Don't Touch It, It's Just Some Accounting: Office Killer (1997)

It is quite near impossible to find works directed by women in media, let alone a film that is decided entrenched within genre.  Having just read the highly informative and critical essays "Woman With a Camera" and "Woman With a Camera: Redux" I decided to slightly shift my plans for the month and remove an anthology horror film in favor of Office Killer, a horror/slasher directed by a woman.  What makes Office Killer particularly worth consideration is that it is not only a work within the horror genre that is indeed female directed, but the director is none other than Cindy Sherman the prolific and quite fascinating feminist photographer whose series Film Stills, already play upon the conventions of filmmaking at what it means to be a woman both in front of and behind the camera.  Indeed, the set up of the film is very much something that exists in narrative comparison to her earlier photography, using the camera to record events in a very personal way, while also being hyper-aware of the manner in which the camera also serves as a tool of voyeuristic looking, even when in the hands of a female director.  One could look at the IMDB rating for this film and think that it is a film far short of enjoyable or rather bad, but I would mount much of the rejection of this film to its losing out financially by being directed by a woman, something that is inexplicably still off-putting to cinema goers who seem intent on still wholly supporting the male-oriented framework of directorship.  While Kathryn Bigelow is far from the ideal signifier of feminist filmmaking, actually quite far from it, she still serves as an example of the issue, in that despite winning an Oscar and being afforded her own degree of auteur status, she is still less sought out by moviegoers, even considering how profound and well-executed Zero Dark Thirty is a piece of cinema.  There is also another issue at play with Office Killer in that it does not subtly subvert the horror genre, but outright rejects it allowing its protagonist to also be the point of threat in the film, suggesting a wild degree of radical feminism within the context of the film, never once branching into a point of pity and curiosity instead representing the individuals in questions break from sanity to be an understandable action, merely a rebellion against a barrage of socially oppressive forces.

Office Killer is rather straightforward in its title and quite indicative in regards to what occurs, however, the story does have a few layers allowing for it to flow comfortably and succinctly.  The film centers on an office that produces a monthly magazine, facing yet another downsizing, this time leading to employees not being fired, but considerably cut down on hours.  The workers, excluding the big wigs like accountant Norah Reed (Jeanne Tripplehorn) and head editor Kim Poole (Molly Ringwald) seem comforted even in the dire times, Norah engaging in small scale embezzlement with company money, while Kim engages in romantic acts with a higher up member of the company expecting it to assure her safety.  In contrast is Dorine Douglas (Carol Kane) a slightly above middle age woman who has spent sixteen years of her life at the company without an ounce of respect or advancement.  During a night of late work, expected to finish an editorial, despite being cut back on days allowed to work, Dorine and and coworker Gary (David Thorton) attempt to complete the task, despite some awkward sexual advances on Gary's part, yet when an issue arises with some of the computers and Gary gets fatally electrocuted, Dorine hesitates in calling in medical help, instead choosing to drag Gary's corpse back to her home, where she hides him in the basement from her cats and invalid mother.  The narrative then reveals that this is far from Dorine's first experience with a violent death, suggesting that she witnessed, an directly led to what resulted in, her father drive his car into a power line.  This act of passive murder was in revolt, viewers are led to believe, to her father's sexual advances on his daughter.  Regardless, this reawakening of death leads to Dorine systematically planning a means to take out her competition in the office, primarily Kim who constantly berates Dorine, as well as Norah when she eventually realizes that it is her thieving of the company that has led to her underemployment.  Also, mastering the use of email, Dorine is able to pass as various members of the office, tricking higher ups into believing that she is solely responsible for the success of the recent issue.  Accruing a considerable amount of corpses in her basement, Dorine creates an idyllic space in her basement, clearly intended to return to a simpler time in her youth, complete with her mother now dead eating cookies and friends watching TV late into the night.  Given the non-threatening nature of Dorine, the narrative closes with her looking for a new job and a narration warning that she might be emerging at an office near any one of the people viewing the film.

