Tall and Gothic

I might as well blog the next two together, although they don't have much in common - other than unreliable point of view characters who are mad.

Tall Men (2017) starts with a somewhat twitchy young man bringing a woman upstairs, telling his grandmother that they are studying for a math test. When the lights flicker downstairs, the grandmother runs up and we hear hear scream, "What have you done?"

Later, the man, Dan Crisafulli, is shown getting a. bankruptcy set up by a group of smug condescending lawyers. Back at home, he goes through his junk mail, and after great temptation, throwing out credit card offers. He works in a warehouse with a group of other troubled or challenged people, including a shy young woman who seems to like him. Their boss is a dick who only talks to them through a megaphone.

One day he gets an offer for a credit card that looks too good to be true - and it is. Soon, he's being menaced by shadowy tall men. The police don't seem to believe him, but find enormous footprints. His friends come to his aid, but disappear. And it gets worse. 

Two things about all this. One is that this is more or less a comedy. But the humor is based on Crisafulli being a twitchy, mentally challenged young man and the rest of the world are similarly challenged or smug, arrogant and disdainful of them. Lot of long awkward moments of handsome, in-control men sneering while Crisafulli suffers under their glare. 

The other is that this starts very slowly, and the horror doesn't really kick in for a while. When it does, it might be a little too horrific for the rest of the tone. 

Other than that, this was pretty good - Crisafulli seems like the kind of indie horror (-comedy?) protagonist we've seen played by Anton Yelchin or Daniel Radcliffe. 

Gothika (2003) has a different tone. It starts with Dr. Halle Berry interviewing Penelope Cruz in a psychiatric prison about a murder she committed, possibly in response to a rape - but she can't tell anything about the rape without going off the rails. 

Berry meets up with Charles S. Dutton, the head of the institute and her husband, along with Robert Downey Jr, another doc who seems to be interested in Berry. Her husband heads home, and she follows a little while later. Downey follows her car a little ways because it's storming and he's a little too involved with her.

On her way home the sheriff tells her a bridge is washed out and directs her to detour. There, she sees a girl in the road, and when she gets out to help, she blacks out.

She wakes up in a cell in the very institute she used to work in. Downey comes in to tell her that she has been unresponsive for days, and that her husband is dead. And it looks like she killed him.

This is a great setup: A psychiatrist imprisoned in her own asylum, accused of murdering the man she loves, her only source of aid is the man who seems to be infatuated with her. There are a few more twists to come, but I think the first two-thirds are better. All throughout, she is plagued by visions of the girl from the road, as well as memories of blood and the words "Not Alone".

So an indie comedy horror and an asylum "gothic". In both cases, the protagonist may be threatened, may be hallucinating, or maybe both. I found both to be only fair, from a film point of view. Ms. Spenser found them both poor from a horror point of view - Tall Men for the too-real horror in the background, Gothika for the too-unreal underlying crimes. I'm not doing great at horror this Octo-boo.