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CAPSULE: VISIONS OF SUFFERING (FINAL DIRECTOR’S CUT) (2006/2016)

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Visions of Suffering is available to watch on video-on-demand in either it’s original 2006 version or the 2016 “Final Director’s Cut.”

BewareWeirdest!

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Anastasia Asafova, Andrey Iskanov

PLOT: A necrophilia-obsessed man is haunted by demons.

Still from Visions of Suffering (Final Director's Cut) (2016)

COMMENTS: Ominously titled, as if to warn potential viewers, Andrey Iskanov’s Visions of Suffering is available both in an original 2006 cut and in a shorter 2016 “Final Director’s Cut.” Given the option of watching both, it seems obvious that 90 minutes of Suffering is preferable to 120 minutes of Suffering. Without having seen the original, I feel confident in saying Iskanov made the right decision to cut out 30 minutes of Suffering.

While the movie is extremely abstract and opaque in its details and methodology, playing like a feature length music video for an industrial noise/death metal crossover band, the basics of the thin plot are not especially difficult to comprehend. Sasha, our bespectacled protagonist, wanders through a misty yellow forest until he encounters a guy wearing a burlap sack on his head (the synopsis explains that this is a shaman and that Sasha interrupts an occult ceremony, perhaps thus bringing a curse on his head). Of course, it was all a dream, and Sasha wakes up and immediately screens a necrophilia porno flick before discovering that his phone is on the fritz. He leafs through books on Jack the Ripper and an anthology of murder scene photos while waiting for the repairman to arrive. While the repairman fixes the phone, they talk about dreams, and the guest casually drops some vampire lore. Phone fixed, Sasha calls his girlfriend (?) Vika, who’s busy shooting lesbian cutter porn. After hanging up, Sasha sees some vampires loitering about outside, and one of them stabs him in the earlobe through the keyhole. Then Sasha has some visions of suffering, and Vika’s car is possessed as she drives to his apartment while wearing iron cross sunglasses. Sasha has some more visions of suffering and calls an exorcist type (played by the director), who explains that Sasha has likely riled up some demons through his desecration of the dead. The director offers to fix the problem for 7000 euros, but that’s too steep for Sasha. So he has some more visions of suffering until the demon Golgatha shows up in his apartment with a sword and starts hacking up the furniture. Then he wakes up, and everything’s OK.

It’s a familiar old story, but Iskanov films it with some genuine style, if not taste or discipline. Much of the film is shot through hazy green/yellow filters that turn cheap costumes and effects that would probably look ridiculous in the full light of day into creepy nightmare fuel. (At times it’s like a less-effective Begotten, without the mythological resonances.) The sound mix is thick, dripping with ooze, spooky noises, and shrieks and moans off one of those atmospheric Halloween sound effect compilations. There is a lot of shock imagery: mutilation, autopsies, explicit sex, implied necrophilia. There are also a lot of superimposed image, especially in the fast-cut opening credits sequence that shows off Iskanov’s gift for montage. But all of this artistry is in service of a juvenile morbidity that seems to arise from listening to too many Marilyn Manson albums under the influence of too much hashish.

Suffering earns the rare and, in some quarters, coveted “” + “” tags. That’s not a recommendation for most folks. The Beware is for content—explicit sex, grotesque real autopsy footage, and some sick stuff that made even me cringe—but even excepting those, the film will prove a bit of a slog for most viewers because of its nonlinearity, tonal monotony, and humorlessness. Still, although it might have worked better chopped up into a series of easily digestible shorts, thanks to some memorably spooky imagery and resourcefulness in disguising his budgetary limitations Iskanov’s movie is not as much of a trial as it sounds like on paper. Fans of experimental extreme horror will eat it up. But please, don’t force me to watch the 2-hour version.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The movie is really about an endless stream of colorful cinematography and visuals, head-trips, nightmares, atmosphere, bizarre creatures, etc… the plot and characters never really develop. In other words, too undisciplined.”–Zev Toledano, The Worldwide Celluloid Massacre

(This movie was nominated for review by “Josh.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE DEMON’S ROOK (2013)

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DIRECTED BY: James Sizemore

FEATURING: James Sizemore, Ashleigh Jo Sizemore, John Chatham, Josh Gould

PLOT: After disappearing into the Earth as a young boy, Roscoe returns from the Dark Womb years later to thwart a demonic invasion.

