I can put up with a lot of nonsense in horror films. I can suspend my disbelief to quite a substantial extent. But only if the filmmakers give me some compelling reason to do so, and having a flagrant disregard for narrative is most definitely not a reason. Say hello to LEMON TREE PASSAGE (2014).
And then quickly say goodbye to it, because it's confusing rubbish.
It starts promisingly enough, and is a fantastically lovely looking film throughout (which you'd expect, since this comes from two former ad men) but it's like finding out that pretty girl at the party has a habit of missing out entire sentences during conversation, and as such leaves you wondering quite what she's on about. EXACTLY.
Three American backpackers are chilling out on a beach in New South Wales, where they meet two friendly Australian lads. Soon they're swapping spooky stories around a campfire and this is where we're introduced to the tragic story of Lemon Tree Passage (which is a real place). Apparently, if motorists speed down it they see ghostly phenomena, in part due to a supposed accident in which a motorcyclist was killed by another vehicle.
Of course, they all decide to go speed down this road and, sure enough, they all (well, almost all of them) see a weird bright light behind them. "Okay," you think, "they've disturbed the motorcyclist's ghost and now it's going to get them." That's even what the official synopsis says. But hang on just a minute!
and then a kind of 'prologue' in which a skinhead is bothered by a ghost in his garage. Then we meet the main characters and it all flows quite naturally. Although, hang on, back at the nice Australian lads' house we find out they live with the skinhead from earlier. THAT'S WEIRD. And now what's this? The one tourist who claimed not to see the ghostly light is now having visions of, it appears, a car of teenagers? THAT'S WEIRD.
Deciding to properly document the spooky light, they go back to the road in question, where one of the Australians promptly disappears. Meanwhile, back at the house, Skinhead Housemate is being bothered by more ghostly visions. Wait, what. But he didn't go with them before, so why is he...? THAT'S WEIRD.
It doesn't take long from this point for the characters to stop acting even remotely like real people and purely as creatures who serve the plot. No explicit spoilers, in case you're mental and feel the need to find out for yourself, but you would think that, after finding your friends dead, the last thing you'd do is take the time to set up a campfire (a big no-no in Australia anyway) and sleep in the very same woods your friends were just MURDERED IN.
And if it's a ghost they've woken up, why is bothering Skinhead Housemate? Is it even the same spirit? And why was it bothering him before they drove down the road? And if it is capable of giving people scary visions to fuck with them and make them truly believe they're bleeding, etc, before abruptly reverting everything back to normal (which is actually a pretty cool idea) AND it can move objects like, you know, a ghost, why OH WHY does it then feel the need to make a really, really lame booby trap? THE GHOST MAKES A BOOBY TRAP.
IT MAKES A BOOBY TRAP.
I can't even.
Okay, so the person killed in this manner is shown to reference another death, except that death doesn't actually involve an actual booby trap set-up. I just...WHAT IS GOING ON.
The biggest sin LEMON TREE PASSAGE commits is that it purposefully withholds information from the audience. This does not generate tension, but instead is a slap in the face to that very same audience. Is it just one ghost? Why is it being, apparently, sympathetic to that one person but then acts vengeful towards others? Why is Skinhead Housemate now in the same woods? Why is the ghost telling him to find one of the characters when it, er, has clearly found them already? Why, after two people are shown running away, in the next scene is one of them now inexplicably tied to a tree? AND WHERE IS ALL THE ROPE COMING FROM?
Why is all this happening?
It's because the filmmakers hate you. They hate you, and think that pulling all these "tricks" and refusing to establish clear rules for the threat (or even the clear nature of it, as suddenly this ghost can possess people so OH WHAT I GIVE UP). I give up. All they had to do was include a few extra scenes to show exactly how Skinhead scratch all that. No amount of extra scenes could stop the characters from acting like non-people, or adequately explain why the filmmakers are so hellbent on pretending to tell two completely different stories when the actual story would be a fully worthwhile idea if properly focused on.
But something that really bothered me is, the road just doesn't feel remote. There are plenty of places here (in Australia) where you could drive for a while and only see trees (typically when you're driving past/through a national park), but there are several points in the film where I got the impression they were remarkably close to civilisation (including an end shot that shows adjacent farm fields). I thought "Maybe that's just me. Maybe it is a surprisingly remote road." But it isn't. Look at this map. There are very few points where there's just trees/fields - ie. it really wouldn't take a person on foot too long to reach help.
LEMON TREE PASSAGE starts with a decent idea but then thoroughly pisses it away. Or rather, pisses in the face of the audience. It's riddled with confusing scene transitions, incoherent structure, far-too-coincidental clues (a bloody PHOTOCOPY OF A NEWSPAPER ARTICLE? Are you serious? Not only AN ARTICLE THAT EXPLICITLY STATES WHO THE GHOST IS but for some weird reason it's a PHOTOCOPY. Why has the ghost PHOTOCOPIED IT?) and oh yeah A GHOST THAT MAKES A BOOBY TRAP.
