As much as I love horror movies, it's rare that I find a film that I actually find to be scary anymore. Sure, there's movies that are well put-together or that happen to make those midnight trips to the bathroom slightly more harrowing, but I haven't seen many things lately that have actually had me curled up in my seat, my spine seemingly filled to the brim with liquid dread. Fear is, of course, a subjective thing (so take the following statement with an appropriate amount of salt), but I personally found The Taking of Deborah Logan to be one of the scariest movies I've ever seen.
Framed as a documentary about Alzheimer's, the film follows a production crew of grad students as they record the daily life of Sarah Logan (Anne Ramsay) and her mother, Deborah (Jill Larson). As is the case with such movies, things appear normal at first, until Deborah's sporadic behavior implies that something much more sinister may be afoot.
It's hardly an original premise, but the film's worth lies mainly in the execution of the concept and the performances of its cast. The documentary facade is truthfully never really that believable; some of the cuts and angles are just a bit too clean for college students filming on a handheld. However, this framing device works to the benefit of the atmosphere. When a character is filming in a dark room, our field of vision is greatly hindered; you never quite know what is lurking just outside of your periphery, and the first-person shots really help to immerse the viewer in the creepy happenings on screen. It's safe to say that, had this movie been shot in a traditional fashion, it would have totally fallen flat. It's also worth noting that it rarely falls into the classic pitfalls of the found-footage genre; while it does dabble in stuttering shaky-cam, this only comes into play during the tense climax, adding to the feeling of disorientation and discomfort.
Everyone here gives excellent performances, but the stand-out star by far is Jill Larson, as the titular Deborah Logan. She exhibits such a wide range of emotions throughout this entire movie, switching from sweet and docile to sinister and crazed in the blink of an eye. When we first meet her, she could easily be anyone's mother or aunt; as the movie progresses, her condition only deteriorates more and more to the point that she's hardly recognizable by the end of it all. She's totally unpredictable, keeping the audience on edge whenever she's on screen. Before the supernatural elements are even suggested, her behaviors and episodes are wholly convincing, establishing a tragic, uncomfortable atmosphere before things begin to get terrifying. This is a movie where the audience is never allowed to relax; even when nothing bad is really happening, there's a distinct undercurrent of dread that keeps the tension from ever really dying.
I must also praise the special effects on display here as well; this is not a flashy movie by any means. Far too many horror films these days are all too eager to show off their gore and monsters, the logic of course being that all the money and work that went into the effect warrants it being clearly shown to the audience. This is a film, however, that holds back. When something terrifying happens, we're given just the slightest glimpse; before we can fully process what we've seen, it's gone, and our brain fills in the gaps. It's a commitment to subtlety that I can wholly respect and which pays off majorly in the film's benefit. There was one instance of gore that, thanks to the way it was shot, remains one of the most squirmifying effects I've ever seen out of a modern horror film.
No comments:
Post a Comment