EVERY DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE

Being a big David Lynch fan, I'm pleased I finally got round to watching INLAND EMPIRE tonight. Now I've managed all 3 hours of it, I can succinctly review it in one word:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

True to form, it's a real brain-melter. And is, I would say, his most fractured film to date. Prologue aside, it's pretty straightforward for a while, then just goes completely bananas. Lynch alumni Laura Dern plays Nikki, an actress hired to play the female lead in a film that is revealed to be a remake of an unfinished Polish film. It wasn't finished because the two leads were murdered, and the film itself was believed to be cursed. A nice set-up that adds to the strong horror element running throughout the movie like mould in blue cheese. The first properly weird thing that happens is Nikki starts to think she's her character, Susan...after that, things rapidly spiral out of control. Sort of. It's a little bit more 'circling the drain' cinema than 'headlong plummet into fear' filmmaking.

Several realities play out side-by-side and intertwine...or do they? Rabbit-headed people appear in a dingy sitcom, waiting for someone to show up. Polish actors/characters echo scenes from elsewhere in the film itself. Other people reference events yet to happen. People from one reality appear in another, but are contained in the same story. There's the story of Nikki filming the remake; of her character Sue's life outside the remake; the story of the original production; and the characters from that as they were/would be if they were also real. Those are the clearest arcs evident in INLAND EMPIRE, though they are by now means the only ones.

The main feeling I got from INLAND EMPIRE is one of hearing someone tell the punchline to someone else's joke. Part of the fun with David Lynch (who often employs dream logic in his work) is figuring out not what something means, but rather if it does actually mean anything. Maybe the rabbit people are linked to the recurring statement about a person who "looks after animals", or they're a reference to Alice in Wonderland (not my opinion, that). Or quite possibly they don't mean anything, and he just put them in to screw with the audience.

What is fairly obvious though, is his recurring theme of dual-identity and, as with Mulholland Drive, a treatise on the price of fame. And not since Eraserhead has Lynch created something that more closely resembles a work of art than a film, nor anything with quite so much horror in it, and I guess that's saying something. In much the same way as SOUTHLAND TALES appears to be Richard Kelly sticking his fingers up at the mainstream and what people expected from him, INLAND EMPIRE could well be Lynch pulling his pants down and pissing all over any pretenders to his throne. The languid pace and the fact it's shot on digital video (which looks bloody awful/naff/cheap/like a student film most of the time) are really the only faults with it.

Thankfully once again the score/soundtrack is absolutely spot-on, with ominous drones, midnight jazz, blasts of discordant orchestral noise and creepy ambient effects. I was actually reminded of Chris Morris' work, particularly JAM, and also Michael Haneke's HIDDEN - this latter comparison sprang to mind when I realised that I didn't realise if what I was watching was the film or not, but actually a film within a film.

Despite these comparisons, INLAND EMPIRE is definitely a David Lynch film, and it's hard to imagine who else could or would make anything quite like it. Likewise, it's hard to imagine anyone who isn't already a fan or at least familiar with his work enjoying INLAND EMPIRE, although a friend of mine tonight fitted exactly into this pigeon-hole and experienced the film as a trial by fire. Whether or not they've been mentally scarred by the ordeal remains to be seen, but it's certainly given them something to think about ;) Honestly, if this film can convert someone to liking Lynch, then it's pretty much a given they'll enjoy his other films - "If you can hack THAT then THIS will be a piece of cake to watch and understand". A piece of delicious dream cake filled with jazz.

LAUGH, YOU BASTARDS!

Under advisement from a chum I recently watched SOUTHLAND TALES. He said "I believe in a few years people will start to see the film for the genius it is". I'm not so sure about that. SOUTHLAND TALES is a mess, but WHAT a mess!

With his début film DONNIE DARKO, director Richard Kelly bent space and time to create an interesting and unusual sci-fi horror (that's what I'm calling it) that bordered on the surreal and turned Patrick Swayze into a deviant. With SOUTHLAND TALES, he crams so many genres into one film it tends up being none of them in particular. I do admire the fact he evidently cut loose and went "Nuts to this, I want to write an apocalyptic sci-fi drama with elements of romance, time/space travel and comedy in it. What's that you say? It'll never work? Bushwa! Let's see you say that once I get Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Sean William Scott in it! Oh that's still not enough? Well howsabout I make JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE the narrator AND give him a central role? Yeah, NOW you're confused ya filthy mook."

The Rock appears to sporadically channel William Shatner, SMG swears like a trooper and has some of the smuttiest dialogue in the film, and Sean William Scott plays a welcome and restrained character from his usual loud/goofy/obnoxious schtick. I don't mind saying that Justin Timberlake is probably the best actor in the film, as you can tell he's clearly having fun and enjoying doing a few things his pop star image might not otherwise allow (the highlight of his performance is in a musical interlude in which he mimes along to The Killers 'All The Things I've Done', although this section itself is pretty rubbish).

There are certain points in SOUTHLAND TALES (the title refers to Texas, where a nuclear bomb explodes at the start of the film) where Kelly appears to be trying to out-Lynch David Lynch, but replacing the noir aspect with a sci-fi one. There's even a bit where Rebekah Del Rio sings an odd version of a famous song (as she did in Mullholland Drive). Suffice to say, it doesn't work - but not for want of trying.

If you're going to populate your film with weird characters, you need someone normal to anchor events, and although Kelly does this with government man Vaughn Smallhouse he's not a major role, is instead on the very fringe of events. He is also my favourite character in the film, purely because he's the only one asking the sensible questions and who actually seems to be aware that weird things are going on. Add to this list Will Sasso as Fortuni Balducci, who spends almost the entirety of the film with a bemused "Can you believe this shit?" expression on his face and it only adds to the confusion.

