Some Movies I’ve Been Watching

I recently spent some quality time with Netflix and ran across a really interesting take on the vampire genre, Midnight Mass. I’m a long-time fan of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot and have read most books involving vampires or werewolves pre-Twilight. Still, I had trouble loving this show. Spoilers to follow. Also, for an interesting review that got me to watch it in the first place, check out an author I love, Harry Connolly’s take on it.

A couple things that I found interesting was the story structure. Throughout the entire show there is a back and forth dialogue at an AA meeting between the spooky priest, played by Hamish Linklater (the real star of the show), and our ostensible protagonist who is guilt-ridden after killing a woman in a DUI. The device of having the main characters unburden their inner thoughts in AA is great at first but quickly exhausted my patience as it was done over and over. The one crucial bit of plotting that was revealed during these dialogues could have been disposed of much more quickly. The protagonist is an atheist and doesn’t really believe there is anything that follows after death. I have no problems with that revelation, since it is set up for a great change to his character later on, but there was a LOT of dialogue to slog through to get there. I did enjoy time with Linklater’s priest, he’s a star, no doubt about it, and channels a creepy beatitude that made these scenes, and the movie, a real joy to watch.

The other fascinating choice they made was about religion. Specifically, the decision to make both the vampire and the Church less overtly “magical.”

In Salem’s Lot when Kurt Barlow finally steps on stage and begins taking a hand in things, it becomes clear that he views himself as a malevolent force in opposition to an equally supernatural force of good. This sets up one of the greatest showdowns in vampire fiction lore between Barlow and a totally unprepared priest who ends up losing in a pretty epic fashion—not because the powers of good are weak, but because humans have lost sight of their supernatural origins and fail to place enough faith in them. Put another way, Father Callahan is almost surprised that his magic priests powers are working against Barlow and because of his unfamiliarity and fear, he ends up doing the priestly equivalent of fumbling the keys while being chased by the monster.

Midnight Mass presents a wonderful counterpoint to King’s Salem’s Lot because the primary antagonist throughout the movie is the priest. The Church and its priest have no supernatural power over the vampire—whose power is portrayed as more virus than demon. This tale’s version of Kurt Barlow, the vampire the priest is shilling for, is basically an ancient, dumb animal whose brain has been cooked by living out in the desert for thousands(?) of years. The priest, who stumbled upon said vampire during a pilgrimage to Israel and was transformed, is the true villain of the piece.

Here is where—in my opinion—this take on the classic vampire-eats-town story really runs into trouble. The allegory presented in the show is less interesting than a straight vampire show (in my opinion obviously). Midnight Mass wants to suggest that flawed human beings confronted with strange supernatural powers inevitably use them to destroy themselves. Even worse, the ones who believe in religion, the importance of a supernatural good, are even more susceptible to this destruction because they have suppressed their worldly desires in return for a blessed afterlife. Or equally valid, by utterly subordinating their wills to a Church that dictates good and evil, they are helpless to resist once evil takes the reins. When given the opportunity for true immortality in the here and now, this pious community immediately throws their beliefs out the window and, like lemmings, follow their Pied Piper right off the cliff of vampirism. Fair enough. I love me a good vampire-eats-town yarn.

But there are two major problems with the way the show unfolds. First, vampires are inherently supernatural. You can point out the biological underpinnings all you want, but once you bring in supernatural evil, the audience starts looking for supernatural good. And worse, the writers seemed to almost know and acknowledge this. One of the main characters professes to being an atheist—who is nonetheless haunted by vivid visions of his dead victim—but ends up taking a leap of faith to keep himself from repeating the same kind of behavior that had him kill someone in his DUI. In this case, vampirism is like being drunk, you can’t help yourself from taking a drink, so better to suicide out of it rather than driving under the influence. The issue here is that this choice is portrayed as being a spiritual revelation, but it never manifests in any tangible way outside of the character’s internal decisions. Leaving aside the depressing conclusion that the story’s only atheist couldn’t seem to do the right thing out of empathy but had to be “haunted” by his victim, it still feels like a missed opportunity.

