I remember watching an interview with Nicholas Roeg where he talked about studio executives giving him crap about the titles of his film, their point was that his titles, such as "Don't Look Now" and "Bad Timing", gave critics way too easy an "in" for mocking the work. I was thinking about that while I was watching "We Are Still Here", specifically thinking, "Well I know the audience didn't say that." And Rotten Tomatoes somewhat backs me up and actually gives a little kindling to a pet theory of mine regarding our current state of interconnected mutual media massages and the "everyone likes everyone so nothing can be bad" groupthink that has replaced real community interactions among artists.
The RT rating for WASH (as I'll be calling it to keep from typing that title out a thousand times) is at an absurd 95%. Absurd because, it's not a very good movie. But what's more telling is that the audience review for the film is 51%. Now that makes more sense. I know that often there's a disconnect between what is popular with "the people" and what is popular with "the critics", but usually when it comes to shitty horror films it's the other way around.
Like, "The Witch" (which is out right now) has an 89% with the critics and a 53% with the audience. That's a lot closer and makes more sense. "The Witch" is art house horror so it serves to assume that critics would enjoy it while the mass market populace not as much.
WASH is just a mess of a film, actually it's not even a mess, it's a well choreographed exercise in boring nonsense. It would be more fun if it was a mess. The basic premise is two middle aged folks move into a cabin on the outskirts of town in a small, snowy Boston suburb. They're moving to a new place because their son had recently died and they want a new start. So far so dismally blandly fine. Upon arriving at their new place they begin to notice weird things going on, truly terrifying things like a picture frame falling over or a really warm basement. Things aren't helped when a kindly old couple stop by to welcome them to the neighborhood and go on to tell them the wicked and evil tale of the house (Dramatic music swells).
The story goes that the family who originally lived here were funeral people and it turned out that the father was actually burying empty caskets and selling the bodies to parties unknown. So the Dagmar family was driven out and then the father killed himself (I guess?). It's an important plot point that is only given a fraction of a second of exposition which is funny considering how many other dull, inane plot points are given much much longer bits of exposition, even when they don't mean anything or have anything to do with anything (30 years!)(I'll come back to that).
Before the creepy neighbor plot delivering people leave the wife hands the couple a scrunched up piece of paper that repeats what old male creepy neighbor had just said about "The house needs a family" but she's added to it, "Get out!" This was the first point in the movie where my "Maybe it just needs to get going" vibe turned to "This movie is going to be terrible, isn't it?" vibe.
Now this is going to sound like some horrible, conservative reasoning but it's really not. But are two people a family? Isn't it common in cheesy romcoms and Hallmark movies that when a wife finally gets pregnant someone at some point says something about "You've turned our house into a home and our unit into a family" or something along those lines? Now if you think I'm being pedantic or arguing semantics, during the film's closing credits there is an incredibly cheesy little slideshow that looks like it was put together for a high school film project using iMovie edits and photoshop, that's meant to convey the horrible history that's just been alluded to throughout the film (you know, trying to actually explain the movie and story since the actual movie failed so miserably at it). And one of the things we see during this montage is all of these stories about families that disappeared or died after moving into the house, but all of these stories are about parents AND kids.
Now the argument against this will probably be that ghost of the son was with them and so, there you go, there's the family, but that's bending some already pretty shaky rules. Speaking of already pretty shaky rules, during this initial introduction to absurdly dull mythology the story of what happened after the Dagmars left/died is left out. But later on when creepy male neighbor is talking at the local restaurant to the local restaurateur he mentions that "every 30 years" the house needs a new family, that it's up to the town to keep feeding people to the house, or "the darkness within" will spread over the town. Oh! And it's worth noting that the creepy male neighbor shoots and apparently kills a new waitress working at the restaurant because she answered the door when he knocked. It's never explained why this happened. To cover up that he and his wife had come to the restaurant late to talk to the owner? Why?
