racial strife and resentment, conspiracy, domination, and even the quest for independent identity.

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

As I mentioned here yesterday, I often receive e-mails asking me to review specific films. One of the most oft-requested reviews is for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), which is widely-regarded as the worst Star Trek film to feature the original cast.

I don't know this for certain, but I strongly suspect this particular review is requested in the hope that somehow, some way, this poorly-reviewed William Shatner film might be rehabilitated in popular imagination. For instance, requests for a review of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier spiked after my positive review of The Motion Picture last year. My supposition thus leads me to believe that a lot of Star Trek fans must enjoy the oft-derided film, and are seeking valid, well-enunciated arguments in support of it.

I can relate to that.

After all, I am a Star Trek fan, and can probably see the silver-lining in every Star Trek movie ever made. So I am happy to enumerate the aspects I appreciate and like about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

However, for the record, it is also necessary for me to note where and when things went dramatically wrong with the movie. So -- to quote Joss Whedon -- this review isn't going to be all "hugs and puppies."

That established, there are indeed many components of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier worth lauding, and I will explain in detail below why I feel that way.

Let's start, however, with a brief re-cap of the plot. This fifth Star Trek picks up with Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and his crew on vacation on Earth -- in a the paradise-like setting of Yosemite -- when a dangerous hostage situation unfolds in the Neutral Zone. There, on Nimbus III -- on the "planet of Galactic Peace" -- a Vulcan renegade named Sybok (Laurence Luckinbill) has taken hostage the Romulan, Klingon and Federation counsels. He has done so with an army of devout "believers." Sybok's gambit is to capture a starship so he can set a course for the center of the Galaxy and find the mythical planet Sha Ka Ree (named after Sean Connery), where he believes "God" awaits.

An unprepared U.S.S. Enterprise, with only a skeleton crew aboard, is assigned to rescue the hostages. The attempt fails, and Sybok commandeers the Enterprise using his particular brand of Vulcan brainwashing to persuade the crew to follow him. In particular, he frees each man he encounters of his "secret pain." Kirk soon learns that Sybok is Spock's (Leonard Nimoy) half-brother, who rejected Vulcan dogma and came to believe that emotion, not logic, was the key to enlightenment.

With a Klingon bird of prey in hot pursuit, the Enterprise passes through the Great Barrier at the center of the galaxy and encounters a mysterious planet. There, on the surface, awaits a creature who claims to be "God." Kirk questions the Being, and soon a vision of Heaven goes to Hell.

Because It's There: The Search for the Ultimate Knowledge; The Search for a Film's Noble Intentions

From Captain Kirk's effort to climb El Capitan at Yosemite National Park in the film's first scene to Sybok's probe through the foreboding Great Barrier, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier concerns, in large part, a typically-Star Trek conceit: the human quest to reach a higher summit and to find at that apex a new or deeper truth about existence.

When Mr. Spock asks Kirk why he would involve himself in an endeavor as dangerous as climbing a mountain, Kirk answers simply, "because it's there." That's a simplistic but apt way to describe one of our basic human drives. What our eyes detect, we want to explore, to experience. Enlightenment, for us, is often attained on the next plateau.

Sybok terms his search for "God" the search for the "ultimate knowledge" and he too seeks to climb a mountain after a fashion: penetrating the Great Barrier which protects a secret at the center of our galaxy. The means by which Sybok conducts his quest are not entirely kosher, however (kidnapping diplomats and hijacking a starship). But his quest, though coupled with his vanity, is sincere. An outcast among his Vulcan brethren, Sybok believes that if he can "locate" God, his beliefs will be validated, re-examined.

At one point late in the film, Kirk seems to realize that Sybok and he share a similar drive; that he has stubbornly refused Sybok the same liberty he affords himself, not merely to "go climb a rock," but to see, literally, what awaits at the mountain-top. Upon this realization, Kirk gazes knowingly at an old-fashioned captains' wheel in the Enterprise's observation deck. His hand brushes across a bronze plaque engraved with the legend "Where No Man Has Gone Before," a re-iteration of the franchise's "bold," trademark phrase.

