Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Donald Pleasance, Lisa Blount, Victor Wong, Jameson Parker
Have I Seen it Before: Never. I know, I know. And in an interesting turn of events, I would normally watch this film later this year for Beyond the Cabin in the Woods, but it is still up next on my summer of Carpenter re-watches, so that will certainly save me the time of having to do my podcast notes and review later.
Did I Like It: I had that sinking feeling about halfway through the film that I wasn’t going to enjoy this as much as some of Carpenter’s other films. I’ve said before that Carpenter works best in a milieu of ruthless simplicity, and this one may just have too many characters for its limited setting. To the film’s credit, there’s a running gag where even the characters—trying to wrap their heads around the scientific and theological implications of the apocalypse—can’t seem to remember names and faces of everyone involved in the plot.
Even in a lesser Carpenter film, there are joys to behold. For one thing, there are some legitimately bewildering things done with insects in the film, to the point where I somehow have an even lower opinion of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). And there frankly should be a lot more films that hinge on Donald Pleasance—here called simply “Priest,” just in case anyone was worried about Carpenter completely abandoning his ruthless simplicity—monologuing about the nature of “pure evil.”
These are perhaps trivial things to pick out, the kind of things a critic might reach for when discussing a film they don’t really like, but something happened to me as the film concludes. I started thinking of it less as an overstuffed, claustrophobic riff on The Exorcist (1973), and more of an Assault on Parish 13. I really started to like it, and the ending was so authentically unnerving that I couldn’t help but love it. Goddamnit, Carpenter. You got me again!