APT PUPIL (1999)

Stephen King has seen more adaptations of his written body of work than any other writer living or dead, except maybe for Bram Stoker, whose novel, Dracula, has been adapted for a literal, accurate, and confirmed figure of ninety bajillion times. As such, among these King adaptations, some are classic, some are decent, and some are best forgotten. His 1982 four-novella collection, Different Seasons, contained the original stories that would later be adapted into Stand by Me, The Shawshank Redemption, and then Apt Pupil. The fourth story, The Breathing Method, is in the works under the direction of Sinister’s Scott Derrickson, so the Different Seasons adaptation game is looking like a clean sweep. Not bad for one book. (The jealous author in me weeps bitterly.)

Until Derrickson’s adaptation sees release, Apt Pupil remains the dark horse adaptation of the book. Having been released to mixed-to-positive reviews back in 1999 (and mired in controversies/production difficulties), and directed by a post-Usual Suspects Bryan Singer (the X-Men series, Valkyrie), Apt Pupil has always remained just under the radar in the King world. Headlined by Brad Renfro (The Client), who died at the age of 25 in 2008, and whose death was overshadowed by the passing of Heath Ledger one week later, Apt Pupil presents a young, well-to-do high school student and all-around sociopath Todd Bowden, who deduces that an elderly member of his community, Arthur Denker (Ian McKellen), is a former Nazi living in hiding under an alias. Bowden, fascinated with Nazi atrocities (or perhaps just atrocity in general), first blackmails Denker before cautiously befriending him, wanting nothing more than to hear all of Denker’s vile holocaust stories. And Denker, at first backed into a corner, slowly begins to spin the arrangement to his advantage, until the two get to a point where both are manipulating each other. As such, only one will likely walk away.

As can be expected by a King work, Apt Pupil is very dark – not in terms of gory visuals, but more its tone and its subject matter. There’s no blacker stain in the world than the atrocities of Nazi Germany during World War 2; even without the grainy black and white photographs of stacked bodies and emaciated figures, the mere discussion of it is still upsetting enough that Apt Pupil presents as a somber and by-design upsetting experience. Singer and screenwriter Brandon Boyce don’t back away from the darkness of the story’s subject matter, although it does update certain aspects, such as its much more explosive finale (to be expected in 1999’s immediate post-Columbine era).

Ian McKellen is chilling in his role as the runaway Nazi, whose villainous turn almost laughs in the face of his more well-known, and by comparison, lovable, take on the X-Men series’ Magneto (ironically, a survivor of the holocaust). But in a way, it’s Renfro as Bowden who walks away as the film’s bigger sociopath, and that’s because he wears the façade of a sixteen-year-old kid in a varsity jacket and has a pretty girlfriend on his arm, who society would dictate has the perfect life, and hence, is no one to worry about. Renfro finds a way through all that and presents an angry, confused, and severely psychotic kid for whom more teachers would write a letter of recommendation than recommend him for psychological counseling. (Sadly, Renfro battled with drug addiction throughout his 20’s, nearly obtaining the lead in Freddy vs. Jason before a bizarre incident in which he stole a yacht cost him the role.)

On the triple tier Stephen King adaptation scale, Apt Pupil rests comfortably in the upper-middle ranks. The lead performances and Singer’s direction are top notch, while the screenplay can sometimes meander, with its neutered ending sacrificing much of the impact of King’s original story. Still, it’s certainly one of the better King adaptations, with immense talent on both sides of the camera. Sadly, it’s also more relevant in the modern climate than it’s ever been before.

IT: CHAPTER TWO (2019)

 

(Contains spoilers.)

IT: Chapter One, which I guess is what we’re now calling the first half of this saga, was a mostly successful horror flick, if not an overly loyal adaptation of Stephen King’s legendary tome. Though the troubled production, began by True Detective director Cary Fukunaga and concluded by Mama director Andres Muschietti, culminated in a better genre picture than most people were expecting, certain audience members (including me) were a little disappointed that King’s novel wasn’t adhered to a little more faithfully. Still, the essence of the novel remained, and that was the most satisfying part. 