It is this confrontation with the viewer without directly subverting the gaze that makes Cindy Sherman's involvement with Office Killer particularly intriguing.  Indeed, the opening of the film notes that the gaze is a thing well-established, blocking the cameras ability to completely objectify bodies by placing props in the line of view, or by using such wild angles, which constantly, change as to never provide viewers with time to situate their gaze. However, this is only a minimal element to the film, instead, Sherman whose visual ability is undeniable also excels here at drawing out the narrative forms of oppression and Dorine's breaking away from this internalized identity as lesser.  This emerges first in her moving from a woman who constantly keeps her head down, literally focused on her work, ignoring the negative views directed at her by coworkers, yet when she is made aware of the lesser status she is viewed under when receiving the cutback letter she becomes cognizant of the bodies in her office responsible for her exploitation, whether it be the unwarranted sexual advances of Gary or the matriarchal bargaining with patriarchy to achieve a degree of exploitative power, occurring on the part of Virginia Wingate (Barbara Sukowa).  It is a literal destruction of the hegemonic power structures, one could argue that Dorine realizes that her assumption that by playing into patriarchal gender roles and established norms she would eventually make it to be illogical.  At this point the film becomes violent in the sense that it undermines patriarchy in a very visceral manner, at times by accident, while at other very purposeful, but is also worth noting that not all of the rejection occurs within the space of violent engagements, indeed, Dorine is able to appropriate technology, a thing traditionally deemed masculine, and use it to undermine her oppressors.  She accrues the bodies, not incapable of objectifying her and making them part of her new post-patriarchal world, although there is something to be said about having the group watch white snow on the screen.  In this reading the only thing that could be deemed remotely problematic would be the murder of the Girl Scouts, which while troublesome play into ideas of infanticide, not out of spite but out of fear for the girls' future in a world of oppression, not justifiable, but certainly understandable coming from Dorine's framework of the world.

Key Scene:  There are a couple of segments where Sherman just lets Carol Kane perform for the camera in strokes of genius, two being her sharpening of pencils, as well as the hand tapping scene, which is only understood when seen.

This is a hidden gem on Netflix right now and it could use some love and a bit more word of mouth, for it is a rather brilliant piece of feminist filmmaking.

This Is Not A House, It Is A Machine: Thir13en Ghosts (2001)

This (Thir13en Ghosts) and the spelling in the title will be the only times I acknowledge the correct spelling of Thirteen Ghosts because it is a pain in the ass to type quickly and is frankly rather obnoxious in that it really serves no purpose aside from going out of its way to be different, or possibly to avoid some issues in copyright that were likely faced by the producers of this film.  Indeed, the trying to be cool that translates into obnoxiousness is perhaps the best way to describe what is occurring in Thirteen Ghosts, a bit of 2001 flare that was brought to my attention when I heard an employee at the great land of high film tastes Blockbuster, suggesting it to a customer, claiming that it was one of the better scary movies of the past decade or so.  To be fair, this Blockbuster was going out of business and I had a copy of Session 9 in my hand ready to purchase, incidentally a far superior film (my personal favorite of horror cinema) and a work that came out in the same year.  I, as is usual, am digressing from the film at hand Thirteen Ghosts, or what could also be described as the biggest squandering of potential committed in the digital age.  Thirteen Ghosts does a few really cool things visually throughout, but for every bit of great work done, even the glaringly outdated CGI, there are a ton of terrible narrative choices, only doubled by a lot of blatant breaks in continuity or signifiers of bad, or more appropriately lazy, filmmaking.  It is almost too obvious that all the film's budget was dumped into the makeup and special effects for this film, which do pay off, even if cheesy by contemporary standards wherein post-production has become exponentially better, allowing for the uses of such creatures to more evocatively work.  Indeed, for being little more than a barebones labyrinth narrative, Thirteen Ghosts never really amounts to anything remotely tangible, given minimally realized characters, placed in a space hat is clearly influenced by the point and click adventure world of only a few years prior, one could mistake this work as a misguided labor of love by Steve Beck, whose only two directorial efforts come in the way of somewhat obscure horror film remakes, but attaching the term love to this would suggest it was made with any degree of passion, which is far from the case and as much as Tony Shalhoub tries to save this film with his acting, there are only so many ways even the most season of actors can deliver the phrase "what is going on?"