It should be noted here that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is not out on a limb, franchise-wise, in exploring the existence of "God" or a planet from which life sprang. On the former front, the Enterprise encountered the Greek God Apollo in the second-season episode "Who Mourns for Adonis" and on the latter front, discovered the planet "Eden" in the third season adventure "The Way to Eden."

What remains laudable about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, however, is that screenwriter David Loughery, with director Shatner and producer Harve Bennett, carry their central metaphor (discovery of the ultimate knowledge) to the hearts of the beloved franchise characters. Star Trek V very much concerns not just for the external quest for the divine, but a personal and human desire to understand the meaning of life. Or, at the very least, the path to understanding the meaning of life.

What that comes down to is one lengthy scene set in the observation deck. There are no phasers, transporters, starships, Klingons or special effects anywhere. Instead, the scene involves Kirk, Spock, Bones and Sybok grappling with their personal beliefs, with their sense of personal identity and history, even. Sybok attempts to convert Spock and McCoy to his agenda by using his hypnotic powers of the mind. "Each man hides a secret pain. Share yours with me and gain strength from the sharing," he offers. One at a time, Kirk's allies fall. Then Sybok comes to Kirk, and the good captain steadfastly refuses Sybok's brand of personal enlightenment.

In refusing to share his pain, Kirk notes to Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) that "you know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!"

This specific back-and-forth is the heart of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. The Kirk/Sybok confrontation embodies the difference between Catholic Guilt (as represented by Kirk), and New Age "release" (as represented by Sybok). In terms of a short explanation, Catholic guilt is, essentially a melancholy or world-weariness brought about by an examined life. It's the constant questioning and re-parsing of decisions and history (some call it Scrupulosity). And if you know Star Trek, you understand that this sense of melancholy is, for lack of a better word, very Kirkian.

As a starship captain, James Kirk has sent men and women to their deaths and made tough calls. But he has never been one to do so blindly, or without consideration of the consequences. "My God, Bones, what have I done?" He asks after destroying the Enterprise in The Search for Spock, and that's just one, quick example of his reflective nature. In short, Kirk belabors his decisions, so much so that McCoy had to once tell him (in "Balance of Terror") not to obsess; not to "destroy the one called Kirk."

What Captain Kirk believes - and what is crucial to his success as a starship captain -- is that he must carry and remember the guilt associated with his tough decisions. He must re-hash those choices and constantly relive them, or during the next crisis, he will fail. His decisions are part of him; he is the cumulative result of those choices, and to lose them would be -- in his very words here -- "to lose himself."

By contrast, Sybok promises an escape from melancholy. His abilities permit him to "erase" the presence of pain all-together. This a kind of touchy-feely, New Age balm in which a person lets go of pain (via, for example, ACT: Active Release Technique!) and then, once freed, suddenly sees the light.

Sybok's approach arises from the counter-culture movement of the 1960s (the era of the Original Series), and might be described -- albeit in glib fashion -- as "Do what feels right" (a turn-of-phrase Spock himself uses in the 2009 Star Trek). But Sybok is a master of semantics. He doesn't "control minds," he says, he "frees" them. Left unexamined by Sybok is Kirk's interrogative: once freed from pain, what does a person have left? Isn't pain, borne by experience a part of our core psychological make-up? The New Age depiction of Sybok in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier led critic David Denby to term this entry "the most Californian" of the Star Trek films (New York, June 19,1989, page 68).

In countenancing the false god of Sha Ka Ree, these belief systems collide. Sybok -- freed of pain and self-reflection -- is unaware of his own tragic flaws. Eventually he sees them, terming them "arrogance" and "vanity." But Kirk, who has always carried his choices with him, is able to face the malevolent alien with a sense of composure and entirely appropriate suspicion. Kirk is able, essentially, to ask "the Almighty for his I.D." because he has maintained his Catholic sense of guilt. He's been around the block too many times to be cowed by an alien who wants his ship.

