As always, I'm trying to find some supernatural horror for Ms. Spenser. No slashers, preferably ghosts, and a moody rather than frantic atmosphere. Since I'm not really a fan, I often choose blindly. I picked The Gathering (2003) because Christina Ricci is in it.
It is set near Glastonbury. A couple of hikers fall into a hole in the earth. He lands in a spike and is impaled. She survives and finds herself in a buried church. Later, art historian Stephen Dullane is brought in to investigate the church. It's most curious feature is that the crucifixion is portrayed from behind, with a crowd of onlookers painted on the wall.
Dullane's wife, Kerry Fox, is driving with her two children and hits Christina Ricci. Everyone is quite shook up, but Ricci is barely scratched. However, she has total amnesia. She has papers indicating that she's an American named Cassie. Fox invites her to stay with her family in their large, recently restored manor house. It's the least they can do after running her down. She also gets along really well with the kids, especially the young boy. He stopped talking when his mother, Dullane's first wife, died. At this point, Ricci just seems too good to be true - she's going to turn out to be a demon or something. SPOILER - she isn't. She really is nice. Also, Fox is not an evil step-mother, but quite a nice one.
So Ricci starts helping take care of the kids, walking them to school and chasing off the bullies. She is hoping someone will recognize her - or she will recognize them. She sees people she sort of recognizes, but they are grim and spooky. She also has visions of bloody horror, associated with a creepy auto mechanic. But she also meets Ioan Gruffudd, a nice guy who takes an interest in her.
Doing some snooping, she figures out that the mechanic was a abused as a kid in an orphanage - that is now the manor that Fox and family live in. She thinks he's going to snap and start killing everyone involved: The priest, a judge, and probably Dullane's mute son. But she can't get anyone to believe her.
SPOILER-ish: It turns out that the creepy people Ricci keeps seeing are the Gathering: The people who came to see Christ crucified, just because it was a spectacle. They are cursed to live forever, observing horrible events and mass killings. Guess what they're doing in this town?
This is kind of a far-fetched gimmick. They fancy it up by mentioning the Wandering Jew and identifying the church with one one Joseph of Arimathea supposedly built in Glastonbury. But outside of that, I liked this a lot. The setting (filmed on Isle of Man, like The Others) is lovely. The characters are much nicer than you might expect, even the ones who turn out have secrets - Gruffudd is a member of the Gathering, but they aren't really evil, just content to allow evil to happen. And Ricci is great in a fairly generic role.
Also, Ms. Spenser liked it, so it was a success.
No comments:
Post a Comment