Thirteen Ghosts begins with paranormal hunter Cyrus Kriticos (F. Murray Abraham) and his psychic aid Dennis Rafkin (Matthew Lillard) attempting to track down a violent ghost, one that Cyrus claims is necessary to an unexplained quest.  After fending off a few competing paranormal experts Cryrus and by unwilling involvement Dennis, are able to capture a ghost, but it is at the result of Cyrus' life.  The narrative then flashes forward to show the experiences of the Arthur Kriticos (Tony Shalhoub) a recently widowed father who is attempting to make due in a cramped apartment with his daughter Kathy (Shannon Elizabeth) and son Bobby (Alec Roberts), his teachers salary barely able to afford the aid of a maid named Maggie (Rah Digga).  When an unsuspected knock at the door reveals lawyer Benjamin Moss (JR Bourne) informing Arthur that he has inherited a house from his late uncle Cyrus he cautiously accepts the offer and travels with his family and Maggie in tow to the house, a building entirely made of windows covered in Latin writing, awaiting there is arrival is Dennis, passing as an electrician, who is equally eager to enter the house.  The unassuming Arthur allows him to do so and the entire group, including Benjamin, begin exploring the house cautiously.  It becomes clear rather quickly through a combination of Dennis revealing his true identity and the splitting of the group that the house is even more bizarre than its looks would suggest, indeed proving to be a large machinery that serves as both a caging device to a variety of ghosts, including Arthur's late wife, all intended to work together in an ancient configuration to open up what Dennis calls The Eye of Hell.   However, given that the process requires one last ghost, a sacrifice by a broken hearted individual, Arthur realizes that there is a real possibility that he might have to kill himself in order to save his family.  All through this endeavor, the ghosts, many of which met violent deaths chase the persons in the house, killing a few in the process.  After the arrival of another ghost hunter and the reemergence of Cyrus from what may or may not be the dead, it becomes clear that Arthur's task might be a bit different than assumed, but no less predicated upon making sure he and his children are not killed by the thirteen ghosts roaming the halls of the house.

The plot is rather straightforward in Thirteen Ghosts, as noted serving as a means to show off a set of creepy ghosts and a few, at the time, impressive tricks with CGI.  Where the film seems to fail is in its attempts to synthesize these various elements into anything productive, even kowtowing to prevailing trends in the genre at the time.  Clearly working in a post-Asian horror invasion, many of the ghosts are created more for a creepy factor than a sense of threat, although The Hammer (Herbert Duncanson) is wholly intended to be slasher.  However, the way creepy ghosts work is to provide them with a sense of constant impending dread, as is the case with The Girl in the Ring, or pretty much every spectral entity in The Exorcist.  Here the creepiest ghosts The Torso (Daniel Wesley) and The Great Child (C. Ernst Harth) receive little screen time a choice I am fully willing to blame on a director that was more comfortable going for slash and off screen shock than any degree of ambient horror.  In fact, I am usually a fan of filmmakers using editing tricks and subverting of the visual palette to add intensity to a scene, but this choice starts off heavy and becomes grating well before the film ends.  Steve Beck seems to think the use of the contrast image can serve as a metaphor for every type of mental break in a film, causing the ability of the characters identities to become distinct or varied pretty much impossible. Finally, the film seems to openly embrace lifting the most obvious tropes from post-digital horror films imaginable, whether it be an inclusion of a widowed father with two distantly aged children, one who happens to be an attractive girl.  Despite a passing suggestion at having an anger issue, Arthur is made to be a lovable loser void of any point of socially problematic behavior, and his children's vanity in the case of Kathy and ignorance in regards to Bobby are neither problematic or worthy of narrative chastising.  Finally, and most offensively, the character of Maggie appears to serve no other quota than allowing for a black character to be present in the narrative, her constantly loud behavior and means of "stopping" the recorded incantation are not only in bad taste, but border on outright racism, never mind the closing moment of the film.  Overall the film suffers from being poorly planned, executed and produced, which is a shame for a film with such wonderful special effects work throughout.

Key Scene:  The segment revealing all the ghosts simultaneously is the only thing of interest in this film and it comprises, at most, two or three minutes of the narrative.