The lengthy scene in the observation deck, during which Sybok attempts to shatter the powerful triumvirate of Kirk, Spock and McCoy is probably the best in the film. Shatner shoots it well too, with Sybok intersecting the perimeters of this famous character "triangle" (of id, ego, and super-ego) and then, visually, scattering its points to the corners of the room.

And then, after Kirk's powerful argument and assertion of Catholic Guilt, the triangle (depicted visually, with the three characters as "points") is re-asserted and re-constructed. Sybok is both literally and symbolically forced out of their unified "space."

In point of fact, Shatner uses this triangular, three-person blocking pattern a lot in the film. Variety did not like the movie, but noted the power of this particular sequence in its original review: "Shatner, rises to the occasion," the magazine wrote, "in directing a dramatic sequence of the mystical Luckinbill teaching Nimoy and DeForest Kelley to re-experience their long-buried traumas. The re-creations of Spock's rejection by his father after his birth and Kelley's euthanasia of his own father are moving highlights."

While discussing Shatner, I should also add -- no doubt controversially -- that Shatner has a fine eye for visual composition. The opening scene on the cracked, arid plain of Nimbus III, and the follow-up scene set at Yosemite reveal that he has an eye not just for capturing natural beauty, but for utilizing the full breadth of the frame. As a director, Shatner came out of television (helming episodes of T.J. Hooker), but his visual approach doesn't suggest a TV mentality. On the contrary, I would argue that there are moments in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier that remain the most inherently cinematic of the film series, after Wise's Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and Abrams' big-budget reboot of 2009.

What Does God Need With a Starship? Pinpointing the Divine Inside The Human Heart and in the Natural World

I've noted above how Star Trek V: The Final Frontier involves the search for the ultimate knowledge, and uses two distinctive viewpoints (Catholic Guilt embodied by Kirk and New Age philosophy embodied by Sybok) to get at that knowledge.

What's important, after that "quest" is the film's conclusion about the specific "ultimate knowledge" gleaned.

In short order, in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, the angry Old Testament-styled God-Alien reveals his true colors and demonstrates a capricious, violent-side. After Kirk asks "what does God need with a starship," "God" is wrathful. And this is what the site Common Sense Atheism suggested was really being asked by our secular, humanist hero.

"One might ask, "What does God need with animal sacrifice? With a human sacrifice? With a catastrophic flood? With billions of galaxies and trillions of stars and millions of unstoppably destructive black holes? What does God need with congenital diseases and a planet made of shifting plates that cause earthquakes and tsunamis? Isn't the whole point of omnipotence that God could make a good world without all these needlessly silly or harmful phenomena?" Moreover, why should humans obey the commands of someone as capricious, jealous, petty, and violent as the God of the Jewish scriptures?"

This critical line of thought reminds me of my experience seeing Star Trek V: The Final Frontier in the theater with my girlfriend at the time, who is Jewish.

Afterwards, she was utterly convinced that Kirk and company had indeed encountered the Biblical, Old Testament God. And that they had, in fact, destroyed Him. Her reasoning for this belief was that "God" as depicted in the film looked and acted in the very fashion of the Old-Testament God.

On the former, front (God's appearance), The Journal of Religion and Film, in a piece "Any Gods Out There?" by John S. Schultes, opined: "This being appears in the stereotypical Westernized figure of the "Father God" as depicted in art. He has a giant head, disembodied, depicting an older man with a kind face, flowing white hair and booming voice."

On the latter front, behavior, there are also important commonalities. The Old Testament God was cruel, self-righteous, unjust, demanding, and acting according to a closely-held personal agenda (moving in a mysterious way?) without thought of courtesy or explanation to humans. Consider that the Old Testament God destroyed whole cities (like those of Sodom and Gomorrah), and that it's his plan to kill us by the billion-fold in the End Times, if we don't believe in him. The Old Testament God is indeed one of violence and punishment.

