FEATURING: Tamara Krcunovic, Leon Lucev, Szilvia Krizsán
PLOT: A group of former factory workers find solace in satanism.
COMMENTS: When a movie opens with murals of socialist era workers on the crumbling walls of an abandoned building, you understand pretty well what it will be about: a society in disarray looking back to an idolized past while trying to find hope in desperate times. And it is, as we follow a group of former factory workers trying to negotiate a better future for themselves and secure severance payment for an accident that happened years ago and took the lives of many of their loved ones.
Everything changes for the weirder when Mia, a man with some disturbing ideas of the apocalyptic kind, arrives in the group. At first, he persuades the group to conduct Satanic rituals to communicate with their dead loved ones. Then he offers more wish fulfillment. Will they find what they are looking for, and what will be the price?
Serbian director Djordjevic is known mostly for his shocking 2009 The Life and Death of a Porno Gang, a provocative piece of cinema that went largely unnoticed because of the release of an even more disturbing Serbian movie in the same year, the infamous A Serbian Film. But whatever comes from this director needs to be examined as potentially weird, especially when supernatural events are mentioned.
What we have here, though, is a contemporary moral parable with hints of the supernatural and the apocalyptic. More grounded than a typical horror—only some bad omens like birds falling dead hint at the supernatural—this tale portrays moral decay and the worship of false idols in an ambiguous, non-didactic way. While the idols prove to be hollow in the end, a new unity emerges from the experience of common rituals, reigniting the passion of our characters to continue fighting for their rights. It is almost wholesome.
Balkan cinema is known for eccentric magical realist works, like the filmography of Emir Kusturica. Here the tone is less lighthearted, but a similar exaggeration of reality in a portrait of societal upheaval takes shape, climaxing with an urgent act of vigilantism. There are many nods to the history of the country too, from the Ottoman Empire to its recent socialist past, giving context and enriching the narrative.
PLOT: Two middle-aged men, an old artist, and some women embark on a series of depravities.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: It is not only one of the most disturbing movies ever, but an incoherent mess that most of the time does not make any sense.
COMMENTS: German extremism has a rich cinematic tradition stretching from Jörg Buttgereit’s infamous Nekromantikin 1988 until today. In the 21st century, where extreme cinema has developed as a distinct genre worldwide, even more disturbing works of dubious artistic quality appear. And in the extreme horror landscape of our day, Buttgereit is no longer at the forefront. A new voice has emerged, as out of our worst nightmares. The name of that voice is Marian Dora.
Melancholie der engel (The Angel’s Melancholy) remains Dora’s most widely known movie, considered by many to be the most disturbing film to ever exist. We follow two men, seemingly with no purpose in life, who seduce three women and take them to an isolated building deep inside a creepy forest, full of dead animals, worms, and slugs. An old friend of theirs introduces himself as an artist early on, bringing another, handicapped, woman with him. And the depravity begins.
Many scenes of violent torture, mostly of a sexual nature, take place both towards the women, and towards living (or even dead) animals. The violence persists from the first moment of the movie, even when its narrative function is not always clear. Rapid editing and many close-ups create a sense of disorientation, while grotesque imagery attacks the viewer from every direction. No coherent story emerges. In the tradition of contemporary extreme cinema, as we read in “Extreme Cinema: Affective Strategies in Transnational Media” by Aaron Michael Kerner and Jonathan L. Knapp, we have something more akin to an episodic structure, with the disturbing events being the episodes.
What kind of extreme imagery are we talking about? Images of decay, mostly, in its many forms. Worms, corpses, and decomposition are always in the background. However, the cinematography maintains a painterly quality, especially in its blurry landscapes. The dreadful forest that engulfs our characters reminds us of the forest in Lars von Trier’s Antichrist(2009), if it was even more extreme and perverted. But the real evil remains inside our protagonists, the three men, and their disgusting acts.
The women are not always the typical female victims of a slasher flick or torture porn. Sometimes they seem to enjoy the depravity around them, which makes the movie even more disturbing and difficult to watch. The exhausting duration, around two and a half hours, does not help either. It is surely a weird movie, but it is recommended only for hardcore fans of extreme horror. Everyone else, stay away from this.
366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
DIRECTED BY: Tatu Heikkinen, Veleda Thorsson-Heikkinen
FEATURING: Tatu Heikkinen, John Haughm, Veleda Thorsson-Heikkinen
PLOT: Strange events beset a grieving husband in the wee hours of the night leading into October 31st.
COMMENTS: The facts, as best they might be determined, are these: 1) the unnamed lead character has lost his beloved wife, and 2) his night-vision exterior surveillance camera picked up more than just a midnight rodent behaving in a silly manner. As for the rest of Haunters of the Silence, it’s just about all up for interpretation. A faded photographic image loses a balloon, a father (?), and finally a boy; ceremonial drumming may be a temporary cure for mind de-anchoring; and if a dream facsimile of your dead wife mutters “It’s okay”, perhaps it’s best to take her at her word.
Or not.
In the hopes of better explaining the Haunters of the Silence experience, I quote from director Tatu Heikkinen’s IMDb bio: “His work embraces abstraction and emotional stillness—rejecting the fast-paced editing in favor of grounded, contemplative storytelling.” This statement, as reflected in Haunters, is true in many ways. Heikkinen (and his real-life wife and co-director, Veleda Thorsson-Heikkinen) embraces abstraction and emotional stillness. Abstraction comes in many forms, many of them being unlikely camera foregrounds framing background action, for instance, but also long stroboscopic sequences, and plenty of forays into straight-up dream imagery. (The protagonist retreating through a large storm drain through the center of the Shadow Man’s menacing outline in the cosmos is of particular note.)