Still from The Demon's Rook (2013)

COMMENTS: Well, that was ridiculous.

Mind you, it is a glorious piece of ridiculousness—and a testament to the can-do attitude of filmmaker James Sizemore and his pals. The Demon’s Rook looks like a professional piece from a career special-effects artisan, though apparently all the costumes, violence, and prosthetics were whipped up by Sizemore after he watched some YouTube tutorials. The whole thing exhibits extreme enthusiasm, as supernatural set-pieces unspool (typically toward a gristly climax) while Roscoe and Eva do their darnedest to dodge death as a trio of dastardly demons reign havoc upon a rural corner of Georgia.

The story functions almost exclusively as a framework for the atmosphere and artistry (beyond the top-notch bloodwork, there’s a ubiquitous moody synth score whipped up—you guessed it—by Sizemore’s pals). The filmmakers provide just enough personality, pathos, and peril to give the viewer an emotional “in,” and a more enterprising reviewer might consider the symbolic ramifications of the title: in chess, the rook is a powerhouse enforcer, though one typically fated for doom.

I am not that enterprising. I am, however, someone who’s seen enough micro-budget DIY outings to recommend this movie to anyone who’s remotely hooked by the gory trailer, or has a yen for ’70s and ’80s splatter features—particularly if they like them spiked with mysticism. The Demon’s Rook is a joyous celebration of classic splatter, and proof positive that anyone with enough gumption (and tolerance for YouTube tutorials) can make an entertaining violence picture.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Like a midnight movie from the 80s, its focus is on showing as much blood as possible, while acting, plotting and coherence all deliberately take a backseat… the nostalgic bunch of you out there, who remember staying up to watch cheap horror flicks on VHS or late-night cable, will probably find themselves entertained by THE DEMON’S ROOK’s cheesy, ridiculous charm.” — Eric Walkuski, JoBlo (contemporaneous)

The Demon's Rook [Blu-ray]

The Demon's Rook [Blu-ray]
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FANTASIA 2024: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: MONONOKE THE MOVIE (2024)

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劇場版モノノ怪 唐傘

Gekijouban Mononoke Karakasa

AKA Mononoke Movie: Paper Umbrella; AKA Mononoke the Movie: Phantom in the Rain

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Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Kenji Nakamura

FEATURING: Voices of , , Hiroshi Kamiya

PLOT: Two new attendants arrive at Lord Tenshi’s pleasure palace, and a karakasa is poised to infiltrate the world of humans unless it is thwarted by a mysterious medicine man loitering  by the castle doorway.

Still from Mononoke the Movie (2024)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Psychedelic colors and flourishes permeate the grand castle, nearly overwhelming the eye. Mononoke then finishes the job with its massive bursts of vibrant imagery and unceasing kinetics whenever the demon attempts to slam into our world.

COMMENTS: From start to finish—and this includes the credit sequence wherein we circle around a beautifully detailed temple chamber as the characters whiz by—Kenji Nakamura’s Mononoke grabs and throttles the eyes with a palette both wondrous and classic, as fluid images in Edo style play across a rice-paper surface. The mundane is majestic, the majestic is mysterious, and the mystery unfolds in one of the most intense exhibits of swirls, spirals, whirls, and wonderment I’ve laid my eyes on in quite some time. If, perhaps, ever.

While the visuals hog the screen (as they are wont to do), the story is more than just a backdrop for artistic razzmatazz. Taking place during the Edo period, almost completely within a pleasure palace, intrigue aplenty fuels the adventure. Crammed into under ninety minutes, we follow the daily struggles of two new “recruits,” Asa and Kame; we learn dribs and drabs about conspiracies and power struggles; we take in the hijinks of the gate’s guardian as he alternately attempts to shoo away the medicine man (insisting, often and emphatically, he does “not need a love a potion!”) and relishes his company. The plot threads move forward at a steady clip, interweaving delightfully into an iridescent tapestry of secrets, emotions, and supernatural to-dos, all held less and less in check by the palace’s strict protocols and the overarching devotion to duty.

