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Looking at screens

Jim Emerson

What was I thinking?

David Poland sent me this funny picture (of me) that he took during a panel discussion at Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival in May, called “Not Playing at a Theatre Near You.” It is clear that I was lost in thought. What was I thinking? I’m pretty sure it was either: “How can I get more coffee here right now?” or “We’d better stop fussing about how ‘superior’ the ‘big-screen theatrical experience’ is and just accept the reality that: 1) more people watch more movies on smaller screens (even big HDTV ones) than go to theaters, in part because home screens and sound systems have improved, while audience etiquette and other aspects of the theatrical experience have deteriorated; 2) theatrical exhibition should be seen as a luxury, not a necessity, since economics prevent many of the best movies being made nowadays from getting the wildly expensive full theatrical release treatment; 3) even critics who tout ‘the big-screen experience’ often don’t see movies on big theater screens, or with audiences; they see them in small screening rooms with a handful of other critics, where the screens aren’t appreciably bigger than my 55-inch Sony HDTV — which, from where I sit, is about the size (and clarity) of your average movie screen to someone sitting in the back half of the auditorium; 4) there’s nothing wrong — or necessarily aesthetically inferior — about watching movies on a video screen (particularly a rear-projection one, which uses a xenon lamp not unlike a movie projector) in a comfortable room at home, and DVDs are far superior in quality to most of the beat-up 35mm art house prints and 16mm nontheatrical prints (many of them multi-generational dupes) with which those of us who grew up as cinephiles in the ’60s and ’70s had to content ourselves; 5) there should be nothing shameful about ‘straight-to-DVD’ releases; that’s a perfectly legitimate, and realistic, distribution strategy for the world we live in.”

Yes, I’m pretty sure it was that second thing I was thinking about. Because I seem to recall saying it out loud.

I was reminded of this when I came upon girish’s provocative posting about “Theater vs. Home” at his always-insightful and stimulating blog:

It is of course a happy truism that watching a movie in a theater is the inarguably ideal way to experience it. For a movie-lover, the theater is a sort of temple, and the experience touched with religiosity. You look up in hushed awe at the screen—in contrast, you look down at a TV screen, as Godard once noted—and the darkness dispatches all distraction, leaving only the light and sound emanating from the screen.

And then there’s the enveloping scale of the image, which you can regulate in relative terms by sitting closer or farther away from the screen. Cinephiles often have their favorite rows and vantage points (when I’m alone: usually fourth or fifth row center; when I’m with others: based upon a process of grumbling and negotiation). Most of all, you relinquish control over the movie by submitting to its (unbroken and continuous) terms, accepting its rules of temporality.

And yet, and yet….there’s a part of me that sees this hushed, worshipful submission to the terms dictated by the work of art as….a tad stifling.

Opening Shots: ‘The Big Animal’

Jim Emerson

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I can’t think of another movie that makes me laugh and cry within the course of its opening shot. This is “The Big Animal” (2000), a feature directed by and starring Jerzy Stuhr, based on an early screenplay by Krzysztof Kieslowski. You may know Stuhr from Kieslowski’s first feature, “Camera Buff” (“Amator”), “Three Colors: White,” “Dekalog: 10” (“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods”) and other films by Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Zanussi and Angieszka Holland.

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This shot could serve as an introduction — perhaps an encapsulation — of a certain Polish sensibility dear to my heart that is both absurd and poignant. It begins in the fog — at least, we think it’s fog, but the way it’s blowing it looks more like smoke. Turns out it is smoke, from a pair of circus vans, and as they move past the camera and roll off into the distance, the right side of the frame clears and… there’s a camel standing there.

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Why is there a camel standing there? We don’t know. It appears to have been left behind for some reason. The image is comical, incongruous, absurd. But if you think about it, it’s rather sad. Poor camel. It just stands there. It looks around. It reverses direction. And just at the end of the shot, the two circus trucks in the background appear to be perched on top of its humps. (Camel fanciers will know that this is a Bactrian camel, not an Arabian dromedary, because it has two humps.)

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The mild existential shock of this opening image sets us up for the satire — of bureaucracy and toleration of individuality — that is to come. A man and his wife adopt the stray camel. At first, everyone is happy. A camel is a novelty in this village, and it becomes the man’s pride and joy. He is no longer ordinary, but exceptional. He has a camel!

