I’ve said before that I’ve been
to a lot of funerals. From the time I
was a toddler, I’ve seen quite a few corpses (post-undertaker, of course). I believe the first time I ever saw a dead
body in the more distanced, clinical sense was in Faces of Death, the notorious Mondo/faux-u-mentary film that
included crime scene footage and scenes of bodies being cut open in
morgues. The dispassionate way that
faces were peeled off to display the skulls underneath was both instructional
and repellant (let’s be honest, I’ll never be a doctor). But it’s because this is something most
people don’t see every day, and death is something which fascinates and
terrifies many folks, that it feels forbidden and sideshow-esque, and that’s
the appeal. Compare that to most
narrative film morticians, who are usually quirky, nonchalant, and flat-out morbid. These are people who seem to make a point of
eating while performing autopsies (some even place their food on top of the
corpses), and their sense of humor is jet black. Sure, sometimes they’re portrayed as strict
professionals, but this is typically when their sole purpose is to supply some
expositional information for other characters to pursue. In James
Cummins’ The Boneyard we get
Shepard (Norman Fell), who looks as
if he were auditioning to be one of Zartan’s Dreadnoks in a G.I. Joe movie and falls squarely in the
former category. Yet, both he and his
colleague Miss Poopinplatz (an un-feather-boa-and-fright-wig-adorned Phyllis Diller) are incongruous in a
film seemingly built on incongruity.
They are comedic characters instructed to play it straight. Sort of.
It’s things like this that make the film simultaneously stand up and
fall over.
Children are turning up dead,
and, having hit a brick wall in the investigation, Lieutenant Jersey Callum (Ed Nelson) turns to psychic Alley Oates
(Deborah Rose), who has holed herself
up in her house. Following a lead on
Chen (Robert Yun Ju Ahn) who speaks
about having to feed dead flesh to some evil being called a Kyoshi (which,
according to my minimal research, doesn’t exist in Chinese folklore; the
closest thing I could find to its name is the Jiangshi, or hopping vampires,
which the monsters in this film definitely are not, so perhaps “Kyoshi” is the
spirit’s/demon’s proper name, like “Phil” or “Stan?”), our heroes find their
way to the county morgue where the dead kids’ cadavers don’t want to stay dead.
The film centers on death and
grief through metaphors of same, while not being strictly about the cessation
of physical life. Alley refuses to leave
her home because being out in the world is painful. Her psychic powers are too emotionally agonizing,
and she cannot handle the grief that comes with them. She carries a burden for the dead, and it is
killing her. She also has a more
personal reason for her sequestration, and this turmoil is reflected in the
state of her house. It is in complete
disarray, a mirror for her mental state as she deals (or refuses to deal) with
the torment of living. Likewise, Dana (Denise Young) attempted ending her own
life because she couldn’t handle it. The
two women encompass the despair of living, one mentally, the other
physically. In this way, these living
characters relate to the living dead in the film. These people have stopped living though they
continue to draw breath. The correlation
is that, if Alley and Dana continue on the paths they are on, they will become
truly dead and, like the zombie kids, corrupted and evil. The core of their journey then is to find a
reason to live, but they must desire this and fight in order to do it.
The Boneyard also deals with issues of horrors of the past and
their effects on the present. Alley
carries the weight of a personal loss which cripples her. This is portrayed in the files and photos she
keeps from previous cases. She tries to
burn these things, to divest herself of her responsibility, but she can’t do
it. It is tortuous for her to get
involved, but she is obligated to do so; she owes the dead a debt only she can
pay. Similarly, Chen is a descendant of
people who first unleashed a force of evil centuries ago (in order to do
something good, though selfish), and his family have been doing penance ever
since (and still performing questionable acts, though now for a more “noble”
purpose). The zombies and monsters are a
legacy of evil, a bastardization of good intent, and they are the embodiments
of what happens when the agony of grief is not dealt with in a healthy
fashion. For the characters to find
closure and new roads toward their emotional healing, they must confront this
debasement and defeat it.
One of the first things that
stood out about this film for me was that the leads are completely not the
standard for the Horror genre (or most mainstream, populist fare, for that
matter). Jersey is a middle-aged cop,
and Alley is an overweight woman. Not
being teenyboppers or hip, energetic twenty-somethings, they go against type,
and Cummins gears the story, at
least initially, toward a more serious, adult-oriented audience. This is reinforced by the inclusion of Dana,
a woman who is in the morgue because she was mistakenly presumed dead following
her failed suicide attempt. You would
suspect that her character and her relationship with Detective Mullin (James Eustermann) are included in order
to appeal to a younger audience and handle the film’s action scenes, but this
is not strictly the case. Alley still
gets to do quite a bit of physical action, and it’s refreshing to see. The zombie children are also extremely creepy
and truly shiver-inducing. Even Diller doesn’t go for a lot of one-liners
(though she does get a few in). The
casting of both her and Fell in more
earnest roles is perplexing, since neither one is especially known for this
type of character.
Still, there are heightened
elements that don’t match up with the more somber aspects of the film. The story begins as a police procedural, and
the first half of the movie is rather slow-paced and inactive. It isn’t until after the half way mark that
the supernatural aspects kick in. Once
they do, the film attempts to tread a thin line between genuine frights and
outlandish, creature feature action. A
couple of the monsters toward the end are discordant with what comes before and
appear to have been inspired by Ed “Big
Daddy” Roth (and if you’ve ever seen a still from this movie it was most
likely the semi-iconic Floofsums who is given more importance than she probably
should have [while being a fantastic-looking beast]). The absurdities that pop up in the back half
just don’t sit well with the more somber first half, with the finale being a
full-on series of action sequences which do work rather well. Nevertheless, while The Boneyard never gels as a whole, and I can’t say that I loved my
viewing of it, I value the chances that the filmmakers took and the ideas they
brought up, and I respect them for that.
MVT: The monster effects are
great on the more serious and the more absurd creatures equally. So, big applause to Andy Clement and the entire makeup effects department on the film.
Make or Break: The first
dream vision that Alley has is chilling and effective. After seeing it you can understand why she is
reticent to use her abilities, and you understand a lot more about her
character.
Score: 6.25/10
No comments:
Post a Comment