The actual story goes something like this:

An actor goes missing, then wakes up in the desert with amnesia. He ends up hooking up with a former porn star and they write a script. A man poses as his identical twin in order to frame the police/government for a (faked) double murder. This man has also amnesia. A group of scientists have created a new form of energy that could well be linked to an actual perpetual motion machine. Somehow the actor and other man are linked together. The new form of energy has some sort of link to an experiment involving time and space. The script starts to come true. Everyone gets really confused.

As the making-of on the DVD reveals, practically everyone involved with the film had no idea exactly what it was, with Sasso calling it a comedy, and Kelly himself constantly referring to it as a comedy. You don't have to laugh at comedy to find it funny but it certainly helps, and SOUTHLAND TALES isn't really an acquired taste in this respect - it just doesn't work. Maybe it is a satire on politics, and on how life imitates art imitates life (characters quote each other/say each others lines, not to mention the [stunt] casting) and that'd be fine, but chucking in an alternate future (well past now - the film's set in 2008) as a backdrop, and then some final act reveal about rifts in time and space, is like getting Heston Blumenthal to make you fish n chips. It might sound impressive, all the stuff he chucks in, but it probably won't taste quite as pleasant or satisfying as a £2 special from your local chippy.

Considering the film's ultimately supposed to be about the apocalypse, it's a bit of a damp squib as you get the distinct impression the most interesting stuff is happening the instant the film ends. The start of the film is also guilty of this to a degree as we're TOLD about World War 3, when you kinda feel like that would make a pretty interesting film. Maybe the three comics that came out before the film answer some of these questions, but I honestly can't be bothered to get them to find out. Leaving some important questions for another medium to answer leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Just like Heston's fish n chips.

TALL THIN MALE SEEKS GULLIBLE IDIOT TO FREAK OUT. MUST HAVE WEAK HEART AND TERRIBLE NERVES.

In a rather disconcerting case of serendipity a friend of mine posted on Facebook something about his friend introducing him to the Slender Man mythos, and then tonight another friend mentioned it in a completely unrelated manner. We (there were a few of us gathered round for drinks) then proceeded to watch a series of youtube videos about a filmmaker who'd started to shoot a film called Marble Hornets, only to inexplicably pack it all in then promptly disappear. His friend decided to finish it and here're the results. You may wish to watch it first before I talk about it for a bit, but you don't have to (a lot of the 'episodes' are very short, when they could easily bleed into following parts, so it gets a bit annoying sifting through them)...

Right. Some of it's painfully obvious and naff, and completely ignores common sense (considering it's supposed to be 'real', characters act in service to the plot rather than realistically). For instance: J, the protagonist, goes to a guys house AT NIGHT, finds the place unlocked and abandoned and utterly creepy, but decides to keep exploring. As you would. He finds some odd stuff, and ends up going back on ANOTHER NIGHT, where he finds things have been altered. Then, a guy in a slightly daft mask appears from nowhere and apparently beats him up. J then goes back YET AGAIN and once again ON HIS OWN, where he finds more weird things. I'm sorry, but what? A weirdo jumped out the shadows and beat you up! No one in their right mind would ever go back there! Certainly not on their own! And after viewing footage depicting creepy stuff, like the masked guy appearing in his room and a Slender Man standing outside his house at night, he continues to go places on his own and at night, like some sort of maniac. Honestly.

However, all that aside, it IS creepy, and despite watching it after a few beers and in a room full of friends, certain aspects worked to create tension and we were all eager to keep watching (despite protestations from certain folks that the whole thing was "balls"). That's nothing to be sniffed at. What works for it isn't the filmmaking technique itself (comparisons with Blair Witch are both blindingly obvious and disgustingly apt) but the central/core myth of the Slender Man - a tall, thin guy in a black suit with no discernible facial features, and tentacle-like spindly limbs. That's a freaky image right there but put him on a lonely country road at night as you drive past and I for one am ready to shit my pants.

So I started looking into his origins and found stuff more disturbing than the Marble Hornets videos. Here're some creepy pictures:

[hmm these pics might not show up, but no matter - you can still see them on the forum linked to below]

Seriously, this stuff gives me the willies. Maybe it's the fear of opening your curtains at night to see a face waiting for you, or walking down a street on your own in the dark and passing an alleyway with something in it, but the Slender Man idea has got MAJOR creep factor. It's also got legs, in that since its inception a little over a year ago, it's spread as a "real" myth (well, more accurately a "real" urban legend) and has evidently struck a chord with most people who find out about it (many, no doubt, firmly believing it's real, or at least based on a real thing).

It all started on this forum HERE. And here's a pretty good infodump on the 'phenomenon'. Interestingly - for me, anyways - the forum that it all kicked off on also mentions Dionaea House, something I literally stumbled upon back in 2004 when it first appeared. Basically, the house in question has A LOT of seriously fkkked-up stuff happening in it, that affects everyone involved with the place. In a masterful stroke that put it in the realm of 'is it real or not?' the main site [http://www.dionaea-house.com/] documents weird things but MORE IMPORTANTLY links to associated stuff, such as a brilliant LIVEJOURNAL of a babysitter who worked in the place (which then in turn links to another associated site, and so on). Very, very clever and creepy. I'd also pay attention to the mentions of The Rake on the aforementioned forum, because that sounds equally scary. Which then in turn lead me HERE. A veritable goldmine of creepy ideas, I'm providing you with! Oy vey!