But then man-made socio-political reality begins to set in. How do you license a camel? Surely pets must be licensed, but there is no such thing as a camel license (shades of Monty Python’s fish license sketch). A dog license is not sufficient — possibly even illegal — because, clearly, this creature is not a dog. It’s not a horse, either. But do you need a license for a horse?

And then there are the townspeople, who begin to wonder: “Why should this man get away with breaking the rules for a camel? Who does he think he is? Why does he need to stand out and flaunt his special status? Such things should not be allowed. Or should they not, at least, be properly taxed?”

Kieslowski’s screenplay, from the story “The Camel” by Kazimierz Orlos, was written in 1973 as a fable about life in the Soviet bloc. But the 1994 “Bart Gets an Elephant” episode of “The Simpsons,” where Homer exploits Stampy to pay the mammoth food bills, provides a capitalistic counterpoint. I love this “Big Animal.”

“The Big Animal” is available on DVD from our friends Amy Heller and Dennis Doros at Milestone Film & Video.

[This is a contribution to the Krzysztof Kieslowski Blog-a-Thon at Quiet Bubble.]

Make Popcorn Not Tea

Jim Emerson

Take the Opening Shots Poll!

Jim Emerson

Here are some of the most popular choices we’ve published so far. The top vote-getters from this round will advance to the next! (I had to upgrade this thing — it only gave me 100 “views” a day, which were used up in about 15 minutes. Now we get 2,000 views per day…) Poll after the jump >>

Protect health insurers!

Jim Emerson

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Thomas Lennon: “… and I’m not being sarcastic, not at all.”

After the jump: Bill O’Reilly (really!) endorses the public option:

Ruptures: Three openings/closingsby Claude Chabrol (1930 – 2010)

Jim Emerson

Part 1

Claude Chabrol’s “La Rupture” (1970) begins in what could be a cave, with the quotation: “What utter darkness suddenly surrounds me?” The camera abruptly dollies to the right a short distance and the “cave” is revealed to have been a close-up of the bark of a tree. The movement pulls in a rustic-looking apartment building (which the DVD commentary explains is a fake French farmhouse, a suburban style popular at the time). The lens has been focused on the building in the distance the whole time; the camera has just moved around the obstacle of the old tree to show us what was “hidden” behind it. And that’s what the movie’s about, looking into the darkness beneath middle-class suburban life. This opening is, in its way, a less overtly surrealistic forerunner of the first sequence of David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet,” 16 years later. (Yet there’s still something disturbingly surreal about it, don’t you think?)

The Ultimate Review of “The Departed”

Jim Emerson

Bad, bad Jack, feasting on food and scenery.

UPDATE: Revisiting “The Departed.”

Everybody’s saying “The Departed” is Martin Scorsese’s best picture since “Casino” — or even “GoodFellas.” And some of the (over-)praise has struck me as pretty condescending to Scorsese: “Good boy. You stick to your mobsters now, won’t you?” I’ll go out on a limb and say I think it’s his best picture since “The Aviator.”

Adding almost an hour to the running time of “Infernal Affairs,” the film on which it’s based, “The Departed” does indeed fill in some of what one critic called the “ellipses” in the plot of the original film (and opens up at least as many other holes in the process). And yet, as others have also observed, Scorsese’s movies have never been driven by plot but character — and, in “The Departed,” the characters, performances, moral ambiguities, and even the filmmaking prowess itself (all the things we treasure in A Martin Scorsese Picture) are not as rich or developed as those of its 2000 Hong Kong predecessor, much less Scorsese’s own best and most personal work. (And let me add that this is not a knee-jerk response; I’m no big fan of Hong Kong action films. What I liked about “Infernal Affairs” was that there was more going on than in most of the HK crime movies or policiers I’ve seen, which I thought were bursting with empty action and little else.)

I’m going to write more about “The Departed” next week (to continue what I began in my MSN Movies essay, “GoodFellas and BadFellas”, but in the meantime, I’ve patched together some of the critical observations from others that made me go “Yes! That’s it!” — either because I felt the same way, or because they expressed something I hadn’t been able to formulate for myself in my initial thinking about the movie.

Meanwhile, after taking a look at these critical observations, please weigh in with comments of your own. (Just remember, it may take a while for comments to actually show up on the site.)

