REVIEW: STRICKEN

In the wake of her mother's death and her father's suicide, Sarah Black is being besieged with awful nightmares. Images of her rotting, black-eyed father are so haunting that she sees them whenever she closes her eyes, even when she's awake. Naturally she begins to think she's cracking up - that the things she is seeing are more than just a byproduct of her emotional state. 

In a defensive move, she buries herself in her job at Whispering Pines, a convalescent home, hoping to get her mind off everything...but her horrors follow her wherever she goes. And she attracts the attention of two homicide detectives after one of her patients goes missing and dies at the hospital. They see a tenuous connection to a ten-year-old murder case that they were never able to put to bed, and so they find reasons to always hang around.

Naturally, Sarah begins to slowly piece together all that she has seen and dreamed.  She begins to realize that it's not all just in her head. There is a very unnatural force plaguing not just her, but also her friends, who begin to fall victim one by one. 

Visually, there is a lot to admire about Stricken. The most effective methods to scare your audiences will always be the easiest: misdirection, sudden movements, darkness, etc. In this regard, writer/director Matthew Sconce is able to overcome his limited budget. Though we've seen many of these types of scares before - a character stoops to reveal a ghostly figure behind her, or a phantom arm reaches into the frame, nearly touching our lead before she turns to reveal...nothing - there's a reason filmmakers still fall back on them: because they work. While some of the techniques are old school, there is a fine mixture of the nu, taking its cue from J-horror of the last decade, but not completely aping it.

It's refreshing to see emphasis on character as well, and that goes beyond our lead and encompasses our two detectives, including Detective Aro. He and his partner are older, bitter, hardened, and haunted by their years on the force. Again, this is familiar territory because they've become dependable techniques with which to tell a story. Oftentimes your detective character isn't just trying to solve a crime because it's his job - rather he's trying to fix within himself the thing that broke long ago. Redemption of self, salvation of soul, etc. 

The story is certainly engaging enough to keep you interested. The film never shows its hand too early and there's a constant genuine sense of intrigue. 

Unfortunately the remainder of the production is severely indicative of said budget. Our lead played by Stephanie French stumbles through most of her role, concentrating too hard on being an actress and not enough on acting. Certain scenes have her forcing her performance instead of allowing it to feel organic and results in occasionally taking the audience out of the moment. The supporting cast, in addition, simply isn't up to the task. Some actors look completely bored with their roles while others are simply distractingly bad.

When checking out something made on a shoestring budget, I try to be as generous and painless as possible. A person should not critique a film like Stricken in the same manner they would a film like, say, the recently released Mama. Stricken does not have a major studio, millions of dollars, and Guillermo Del Toro. It has an independent production, maybe a hundred thousand, and a bunch of amateur filmmakers working with the resources they have available to them. Unfortunately this often includes the usual pratfalls: weak actors and techies eager to show off their skills and end up going overboard. (I'm speaking more in generalities than I am specifically about this film.)

Despite all that, some of the visuals present in Stricken aren't that far off from that of last year's Sinister - a film I happened to love, by the way. And I would love to see what Matthew Sconce could do with several million dollars and access to a more experienced cast. If I'm lucky, perhaps one day I will. 

MORE BLACK-EYED KIDS

My husband, and our two-year-old son and I went to a used bookstore about two hours from our house in Tucson, Arizona this last Saturday (04/23/2011.) I followed my son as we walked back into the children's area.

He rounded the corner to the aisle with the books. I saw a girl stand, not moving, a little ways down the aisle staring in our direction. Then my husband walked up to us. As he came closer, she did as well, following behind him.

My son ran off toward a table and my husband followed. The girl walked up and got right next to me within inches, almost touching. I started to feel extremely uneasy and moved away to where my husband and son stood at the table. They were both looking down at a Mickey Mouse doll which I tried to talk to my son about.

As I was looking down, I saw movement coming up behind me out of the corner of my eye. It was the girl. I noticed her clothing looked from about the 1960s and she looked very out of place. She was also overdressed with multiple coats on in a normal temperature environment.

She walked in a circling pattern, with her head down in a predatory way, the way a panther stalks its prey. As I stared at her while, she walked slowly. I distinctly remember she did not make a sound when she moved. Which now I am thinking was odd, because she had a lot of clothing on and a bag with her.

Her eyes were all black, no whites of her eyes, no pupils. She stared coldly, devoid of emotion, and you could feel the evil radiating off of her. I remember as I made eye contact with her, I had the very distinct feeling that she was not human. I had a feeling that she was something evil in a human shell.

I felt the most amount of terror and most threatened I have ever felt. I also felt like I was the food at the bottom of the food chain and I was her next meal. I definitely had a fight-or-flight response after I was able to pull my eyes away from hers. I remember thinking I had to get away and I had to protect my family.

I tugged on my husband's shirt and grabbed my son and started to pull them away. My husband asked why; I said we need to just go. I remember thinking it was very important that she didn't know we were leaving because we were afraid of her. We went to the other side of the store (if we were smart we would have left immediately).

