CREEP

I was young, perhaps six, but definitely less than ten. Even at the age of six, I slept in a crib because my family was poor and my father was slowly building me a shoddy bed frame at the time. I remember trying to sleep and my hand was poking out of the bars of the crib. And I was half asleep - in that weird state where you're aware that you've dozed off. Then I felt and heard what could have been the most terrifying thing imaginable. I felt something grabbing my index finger on the hand poking out of the bars. And I heard a conversation between whatever it was that was holding my finger and its friend. They said something to the effect of, "See, how nice it looks and feels? It's growing." And I heard cackling. And while this was happening I made certain to keep my eyes shut and I held my breath. Then I felt my finger released from the grip of whatever it was.

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THE REAL SILENT HILL

“This was a world where no human could live, hotter than the planet Mercury, its atmosphere as poisonous as Saturn's. At the heart of the fire, temperatures easily exceeded 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Lethal clouds of carbon monoxide and other gases swirled through the rock chambers." 

Centralia is a borough and ghost town in Columbia County, Pennsylvania, United States. Its population has dwindled from over 1,000 residents in 1981 to 12 in 2005,  9 in 2007, and 10 in 2010, as a result of a mine fire burning beneath the borough since 1962. Centralia is one of the least-populated municipalities in Pennsylvania.

There is some disagreement over the specific event which triggered the fire. David DeKok, after studying available local and state government documents and interviewing former borough council members, argues in Unseen Danger and its successor edition, Fire Underground: The Ongoing Tragedy of the Centralia Mine Fire, that in May 1962, the Centralia Borough Council hired five members of the volunteer fire company to clean up the town landfill, located in an abandoned strip-mine pit next to the Odd Fellows Cemetery. This had been done prior to Memorial Day in previous years, when the landfill was in a different location. On May 27, 1962, the firefighters, as they had in the past, set the dump on fire and let it burn for some time. Unlike in previous years, however, the fire was not fully extinguished. An unsealed opening in the pit allowed the fire to enter the labyrinth of abandoned coal mines beneath Centralia.

Joan Quigley argues in her 2007 book, The Day the Earth Caved In, that the fire had in fact started the previous day, when a trash hauler dumped hot ash and/or coal discarded from coal burners into the open trash pit. She noted that borough council minutes from June 4, 1962 referred to two fires at the dump, and that five firefighters had submitted bills for "fighting the fire at the landfill area." The borough, by law, was responsible for installing a fire-resistant clay barrier between each layer, but fell behind schedule, leaving the barrier partly incomplete. This allowed the hot coals to penetrate the vein of coal underneath the pit and light the subsequent subterranean fire. In addition to the council minutes, Quigley cites "interviews with volunteer firemen, the former fire chief, borough officials, and several eyewitnesses" as her sources for this explanation of the fire. Another theory of note is the Bast Theory. It states that the fire was burning long before the alleged trash dump fire. However, due to overwhelmingly contrary evidence, few hold this position, and it is given little credibility.

However it started, it is agreed that the fire remained burning underground and spread through a hole in the rock pit into the abandoned coal mines beneath Centralia. Attempts to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful, and it continued to burn throughout the 1960s and 1970s. 

In 1979, locals became aware of the scale of the problem when a gas-station owner and then mayor, John Coddington, inserted a stick into one of his underground tanks to check the fuel level. When he withdrew it, it seemed hot, so he lowered a thermometer down on a string and was shocked to discover that the temperature of the gasoline in the tank was 172 °F (77.8 °C). Statewide attention to the fire began to increase, culminating in 1981 when 12-year-old resident Todd Domboski fell into a sinkhole four feet wide by 150 feet (46 m) deep that suddenly opened beneath his feet in a backyard. Only the quick work of his cousin, 14-year-old Eric Wolfgang, in pulling Todd out of the hole saved Todd's life, as the plume of hot steam billowing from the hole was measured as containing a lethal level of carbon monoxide.