Is suggesting “retroactive abortion” fora director’s mom a kind of film criticism?

Jim Emerson

I didn’t want to mention this whole thing, and Vadim Rizov has already done a fine job of going over the history of Armond White’s critical ad hominem attacks on Noah Baumbach movies here. Publicist Leslee Dart (who did not “ban” White from screenings of “Greenberg” — but she originally moved him to a later one) did mention that White had called Baumbach an “asshole.” (“You look at Noah Baumbach’s work, and you see he’s an asshole. I would say it to his face,” he told Steven Boone at Big Media Vandalism. “… I don’t need to meet him to know that. better than meeting him, I’ve seen his movies.”)

Dart also noted that White had said Baumbach’s mother, former Village Voice film critic Georgia Brown, “should have had an abortion.” And, you know, people just expect that kind of thing from White. But did he really say that?

Opening Shots: ‘A Hard Day’s Night’

Jim Emerson

View image: Channnnnnggggggg…

From Sam Goldsmith:

If there is any opening shot that truly shows the power of cinema, it comes from my favorite film, Richard Lester’s “A Hard Day’s Night.” After crediting Miramax and Walter Shenson, the film makes a hard edit to John, George, and Ringo cheerfully running from hordes (not a group, hordes) of overzealous fans at Marylebone Station in London. Accompanied by one of the greatest opening chords in rock and roll history, you know that something fun is about to begin.

View image: Down goes George.

Also, notice the fact that George falls down, Ringo tumbles after him, and John turns and laughs. If it were any other film, the makers would probably have them do the shot again, but the spontaneity of that moment and how they react to it is real and joyous. When they finally approach the screen by the end of the shot, the magic of the film starts to weave a spell of euphoria, and we can do nothing else but enjoy the ride.

View image: John cracks up.

From Jerry Matthews, The Salt Shaker, Salt Lake City, UT:

The picture cuts in from black as, on the soundtrack, George Harrison’s jangling 12-string strikes a kinetic opening chord. The four members of The Beatles run towards the camera on the left side of the frame, while the stampede of fans who want to touch them fills all of the narrow street. The cars parked on the street obstruct much of the crowd, suggesting the film’s energetic, impromptu feel.

Ebert has another surgery

Jim Emerson

Ebert takes the stage at the Overlooked Film Festival.

Roger Ebert, who has been under treatment for slow-growing, non-life-threatening tumors on his thyroid and salivary glands for some years, will be having another surgery in June. Roger’s energy level has certainly not flagged in recent months (he just got back from covering the Cannes Film Festival — and was out late at the Steak & Shake after the movies at his Overlooked Film Festival in April).

More details from a report in the Chicago Sun-Times by Robert Feder:

“It is not life threatening, and I expect to make a full recovery,” [Ebert] said. “I’ll continue to function as a film critic during this time.”

Ebert had surgery to remove a malignant tumor on his thyroid gland in 2002 and two surgeries on his salivary gland in 2003.

Unlike those earlier procedures, Ebert is not expected to require radiation therapy this time.

“This is known as a slow growing and persistent cancer,” he said. “You live with it.”

Gasp! Choke! As film criticism lay dying…

Jim Emerson

Clint Eastwood, a Caucasian American, made a movie about Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima in WW II. How “liberal” of him!

2006 was a big year for stories about the “death of movie criticism” — which were really just bandwagon-jumping trend pieces about the increasing numbers of studio products that the studios themselves don’t deem worthy of the expense of advance critics’ screenings. How can this be tied to some mythical decline in the influence of film critics? Have critics ever had the power to sell a stinker to the public? Or to warn a substantial portion of moviegoers away from a bad movie with a monster ad budget, marquee names and/or genre appeal (horror, comedy, action)? Would “You, Me and Dupree” (which was pre-screened for critics) have done substantially better at the box office if it had gotten good reviews? Of course not. Word-of-mouth travels fast.

So, if American film criticism is wounded or dying, it’s not because of any publicity department’s policies. It’s because of the crap some of the critics — even some of the most reputable — are writing.