Avoid this film unless you are really trying to see every ghost story put to film, I would strongly urge a look at Session 9 instead, the far superior 2001 film shot entirely on digital.

Bad Dreams Make You Think You're Seeing Things: Triangle (2009)

The second stop on my voyage through horror films this October comes the way of a psychological thriller by director Christopher Smith.  The film, Triangle, is a psychological time travel narrative with just enough jumps and moments of suspense to deem it within the horror drama, but with enough moments of uniqueness to help it supplant the traditions of the horror film.  Triangle is an incredibly complex film and certainly does not treat its viewers as idiots, often requiring them to make connections and glean ideas from within the film narrative that do not necessarily pop out, while I have only viewed the film once for this blog, I could imagine it benefitting immensely from repeated viewings and listening to various commentaries and charts of what events occur throughout the film, perhaps similar to what many have done with the cult time travel film Primer.  However, what helps Triangle to stand apart from its contemporaries, and exist as a pretty decent genre film is the absolutely intense psychological turmoil of one character that perpetuates a majority of the movie.  Sure it lacks in the CGI department and a lot of the technological after effects are a bit forced, but this can be excused since the film is a bit of an indie horror work and as such is not afforded the cinematic tricks and treasures of bigger budget films, one must simply applaud the directors for their earnest efforts in making such a piece of horror cinema, one that is nearly perfect, save for ending a few scenes too late.

Triangle focuses on a day in the life of Jess (Melissa George) a somewhat spastic woman who is stuck dealing with the burden of having an autistic son and seeks refuge in a day trip on water with some friends.  The group includes the captain of the vessel, aptly named Triangle, Greg (Michael Dorman) who clearly has feelings towards Jess, as well as Greg's mutual friends Downey (Henry Nixon) and Sally (Rachel Carpani) a attached at the hip married couple and their single friend Heather (Emma Lung) who they hope to hook up with Greg.  Finally the group is rounded off by a young man named Victor (Liam Hemsworth) who is taken on as an aid for Greg after he finds sleeping behind a convenience store.  This group attempts to enjoy a day on the water only to become stalled at sea after the wind lets down, an anomaly that is quickly followed by a fierce storm that destroys the ship and leaves the group stranded on the capsized boat, minus Heather.  Believing themselves lost the group spots an abandoned ocean liner in the horizon, on which they quickly board.  Without giving too many of the details away, as the reveals in this film are excellent, it becomes clear that the group is unwelcome on the ship and begin to be attacked by a force, one that is both unexpected by the attacked as well as the attacker, culminating in a suggestion that the nightmarish course of events is inevitably going to continue on without resolve.

Triangle is particularly keen on the notion that correcting one's actions does not in turn change the past. In the film's philosophy no amount of intervention can even begin to prove fruitful when things are preordained and one's knowingly bad actions will be reprimanded and guilt will not result in redemption.  We see this constantly throughout the move, as it is, spoiler alert, essentially a time travel movie.  One character finds themselves attempting to return to a moment prior to disaster within the day, an act that by default requires them to repeatedly engage in less than acceptable behavior, ranging from simple acts of lying to incredibly grave acts like murder.  The greater issue emerges when it becomes clear that even a perfect execution of events leads to a new series of problems and past injustices.  As it becomes clear in the latter part of the narrative, even if the group is to escape the evil of the ship, another group of nightmares, or realities, await them upon shore, ones that may or may not result in very cataclysmic events.  Finally the film further posits that often our incessant concern with controlling our destiny is futile in that what usually changes the course of events may indeed be simple and uncontrollable interference by nature.  Sorry to be terribly vague with the descriptions, but I do not care to spoil such an enjoyable film, particularly since it is of the horror persuasion.

Key Scene:  Let's just say there is a reveal involving Jess and Sally that is as grotesque as it is cinematically stunning.

Triangle was a pleasant surprise in that it was far more reflective than I had imagined.  The movie poster and DVD cover do it no justice, although they may indeed suggest more upon deeper examination.  Regardless, it is well worth renting and certainly worth buying if one enjoys horror films.