My husband walked off to electronics and my son and I stood in front of a bookshelf full of board games. There was an aisle right behind us for magazines. Then I heard a man that was leaning down toward my son say in a very low tone, "I see you... she can't hear you, but I can."

I didn't turn around; I was too scared. I grabbed my son and dashed away. I now believe he was one of the black-eyed people too and they were there together. I went to the car with my son and just felt this heaviness of evil that almost felt like it had stuck to me until I went to bed that night.

 Origin of source unknown.

ROBERT THE DOLL

CAUGHT ON TAPE

BLACK-EYED KIDS

The parking garage in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, looked safe enough when David Jenkins pulled downtown on a winter’s day in 2008. Jenkins drove forty minutes from his home in nearby York, Pennsylvania, into this city of about 500,000 people to meet a friend he hadn’t seen in a year. He didn’t know evil would greet him when the sun went down.

Jenkins wound his way through the crowded garage and found a parking spot on the third floor. Then he walked to his friend’s apartment building. “We hung out and played PS2, bullshitted over old times, had a few beers,” Jenkins said. “I left at about 12:30 a.m. and went back to the garage for my car.”

Jenkins walked through the cold, now-deserted garage, climbed into his car and started the engine, letting it warm before he started home. As he leaned down to slip an “old school hip-hop” CD into the stereo, he discovered he wasn’t alone.

“A tapping on my window scared the shit out of me,” he said. Jenkins snapped his head toward the window and saw two people staring at him through the glass. “They seemingly came out of nowhere.”

Jenkins immediately turned up the volume. “I know this sounds stupid, but I thought maybe if these were thugs they’d think when they heard that music that I was hard, or something, and maybe be more apprehensive about mugging me, if that was the intent,” he said.

Instead of anyone threatening, he found two pale boys about twelve years old standing in the cold, staring at him through the glass. One boy was taller than the other, and both were skinny. They looked out of place. “The first thing that struck me as odd was their attire,” Jenkins said. “It was ‘80s clothing, only it looked brand new.”

One boy wore a new Montreal Expos baseball cap with a logo the team used between 1969 and 1991. The Expos haven’t existed since 2004. The Vision Street Wear skater hoodies they wore were popular in the 1980s. “What they were wearing just didn’t seem to fit with the time period,” Jenkins said.

The fear of the boys drawing a gun rushed through Jenkins mind. His door was unlocked. Hoping the boys didn’t notice, he rolled his window down a crack, and simply said, “yeah?”

The shorter boy Jenkins dubbed The Ringleader spoke first. “Excuse me,” he said in a voice much older and mature than what should have come out of that mouth. “We’ve had a slight mishap, and I was hoping you could help us out.”

The request froze Jenkins in his seat. “Those were the exact words too,” he said. “‘Slight mishap.’” Jenkins knew a twelve-year-old boy in a parking garage in Pennsylvania after midnight would have never said that. “I was nervous as hell,” he said.

The boy said their ride left them and they were now stuck in that part of town, and needed a lift home. “It seemed an innocent enough request,” Jenkins said. “But my BS alarm was going off. Something just felt really eerie about the whole thing. I mean two kids that young in a parking garage at that hour? It just wasn’t right.”

The fact the boys were in the garage also frightened Jenkins. He hadn’t seen the boys when he walked to his car, and when he got in suddenly they were there. The Ringleader’s request also made him nervous. “It just seemed shady,” Jenkins said. “I asked where exactly they lived, and that I was heading back to York. That ‘other end’ of Lancaster was in the opposite direction.”

Jenkins told the boys no. The Ringleader didn’t like that. “He said he’d give me gas money, and pulled out his wallet and took out a crisp $20 bill and held it up,” Jenkins said. “It was an old style one. An old style $20 should not be that crisp, looking fresh from the bank.”

As the strangeness of the encounter grew more in Jenkins’ mind, he started to ask questions. “Everything about this just felt very wrong,” he said. “I asked where exactly they lived.”

The Ringleader again said, “on the other side of town.”

“I asked where, specifically, on the other side of town,” Jenkins said. “I wanted the name of the township, the name of the school district, the name of the street. An exact address.”

The Ringleader balked; the other boy began to look nervous. “They couldn’t give me an answer,” Jenkins said. “This really creeped me out because it was now apparent that they really had no intention of getting a ride anywhere. They just wanted to get into my car.”

Then Jenkins saw something that kept him awake for the next two days. “I noticed something else – completely jet black eyes,” he said. The sight terrified him. Jenkins looked away from the children, trying to keep them from seeing the fear on his face.

The second child spoke to him. “Please,” he said. “Can we please get in the car? It’s really cold out here. I’ll tell you where to go once we get in.”

Panic consumed Jenkins.

“Please,” the smaller boy demanded.

“At this point it was fight or flight,” Jenkins said. “And I certainly wasn’t getting out of the car.”

He put the car in gear and told the kids “no” through the crack in the window. “Please, don’t go,” the Ringleader said, desperation creeping into his voice. “We’ll be stuck out here.”

“Sorry,” Jenkins said and started to pull away from these black-eyed children.