Beyond the mad flights of demonic fancy, Nakamura’s vision dazzles from moment to moment. In colored geometric form, we see the delicious scent of food; the air and gusts loom blue or brown, as the circumstances demand; and the faces of the innumerable women in the background spiral and shift color. This third touch evokes their ambitions, for they are trained to blend beautifully into the background, standing out only if they have authority or are irredeemably awkward (Kame, I’m looking at you). Scenes end with forcefully slamming ornamental doors. We often see the shifty medicine seller in close-ups of his ever-moving eyes. He knows something bad is coming, and only he has the avian-form scales, sheeves of binding paper, and Sword of Exorcism. (That toothful, piebald little weapon is practically a character in its own right.)

This is nutso, this is fast, and it is a full-frontal assault on the eyes. (I opted to sit in the center of the front-most row. I have no regrets.) You’ve been warned, and I’ll warn you further: you will not want to miss out on this spectacle.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“I’m not entirely certain what it is that I just watched but I’m glad that I got to see it on the big screen with good sound… This all stands beside psychedelic imagery that mixes better than one might think – the evils being committed are ancient and incomprehensible.”–Jason Seaver, Jay’s Movie Blog (Fantasia screening)

 

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE KEEP (1983)

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DIRECTED BY: Michael Mann

FEATURING: Scott Glenn, Ian McKellen, Alberta Watson, Jürgen Prochnow, Gabriel Byrne

PLOT: A Nazi regiment unwisely establishes a base inside the keep of a Romanian castle where an otherworldly beast has been imprisoned for the safety of humanity.

Still from The Keep (1983)

COMMENTS: Wanting to cleanse my palette after my last encounter with Nazis, I figured it would be fun to watch them get slaughtered by a supernatural force even more evil than themselves. What I forgot to reckon with was Michael Mann, a man who walks eagerly into grey spaces. To be clear, dead Nazis haven’t lost their appeal. It’s just that no one comes out of The Keep smelling like a rose. 

Mann has always been interested in the bad things that decent people do in defense of some greater good, usually accompanied by moody visuals and moodier music. In that sense, The Keep fits right into his CV. We’ve got pure bad guys in the form of a Nazi platoon that sets up camp in a Carpathian castle, but the forces aligned against them are a disparate bunch: Molasar, an ancient demon trapped behind silver crosses and a talisman; the amazingly named Glaeken Trismegestus, a kind of knight-errant tasked with ensuring Molasar never emerges from this dark prison; and Dr. Cuza, a Jewish academic sprung from a concentration camp to help the Nazis translate ancient languages, who decides that freeing Molasar will save his people. So our bad guys are plenty bad, but the enemy of our enemy might not be our friend.

The stage is set for a real philosophical showdown, but  Paramount was looking for a horror-thriller, and when the production went way over budget, the studio declined to provide additional funds. To complicate things further, the visual effects supervisor died two weeks into post-production, leaving behind no instruction and no means of accomplishing the effects-heavy finale Mann intended. Finally, Mann turned in a cut nearly three and a half hours long, promptly getting himself thrown off the project. The studio hacked off about ninety minutes and, following a terrible preview, applied classic Hollywood logic and shaved off another thirty. The final product is, predictably, disjointed and open-ended, with characters appearing and disappearing randomly, a significantly truncated romance, and the entire thing wrapping up in a flurry of anticlimax. (Amusingly, an entire battalion of Nazis is wiped out while we’re watching their commander in another room.) It’s hard to argue that a horror film the length of The Godfather Part II is a good idea, but the shortened version is sorely lacking in some of the most critical areas, such as suspense, or clear linear progression.

The elements that work best in The Keep are the ones that go gleefully beyond the pale. Electronica pioneers Tangerine Dream provide a wonderfully anachronistic score that works despite itself. The production design by John Box and the art direction of Alan Tomkins and Herbert Westbrook are suitably evocative and foreboding. And best of all, the acting is top-notch baroque insanity. Byrne is relentlessly nasty in classic Nazi fashion, positioned opposite the war-weary pragmatism that Prochnow brings over undiluted from Das Boot (1981). McKellen uses the full power of his stage-acting experience, bellowing in a bizarre American accent (reportedly at Mann’s instigation) that eventually becomes a John Huston impression. Watson makes no impression at all. And then, in the role of the enigmatic stranger who is engaged in a millennia-old battle against evil, there’s affable everyman Scott Glenn. He’s horribly miscast, but somehow he gets far entirely on the basis of the asynchrony. The story may not make sense, but at least everyone goes for it.