IT: Chapter Two always seemed like the more dubious gamble of the saga, for several reasons, but mostly because the portions of the IT story that deal with the characters as kids are far more interesting, empathetic, and nostalgic than the portions that catch up with their adult counterparts, and this applies to the novel or the original miniseries. Not to mention that the adult portions of the story lend themselves more to the mystical and the strange, including the very odd “ritual of Chüd,” which IT: Chapter Two utilizes and which feels too foreign and unusual when following the fairly straightforward normality of IT: Chapter One. While doing a better job of faithfully adapting the second half of King’s novel, IT: Chapter Two still feels overstuffed at times, and ironically offers a critical flipside reaction when compared to its predecessor. This time, IT: Chapter Two is more faithful to the source material, but suffers at times from offering an inconsistent horror experience, leaving this second half of the saga merely satisfactory. 

Even with the film running at a staggering three hours(!), IT: Chapter Two still feels like it’s in a hurry. It wouldn’t be right to say the introduction to the adult versions of the Losers Club feels perfunctory, but it's awfully streamlined, and Muschietti doesn’t provide enough time for audiences to catch their breath in between meeting each adult counterpart. Beverly (Jessica Chastain), especially, gets the short straw, with the film hurtling through a major part of her character’s background – that she’s matriculated from an abusive relationship with her father to an abusive relationship with her husband. Her character’s reintroduction not only downplays her husband’s mind games that exist in canon, but the film tries to be “slick” by falsely introducing him as a kind man to try and fool the members of the audience who already know he’s an asshole. Meanwhile, Bill (James McAvoy) is writing screenplays for the Hollywood system based on his novels, which star his wife, Audra, but after receiving "the call" from Mike (Isaiah Mustafa), he immediately blows town, leaving Audra behind… never to be seen again. (If you’re familiar with the novel or the previous miniseries, you’ll note this is a major change.) Eddie Spaghetti (an excellent James Ransone, Sinister) is no longer driving cars for the rich and famous, but instead cites his job as a “risk assessor,” which rightfully sounds like the kind of job that a young, neurotic Eddie would grow up to obtain. (I have to give major props to Muschietti for re-using the actor who played Eddie’s mother in Chapter One to briefly play his wife in Chapter Two – it’s somehow both subtle and super on-the-nose, but it works.) The rest of the cast are introduced in the same rapid way, with none of them suffering the kinds of dramatic “Remember that time we were almost killed by a monster clown?” floodgates of memories you’d expect (unless you count a constantly vomiting Bill Hader), and before you know it, the Losers Club are back at the Jade of the Orient Chinese restaurant screaming at demonic fortune cookies. But not Stan, though! Poor Stan (Andy Bean, Swamp Thing); he barely registers as a blip in this new take. By film’s end, when he’s essentially speaking to his friends from beyond the grave, it feels far too late for his character to have the kind of significance the film is asking for, and audiences almost have to remind themselves who he was again. (Poor Stan!)

The criticisms I had for IT: Chapter One remain, mostly in that the changes made from the source material seem unnecessary and useless, feeling especially wrong when arguably significant events from the novel are chucked out in favor of brand new creations that the story, frankly, didn’t need. Whether it's Bill trying to save the life of a young boy who lives in his old childhood house, or the out-of-nowhere revelation that Richie has spent his life running from the fact that he’s gay, there’s nothing wrong with these new subplots, but they just don’t add anything new or constructive to the mix, and this in a movie where there’s already a lot going on. And, again, the humor – for the love of Bob Gray – the humor. Muschietti is fully capable of establishing a creepy and dreadful tone, but he seems intimidated by letting that tone sustain, too often subscribing to the philosophy of setting the audience up with scares and then deflating the tension with a joke. IT: Chapter One had its fair share of this, but IT: Chapter Two’s three-hour running time really accentuates this technique to the degree that it becomes frustrating. Sure, some of the gags are funny, but some are face-palming tone killers, and I’m still trying to figure out which I hated more: Eddie being vomited on by the cellar leper set to ‘80s pop, or the too-long scene where Richie and Eddie are terrified by a Pomeranian. If this were any other property, I’d be more forgiving, but this is a story about a demonic, intergalactic clown who EATS children – who tore off the arm of an eight-year-old kid in the first scene of the first movie – so maybe things shouldn’t be so hilarious. Maybe it’s okay for horror films to retain constant horror instead of the constant up and down emotional ride Muschietti likes to curate. Admittedly, though, some gags do work. The constant references to writer Bill botching the endings to his novels are amusing on both a surface level as well as a meta one, and King, who has been criticized for years with that same claim, was a good sport for letting Muschietti and screenwriter Gary Dauberman (the Annabelle series) throw that in. (King cameos as an antique shop owner and shares a scene with McAvoy's Bill, where he tells him that same thing.) Ironically, however, after flinging this joke toward Bill several times, the flick’s own ending feels anticlimactic and silly, being that our cast of heroes literally bully Pennywise to death.