If you want to watch film criticism writhe in agony from a mortal wound, if you want to see critical standards expire pitilessly before your very eyes, you need only read Jonathan Rosenbaum’s four-star (“Masterpiece”) review of Clint Eastwood’s “Letters from Iwo Jima” last week:

One reason I wasn’t sure what to think of “Letters” the first time I saw it was that I didn’t know how it would be received in Japan. I wondered if it would seem accurate to most viewers there. I’ve since learned that the response has been very favorable and that it’s been near the top of the box-office charts since it opened.

A Japanese film critic and friend, Shigehiko Hasumi, who was around eight years old when the Americans landed on Iwo Jima, admitted to me that even though he likes “Letters from Iwo Jima,” he prefers “Flags of Our Fathers.” I suspect he prefers it for the same reason I prefer “Letters from Iwo Jima” — because it tells a less familiar story. (I’ll concede that “Flags of Our Fathers” is stylistically more ambitious — in its exploration of how images are made and turned into emblems — but that doesn’t necessarily make it more successful.) I told Hasumi I worried that “Letters from Iwo Jima” might define the humanity of the Japanese characters only in terms of American traits (a bias I see in spades in “Lost in Translation”), but he assured me the film is true to a “certain Japanese reality.” He added that he found the portraits of the pro-American Japanese officers in the film a bit “romantic,” comparing them to John Ford’s depictions of Confederate officers in such films as “The Horse Soldiers.”

Critics be warned: Don’t form your opinions about a movie until you’ve checked the box-office charts and the critical and popular reaction from the region in which it is made or set! (I did a Google search for 腐ったトマト, but I couldn’t find a Japanese rottentomatoes.com — what am I to do?)

If Rosenbaum wanted to include the critical opinions of this “close friend” Shigehiko Hasumi, why didn’t he ask him what those opinions were? We learn that Hasumi preferred “Flags of Our Fathers,” but Rosenbaum can only “suspect” why. He says Hasumi “assured me that the film is true to a ‘certain Japanese reality'” — but what “certain Japanese reality” might that be? And is there only one?

I share Rosenbaum’s concern about films that “might define the humanity of the Japanese characters only in terms of American traits” (but I don’t see how it applies to the deliberately jet-lagged, discombobulated, “stranger in a strange land” sensibility of “Lost in Translation” — which, heaven forbid, was not popular in Japan!) But I don’t read Jonathan Rosenbaum to find out how a picture is being received in Japan, or anywhere else. I’d like to know how he sees the movie.

Movies that allow you some breathing room

Jim Emerson

View image Ramin Bahrani on the set of “Chop Shop.”

Ramin Bahrani’s first two features, “Man Push Cart” and “Chop Shop,” live and breathe like few other films these days. (That’s why they’re two of my favorites of the current century.)

In an interview at IFC Blog, Bahrani gives a beautiful description of the kinds of movies he values — and, in the process, indicates what makes him such a fine filmmaker. Of course, I also happen to feel the same way about movies, so no wonder I like his so much:

Film is really 24 frames a second in the present, and I realize when you leave certain gaps, it allows space for the viewer to enter the film. That requires a viewer who wants to be engaged, who wants to have an emotional connection to a film, which should not be confused with films that elicit emotions like weeping and whatnot. You watch a certain movie, and the director puts you in a headlock through ways of dramaturgy, music, camera moves and excessive acting. It hits certain synapses in your brain and makes you cry, then you leave, and the next day you’re having a hamburger and you don’t really remember what the film was. Despite that those are the kinds of films that get lots of accolades and attention, it doesn’t attract me as a person nor as an artist. I’m more interested in the ones — because of your participation — [that] seep into you, and two months later, are still a part of you. I don’t know if I’ve accomplished this, but it’s what I’m striving for.What he describes — that space that allows the viewer to enter the film — is a quality I particularly treasured when going through “No Country for Old Men” with the audience at the Conference on World Affairs last week. Although the first time you see it you’re aware of pulse-pounding tension, suspense and unforseen eruptions of violence, the movie is really full of breathing room. Long wordless sequences encourage you to get inside the heads of the characters and see things through their eyes, to experience what they’re thinking and feeling moment by moment: the opening sequence (which I played once without sound so we could simply look at the progression of images, then see and how they play off of Ed Tom’s voiceover); Lleweylyn following the trail of blood to the two trees in the desert; Llewelyn methodically assembling the tools he will need to place the satchel in the vent; Chigurh tending to his wounds in the motel bathroom…

Sick days

Jim Emerson

Wow, am I sick. Barely strong enough to stand up. I was standing in line at the pharmacy yesterday and the next thing I knew I was waking up on the floor, with my head spinning. All I can do is sleep through it…

Opening Shots: ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’

Jim Emerson

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From Jonathan Pacheco, Anna, TX:

Seemingly too easy of a choice, this film’s first shot meets your criteria perfectly. After a slightly creepy overture, we are blessed with shot of a barely visible moon. It slowly moves down as the earth rises above it, and even more distant, the sun rises above the earth.

