As we approach Hallowe'en most (if not all) of my reviews will be of the ghoulish nature. I find that there is nothing as basic, as primal, as a good horror film, and I think that there is something wickedly enchanting about that. So far in the past week we have seen a monster movie (The Thing), and a slasher film (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Now we journey into the occult with a film that is not at all scary in the jump-out-of-your-seat sense, but it a supremely chilling example of the natural human condition to turn to a deity to explain the misunderstood.
Searching for a missing child, Sgt. Howie journeys to the Scottish island of Summerisle to investigate the disappearance. Upright, very Catholic, moralistic, and a virgin, the good ol' boy is repulsed to find that the entire island, maybe 200 residents, live in a backwards heathenism where they practice pagan rituals and turn to the gods of the Sun and of the orchard to pray for bountiful fruit harvests. Howie is affronted by the level of sexual content in their religion, and how blatantly people are exposed to it from childhood.
Howie finds the townspeople weird, but kind. However they are incredibly unhelpful, offering contradictory stories about the girl Rowan for whom Howie searches. In some cases she is dead, in others she is not. In many she doesn't even exist on the island. His xenophobia clouds his judgment, but as time passes and after he has met with the town's leader, Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee), his investigation leads him down a dark and disturbing path as the town makes ready for their May Day celebrations.
For the life of me I have not the slightest idea how this film got the budget to be made. This is not a horror film in the traditional sense, and the chills come from a place that would not at all be commercial friendly. It flatly mocks Christianity as well as more earthly-bound religions, and would not even really conform to the idea of a murder mystery. The fact that it is made must be a testament to the efforts of the filmmakers, and I am rather glad that it has happened.
This film is well written, very sharp, and always aware of its subject matter. The leads give fine performances, and the rest of cast do a good job in maintaining a mood that carries the audience's suspense even when there is really nothing to draw suspense from. This film's power comes from the fact that it is incredibly unusual material--other films about the occult generally end up having their rituals manifest into something supernatural. This film simply shows the practices, and exposes us to a culture unseen and unwanted. The very nature of a place in which everyone fervently practices beliefs that a contradictory to our Western ideals is unsettling, and to be trapped with them with their most extravagant holiday is frightening.
The end of the film is powerful enough to stay with you long after the credits roll. That final scene made me think of something that someone once said: "Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father can make you live forever and if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so that he can remove and evil force that it present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree." It all has to be kept in perspective, I suppose.
2.5/4
A note: this film has some really weird musical sequences that would be interesting on their own or in a less strange film, but here they seem disjointed and are really confusing. Particularly the siren's song.
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