One great cheesy important fact I'm overlooking is that all of this takes place in the 70s for some reason. No idea why since the filmmakers attempts at recreating the 70s are so pathetic it makes you wonder why they bothered. Did they think that it wouldn't make sense to have a hippie couple in the year 2015? Or is it that modern convenience would destroy some of the paper thin moments of suspense by enabling characters to easily call each other to verify whether or not they are currently alive. The soundtrack also helps to undo any possible 1970s style feel the filmmakers might've been going for. So an anachronistic soundtrack in a setting that is clearly now with people who are clearly now people who are trying to look like their 70s people but not even trying that hard, makes the film seem even more amateurish and goofy.
Back to the "30 years point". Later on in the film, Dave (that's the creepy neighbor guy) says that the house needs people "every 30 years or so". Wait. Is it every 30 years or every 30 years or so? Also, why 30 years? Why not 20 years? Why not every 20 minutes? Why not every 4 years like leap year? Never explained.
The ghost monsters of the Dagmars are in the basement and they assault an electrician and burn him and then they kill the hippie couple's annoying son and equally annoying girlfriend (what's great about the girlfriend's death is how much it doesn't make sense, so the ghosts are haunting the house and they need to be fed a family every 30 years or they'll spread their darkness all over town, but when the girlfriend escapes the house, the ghost manages to hitch a ride in the backseat? how's that work?). The ghost monster Dagmars are actually really well done special effects wise and the violence in the film is also quite well done, seeming to not rely on CGI and appearing to be organic in nature. Those really are the only good things about this film.
So hippie guy and sad dad hold a seance while sad mom and Lisa Marie go shopping. Hippie guy gets possessed and starts saying things to himself (literally, the ghost monster is speaking through him so he's saying "I killed your son and his girlfriend" but sad dad obviously thinks he's talking to him because that would make sense) and the women come home and then, for some reason, ghost monster Dagmar feels the need to warn the folks that he's not the one they need to be afraid of, even though he's currently possessing the hippie guy having already harassed a blue collar worker and murdered two dopey college kids.
That's when the dull, pointless, non twist of a twist really kicks into dull gear for then Dave is at the door, but we don't know it and he shoots Lisa Marie's head off and OH MY GOD WHY WOULD HE DO THAT surely you're supposed to gasp. He's done it guys, seriously come on now knock it off, he's done it because he needs to have the couple who are just a couple and not really a family, stay in the house so they can get killed by the ghost to serve as the 30 years or so sacrifice to make the crops good again (really). Except that Dave and his angry mob of townsfolk are actively trying to kill Sad Dad & Sad Mom, which doesn't really make sense because isn't that the job of the ghost monsters?
But it turns out that the ghost monsters are actually really mad at the townspeople who burned them to death in the first place! Except these aren't the townspeople who burned them to death in the first place, but the grand children and great grand children of them! And why then would they kill an anonymous random family to sate their desire for vengeance on the town through all the time periods between the original act (1850s?) and the present day (1970s)(lol) rather than killing all of those actual people who actually did the deed? Why have they suddenly decided to not kill this random sad couple?
Oh, I guess it could be because of the final shocking non twist twist that doesn't make any sense and is supposed to impress you I guess? It's that BOBBY IS IN THE CELLAR WITH THE GHOST MONSTERS THE GHOST OF BOBBY YOU GUYS HE'S HERE FOR SOME REASON.
Nothing is ever explained, the acting feels off but I think that has to do with the terrible script and the poor editing. The film has no energy moving it forward, the scenes just kind of plop into each other. All the "scares" if there can be said to be scares are all jump out boo scares which are only ever effective once and in this film, not even that. It's a paint by numbers haunted house movie with nonsense added to take the place of cleverness or inventive twists. It's got good special effects but that's about it.
Oh! I never explained my original critic conspiracy theory and this might not be the place for it. But the basic idea is that as everyone gets connected online, as films play circuits and filmmakers, particularly indie, young, trying their darndest filmmakers, network like crazy to try to get their little babies out into the world, everyone gets to know each other and then, if you like someone, if you've chatted a bit before seeing the film and the writer/director seems like just a great guy, then it's going to be hard to tear apart his terrible movie once you've seen it. There's more to it than that and again, it's just a theory I'm developing so don't really pay any attention to it. And I've just realized that I think what my "theory" is, is actually what they call "politics" in the film world.
Don't watch this stupid film.
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