All of this happens as “Also sprach Zarathustra” beams in the background, a song and tone poem based on a book that spoke about the journey in the evolution from ape to man to superman. Already, Kubrick is telling us exactly what will happen in the next couple of hours with just the music. The visuals are telling us exactly how his film should be approached: as a slow but massive epic, a film with concepts and visuals that should be pondered and revered, much like one is awed when looking up at the heavens. As an added bonus, the final shot in the film uses the first shot and takes it to the next level.

JE: Right you are, Jonathan. Kubrick composed his films with a thoroughly musical technique unlike any other director I can think of. (I’ve said it before: “Eyes Wide Shut” is ridiculous if seen as a straight narrative [it is, after all, based on a “Traumnovella” — or, “Dream Story”]; it’s magnificent when you look at it as a musical composition, using imagey the way musicians use sounds — thematic statements, colors, tempos, structure, repetition, development, variation…)

When we see the image of the planets and the monolith in alignment at the beginning of the film’s last movement (the psychedelic star trip into inner/outer space), we have that momentous sense that this is the climax of the picture, and it could take us anywhere — even if we don’t understand exactly what’s going on. And then, in the last few moments of the film, the spherical, planet-sized Star Child drifts into view…

I saw “2001” at the Cinerama Theater in Seattle when I was 10 years old. My life has never been the same since. Kubrick finds expression for the mystery and awe of being alive in this universe, at this time, by invoking images of the unimaginably distant past (“The Dawn of Man”) and the unimaginably near future (“Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite”).

Moments Out of Time 2007

Jim Emerson

View image Matt Damon and Julia Stiles scope out the situation in “The Bourne Ultimatum.”

Kathleen Murphy and Richard T. Jameson present their much-anticipated annual list of indelible memories-at-24-fps, Moments Out of Time, at MSN Movies. They’ve been sifting through the fragments of movie-time for these shining moments for many years, beginning in Movietone News and continuing through the 1990s in Film Comment.

Beginning when I was in high school, I would read through them religiously, looking for moments I’d treasured, too — or maybe even ones I hadn’t spotted or properly appreciated. Then I’d re-read, again and again, as if I were holding gems to the light and examining them through a magnifying glass, for the sheer pleasure of how they caught the rays. I’d pore over every turn of phrase, teasing out the meanings, even for the movies I hadn’t seen with my own eyes (yet).

Here are a few of my favorites for 2007:

In “Ratatouille,” the remembrance of things past courtesy of the eponymous dish: the critic’s flashback to childhood

When Bourne (Matt Damon) wonders why the CIA operative (Julia Stiles) who once set him up is helping him now, she answers with what passes for a declaration of love in the killing environs of “The Bourne Ultimatum”: “You were … hard for me.” …

In “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” the pebbles sliding away from the vibrating rail as Jesse’s boot rests there, waiting to stop his last train

Leaving her friend to wait out her abortion, Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) attends an obligatory birthday party in “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.” The camera holds and holds as she sits frozen, claustrophobically hemmed by babbling guests, until she and we nearly explode with tension

The first getting-to-know-you-and-your-music duet in “Once,” one of the purest distillations of rapport ever

In “Starting Out in the Evening,” confronted by a redheaded beauty (Lauren Ambrose), the elderly gentleman (Frank Langella) involuntarily covers his face with his hand — to hide his age or to shield his eyes from her bright heat

Night birds: Chigurh, the raven, and the gunshot reverberating off the otherwise deserted bridge, after which the two bend their separate ways in “No Country for Old Men” …

“There Will Be Blood”: Killing God in a two-lane bowling alley: “I’m finished.”…

Hungry for more? Devour all of ’em here.