And this is precisely how Star Trek V: The Final Frontier depicts this creature. He wants to deliver his power -- his violence and judgment -- to "every corner of creation." Naturally, Kirk can't allow this.

Over the years, I have come to agree with my former-girlfriend's assessment. The alien portrayed in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier may indeed be the Old Testament God of our legends. Just as Apollo was indeed, Apollo of Greek Myth in "Who Mourns for Adonis."

And, in fact, Captain Kirk kills God. (Or rather, it's a cooperative venture with the Klingons...). In doing so, Kirk frees humanity (and the universe itself) from the oppression of superstition, judgment and tyranny.

The ultimate knowledge, according to this Trek is that God only exists "right here; the human heart," as Kirk notes near the film's conclusion. Accordingly, The Journal of Religion and Society explains that this is a narrative wrinkle true to "the collective history of Classic Star Trek," a re-assertion of Roddenberry-esque, secular principles. In his essay, "From Captain Stormfield to Captain Kirk, Two 20th Century Representations of Heaven, scholar Michel Clasquin concludes:

"In "Final Frontier", Heaven turns out to be Hell: the optimism is deferred until the heroes have returned to the man-made heaven of the United Federation of Planets. The film ends where it began: with Spock, Kirk and McCoy on furlough in a thoroughly tamed Earth wilderness. This, the film tells us, is the true Heaven, the secular New Jerusalem that humans, Vulcans and a smattering of other species will build for themselves in the 24th century, a world in which the outward heavenly conditions reflect the true Heaven that resides in the human heart."

Clasquin's point here demands a re-evaluation of the book-end Yosemite camping scenes of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Many critics complained that the film takes a long time to get started, since the crew must "laboriously" be re-gathered from vacation. However, if Star Trek V: The Final Frontier's point is that "God" resides in man's heart (And is man himself) and that the Garden of Eden, or Heaven itself is "a tamed Earth wilderness," -- a finely-developed sense of responsible environmentalism, in fact -- then these two sequences of "nature" prove absolutely necessary to the narrative. Heaven on Earth is within our grasp, the movie seems to note. We don't have to die to get there. We just have to act responsibly, as stewards, of our planet (or in Star Trek's universe, planets, plural). The human heart, and the Beautiful Earth: these are Star Trek V: The Final Frontier's (atheist) optimistic views of where, ultimately, Divinity resides.

All I Can Say is, They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To: A Movie Shattered (not Shatnered...) by Poor Execution

William Shatner handles many of the visual aspects of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier with flair and distinction. He is badly undercut, however, by three catastrophic weaknesses. The first such weakness involves interference in the very story he wanted to tell. The second involves inferior special effects, and the third involves slipshod editing.

On the first front, William Shatner sought initially to make a serious, even bloody movie concerning fanatical religious cults and God imagery. His plan was shit-canned in large part, by Paramount Studios. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) had just proven a major success, and the Powers That Be judged this was so because the movie evidenced a terrific sense of humor, particularly fish-out-of-water humor. The edict came down that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier had to include the same level of humor as its predecessor.

Frankly, this was the kiss of death. The humor in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home grew organically out of the situation: advanced people of the 23rd century being forced to deal with people and activities of the "primitive" year 1986.

Above, I described the thematic principles of Star Trek V: seeking the ultimate summit, both externally and internally, and discovering that the Divine is inside us -- or is, actually, the Human Heart. How exactly, does Scotty knocking himself out on a ceiling beam, or Uhura performing a fan dance, or Chekov rehashing his "wessel" shtick fit that conceit?

The short answer is that it doesn't. Such humor had to be grafted on here, and it shows. It's forced, iawkward, and entirely unnecessary. The inclusion of so much humor actually runs counter to the grandeur and seriousness of the story Shatner hoped to tell.

