Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week has seen me and my housemates positively gorging on Tears of the Kingdom, losing ourselves in the realms of Hyrule at every possible opportunity. The game still seems plainly unrealistic; game worlds can’t be realized with such simultaneous breadth of experience and effortless nuance of character interactivity, all of these systems can’t possibly feed into each other to encourage such a robust and satisfying play loop, and jury-rigging machines together couldn’t ever feel so seamless, natural, and joyful. And yet it is, they do, and making weird contraptions has proven itself the natural evolution of Breath of the Wild’s call to creative action. They’ve even addressed what issues did exist in Breath of the Wild, from weapon durability (now you can always craft your own high-quality weapons) to rain (say hello to sticky tonics). It’s been hard to pull myself away, but don’t worry – we still found time for our scheduled film viewings. Let’s get into it!
First up this week was Legend, another ‘80s fantasy film, and one of the great misfires of Ridley Scott’s career. Tom Cruise stars as Jack, a “pure being” who must do battle with Darkness (Tim Curry), a force of evil who wishes to envelope the land in, well, darkness. Just by that title and description, you might already be guessing Legend’s core failing – the film strives so hard for “generically iconic” that it simply lacks an identity, with both its world and characters failing to possess any texture or personality.
Jack and his lady love are simply “good people,” with basically no other defining qualities as characters. The world they inhabit is both underdeveloped and preposterous – Jack is a grown man-boy who lives in the woods I guess, the “realms” they cross all feel like neighboring soundstages, and we never learn enough about the greater world or people who inhabit it to feel like there is any sense of stakes or consequence. When Tim Curry sends his minions to kill a unicorn, his description is “there is a beast in the forest you must kill” – so like, is the entire surface world one small forest, and your lair is directly beneath it? Because that’s how the geography of the film actually plays out.
Anyway, given Ridley Scott’s apparent disinterest in the nuance of vision and character texture that bring fantasy dramas to life, the pleasures of Legend are found strictly elsewhere. For one, the film is gorgeous – cinematographer Alex Thomson capably evokes the heightened, dreamlike atmosphere that often characterizes Arthurian fantasy, and the forest groves and ominous dungeons our heroes traverse are lovingly realized through ornate set design and rich colors. Purely experiential moments, like when Princess Lili (Mia Sara) is confronted by an ominous black dress that seduces her into dancing with it, can feel genuinely magical. And Tim Curry is an absolute delight, both for his extraordinary full-body makeup and for the emotive relish he somehow conveys through all that stage paint. Definitely not a successful film, but certainly an interesting artifact.
We then decided that enough is enough, and it’s time to clear out the remaining slashers in possession of any renown whatsoever. This process commenced with Terror Train, an altogether middling slasher that was apparently pitched as “Halloween on a train,” language that distressingly implies an inherent misunderstanding of how Halloween’s setting and impact are inseparable.
Misguided ambitions aside, Terror Train is a fine enough B-side slasher, and benefits greatly from Jamie Lee Curtis’ convincing lead performance. The kills aren’t particularly scary or inventive, but the killer’s habit of donning his victims’ various costumes at least adds some suspense and ambiguity to his presence (though its attempts to convince me David Copperfield was the killer were less effective). To be brutally honest, the best word to describe Terror Train is “inessential” – its story is obvious, kills underwhelming, and production merely competent. An odd fun in seeing Curtis and Copperfield on-screen together, but probably not worth the price of entry.
We followed that up with Hell Night, a slasher star vehicle for Linda Blair filmed eight years after The Exorcist. To be honest, when I think of The Exorcist I mostly think of William Friedkin, but Blair actually does a fine job in this film. While the characters around her tend to speak in heightened horror-ese, that dramatic parlance common to camp slashers, Blair mostly just talks like an actual person, coming across a bit like Scooby Doo’s Velma transported to a slasher frame.
Hell Night sees a group of fraternity pledges in various period costumes sent to Garth Manor, where they must spend a night of terror and trembling, aided in whichever ways possible by their fraternity brothers. Of course, it soon turns out that there’s an actual monster haunting Garth Manor, with a body count swiftly ensuing.
Hell Night is elevated just a touch above this base formula through its alternately sturdy and inventive fundamentals. First off, the cast here is given a tad more shading than your usual hapless victims; alongside Blair, both of her male pledge companions feel like entire people, not just notches on a tally. Additionally, the combination of the cast’s period costumes and Garth Manor’s imposing presence means the film also draws on the aesthetics and dramatic conventions of Hammer horror, adding a touch of set design elegance and old-fashioned melodrama to slasher’s standard attractions. It certainly can’t stand up to the best slashers out there, but I was surprised how fully I enjoyed this one.
Last up for the week was Moana, a recent Disney film starring Auli’i Cravalho as the titular heroine, a young woman who’s spent her whole life on an island, but dreams of traveling the seas. In Moana’s village, it is forbidden to travel beyond the lagoon – but when the community’s fishing lanes dry up, she sets off to find the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson), restore the stone heart of Te Fiti, and save the goddamn world.
Alongside the enduring beauty of its CG animation, Moana soars on the strength of its simplicity and clarity of purpose. There is no fiddly romantic drama here – it’s just Moana on a grand adventure, complimented by a Dwayne Johnson who does everything in his power to not be there. Maui’s unapologetic self-interest and disinterest in Moana’s quest actually makes him one of Johnson’s most endearing characters; his bravado here is constantly deflated, allowing his strength as a comedian to shine. And with Moana’s character journey tethered to her anxieties regarding her identity, she is free to otherwise enjoy the fuck out of this adventure, proving one of the most competent action leads in Disney history.
By shirking many of the narrative assumptions of the “Disney princess movie,” Moana shines as a buddy adventure starring two eminently likable characters, buoyed up by consistently excellent song interludes. The action scenes are creative and energetically storyboarded, the mascots compliment the leads nicely, and the characters’ emotional journeys are resolved gracefully without derailing the film’s overall momentum. Moana is a simply great action-adventure story by any metric, and an ideal family film.