TIFF 2007: Casa of Horrors

Jim Emerson

View image Belén Rueda revisits “The Orphanage” of her youth. Or is it the orphanage that’s revisiting her?

As I was leaving the theater after watching Juan Antonio Bayona’s “The Orphanage,” still in the movie’s thrall, I thought for a moment that maybe I’d seen my favorite of the festival. It was only the second film I’d seen (and the movies ahead included the Coens, Cronenberg, Rohmer, Herzog, De Palma, Rivette, Greenaway, and who knows how many other big names), but I figured this had to be a good omen. Because in that moment I believed it to be possible — and if movies mean anything, they renew and inspire hope for the medium itself.

Guierrmo Del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” was my favorite film of last year’s fest — and, as it turned out, my best picture of 2006. “The Orphanage,” produced by Del Toro, isn’t the seamless masterpiece that movie was, but it’s another strong, dark fantasy-fable and horror movie about mothers and children — that is absolutely made for adults and not for children. I’d venture to say there are more goosepimply moments and well-earned jolts in this picture than in your average year’s worth of commercial shockers. And yet, it’s also the only horror film in recent memory that brought me to tears. (The last one may have been Nicolas Roeg’s “Don’t Look Now” — but that was nearer the beginning of the movie.)

View image Child’s play.

“The Orphanage,” as the title suggests, is an Old Dark House ghost picture (haunted by “The Haunting” and other shadowplays), with “Peter Pan” at the center and the specter of Roman Polanski repeatedly glimpsed around the edges, as if in tricks of peripheral vision. A ghastly face contorted into a permanent scream invokes “The Tenant” (and the open jaw will return in another horrifying image); a woman alone in rooms that play tricks on the mind, recalling “Repulsion”; a shot peering around a corner that, like the famous moment from “Rosemary’s Baby,” had me leaning to see what was in the blackness around the bend.

The revealing camera movement, in which you anticipate the sight of something (awful) beyond the edge of the frame, is the film’s signature. You know Bayona has gotten under your skin when Laura watches a 16mm silent home movie of what we’re told is a boy with a deformed face. We see the child from behind in an underlit room, studying at a desk. The hand-held camera slowly moves up behind him, but all we can see is the back of his head, so that we both dread the reveal and can’t wait for it. That’s the essence of suspense, and it’s a standard trick in the thriller repertoire. It just happens to be exceptionally well done here. And although I’ve touched on a half-dozen movie references already, it’s not because “The Orphanage” goes through the usual motions of offering shout-outs to its influences. They are well-absorbed here. (Oh, and did I mention “The Descent or “Dead Calm” yet? Think of the mothers driven to psychological extremes in those movies…)

Laura (Belén Rueda, from “The Sea Inside”) plays a fiercely devoted mother, raised in the institution of the title, who returns to the decrepit building with her husband and son. The boy begins to draw away from his parents in favor of new imaginary playmates he discovers in and around the house — and the beach cave beneath the lighthouse that can be seen from his bedroom window. Or, maybe, it’s they who discover him.

All due respect to “The Sixth Sense” (which I think is a nifty movie), but this isn’t exactly, “I See Dead Children.” “The Orphanage” takes its characters to the deepest, darkest places imaginable and dares them to fight their way back. There’s a distinctively Spanish/Mexican sensibility at work here, in which the gruesome realities of loss and death and decay are acknowledged in the open, a part of life as it is lived, and there are no guarantees of a fairy-tale Happy Ending for anyone. That’s because, as these cultures understand in their bones, the genuine, non-Disnified fairy tales don’t necessarily have happy endings.

Rueda’s performance is fearless and ferocious. Laura’s own orphan past returns as a deadly children’s game, a test to see how far she’s willing to go, how much she’ll risk, for her child. In some respects, her journey is not unlike the otherworldly plunge JoBeth Williams’ character takes in “Poltergeist,” to reclaim her daughter from the Other Side. There’s a scene with a psychic (a pale and spectral Geraldine Chaplin, looking like a Day of the Dead Catarina skeleton in Victorian dress) that also quite deliberately conjures up “Poltergeist.”

To describe this mother’s descent into the underworld as “bone-chilling” is not hyperbole. It’s just a starkly accurate description.

+ + +

An afterthought: Why are the sing-song rhymes and games of children so spooky? (One, two, Freddy’s coming for you. Three, four, better lock your door…)