Bitter Grace

Two new horror films have just opened up in local theatres, and I am debating whether to go and see them. (Saccharine will either be just what I want right now or will set my own body image issues spiraling; Evil Dead Burn is almost certainly too gory for me, but I'm fighting a reckless urge to ~test myself.) In the meantime, here's what I've been watching at home on a smaller screen:

Conclave (2024): The Pope dies; the Cardinals gather at the Vatican to elect a new one; much political intrigue occurs, and much anguishing of consciences. Ralph Fiennes carried this whole film as the convenor of the conclave, while Carlos Diehz supplied the pontifical eye candy as a badass (by ageing Catholic dude standards) newcomer who had been secretly appointed to the perilous archbishopric of Kabul after a career spent ministering in war and disaster zones. Very fun and tense and aesthetic. I do not have much else to say.

Black Death (2010): This entertainingly heavy-handed medieval action/horror stars Sean Bean as a Catholic warrior on a mission to catch a necromancer accused of using black magic to shield a whole village from the ravages of plague, and Eddie Redmayne as a novice from a nearby local monastery who volunteers to guide him to the village. It starts out as a gritty, filthy, dark historical adventure that takes the adventurers' faith very seriously, before eventually dissolving into an unintentional horror-comedy of Evil Pagans(TM) railing against the Church and trying to torture and trying to force the Christians to renounce God under threat of death and torture, while the Christians are all Vaderesque NOOOOOOOOOO, I'll never renounce God!!!!! Carice van Houten (the Evil Pagan(TM) queen) is so attractive it should be illegal. The twist end was...quite satisfying, actually! I can't take any of it too seriously but it was a very enjoyable watch.

Thesis (1996): Spanish horror/thriller about film student Ángela who, while exploring cinematic depictions of extreme violence for her thesis, stumbles across the existence of a snuff production ring operating in her university. Ángela is in deep denial about her fascination with death and gore and seems confused as to her own moral position; her impulse is to bury her head in the sand and forget all about the horrible criminal discovery. Her classmate Chema, an unabashed horror fan and collector of assorted video nasties, feels obliged to investigate. It is all very meta, and at times seems to be deliberately taunting the audience - many a time the camera will pan slowly towards a sight we are told is unspeakably grisly, only to dart away at the last possible second.

And some DNFs: I watched about half an hour of The Rite because I was in the mood for more films in the vein of The Exorcist, but it ended up being so much in the vein of The Exorcist (right down to the sad brown-haired young priest who boxes to work out and is the middle of a crisis of faith) that I was mostly bored by the time a heavily pregnant woman wandered on-screen and I realised I had recklessly forgotten to check if the movie had child death in it, so I paused and checked and...yeah, that's a nope. I started watching Send Help with high hopes, but the first few minutes were devoted to that guy from Teen Wolf being the most infuriatingly horrible business bro and my blood pressure couldn't take it. That is NOT the kind of stressed out I want to be while watching a horror movie! The Invisible Man was also the wrong kind of stressful, in a different way: Imagine you're dating Tony Stark, and he's a complete abusive psycho! (No thank you, I will not be imagining that.) Finally I watched a bit of The Cabin in the Woods, but the Whedonesque vibes just weren't what I was in the mood for - I may come back to this one at a later date, though, since it's such a classic.