In 1984, the U.S. Congress allocated more than $42 million for relocation efforts. Most of the residents accepted buyout offers and moved to the nearby communities of Mount Carmel and Ashland. A few families opted to stay despite warnings from Pennsylvania officials.

In 1992, Pennsylvania governor Bob Casey invoked eminent domain on all properties in the borough, condemning all the buildings within. A subsequent legal effort by residents to have the decision reversed failed. In 2002, the U.S. Postal Service revoked Centralia's ZIP code, 17927. In 2009, Governor Ed Rendell began the formal eviction of Centralia residents

The Centralia mine fire extended into the town of Byrnesville, Pennsylvania and caused this town to become extinct also.

Very few homes remain standing in Centralia; most of the abandoned buildings have been demolished by the Columbia County Redevelopment Authority or nature. At a casual glance, the area now appears to be a field with many paved streets running through it. Some areas are being filled with new-growth forest.

The only indications of the fire, which underlies some 400 acres (1.6 km2) spreading along four fronts, are low round metal steam vents in the south of the borough and several signs warning of underground fire, unstable ground, and carbon monoxide. Additional smoke and steam can be seen coming from an abandoned portion of Pennsylvania Route 61, the area just behind the hilltop cemetery, and other cracks in the ground scattered about the area.

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DEAD WALK

In times past, when the villages of Tana Toraja were still extremely isolated and difficult to visit, it is said that certain people had the power to make a dead man walk to his village in order to be present at his own funeral. In this way, relatives of the deceased were spared the necessity of having to carry his corpse. One particular area, Mamasa-West Toraja, was particularly well known for this practice…

According to the belief system of the people of Mamasa, the spirit of a dead person must return to his village of origin. It is essential that he meet with his relatives, so that they can guide him on his journey into the afterlife after the ceremonies have been completed. In the past, people of this area were frightened to journey far, in case they died while they were away and were unable to return to their village. If someone died while on a journey, and unless he has a strong magic power, it would be necessary to procure the services of an expert, to guide the dead person back to the village.

This is not intended metaphorically—the dead person would be made to walk from wherever he had journeyed back home, no matter how far away that was. The corpse would walk stiffly, without any expression on his face, in the manner of a robot. If anyone addressed the dead man directly, he would fall down senseless, unable to continue his journey. Therefore, those accompanying the deceased on the macabre procession had to warn people they met on their path not to talk directly to the dead man. The attendants usually sought out quiet paths where the procession was less likely to meet with strangers…

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REVIEW: AEGRI SOMNIA

 

Films like Aegri Somnia, tales of nightmarish figures and landscapes as experienced through the eyes of our "unreliable" lead character, date back as far as 1920 with the German silent film classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. And since then we have seen plenty films about folks traversing their own personal hell and madness only to reach that inevitable conclusion where it turns out they are either dead, insane, in hell, or all of the above! 1990’s Jacob’s Ladder might just be the definitive take on the concept, and seems to have heavily inspired writer/director James Rewucki to make Aegri Somnia, whose title translates to “a sick man’s dreams.”

Edgar (Tyhr Trubiak) lives a miserable life. And who wouldn’t be miserable when everything’s in black and white? (Jokes!) He works a miserable job, goes home to a miserable and hateful wife, and can barely speak in full sentences without inserting Obama-like 20-second pauses in between his words. On one particular day, after a spat with his wife, she goes into the bathroom and takes her own life. This event will propel him into his self-imprisoned world of madness and guilt, where walking nightmares come to life and taunt him from dark corners. These brief trips into his subconscious begin to escalate, leading him to a very dark and dangerous revelation.