The best thing that The Keep has going for it is its spectacle, and that suffers from being visibly undercut, far from the poetic grandeur its auteur intended. It’s hard to say if the film Mann had in mind–a blend of arty philosophy and purple grandiosity –would have worked. But it’s clear from what remains that it would have lacked for neither.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The Keep is a weird movie and I mean that in the best possible way. On the negative end of the spectrum, there are too many characters and the film is often muddled and slow-moving. However, if you stick with it, you will be rewarded with some rather fine monster-mashing and other assorted general nonsense.” Mitch Lovell, The Video Vacuum

(This movie was nominated for review by purplefig. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

The Keep

The Keep
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Capsules

CAPSULE: LO (2009)

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Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Travis Betz

FEATURING: Ward Roberts, Jeremiah Birkett, Sarah Lassez

PLOT: Justin uses a spell book to summon the infernal spirit Lo to help him see his dead girlfriend once again, but the demon uses every trick possible to avoid fulfilling the command.

Still from Lo (2009)

COMMENTS: There have been many movies about demonic possession, but few about demonic summoning… and no other, that I can think of, where almost the entire movie plays out from inside the safety of a pentagram. (Lo‘s closest competition for time spent inside a thaumaturgic circle might be Viy.) For the first five minutes we watch Justin, in a pitch black room lit solely by candles, painstakingly (if clumsily) construct this magical barrier, following the instructions etched on the yellowed parchment of an ancient grimoire, christening the ritual with his own blood. He then speaks the magic incantation and successfully summons the demon Lo, a pathetic yet powerful devil with a partly exposed brain and useless crushed legs which force him to painfully drag himself from out of the inky blackness towards his summoner, angry and defiant but unable to cross the enchanted barrier and devour Justin’s soul. The spell Justin cast compels a boon from this creature. You see, he saw a demon drag his girlfriend off to Hell, and now he wants her back—or at least to see her one last time. And Lo must meet Justin’s demand—although, in classic Mephistophelian fashion, the spirit isn’t above resorting to temptations, tricks, half-truths, and twisting Justin’s requests in any way he can.

The way Lo achieves its aesthetic aims on a minimal budget is nothing less than magical. Darkness is an ally; the set is a essentially black box, props are minimal, and only the demon costumes consume a significant amount of dollars. The flashbacks that supply the backstory are told through reenactments on a stage Lo conjures in Justin’s darkened apartment. There are red curtains, applause, visible stagehands, and comedy and tragedy masks that react to the proceedings. For additional color, Lo also summons a fuzzy green demon rat, a lizard-headed Nazi demon, a pair of damned silhouettes who press against a saran wrap wall as they describe the torments of Hell, and a couple of (mediocre, but welcome) musical numbers.

The story advances almost entirely through the antagonistic dialogues of the demon and his summoner. Chances are good that you will guess the twist ending early on; but it’s such a perfect construct that it doesn’t detract from the poignancy of the reveal. Who can’t relate to falling in love with the wrong person, a love that might be mutual and true, but which fate and circumstance dictates must be temporary? And who can’t relate to the compulsion to understand the true reasons behind a disappearance, however horrible the answer might be? As breakup movies go, Lo supplies a real, mythic catharsis.

With all that it has going for it, I would love to nominate Lo for our supplemental Apocryphally Weird list. Is it ingenious? Definitely. Engaging? Undoubtedly. Passionate? Sincerely. Recommended? You know it. Weird? Ah, here is where the favorable adjectives falter. Lo is well off the beaten path of the average filmgoer—the one who doesn’t frequent this site. What we see in Lo, though, isn’t so much weird as offbeat, rare, counter-Hollywood: unusual in its approach, by necessity, but not so far out-there that it makes us question our notions of reality, or if what a film can and should be. So, despite the fact that we give Lo a high rating, we won’t be adding it to our List. That doesn’t mean we’re giving you a pass to skip it.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a peculiar and experimental horror film about love gained, love lost, and the demons that can stand in your way. ‘Lo’ is an odd twist on Faust, and an entertaining indie film that impresses with its bare essential filmmaking.”–Felix Vaquez, Cinema Crazed (DVD)

(This movie was nominated for review by Kat, who argued “I’m a little surprised not to see Travis Betz’s Lo (2009) on the suggestion list. Like Ink, its imitations and inspirations are pretty obvious– but I personally think it outstrips Ink in a few key areas, never over-stepping its budget. I found it a little more bizarre, too, in the way it takes a simple trope of a premise and reels continually between drama and dark comedy.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)