And then -- in typical bean-counter nonsense, what does Paramount do next? Well, it advertises and markets Star Trek V: The Final Frontier with the ad-line "why are they putting seat belts in theaters this summer?" suggesting that the movie was an action-packed roller-coaster ride. This is after they demanded the movie be a comedy! Talk about assuring audience dissatisfaction! Tell audiences that the movie they are about to see is super-exciting and action-packed, and then give them Vulcan nerve-pinches on horses, Uhura and Scotty flirting with each other, and crewmen singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."

The second aspect of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier that damages it so egregiously involves the special visual effects. A movie like this -- about the search for God, no less -- must feature absolutely inspiring and immaculate, awesome visuals. We must believe in the universe that includes Sha Ka Ree, and the God Creature. Originally, Shatner envisioned Sha Ka Ree turning into a kind of Bosch-ean Hell, with demons and rivers of fire. But what we get instead is a glowing Santa Claus-head in a beam of light, and...a desert planet. What's worse is that many visuals don't seem to match-up. When Kirk's shuttle flies over the God planet initially, the surface of the world looks like a microscopic landscape (a sort of God's Eye view of the head-of-a-pin, as it were). But when the shuttle lands, the planet just looks like a desert. This is Heaven?

Perhaps Star Trek V could have surmounted this problem, since the TV series was never about special effects anyway, but about ideas. But the special effects in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier fail to even adequately render believable and "real" such commonplace Star Trek things as starships in motion or photon torpedo blasts. Watching Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is a little bit like watching Golan and Globus's Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1986): the cheapness of the effects just make you wince, and stands in stark contrast to a franchise's glory days.

And the editing! Oh dear. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is edited -- in polite terms -- in disastrous fashion. During Kirk, Spock and McCoy's escape on rocket boots through an Enterprise turbo shaft, the same deck numbers repeat, in plain view. When Kirk falls from his perch high on El Capitan, the movie cuts to a lengthy shot of Shatner, in front of a rear-projection background, flapping his arms. And just take a look at how Kirk's weight, make-up, hair-cut and disposition shifts back-and-forth in his final scene with General Koord and General Klaa aboard the Klingon Bird of Prey. This was due to post-production re-shoots when the original ending was deemed unacceptable.

Forget the script (which might have worked without the studio-demanded humor). Forget the acting (which is pure Star Trek ham bone -- and, in my estimation, perfect for a futuristic passion play), it's the editing that scuttles this film. Whether it's allowing us the time to notice that Sybok's haircut and outfit change on Sha Ka Ree, or permitting us to linger too long on visible wires in two fight scenes, Star Trek V's cutting is just not up to par.

There's a Star Trek fan out there on the Net who has taken it upon himself to re-edit Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and you know something? It's a worthy enterprise. Preferably, Shatner should do a director's cut, and trim his misbegotten film down to a mean, lean eighty-five minutes. The worst editing, effects, and jokey moments would be excised, and audiences would be surprised, perhaps, how visual, how dynamic, how meaningful (even spiritual?) this Final Frontier could be, sans the theatrical release's considerable problems.

Let's face it, modern criticism often thrives on hyperbole, so it's fun and dramatic to declare that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is one of the ten worst science fiction films EVER! The only problem is, it's not necessarily true. I don't even know that it's actually the worst Star Trek film, to be blunt. One of the women I saw Star Trek: Insurrection with actually threw up during a screening. She wasn't sick. It wasn't what she ate. It was the movie. She vomited somewhere after Spiner's Gilbert and Sullivan rendition, Patrick Stewart's mambo, and before Gates McFadden -- the best physician of the 24th century and Counselor Troi-- made a passing reference to their "boobs."