Along with Jacob’s Ladder, Aegri Somnia owes an awful lot to David Lynch’s 1977 oddity Eraserhead. From the black and white landscape to the introverted lead character to the deluge of pregnant pauses, Aegri Somnia is very much a spiritual reinterpretation of what might be one of the oddest but most accessible of Lynch's surreal repertoire. But Aegri Somnia also exists in a post-1980s world, featuring very familiar yet somehow unique-feeling set pieces and creatures. Dark-cloaked, rag-covered, and barbwire-encircled monsters whisper into Edgar’s ears and very much recall Clive Barker’s collection of demonic angels from his Hellraiser stories. And they jitter, chatter, and move unnaturally like the things following Tim Robbins in Jacob’s Ladder. Eerie images of bloody bathtubs and things in your periphery vision are the stuff of Freddy Krueger. It’s an interesting, engaging, creepy, yet flawed hodgepodge of horror cinema. 

By the time the ending happens, you can’t help but say, “no shit,” but much like the recent Shutter Island, the film isn’t so much about the ending as it is the journey. And it’s about our damaged character realizing what we as the audience already have a sneaking suspicion about: that he’s obscenity-screaming, Tom-Cruise-grinning insane.

*

While Aegri Somnia never manages to consistently capture the viewer from the first frame to the last (which can be fully attributed to the need for one more tightening pass in the editing room rather than a failure to tell a story), I must give all the credit in the world to writer/director James Rewucki. What he was able to accomplish on what must have been a very modest budget is an immediate cause for praise, regardless of the film’s overall success. It is a quiet film about quiet madness, and because of this the film will lose audiences more attuned to dripping monsters, whipping chains, and bloody murder. In fact, I can see most audiences downright hating it. Generally I am a big fan of films that try to bestow upon its audience the same feeling of insanity or hell that its characters are experiencing. Like Silent Hill, or The Cell before it, where the films lacked in strong stories or central characters it made up with fantastic visuals, and at the very least affects on a visceral level, if not on an emotional one. Aegri Somnia very much belongs in that category. It really does feel like a nightmare, and the visuals it contains are some of the most impressive I’ve seen within the low-budget horror world. (*And as an aside, the scene where Edgar buries his wife is shot fucking beautifully.)

While it's easy for abstract filmmakers to be labeled as pretentious simply because they want to present their film in an out-of-the-box manner, I do find Rewucki's choice to alternate sequences in black and white as well as color, along with the creatures' propensity for randomly whispering lines from T.S. Eliott, a little dubious. I'm sure Rewucki had a reason for doing both (you could make the argument that the creatures which haunt Edgar are the "hollow men" of which Eliot wrote, but if so, what's the significance of that poem to him in the first place?), but I just don't understand what that point was. And claims of pretension are caused not by abstract expression, but when there seems to be no rhyme or reason to utilize the tactic; and so the danger of Rewucki being labeled as such becomes dangerously close to being a fair criticism.

Regardless of my ultimate reaction to the film, I’ve been thinking about it off-and-on for the last three days. Filmmakers consider such a reaction to be a strength, whether that reaction be overwhelmingly positive or negative. Three days ago I had decided Aegri Somnia wasn't a film I ever had to see again, but the more I think about it, the more infectious the desire to revisit Edgar's nightmarish world is becoming.

VEILED

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LEVITY

REVIEW: ELEVATOR

Based on a story by John Steinbeck, Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (1944) was one of the first to confine a cast of people to one location and base its entire forward plot on dialogue only. Beyond the obvious, there is no “conflict” other than what is born from the characters’ exchanges. The more these stranded men and women converse, the more they unearth about themselves, and the more their true natures are revealed. 12 Angry Men would come along thirteen years later, mine that concept, and become one of the most famous and well-regarded “bunch of people confined to one place” films of all time. It is a tough job to craft such a concept – something based entirely on dialogue – but it’s come back in a big way the last ten years with varying success. Buried, with Ryan Reynolds, was mostly well received in the horror community, while Saw was an irritating heavy-handed morality tale. Lastly, we have Devil, a laughable tale of people trapped in an elevator with the prince of darkness himself.

