The House Between: "returned" (Season 2 / Episode 1)

Guest Post: Gretel & Hansel (2020)

Gretel & Hansel: "The Seduction of Gretel"’

By Jonas Schwartz

Ozgood Perkins, son of the horror movie legend Anthony Perkins, has spun the classic fairy tale Hansel & Gretel into a feminist tome on gaining power in a despairing time. It's no misprint that the filmmakers reversed the title order in this version, Gretel & Hansel, since this is definitely the sister's story. Perkins has a keen eye for evoking visual dread, but like the two waifs in the original tale, the plot meanders off the path for too long to keep audiences invested. 

Like most fairy tales, Gretel & Hansel begins with a narration, a prologue about a beautiful child with a black heart. It is a fable that all the kids in town have been told about the child gaining supernatural energy and feeding off the village children. That legend is well-known to adolescent Gretel (Sophia Lillis). She and her baby brother Hansel (Samuel Leakey) are evicted from their home by their desperate mother so they wander the woods for shelter. They find a kindly old lady (Alice Krige), who offers them protection and food. The old lady recognizes innate powers in Gretel and begins to teach the girl to harness her abilities, but their new home is anything but safe. Ghostly children call out from behind the walls and the old lady has agendas that frighten the little boy. Gretel, on the other hand, has become transfixed.

Perkins' masterful mise-en-scène is a visual feast that sets a foreboding mood. Foggy woods with sun beams cutting through like razors and fall colors of orange and yellow present a pastoral setting, where evil lingers just off-screen. There is one scene where a tree bends to Gretel's will, reaching down to touch her, that exemplifies the heroine's burgeoning skills and emancipation from her out-of-control life. 

The script by Rob Hayes is a bit slow and he fails to build enough of an impression of each character to interest the viewer. Hansel is a cypher of the dependent younger sibling. We have no sense of who he is, so he merely becomes a ball and chain around Gretel's leg. Several sequences, such as a sojourn to an abandoned cabin, are badly paced, and a scene with a hunter (Charles Babalola) adds nothing to the plot or pacing. The 14^th-15^th Century dialogue, instead of lending authenticity, comes off stilted and affected. It takes great talent -- Arthur Miller perfected it with his play The Crucible -- to utilize that mid-millennium cadence without sounding forced, and Hayes does not achieve the same artistry. 

The cast is fine, but few stand out. Lillis, the horror film flavor of the decade after IT and Netflix's gruesome black comedy I’m Not Ok With This, has the most meat and is a captivating protagonist. Krige finds little to add distinction to the old lady, and young Leakey has been led adrift by his thin characterization. Perkins seems more attentive to the sights and sounds than the story and performances.

Osgood Perkins, without a doubt, is a director to watch. While still early in his directing career, he captures dread with his camera as the German expressionists did in the silent age. It will be interesting to see what he conjures with a wiser script.  

Jonas Schwartz is Vice President / Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle,  West Coast Critic for TheaterMania, Contributing Critic for Broadway World, and a Contributing Critic for ArtsInLA

Guest Post: The Invisible Man (2020)

GONE GUY: The Invisible Man (2020)

By Jonas Schwartz

A vital horror remake needs four components to succeed. A compelling lead, taut direction, smart dialogue, and a purpose for being remade, so that the new version is relevant to the times and not just a cash grab. Leigh Whannell's new The Invisible Man has all that in spades. Not a perfect film, but there's enough craft and ingenuity to invade people's psyches. 

Late at night, Cecilia Kass (Elizabeth Moss, Mad Men and Handmaid's Tale) retrieves her hidden bags and sneaks out of her fortress of a house from her abusive boyfriend Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen, The Haunting of Hill House). Adrian has treated Cecilia like a possession, and he attacks her for wandering off like a dog. Resourceful and determined, she manages to get away, nonetheless. While recovering with a cop friend, James (Aldis Hodge) and his daughter, Cecilia continues to suffer from battered wife syndrome. Learning that Adrian committed suicide and left her all his money gives Cecilia some solace. However, Cecilia begins to feel stalked even though Adrian has died, and before long, she knows that an unseen presence is putting her back in peril. But everyone else thinks Cecilia has just lost her mind. She becomes isolated by her loved ones and deemed dangerous. While they pity and fear Cecilia, her friends had better watch their backs, because an invisible spector is right behind them.

The Invisible Man would never have worked without an actress of Moss' caliber. The film is from her perspective and the audience must be fully invested in her nightmares and her ability to fight back. Moss allows herself to play that line between determined and unraveled. Her behavior needs to appear nuts or all her friends who abandon her would just seem like jerks, so the audience wouldn't care that they too are being menaced. Moss projects strength of mind and physical prowess to survive the assaults from someone she can't see. Additionally, Wannell taps into the abused captive scenario and never makes her a victim. Cecilia is always fighting back, whether physically or psychologically. She drives the entire story and never allows events just to happen to her. She's a potent but credible heroine. Even her occupation becomes an essential part of her being.  As an architect, she not only is able to compartmentalize and think through details quickwittedly, but she knows all the secret compartments in her house to hide things from her menacing boyfriend. 

Wannell takes the original HG Wells story (and classic James Whale 1933 film) and breathes new life by following the impetus, but not repeating the plot points of the originals (though he does nod to the origins by naming the villain Griffin like the original tale). The villain's ability to become invisible is stylish and creative. With the opening, Wannell harks back to those houses on the haunted hills of horror films past, hanging over a cliff above the crashing waves, and the setting manages to be both gothic and post-modern. He draws visual cues from water, the waves, rain, etc, to the opaque killer. Wannell earns his jump scares and they never seem cheap. The score by Benjamin Wallfisch is spine-chilling and reminiscent of Franz Waxman's early 30s horror music, particularly for The Bride of Frankenstein.

One plot hole that does bug is turning the villain into the Invisible Terminator. The invisibility is believable in a sketchy, technology way, but his super-human strength is not. He lifts huge men and throws them down corridors which is never explained convincingly.  However, this is not enough to detract from enjoying the movie. Director Wannell has already proven himself as one of Hollywood's most beguiling horror writers of the new millennium. He gave birth to two horror franchises, SAW and Insidious. Now with The Invisible Man, his second film as a director, he illustrates his panache as a suspense master. 

Jonas Schwartz is Vice President / Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle,  West Coast Critic for TheaterMania, Contributing Critic for Broadway World, and a Contributing Critic for ArtsInLA.