Unless Warner and New Line decide to go ahead with IT: Chapter Zero and explore the town of Derry’s morbid, dangerous history from King’s novel (or if Muschietti assembles his “director’s cut” and resurrects much of the unused footage he shot for both chapters), then this is all she wrote for this long-mooted IT saga. Like the miniseries itself, or the novel before it, or hell, even the kind of idealistic childhood as suggested if not experienced by the young versions of the Losers Club, this new take on IT starts strongly and ends satisfactorily, resulting in an above-average horror epic that manages to be scary, touching, imaginative, and conclusive, even if it’s not definitive. 

[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]

HE'S GOT MY VOTE

SINISTER: THE "OTHER" SOUNDTRACK

The most effective tool Sinister had going for it, beyond those creepy, fleeting glimpses of primary boogeyman Bughuul, was its soundtrack, which was a compilation of  composer Christopher Young's score as well as a collection of strange and experimental tracks from different avant garde groups. Like a lot of other Sinister fans, I was left a little underwhelmed by the official soundtrack release, which only showcased Young's score and left all the other, more memorable tracks on the cutting room floor. Because of this, I assembled my own "complete" soundtrack, plugging those avant garde tracks back into the existing soundtrack in the order in which they were used. Sinister director Scott Derrickson did such a good job of combining Young's score, the soundtrack, and the sound design that all of it is nearly indecipherable from one another. However, some tracks, like "Levantation," "Sinister," "Pollock Type Pain," "Don't Worry Daddy, I'll Make You Famous," and "The Eater of Children" don't appear at all (though the latter may be layered over the finale use of "Blood Swamp" - very hard to tell.)

Below is a large portion of those different avant garde tracks -- including their track titles, the artists who did them, and at which points they are used in the film.

Listen to the entire playlist on Spotify.

(Spoilers should be assumed from here to the end of the post.)

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Family Hanging Out '11 / BBQ '79
Artist: Ulver
Song: Silence Teaches You How To Sing

Different parts of this 24-minute track are used twice: the first time is when the family is being hung from a tree branch in their own backyard, and the second is when the family is burned in their garage. The BBQ '79 portion of the song contains the infamous and wailing vocalizations.

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Pool Party '66
Artist: Judgehydrogen
Song: A Body of Water

A family is tied to lawn chairs and pulled into a pool one by one.

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Sleepy Time '96
Artist: Aghast
Song: Sacrifice

Each family member slowly has his/her throat cut.

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Lawn Work '86
Artist: Accurst
Song: Fragment # 9

The deranged lawn mower scene.

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House Painting '12
Artist: Sunn O))) & Boris
Song: Blood Swamp

Things don't end so well for Ellison and his family with the final "footage" track that plays as his young daughter paints the house in her family's blood. 

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Artist: Aghast Manor
Song: Call from the Grave

Ellison discovers the attic drawings.

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Artist: Aghast
Song: Enter the Hall of Ice

Ellison sees Bughuul in the backyard.

 

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Packing / End Titles
Artist: Boards of Canada
Song: Gyroscope

Ellison burns the home movies and his family begins packing to leave, as well as makes a reprisal during the end credits. This is the song with the very unusual dragging drum beat.

REVIEW: SINISTER

Within the first ten seconds of Sinister, I knew I was seeing something fresh, new, exciting, and creepy. And within that first ten seconds, I knew I would love it.

When Sinister was announced as far back as May of 2011, I began keeping an eye on any developments almost immediately because of the director attached to the project: Scott Derrickson. While he’s not a household name, at that point he had already given us the extremely undervalued The Exorcism of Emily Rose and the unfairly maligned Hellraiser: Inferno (my personal favorite entry in the Hellraiser franchise, even though it was never meant to be a Pinhead movie, anyway). I don’t really blame him for the completely inept remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, being that it was a Fox Studio movie, and as many know, they are a studio that can’t keep their grubby mitts off their larger, tent pole films.

Developments on Sinister began rolling in, using the terms “found footage” and “true crime.” Being that I’m a found footage nut ball, this sounded only but good to me. Then Ethan Hawke was announced for the project, and I was completely confused.

“Why are they casting such a big name celebrity for a found footage movie?,” etc.

