Movie review: 100 Feet
Aug. 3rd, 2010 04:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficI don't get this. It's written and directed by Eric Red, who wrote Near Dark and The Hitcher, two classics of the genre. Then he goes and comes up with a killer premise: a haunted house story where the protagonist can't leave because she's under house arrest! He even casts Famke Janssen in the lead! She was in Deep Rising!
So why is the final result such a misfire? You have this great writer, but it's like he's trying to do a ghost story as a wham-bam thrill ride and that just doesn't work.
Famke Janssen should know this by now. And not to take any job where Chris Kattan gets on the poster instead of her.
First, the premise. Famke Janssen plays Marnie, who killed her abusive husband in self-defense. She was sent to prison, but after a traumatic incident (the movie doesn't go into it except as a reason that Marnie would prefer Hill House to prison), she's released to house arrest. Oh, and her husband was a cop, his ex-partner (who hates Marnie's guts) is handling her case, and the husband is now a ghost.
Right away, you see a few holes. First off, do they have a media service in this universe? The movie outright states that Marnie repeatedly reported her husband attacking her, but it was covered up because he was a cop. Now at what point does this become a scandal? When a manslaughter occurs because the NYPD helped trap a woman in an abusive relationship? When an innocent woman is sent to prison? When she's then attacked in prison? When a completely biased man acts as her parole officer? Any one of those would get a headline, yet here, apparently no reporter is interested in a sensational miscarriage of justice.
"Exposing police corruption? I hardly think that's the job of the press. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go undercover as a woman who thinks chocolate syrup is clothes."
But fine, it's a ghost story, we'll go with it. The thing is, the story gets no mileage out of it. Looking at the premise, you can see there's not much chance of an arc for Marnie. She's already killed her abusive husband, what more self-improvement can she go for? Maybe it was an accident, or maybe she feels irrational guilt over what happened, and the ghost acts as a metaphor for her letting go of the past? Nope! Just a ghost.
And it's not even a good ghost. Usually with haunted house movies, there's some build-up, a few moments where you wonder if the house is really haunted or if it's all in someone's head. Of course, that's largely fallen by the wayside since now you can't do a ghost movie without a bazillion CGI effects and loud noises, but you'd think the guy who wrote The Hitcher would know something about suspense involving nigh-omnipotent antagonists. But no! Pretty much as soon as Marnie steps inside the house, her dead husband shows up in all his ghostly splendor (i.e. looking like the result of a man and a copy of Photoshop going through the Brundle machine together) and smacks her around. Then, in the very next scene, Marnie is looking at herself in a mirror going "There's no such thing as ghosts." LADY. A GHOST WALKED UP TO YOU AND SMACKED THE TASTE OUT OF YOUR MOUTH. If an angel flew down and kicked Phillip Pullman in the balls, even he would be going "Maybe there's something to this God business." (This would be perfectly justified after that Golden Compass movie.)
There's no real escalation to the conflict. The ghost just shows up now and again, beats Marnie up, and leaves. There's not even the old monster movie treat of revealing the creature -- from the moment the haunting starts, you know exactly what the ghost looks like. It's just 90 minutes of Famke Janssen putting up with a kickboxing ghost until she's arbitrarily able to defeat it (by a method that previously didn't work, and implying a redemption for the murderous, abusive, corrupt husband).
There's also some odd acting decisions made by Janssen -- I don't know if she got some off direction or what -- but they do not dovetail well with the decisions her character has to make. For instance, you'd think the whole thing where her parole officer hates her would lead to a scene where she tries to move somewhere else but can't? No, she literally seems not to think of it, instead being determined to fight a ghost over her apartment. Which makes the house arrest thing entirely pointless. Or when her character has to stick her hand into a garbage disposal? Lady, I don't even live with a vengeful ghost, and I wouldn't stick my hand in a garbage disposal.
Oh, and Ed Westwick plays this teenager who delivers groceries to Marnie since she's under house arrest, and even though he really does the bare minimum of masculine comforting (I think the solace for one confession of murder as a response to spousal abuse should at least entail hugging, maybe even some hot chocolate with marshmallows in it?), he still gets the hero's reward. Never before have I wanted to be Ed Westwick. Not to TMI anyone out, but while your character may make no sense, Famke Janssen, you do know how to act out ghostly voyeurism anger-sex.
So why is the final result such a misfire? You have this great writer, but it's like he's trying to do a ghost story as a wham-bam thrill ride and that just doesn't work.
Famke Janssen should know this by now. And not to take any job where Chris Kattan gets on the poster instead of her.
First, the premise. Famke Janssen plays Marnie, who killed her abusive husband in self-defense. She was sent to prison, but after a traumatic incident (the movie doesn't go into it except as a reason that Marnie would prefer Hill House to prison), she's released to house arrest. Oh, and her husband was a cop, his ex-partner (who hates Marnie's guts) is handling her case, and the husband is now a ghost.
Right away, you see a few holes. First off, do they have a media service in this universe? The movie outright states that Marnie repeatedly reported her husband attacking her, but it was covered up because he was a cop. Now at what point does this become a scandal? When a manslaughter occurs because the NYPD helped trap a woman in an abusive relationship? When an innocent woman is sent to prison? When she's then attacked in prison? When a completely biased man acts as her parole officer? Any one of those would get a headline, yet here, apparently no reporter is interested in a sensational miscarriage of justice.
"Exposing police corruption? I hardly think that's the job of the press. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go undercover as a woman who thinks chocolate syrup is clothes."