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier conforms to Muir's Snowball Rule of Movie Viewing. Allow me to explain. Because Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is perceived by the majority of critics and Star Trek fans as "bad," everything about the film gets criticized, when -- in point of fact -- many other Star Trek movies feature many of the same goofy errors. For instance, I have read some Star Trek fans complain vociferously about the fact that the Enterprise travels to the center of the galaxy here in a matter of hours. The fact that in First Contact, the Enterprise gets from the Romulan Neutral Zone to Earth in time to join a battle against the Borg, already in progress, goes unnoticed or at least uncommented upon. So, the starship got there in like, you know, a few minutes, I guess. But because First Contact is beloved and evaluated as good, it generally doesn't garner the same level of negative attention or scrutiny. When it fails in a spot here or there, it gets a pass.

Whereas, by contrast, the details in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier definitely get heavier scrutiny. The "bad movie" snowball, once rolling down a hill, just grows larger and larger. We forgive less and less.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is an ambitious failure. But ambitious may be the operative word here. The movie certainly aimed high, and hoped to chart some fascinating spiritual and philosophical ground that is true to the Star Trek line and heritage. But plainly, the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: The House of the Devil (2009)

While many terrific horror movies have been released in the last few years (especially in 2009), only a select few have achieved greatness in the impressive fashion of Ti West's The House of the Devil (2009).

Because West wrote, directed, and most importantly, edited the piece, the film evidences a real sense of unity in terms of presentation. The cumulative effect is, in a word, powerful.

The House of the Devil is a throwback to an older genre aesthetic, one in which a sort of free-floating, generalized sense of anxiety is generated and escalated through modest, subtle means. The aura of terror arises from periods of silence, a minimum of dialogue and adept film-grammar-styled compositions. In the tradition of all great genre efforts, the movie's stylish shape also reflects the film's narrative.

Specifically, The House of the Devil is set in the early 1980s, around the time that paranoia about "Satanic Ritual Abuse" overtook the nation's middle-class. This strange fear might have been due to the rising influence of fundamentalist Christians in the Reagan Era, and their belief (still held today, vis-a-vis President Obama) that anything not born of the extreme right-wing is the work of the Devil.

Or the paranoia about Satanists in our midst could have been the result of collective parental guilt and shame over the fact that -- in the yuppie era of upward mobility and two-income households -- it was deemed necessary to outsource child-care to day-cares, nannies and other "interlopers." After entrusting their children to strangers all day, parents -- when faced with changes in their little darlings, --may have found it easier to charge "Satanism" than look in the mirror.

The F.B.I investigated the strange charges of Satanic Ritual Abuse and never found substantial evidence that worship of the Devil was involved even in a fraction of cases where it was raised. The House of the Devil, however, trenchantly utilizes this context as a springboard for its tale. It offers some brief information about SRA in its opening title card, which feels reminiscent of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Return of the Living Dead (1985) and other genre classics.

But the undercurrent or vibe established so brilliantly and thoroughly by West in The House of the Devil is that there is something wrong...or off with the world at large as presented in the film. The source of this problem may not be easily pinpointed (especially at first...), but lurks just out-of-sight, slightly beyond our perception.

One of the ways that West forges this "free form," generalized sense-of-anxiety is to deny the audience a sense of visual comfort from the very first shot. As the movie opens, West's camera captures a long-shot of a figure, but one seen only from the back. She is also some distance from us -- through a door-frame -- and we get no details. In other words, her face is withheld from us for an abnormally-long spell, and the effect, visually, is to unsettle us. The camera zooms in, but still reveals no additional details.

It turns out that this is Samantha (Jocelin Donahue), our college-age heroine. And she's not doing anything suspicious here, merely admiring the interior of an apartment that she hopes to rent. But how the camera views Samantha begins to make us feel uncomfortable. For one thing, her space in the frame is limited by the surrounding "box" of the door-frame. And indeed, this is a set-up that West frequently repeats; cutting off Samantha's available space in the wide-screen frame.

The free-floating anxiety the audience feels grows deeper as it observes apparently mundane details of Samantha's life. She needs money desperately if she is to rent the apartment she desires. She can't get back into her dorm-room (her roommate is having loud sex..). She waits all morning on campus for a man who doesn't show-up; a would-be-employer seeking a baby-sitter. Her friend, Meghan, does something unethical, and that Samantha feels reflects poorly upon her. The pepperoni pizza at the local dive doesn't taste good today.