Now that I’ve seen the film, and know how the found footage is incorporated, it all makes perfect sense.

Ethan Hawke plays true-crime writer Ellison Oswald, who rose to prominence and fame with his book Kentucky Murder, written ten years prior to the events of Sinister. His prominence and exposure came when his book made known the fact that law enforcement had dropped the ball in a number of places while investigating during whatever murderous crimes that took place (they’re kept purposely vague), and Ellison’s book brought to light a lot of information that had been left behind. This is all well and good, and resulted in a bestselling book and a tidy little sum of money for the author and his family. However, there’s a blemish on Ellison’s career called Cold Denver Morning, another true-crime tome that unfortunately got some things wrong and allowed a murderer to walk free of his crimes.

Ellison moves his family, unbeknownst to them, into a Pennsylvania house where the previous family had been hung from a tree in the back yard. He hopes to investigate the unsolved murders and write the book of his career –  one that will erase all his past indiscretions and award him with all the fame and fortune he claims not to desire.

After discovering a box of super 8 films marked “home movies” up in the attic, Ellison begins going through them one by one, and what he sees before him are mere moments of idealized familial happiness and togetherness before the films jump cut and see those very same families being killed in some gruesome or intricate way. They aren’t just shot or stabbed – they’re tied to lounge chairs and pulled one by one into a swimming pool, or they're bound and gagged and pushed into a car filled with full cans of gasoline, only to burn alive. What’s important to note is this murderous footage features not only the family who had previously lived in Ellison’s new house, but other families from other houses from all across the country – and all involving one member of the family, a child, going missing soon after. The footage is genuinely unnerving, made all the more so by the very unorthodox musical choices of such avant garde/ambient musical groups like Accurst and Ulver, while Christopher Young, goddamn legend that he is, scores the more traditionally shot portions of the film.

Though Ellison tries as best as he can to isolate his family from his creepy discoveries, his son's previously conquered night terrors begin happening again with much more intensity, and his daughter begins to draw on her bedroom wall images featured in his ghastly filmstrips.

As Ellison investigates each murder, he begins to slowly realize that he’s not just dealing with terrible murders, but something much more than that…something beyond that boundary he never thought he would cross…something supernatural.

Something named Bughuul.

Blumhouse Productions, who produced Sinister, is quickly becoming a best friend to the horror community, having produced the Paranormal Activity trilogy (make that quadrilogy), Insidious, and the television series "The River." Blumhouse et al. and director Derrickson (along with first-time writer C. Robert Cargill, who knocked this out of the park for his first time out) work well together, and all seem to be on the very same page in terms of realizing this project and bringing it to the forefront. Sinister plays out very much like a kindred spirit to Insidious, with a heavy focus on quiet horror mixed with legitimately creepy imagery, non-melodic music, even down to a monstrous face appearing in every filmstrip Ellison watches.  It contains the perfect balance of quiet terror, disturbing images, and comic relief (which we end up relying on to take a breather from the mounting terror that befalls Ellison every night when the antiquated projector in his locked-up office kicks on by itself…)

What works in Sinister’s favor is that it’s a very simple and very contained story. There are only six people featured prominently in the movie (alive, anyway) and the action hardly ever leaves the Oswald family’s new home. And as for the story being simple, that’s not a slight against the film. Some of our best horror films – Halloween, Psycho – had simple stories, and because Sinister's filmmakers didn’t feel bogged down with having to provide exposition, this allowed them to create sequences to unnerve the audience.

It goes without saying that Sinister is Derrickon's best effort as a director. Watching the film gives you a feeling he's achieved a new way of approaching his material, and it's one that also feels the most unrestrained. It feels as if he was given nearly carte blanche to make this film the way he intended without a studio looking over his shoulder.

Sinister also features a strong supporting cast, featuring Juliet Rylance as Ellison’s wife, Vincent D’Onofrio as a local university professor (featured only in a Skype video chat), James Ransome as Deputy So-and-So (see the movie and you’ll understand), and even Fred Thompson as the town’s grizzled sheriff.

Horror needs more movies like Sinister. It needs high-concept and original ideas that are only out to scare audiences in the purest ways – with images, mood, music, and good story telling. I can only hope that Sinister sees success at the box office when it opens in a wider release on October 12th – not so it can be sequalized, but so once again, like Insidious and the PA films before it, studios can see that low-budgeted original horror fare can and will be successful, so long as you give it a chance.