Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we are sadly reaching that point in the anime season where we can no longer even pretend it’s still summer, as the season’s shows air their final episodes and we wait for the onset of the fall deluge. Fortunately, as someone who has already escaped from the seasonal viewing grind, I have ascended to a point where time has no meaning beyond the steady shift of the sun’s gaze and the encroaching winds of winter. As long as it’s still warm out it’s still summer to me, and I’m going to enjoy it for as long as this blighted New England landscape lets me. As for the week in media, my usual film selections were once again complimented by a touch of animated razzle-dazzle, as we continued our Naruto investigations by sampling its first feature film. Let’s see what treasures await as we run down the latest Week in Review!
Our first film of the week mixed the personal, philosophical, and theological to riveting effect, as we explored the British made-for-TV film Penda’s Fen. Set in a provincial English village on the cusp of the titular fen, the film follows Stephen, the young son of a pastor who initially possesses an unerring belief in the righteousness of the church. In spite of his faith, Stephen is haunted by visions that range from angels and demons to charged exchanges with male partners, driving a crack in his faith that will eventually widen into a far broader perspective on man’s relationship with the infinite.
Created as a “television play,” Penda’s Fen is absolutely stuffed with fascinating monologues, using its few key players to construct a sprawling contrast of spiritual duty, personal identity, relationship to country, and relationship to the land itself. A town meeting early in the film makes its thematic ambitions clear, as an incensed and quasi-anarchist playwright reflects on how what we see as “natural duties of English citizens” mask vast injustices of relation between the individual and the state, painting union agitators as enemies of their fellow proletarians, and disguising the government’s rapacious attitude towards the land itself. Such an argument could easily provide thematic grist for any number of full films, but in Penda’s Fen it is merely one perspective among many, with other voices examining what it means to be “pure” in either a national or sexual sense, or the tempestuous relationship between pagan and christian theology.
With his faith assailed by both pagan visions and a growing understanding of his own sexual deviance from church doctrine, Stephen becomes a willing vessel for these contrasting ideas, as argument upon argument draws the unassailable righteousness of faith down into the muck of history and personal identity. Stephen’s own father is far from your typical preacher, gamely stating such heresies as “whenever christianity comes in conflict with a prior god, that prior god must be framed as the devil,” and generally encouraging his son’s deconstruction of staid theology into a series of popular fantasies and conformity-demanding social directives. Meanwhile, the encroaching forces of England’s pagan past are represented through an evocative series of visitations and rituals, with their inherent and pre-christian ties to the land bolstering the film’s argument regarding environmentalism and nationalism as fundamental antagonists.
There is just so much to dig into with Penda’s Fen that I couldn’t possible explicate it all here. Even these preceding paragraphs feel more like summary than analysis, attempting to pin down in description what Penda’s Fen makes irreducibly complex through their relation to specific human experiences. Penda’s Fen makes the philosophical arguments presented by much of folk horror textually explicit, and then goes three steps further, challenging its protagonist and audience to arrive at a new formation of self as a component of a vast and ancient world. Far-seeing in its formulation of both citizens’ relationship with government and humanity’s relationship with the natural world, Penda’s Fen feels like the starting point for a true argument of identity, faith, and social responsibility, having integrated and moved beyond the simplistic philosophical conclusions of most popular art. A truly stunning work, and undoubtedly one of the most vital constructions of the folk horror movement.
Our next viewing was Raven’s Hollow, a recent Shudder arrival and yes, another folk horror film. Look, if I click on Shudder and see ominous treelines or foreboding woodland villages, I’m not going to be able to stop myself. Anyway, Raven’s Hollow follows five army cadets in early 1800s New England, who come across a mutilated man strung up in an empty field. After hearing the man’s final word, “Raven,” they dutifully investigate the nearby town of Raven’s Hollow, hoping to discover the culprit. The townsfolk are secretive and distrustful, and soon enough, the cadets realize they’ve stumbled into something far more dangerous than they could have imagined.
Raven’s Hollow hits your standard folk horror beats and more besides, threading in elements of mystery, creature feature, and even (regrettably) romance alongside its creepy village imagery. The film casts a convincing spell of entrapment and encroaching danger over its run, and wisely limits our direct exposure to its supernatural threat for as long as possible. I’d actually have preferred the film employ an even lighter touch in revealing its monster, but was nonetheless impressed by its mixture of gory, satanic, and plague doctor-derivative imagery.
The one thing I strongly disliked about this film was its obnoxious, unnecessary conceptual framing. One of our hapless cadets is actually a young Edgar Allen Poe, and thus Raven’s Hollow is essentially framed as a prequel to Poe’s later stories, the inspiration that would haunt his pen forevermore. Though there are occasional exceptions, I generally tend to be categorically opposed to stories whose foundation is “but what happened before the events of that story?” If a story is told well, its lingering edges are as purposeful as its core happenings – ambiguity is not a failure to be redressed, but an atmosphere to be nurtured.
Furthermore, Raven’s Hollow also follows that cloying model of “we must explain how everything that defines this character happened in one impactful weekend,” meaning Raven’s Hollow must lurch and sway to “justify” things ranging from Poe’s lost love and raven obsession to his debilitating substance abuse. I simply do not understand whatever satisfaction is supposed to be drawn from a prequel announcing “and that’s how Bobby Twoscars got his famous scars,” and felt Raven’s Hollow was worse for every moment it spent attempting to be Edgar Allen Poe extended universe fanfiction. Still worth a watch, but dear lord let this trend die.
We then continued our journey through the Naruto catalog with the franchise’s first film, Ninja Clash in the Land of Snow. Naruto tends to be at its best when artists other than Kishimoto are at the helm, and Ninja Clash was no exception; the film is propulsive, playful, and sumptuously animated, offering a winding story of an in-universe movie star who also happens to be an actual princess. The film’s plot is mostly just an excuse for a mix of cinema jokes and fight scenes, but it’s paced well and generous in its payoffs, while also offering Sakura far more to do than the main show allows her.
Naruto is a strange property in that its conceptual resources tend to be far stronger than its actual narrative application of those resources, making it easy for great directors and writers to spin compelling side dramas. With Wolf’s Rain’s series director Tensai Okamura and adaptation script veteran Katsuyuki Sumisawa on board, Ninja Clash absolutely qualifies, offering a tight eighty minutes of satisfying ninja action.
Our last film of the week was Moonfall, the full film adaptation of that “moon’s haunted” meme, directed by disaster movie maestro Roland Emmerich himself. Moonfall’s characters are threadbare and narrative routine, but such things are not what you’re here for: you’re here to see the moon fuck up some cities, and it certainly does that.
The film’s opening third drags tremendously, as it laboriously introduces all of our space heroes’ emotional support appendages (the film’s main couple each have their own Son Who Must Be Saved, one of whom is literally named Sonny). But once the moon’s gotten good and ornery, the destruction commences in earnest, as increasingly close orbits start inflicting rolling “gravity waves” on our hapless civilians. You could probably cut twenty minutes off this film with little ill effect, and the CG is often less than convincing, but Patrick Wilson is as game as ever, and it’s delightful seeing John Bradley (Game of Thrones’ Samwell) get some work. Could not be less of an essential watch, but a perfect lazy Sunday viewing if you’re in the mood for some senseless destruction.