After this, the allegory takes over and what could have been a fun vampire show receives the proverbial stake to the heart. There is a suggestion that supernatural good exists but it is buried deep within us and doesn’t come out to play just because supernatural evil is biting our necks and running around converting entire towns into the undead. This is a depressing take on things, though I’ll admit I enjoyed how human frailty was just as destructive to vampires as it was to humans. Supernatural evil can defeat good and corrupt the human heart—but only for a short time because humans without their moral fig leaves immediately revert to the state of nature and burn their entire town to the ground killing off everybody.

I sympathize with this message (however you want to take it) but I still wanted a much more fun vampire show.

The other major problem is that the show dropped the ball on the vampire. Okay, the show had a message, but putting that aside for a minute, it almost had a great vampire! The visual effects, not to mention the entire island town, were gorgeous and the glowing eyes of our vampires were absolutely haunting. Really hit that sweet spot of being possibly supernatural or perhaps simply animalistic. Aside from the visuals, which this show hit out of the park, the actual backstory to our creature-feature’s creature was sparse. What hints the show did drop about the vampire were more interesting to me (as a long-time vampire fiction reader) than the all-encompassing people-are-moral-lemmings message. Found buried in a desert near one of Christianity’s most holy sites, this vampire had no problem converting (ha!) a priest and trying to found his own religion with him playing the part as an angel. Okay, this fairly intricate backstory is foisted entirely on the priest’s shoulders by the end and the vampire is more Cujo than Barlow. But what a missed opportunity! There could have been a great research scene where kids use the internet to research a sprawling hidden history backstory of our angel/vampire’s prior exploits. Overall, this was a fun show with too much setup and not enough payoff. It was more interesting to me because of its contrasts to Salem’s Lot than its allegorical spin on human nature.

Another movie I watched was Underwater with Kristen Stewart. I’ll admit I had low expectations but hoped this would be a bit like Deep Blue Sea, where the unintentional (and intentional) humor might save it.

It didn’t.

That said, it was fun to watch because I heard a rumor the movie villain was actually Cthulhu! Also, because it seemed like a surprisingly clean attempt at recreating Alien with Stewart cast as Ripley. Possibly an evil version of the Abyss-where the aliens are not nearly as cuddly. Unfortunately while Stewart has the chops to play Ripley, the structure of the movie made her job impossible. The most damaging part of the script was the start. At the beginning of Alien, we meet our space-faring crew as they emerge from stasis. Similarly, at the start of Abyss we get an introduction to the underwater team. In Alien, we see everybody’s character and relationships on display. It’s a ship crewed by space truckers, all blue-collar humor and a good working environment with a hint of corporate greed underpinning everything. In Abyss, the emotional heart of the story revolves around Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio’s failed marriage and their powerful, clashing personalities.

In Underwater, there’s nothing. Really. Not much of anything. Just an instant underwater disaster and Stewart running her ass off to survive from scene to scene. An since you don’t know her or anybody else, you don’t really care. Even the hint that the Captain may be up to something nefarious is just abandoned after one anemic glimpse of a pentagram or something. While I started mentally comparing this movie to Alien, as I watched it I realized I should have been comparing it to Jennifer Carpenter’s Quarantine (2008). But even there, the sudden localized zombie apocalypse in a quarantined building gives us some time with Carpenter’s character to like her before the zombies hit. And more importantly, we actually get a dose of plot-relevant lore at the end! A nicely plotted horror scene where we discover some creepy scientist-dude—now a creepy zombie—with doomsday cult leanings got his hands on some super-virus. But Underwater didn’t even give us that.

That said, I have to admit I still enjoyed the movie. Lots of action and there was Cthulhu at the end as promised. I love me some Cthulhu. But it says something that the movie killed off Stewart’s character even though there was an alternate ending with her surviving. Like maybe the director sat down and watched his own movie before release and realized he wasn’t going to need her for a sequel. Which is a bummer, I would have loved to see Stewart with her own Ripley franchise!