And now we have Elevator, the newest film to try its hand at this one-location concept. More Lifeboat than Devil, a bunch of Wall Street workers find themselves prisoners of their malfunctioning elevator while on their way to an after-hours reception. Among them are Don and his news reporter girlfriend, Maureen; Celine, Don’s pregnant co-worker; Henry Barton, the president and CEO of the company, along with his granddaughter; George Axlerod, another employee as well as “comedian” of the night’s event; and Jane Redding, an investor. Through unfortunate happenstance, the elevator becomes trapped in between floors. And not soon after, it’s revealed that one of them has a bomb strapped to their chest.

And the games begin.

"Mind if I irritate?"

A concept like Elevator really relies solely on the story it’s telling. With cameras trapped along with our cast, what director Stig Svendsen can accomplish stylistically is severely limited. He has nothing to propel his film except the skeleton of the story, and his actors. While the performances are competent, and the story is engaging and never boring, once the “big reveal” is made, it never becomes thrilling or pulse pounding. It never gives you that “on the edge of your seat” moment when you can feel the danger our characters are in. With a bomb quite literally ticking down, what’s supposed to make the viewer more and more nervous never really gets past “sucks for them.”

Elevator really wants to be a condemnation on American culture. The problem is it doesn't know where to start, and when it finally does, it doesn’t go far enough. Early in the film, after the elevator comes to a dead halt, comedian George eyes Mohammed, the security specialist of the building, with great suspicion. Mohammed, after all, is Iranian, and to us ‘mericans, all Iranians = bad. But the problem with this subplot is that beyond just trying to make George look like a complete prick, the movie does nothing with it. There is no lesson learned. There is no redemption for Mohammad’s lineage or George’s close-minded point of view. There's no chance for Mohammed to prove himself in George's eyes, nor does George ever have to rely on Mohammed for anything that would alter his point of view. Besides being played for tension-breaking comedic effect, nothing ever comes of it. Nor does anything come from Maureen’s decision to stream the events occurring within their elevator car (she’s a reporter, remember), which to us seems completely inappropriate and offensive, but would most likely occur in real life. Though she, too, is facing certain death, she holds her phone at arm’s length. I suppose by film’s conclusion, when it appears that our characters are beyond salvation, Maureen realizes that she’s just as expendable as the folks she’s been filming both inside that elevator and outside it during her whole career, but again, not enough is done with it. She never has her moment where she finally feels what it's like to be on the other end of the camera. And let's face it, it’s hard enough to get one person to believably realize the error of their way during a film’s climax, but trying to force half-a-dozen people to do the same, while admirable, just doesn’t have the kind of pay-off the filmmakers are going for. Too much time is spent setting them all up, but none of them are ever brought to a satisfying conclusion.

Speaking of no pay-off, the not-so-shocking revelation that (spoiler) Don happens to be the father of Celine’s baby, is completely wasted within the events of the film. What should have been shocking enough to warrant at least a ten-minute diatribe between Don, Maureen, and Celine is literally over in seconds. Celine looks embarrassed, Maureen cries and looks horrified, and Don looks kind of guilty. But it’s so soon forgotten and never mentioned again that you wonder why the filmmakers bothered to include it. Maureen never says one nasty thing to Celine, nor does Celine ever attempt to apologize. It doesn’t create any tension. You could have removed that mini-twist and the rest of the film, as presented, would have gone on seamlessly.

The only real morality-tale weight comes from the twist that (again, spoiler), Jane Redding is the one who has the bomb strapped to her chest. For you see, it was after her husband received very poor investment advice from Henry Barton’s company and lost everything that he killed himself. And Jane has come to reap revenge upon the company that destroyed her life. It’s an interesting act of domestic terrorism inspired once again by American greed and selfishness. But it also has the subtlety of a nuclear explosion.

Elevator is a decent time waster. No one will ever call it their favorite film, but nor will they call it a terrible one. It’s vanilla ice cream. It’s white bread. You won’t regret having watched it, but it’s one you’ll wish had contained a little more zest. 

Although someone does pee in a purse. So...there's that.