Haunters of the Silence does have fast-paced editing, though. Shots hastily flicker from one to the next, which might risk leaving the viewer disoriented if weren’t for the meticulous, subtle, and grounding sound design: the listener, as it were, is rarely if ever jarred from the dream-logic ordeals put before them. This sensory-tension works nicely with the temporal-tension: time does not pass per usual in this film, and the Ancient and the Modern co-exist, with incense-burning and buzzing smartphones pulling upon each other across the millennia of human ritual.
As the reader will have noticed, my remarks fell into abstruseness more quickly than usual here, but I blame that on what I saw (and heard). Haunters of the Silence is a weird thing to experience—and it is more in the realm of an experience than a customary film. Tatu Heikkinen and Veleda Thorsson-Heikkinen have built a precise sequence of sounds and images, which is as often baffling as it is beautiful. I give nothing away with this observation on the final scene when the Shadow Man emerges through the bedroom door of now-waking protagonist: life—like time, memory, and grief—does not finish so long as we are on this Earth.
366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
DIRECTED BY: Lotfy Nathan
FEATURING: Noah Jupe, Nicolas Cage, FKA Twigs, Isla Johnson
PLOT: A Jewish teenage boy, the son of a carpenter, is tempted by a Stranger to use his innate powers for evil.
Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
COMMENTS: Mary and Jesus speak like they’re ordering high tea at the Goring hotel, Joseph raps in a California accent, the locals talk like Greeks pretending they’re Egyptians, and I swear one esteemed rabbi is Scottish. Inconsistent accents are not always a death knell for historical movies. There are numerous classics where the cast eschews their natural tongues to speak English (e.g. Schindler’s List), others where one or two characters can be forgiven for mangling a difficult accent (e.g. Braveheart), and even a few where they purposefully ignore proper dialects (e.g., The Death of Stalin). But those are movies whose greatness overcomes their anachronisms; when your movie isn’t great, or anywhere close to it, that kind of lack of attention to detail can become emblematic of what’s wrong with the work.
The Carpenter’s Son is a historical horror drama set during Jesus’ teenage years, an era the Gospels skipped over as too boring. It revolves as much, if not more, around Nicolas Cage’s carpenter than it does his moody teen son. Joseph (he’s never named Joseph in the film, despite the character being firmly public domain by now) narrates and struggles with doubts over whether his son is who his wife says he is, and, once it appears that the boy has magical powers, whether he’s a force for good or evil. In the meantime, he lays down strict rules for his stepson’s own good. No one is to know who they are while the trio is hiding out (for pseudo-Biblical reasons) in Egypt. Mary (i.e. “the mother”) does little of anything. “Jesus” (credited as “the boy”) acts like a typical teenager, basically a good egg, but taken to occasional impertinence and rebelliousness, and even a bit of peeping at his bathing neighbor. Oh, and he accidentally heals lepers when a playmate shoves him into them, so there’s that. And he has a real case to scream “you’re not my real Father!” at Nicolas Cage, but he mostly avoids that temptation. Plus, he fights demons!
But despite all this meaty material, the script provides no suspense or tension. Jesus’ temptation by Lucifer was already covered more profoundly and succinctly in both the Canonical Gospels and in a far greater film; this story is therefore not only predictable, but redundant. Satan’s initial attempts at seduction are pretty lame: she mostly tempts Jesus to use his powers for good, then gives him a peek at eternal damnation, which pretty much turns him off to the whole Universal Evil thing. The plan of acting kind of like a dick to get the messiah to abandon the world’s salvation doesn’t work out, but Satan will learn from this failure and give it a better shot in 15 years.
Cage monotones his way through his monologues, briefly erupting into periodic patented “Cage rage” rants to earn his paycheck before slipping back into a doze. As meek Mary, out-of-her-depths pop star FKA Twigs follows her screen hubby’s lead, looking lost most of the time while conserving her emotion for the one or two chances she gets to raise her voice. The two younger actors, Jupe and Johnson, fare better, but the script gives them so little to work with that they make only a slight impression. There are a few nifty if frustratingly brief visions of Hell and stuff near the end—if you can stay awake that long, and can make them out through the underlit and murky lensing.
The Carpenter’s Son was “inspired by” the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas. That narrative was a fascinating imagination of Jesus’ childhood, where the future savior acts like a bit of a brat, killing classmates for slights (don’t freak out, he later resurrects them) and performing odd rites like creating clay birds and bringing them to life. That script would make for a potentially great, wild movie. But The Carpenter’s Son is too reverential and chickens out from making that gonzo adaptation; what should be a bold provocation is instead an assemble-as-directed horror film, with a depressingly literal and violent good vs. evil showdown and only a surface-level examination of theology or the burden of messiahdom. Christians wary of a blasphemous Jesus horror film need not fear this mediocrity; worshipers at the altar of cinema, on the other hand, may call it sacrilege. Frankly, I’d rather get a splinter than watch The Carpenter’s Son again.
(This movie was nominated for review by “Sal U. Lloyd,” who said it was “Theologically unorthodox, with influences from Begotten and the African flashbacks in Boorman’s Exorcist Ii: The Heretic.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
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.
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.
![The Demon's Rook [Blu-ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41Tu2ceFgeL._SL500_.jpg)