I give this film -657908 out of a possible 100968745.
Musician and producer John Congleton continues to earn a place as one of my favourite lyricists with his, technically first, solo album UNTIL THE HORROR GOES. First, in that he's using his own name along with 'and the Nighty Nite', though his name may already be familiar to some from his days fronting discordant indie band THE PAPER CHASE.
Congleton has produced a wide mix of artists from the exuberant hip hop of Missy Elliott to the bludgeoning metal of Tombs, and it is this eclecticism that informs the actual sound of UNTIL THE HORROR GOES. Battering drums and squealing synths give way to distorted beatbox-style percussion and swathes of ethereal keyboards, whereas some songs (such as 'Who Could Love you Lucille?') are almost anti-genre, being as they are almost completely devoid of any coherent, recognisable style other than 'John Congleton being weird'. That is not a criticism.
Congleton has stated in interviews that this album is very much about "the human condition", and luckily for us it's a suitably fatalist view:
"to me the human condition (the water in which my music tends to swim) is in some ways the slow realization magic does not exist. the idealizations one has as a child are chipped away by the lubrication of life; we slowly discover there is no santa claus, no salvation as we were promised. until the horror goes is in some ways the musical manifestation of that screaming child rejecting the intimacy and connection for which it cries; the endless quest for the sublime uncovering only the inane. the feeling of aloneness in the universe while connecting with everyone else feeling alone and laughing at the simple irony we all feel alone together."
It's bleak, but that aforementioned musical eclecticism saves it from being a dirge: 'Animal Rites' starts the album by kicking the door in with pounding drums before throwing up mental keyboards that sound like an old computer game playing freeform sax solos. 'The White Powerless' follows with the suggestion of grinding synths before quickly morphing into a demented 1950s ballad interspersed with blocks of filth. It's like Mr. Bungle have returned and it's glorious.
Following in the footsteps of The Paper Chase's own wilful chaos, I was concerned The Nighty Nite would see John Congleton abandon the skronk (the use of discordance and dissonance to create rhythm) of that band for something more palatable, but thankfully UNTIL THE HORROR GOES presents a different kind of noise. The nightmare orchestral passages from The Paper Chase reappear here but in much smaller, refined doses, as does the dramatic-yet-haunting pianowork. The guitar gymnastics of the past have been replaced by barrages of synth, though there are still guitars used to give certain songs an extra kick or punch.
The biggest difference though, is in tone. Whereas The Paper Chase traded on creeping horror and paranoid menace - threat, in other words - The Nighty Nite is all about the immediate terror and quick realisation of an impending death. There is a LOT of death on this album, and murder. Some of it is explicit, such as in the aforementioned 'Lucille' with Congleton's desperate cry of "Death to everyone!"; other times it's more implied, such as in the haunting closing track 'You Are Facing The Wrong Way' with its refrain of "I require a body bag".
This track in particular deserves to reach the heady heights of the strangely similar 'Hurt' by NIN - a somber lament about losing someone/thing that should never have been lost. "You could have had it all / We held it right in our hands / It's the truth that will slip through your fingers / It's the beauty we could have had" Congleton sings, his voice layered with a fuzzy, warped version of itself. The main difference between Trent Reznor's industrial angst and Congleton's subtle rage, however, is Congleton has this (seemingly) effortless ability to take the theme and content of his songs to an exceptionally bitter place, but one wrapped up in fantastically dark humour. "Some day this could all be yours / But you chose to remain on all fours / An enlightenment that never lingers / An existence without poetry" he continues, sticking a great big middle finger up at the (former?) object of his affections. "Enjoy being alone and miserable" he appears to say, "as you realise things could have been so much better for you."
Sometimes you can even picture him smiling as he sings lines like "You deserve to be eaten / So I hope something eats you" and "The storm is the bastard / Your face is the face it's slapping" as if he's secretly saying "You know what I'm talking about, don't you?" I could spend all day quoting John Congleton lyrics, to be honest, because they're singularly marvellous.
If all this death sounds a tad too dark, a tad too relentless, I suppose it depends on your frame of mind. UNTIL THE HORROR GOES isn't party music, but it still holds a pleasing sing-a-long quality within many of its songs and the playful, unexpected, inclusion of unusual audio textures/production. It's like the severely underrated and unknown Meow Meow, who also excelled in writing perfect indie-pop music that they then purposefully ruined.
"Just stay with me," Congleton sings on the album's title track, "until the horror goes." Except it never ends, does it? Can any of us find someone to stay by our side forever? UNTIL THE HORROR GOES suggests the best way to make sure this happens is if that person becomes a corpse. The body is dead but the memory lives on.