But fine, it's a ghost story, we'll go with it. The thing is, the story gets no mileage out of it. Looking at the premise, you can see there's not much chance of an arc for Marnie. She's already killed her abusive husband, what more self-improvement can she go for? Maybe it was an accident, or maybe she feels irrational guilt over what happened, and the ghost acts as a metaphor for her letting go of the past? Nope! Just a ghost.
And it's not even a good ghost. Usually with haunted house movies, there's some build-up, a few moments where you wonder if the house is really haunted or if it's all in someone's head. Of course, that's largely fallen by the wayside since now you can't do a ghost movie without a bazillion CGI effects and loud noises, but you'd think the guy who wrote The Hitcher would know something about suspense involving nigh-omnipotent antagonists. But no! Pretty much as soon as Marnie steps inside the house, her dead husband shows up in all his ghostly splendor (i.e. looking like the result of a man and a copy of Photoshop going through the Brundle machine together) and smacks her around. Then, in the very next scene, Marnie is looking at herself in a mirror going "There's no such thing as ghosts." LADY. A GHOST WALKED UP TO YOU AND SMACKED THE TASTE OUT OF YOUR MOUTH. If an angel flew down and kicked Phillip Pullman in the balls, even he would be going "Maybe there's something to this God business." (This would be perfectly justified after that Golden Compass movie.)
There's no real escalation to the conflict. The ghost just shows up now and again, beats Marnie up, and leaves. There's not even the old monster movie treat of revealing the creature -- from the moment the haunting starts, you know exactly what the ghost looks like. It's just 90 minutes of Famke Janssen putting up with a kickboxing ghost until she's arbitrarily able to defeat it (by a method that previously didn't work, and implying a redemption for the murderous, abusive, corrupt husband).
There's also some odd acting decisions made by Janssen -- I don't know if she got some off direction or what -- but they do not dovetail well with the decisions her character has to make. For instance, you'd think the whole thing where her parole officer hates her would lead to a scene where she tries to move somewhere else but can't? No, she literally seems not to think of it, instead being determined to fight a ghost over her apartment. Which makes the house arrest thing entirely pointless. Or when her character has to stick her hand into a garbage disposal? Lady, I don't even live with a vengeful ghost, and I wouldn't stick my hand in a garbage disposal.
Oh, and Ed Westwick plays this teenager who delivers groceries to Marnie since she's under house arrest, and even though he really does the bare minimum of masculine comforting (I think the solace for one confession of murder as a response to spousal abuse should at least entail hugging, maybe even some hot chocolate with marshmallows in it?), he still gets the hero's reward. Never before have I wanted to be Ed Westwick. Not to TMI anyone out, but while your character may make no sense, Famke Janssen, you do know how to act out ghostly voyeurism anger-sex.
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no subject
Date: 2010-08-04 05:06 pm (UTC)Actually... that sounds sadly realistic.
You would be appalled at how many tremendous miscarriages of justice, involving cops *killing* people (among them innocent children), just never get media attention at all... I find out about them because some blogger rescued them from page 17 of a local newspaper, or because someone who experienced them blogs about it.
Cops recently murdered a 7 year old girl lying on her couch to sleep, because they were so excited about being in a reality cop show that when they attacked the wrong house, they fired off their weapons without checking. Also, threw a smoke grenade which set the child on fire (but she was already dead); threw the father to the ground and prevented him from going to his child. I heard about this on *blogs*, not the national news.
When judges, cops, or other agents of the law enforcement system are biased, or screw things up completely, or kill innocent children, or rape women, it very, very rarely makes a big media splash. Hell, an incident in which the cops attacked the MAYOR of a small city in Maryland and shot his dogs because some lowlife had drop-shipped drugs to his house -- although law enforcement was well aware of the practice by drug dealers of using innocent people's homes as drop-ship locations -- barely made the news outside Maryland, and that was THE MAYOR OF THE CITY IN QUESTION. If cops attacking a *mayor* without cause doesn't make a big media splash, why do you think the wife of an abusive cop can get anyone to pay attention to her?
Or, here's a situation you may actually be familiar with, because it *has* been a media circus. Mumia abu-Jamal, a black journalist who was a member of the Black Panthers, has been on death row for 20 years for killing a cop, which he claims he is innocent of. His supporters loudly declare that he is innocent and deserves a new trial because of how badly his trial was screwed up. His detractors loudly declare that he is a cop killer and must die. Neither his supporters nor his detractors challenge the prosecution's contention that the cop he supposedly killed was BEATING HIS BROTHER at the time he supposedly killed the guy. Cop brutally beating your brother != not sufficient excuse for killing a cop that you can be spared the death penalty. But cop murdering an unarmed, restrained man who has just been arrested in the subway (Oscar Grant case, recently) = slap on the wrist.
In many people's minds, including most of the mainstream media, there is never ever ever a justification for killing a cop, even if he is killing you, but if a cop kills an unarmed man he is unlikely to get more punishment than maybe a suspension from the force for a few months without pay. Women who kill their husbands after repeatedly reporting abuse often end up in jail or on death row in real life even when their husbands were *not* cops, and people who kill cops, even in self defense, are treated by the legal system and even the media as subhumans who deserve only death. There is actually nothing whatsoever implausible about the notion that a woman who killed her abusive cop husband would be mistreated horribly by the justice system and absolutely no one would notice or care.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-04 05:18 pm (UTC)