The tenor of the Ringleader’s voice changed. “Now, perhaps realizing their fate was sealed, they no longer held back,” Jenkins said. “The talkative shorter one’s voice changed now. No longer like that of a desperate little boy, it had a nasty snarl to it.”

The Ringleader started cursing at Jenkins as the car pulled away from them. Before Jenkins drove onto the ramp down to the lower level, he chanced a look in the rearview mirror. Terror stabbed at him anew, but it had nothing to do with the strange eyes of the boys. His fear came from something more human. “There was no trace of them,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking, ‘oh wow, they vanished,’ I was thinking, ‘shit, they’re gonna try to head me off at the next level down.’”

Worried the boys might run in front of his car at every turn, he hurried to the ground floor and shot onto the street. The black-eyed boys weren’t there. Three blocks away, his heart pounding in his chest, he stopped for a red light. “I kept looking back, scanning for them,” Jenkins said, but the strange boys weren’t behind him.

He sat in his car, still shivering from fear; the light stayed red. “It seemed like it was taking an unnaturally long time to change,” he said. “In fact I think now that those intersections are even supposed to be flashing red and yellow lights at that time of night.”

The minutes crawled by, and the light refused to change. Then he saw the black-eyed boys standing on a street corner he’d looked at not ten seconds before. “Sure enough, there they are,” Jenkins said. “I’d been looking around everywhere the entire time and didn’t see them coming. There’s just no way they could’ve gotten right on top of me without me seeing them coming.”

The Ringleader made eye contact with Jenkins and snarled. The second boy looked apprehensive “Even apologetic,” Jenkins said. “Like a good cop/bad cop routine or something.”

The boys started walking toward Jenkins’ car, and the panic again rose in his chest. The light still shown red. “There was nothing coming the other way and I just gunned it through the red light. I was hoping to God there’d be a cop.”

He didn’t encounter one police car on his fear-fueled drive home, running every red stoplight on his way. Once he reached the highway, he began to relax, but nothing went back to normal. “I didn’t sleep for like 48 hours after that, and didn’t sleep without a night light on for quite some time after,” Jenkins said. “When I finally did sleep they were in my dreams. I kept thinking that maybe my mind was just playing tricks on me that night, but after seeing other accounts, there are just too many similarities to write off. These things are very real.”

Source: Jason Offutt.

TRI-STATE CREMATORY

The Tri-State Crematory was founded by Tommy Marsh in the 1970s. Located in northwest Georgia, near the city of LaFayette, it provided cremation services for a number of funeral homes in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. When Tommy Marsh's health deteriorated in the mid-1990s, his son, Ray Brent Marsh, took over operation of the business.

In 2001, a propane delivery truck driver named Gerald Cook contacted the Walker County Sheriff's Department and reported having seen dead bodies strewn about outdoors on the Marsh property. A deputy sheriff responded to the call but didn't find anything out of the ordinary.

Frustrated by the lack of results, Cook told his aunt what he had seen - that human remains were not being disposed of properly at the Crematory. His aunt, who worked for the FBI as a secretary, contacted the US Environmental Protection Agency field office in Atlanta with the information. EPA agents were sent to investigate the property and discovered a human skull and bones on the premises.

On Feb. 15, 2002, investigators returned and a more thorough search was conducted. They found piles of rotting human bodies in a storage shed, in vaults and scattered throughout the property. The search ultimately recovered 339 bodies in various states of decay.

A federal disaster team was brought into the area along with a portable morgue shipped from Maryland. The team began trying to identify the remains, a process made difficult because many of the corpses were in advanced stages of decomposition. Some were little more than skeletons. Of the 339 bodies that were discovered, 226 were identified.

At some point after Ray Brent Marsh took over the business, he claimed that the cremation oven, or "retort," was broken and that was why the 339 bodies had been buried, stacked in the storage shed or left in the woods instead of being cremated. Families had received concrete dust instead of the cremated remains of their loved ones. Later, the oven was tested and found to be in working order.

Ray Brent Marsh was arrested on over 300 criminal violations and was ultimately charged by the State of Georgia with 787 counts, including theft by deception, abusing a corpse, burial service related fraud and giving false statements. Marsh pled guilty and is currently serving a twelve year sentence.

Wiki.

WHAT A CONCEPT

I didn't catch Texas Chainsaw 3D when it was in theaters. Based on the surprising success it enjoyed at the box office, I guess I'm one of the few who opted to stay home and...watch something better. The promise of seeing a Chainsaw film directed by the guy who made Takers, produced by the guys who made multiple Saws, and starring a rapper named Trey Songz didn't exactly lure me into theater lobbies to slap my hard earned cash down on the counter.

Look, I can sit here and pretend to be better and above it all, but I know I'll be checking it out when it hits Redbox, so I'll stow my pompousness for the time being.

Strictly by happenstance I stumbled across this very cool concept art by artist Jerad Marantz (I Am Legend, Rise of the Planet of the Apes). Because I haven't seen the film, I have no idea in what context these images might have been used, but I find the idea of an older, grayer Leatherface intriguing: 

Source.

Jerad's Other Stuff.