Hey all, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I’ve got a slew of new film impressions for all of you this week, and for once, they’re not even dominated by horror movies! Well, I did watch one horror movie, and one that’s theoretically horror-adjacent, but all in all this week featured a fairly diverse screening collection, including an animated film that I’ve been both personally and professionally meaning to get to for years. It’s been a lot easier to invest in movies now that I’m not half-expecting our president to blow up the moon at any given moment, and while Trump is still clawing to the office with all the infantile lawlessness we expected, it seems his party will not be following him into full-on coup territory. So hurray for my country just barely avoiding a coup, and let’s break down some intriguing new films!
First up this week was Phantom of the Paradise, a cult favorite by Brian de Palma. It’s easy enough to see why Phantom of the Paradise was a commercial and critical failure upon its 1974 release – the film is weird, a tragicomic musical quasi-horror film combining elements of Phantom of the Opera, Faust, and The Portrait of Dorian Grey. There are frequently only tangential narrative connections between one scene and the next, and even if you’re here for the gore and scares promised by its premise, you’ll soon realize the film’s dramatic moments are more self-consciously operatic than bloody or terrifying.
Of course, if you’re a fan of anime, none of these stylistic quirks should be news to you. From its dramatic, surreal set design to its larger-than-life character acting and fabulous costumes, Phantom of the Paradise is anime as all hell, and I had a great time with it. Some films are tightly constructed dramatic engines, and some films are rambling buffets of aesthetic riches; Phantom of the Paradise is unapologetically the latter, and dazzles from start to finish with its inventive set designs, terrific musical performances, and gleefully exaggerated lead performances.
That’s not to say the film is simply indulgent, however. Palma’s camerawork in this film is phenomenal, encompassing wild, active flights around the characters, layouts that make terrific use of the film’s natural stage design, and even some standout sequences where the frame is split, with the right and left halves of the frame depicting different elements of the ongoing action. Perhaps the film’s greatest sequence uses this technique to visually underline its central theme: the absurd contrast between rock stardom’s image and reality, as one singer joyfully croons about gals and carburetors, while his pain-wracked bandmate is stuffed with uppers backstage.
That theme is given a more human visage through the contrast of Paradise’s three central characters: the devilish producer Swan, the scarred composer Winston, and his muse, the singer Phoenix. Without their poignant, hopeless arc of mutual destruction, the film would feel satirical to the point of cynicism; instead, we can truly feel how all of them, even the heartless Swan, are hopelessly in love with the magic of the stage, and the beauty of a perfect performance. Through its focus on the maimed Winston’s voyeurism, Phantom asks us to feel for these characters, and to understand that even if the reality of this industry is a heartless, soul-grinding mess, the transcendence they are seeking is absolutely real.
Next up, I finally followed up on Koji Shiraishi’s phenomenal Noroi: The Curse by checking out Occult, another documentary-style horror film he wrote and directed. Though Occult can’t match Noroi for its density of creepy setpieces, or the impact of its ultimate threats, it’s still a high tier found footage piece, centered on a public murder-suicide caught on tape, whose strange details gain greater and greater significance as the film continues.
While Noroi focused more on the aesthetic flexibility of the documentary-style horror film, Occult is much closer to a character study, following the wounded survivor of that murder-suicide as he joins in the production of a documentary on the attack three years later. Occult’s greatest source of terror is likely the mundane, matter-of-fact way it ropes both the audience and the characters into greater and greater leaps of moral logic; rather than appear as a cackling villain, the film’s greatest threats come in the form of whiny, self-assured mortal actors, who reveal their true form over the course of the film’s repeated celebratory dinners.
That said, there’s also some solid meat here in terms of the traditional horror elements. The crew’s journey up to the top of a foggy mountain is a particular highlight, gracefully capturing that unique sense of entering a forbidden territory, marked by trees like prison bars or uneven teeth, all distant landmarks lost in the fog. It was also nice to see Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Pulse, Cure) show up as himself, serving the role of the team’s occult expert. I didn’t feel the film’s tension quite matched its length in the way Noroi managed, but I’d still recommend Occult to any found footage enthusiasts.
I also finally checked out Into the Spiderverse, which I’d been assured was the vanguard of a brilliant new era in terms of film animation. As it turns out, the consensus was right: the things this film does with its CG-integrated style are astonishing, ranging from the sort of spiraling, active camera rollercoasters used in Land of the Lustrous, to plentiful comic flourishes like dynamic freeze frames and text balloons, to Ping Pong-esque multipanel fragmentation, to utterly absurd color and filter work, all designed to convey the sensation of a living, breathing comic book.
I frankly wasn’t sure I actually liked all of this film’s wild visual choices, and it still felt a bit too CG-derivative for my aesthetic sensibilities (as well as being focused on movement over layouts, also not my preference), but I was still consistently dazzled by the invention and craft on display here. This is easily the best-looking CG film I’ve seen, and its cohesion of visual craft, sound design, and storytelling is just as sharp. And it’s even a poignant character story, featuring some weighted reflections on the nature of family from both a young and adult perspective, and an absolutely gutting speech by Miles’ father halfway through. An excellent adventure film in any right, and an essential watch for anyone who’s intrigued by animation’s continued evolution as an art form.
Finally, I also checked out Johnny Mnemonic, a cyberpunk Keanu Reeves film based on a story by cyberpunk visionary William Gibson himself. Though much of this film revels in a vision of the future that likely felt dated even by its release, its array of squalid cyberpunk dens and convoluted tech devices still make for a fun design tour, especially given the cast list also includes such unlikely, absurdly welcome turns as Ice T as a slum king, Takeshi Miike as a repentant yakuza, and fuckin’ Henry Rollins as a tech expert. Mostly compelling as a mid-90s, portentously pre-Matrix curio, Mnemonic isn’t a genuinely good film, but it’s a fine background watch, and an interesting mix of actors you’d never expect to share screen time.