Again, not one bit of this material is earth-shattering or overtly horrific in and of itself. Instead, as the soundtrack suggests -- to the lyrics of The Fixx -- "One Thing Leads to Another."

The movie thus makes us acutely aware of how each little step that Samantha takes brings her closer to the precipice; closer to her reckoning with terror; closer to her "destiny" that she is asked to accept. Specifically, Samantha takes a babysitting job at 7714 East Beaumont -- way out in the woods -- and then is confronted with further...discomfort.

Her would-be employer, Mr. Ulman (Tom Noonan) is a liar. There's no child to "sit," only an old woman locked away in an upstairs bedroom, and this makes Samantha (and the audience) uncomfortable too. This man isn't trustworthy in the slightest but Samantha feels put-upon and he keeps throwing money at her (400 dollars for four hours work). Eventually, an uncomfortable Samantha acquiesces to take the job. On the night of a total lunar eclipse, no less.

Once alone in the old, spooky, Victorian house, the camera's views of Samantha through a door-frame recur repeatedly, symbolically cordoning off her free space in the frame. One long-lasting but utterly still shot even establishes the parameters of Samantha's "safe zone." We stay in the room -- the camera unmoving -- as Samantha starts to probe out, deeper and deeper into the quiet, dark house.

And then more discomfort comes. While dancing on the staircase (wearing her Walkman), Samantha accidentally breaks a valuable vase...and then finds evidence that her employers were lying about something important...

Most of The House of the Devil is over before Satanism overtly enters the proceedings...and West truly provides one of the great set-ups in horror movie history here, assiduously ratcheting up anxiety along the way. When Samantha finally finds her way to the attic -- where she observes a light on under the crack of a closed door -- you'll find yourself perched on the edge of your seat. Through an unforced but deliberate pace and a canny sense of visualization, West thus brings the audience to throat-clutching terror. The House of the Devil is patient. It creeps up on you. It knowingly and methodically pulls down your defenses until you are absolute putty in West's hands.

West has a great eye for detail too. The film is set in the early 1980s, and the period detail is perfect, from the Sony Walkman to the Isotoner gloves to the rotary phones. Even better, the lead actresses actually seem to belong to this era. They aren't simply playing dress-up. Donahue, in particular, gives a fantastic, internally-driven performance. We sympathize with her as Samantha's day goes from bad to -- uh -- really, really bad.

If The House of the Devil fails to please in any sense, it is simply that -- after the exquisite and terrifying build-up -- the film's resolution comes a hair too quickly. But this is indeed a minor quibble in what is frankly one of the finest, most-carefully-crafted new horror movies I've seen in sometime. I especially appreciate the fact that West opted to tell his story straight, with no self-referential humor or easy jokes to leaven the mood of unease. This movie is practically a machine built to scare you and there's never a moment where you get to breathe because the director releases you with a laugh; finding a moment outside the confines of the narrative. Even a TV clip (on "Frightmare Theater") of Romero's Night of the Living Dead isn't used as jokey allusion, but suggests a deeper narrative purpose. Samantha's daylight existence has been -- step by step -- literally "eclipsed" by evil and darkness. From the light of the moon outside, to the TV inside...horror bleeds in.

Ti West's name has been bandied about a lot in the blogosphere of late, and now I understand why. The House of the Devil is a modern genre masterpiece of mood and escalating terror. My only recommendation to West is this: as he grows more established and powerful within the movie industry, he should negotiate to be his own editor. This is important. The House of the Devil looks and feels like the individual work of a unique artist -- an early Romero or Carpenter picture, even -- and that's largely due to the careful, accomplished editing. I hope West doesn't accept any Faustian bargains for big budgets, because The House of the Devil proves that -- left to his own devices -- he's already got all the right moves.