Tag Archives: Borgman

Fright Club: Sleep Paralysis in Horror

Nightmares may be the source of all horror. There’s a theory that sleep paralysis may be to blame for history’s waking nightmares: ghosts, demons, specters. We dive into this horrifying complex and the horror films it has inspired.

5. The Night House (2020)

Director David Bruckner’s The Night House rests on a trusted horror foundation that’s adorned with several stylishly creepy fixtures. A remarkable as always Rebecca Hall plays the recently, startlingly widowed Beth whose grief combines with nightmares, sleuthing with doubt.

Though Beth’s neighbor (Vondie Curtis-Hall, always a pleasure) and best friend (Sarah Goldberg) both warn her not to fill the void in her life with “something dark,” the dark keeps calling. The more Beth digs into things Owen left behind, the more signs point to an unsettling secret life, and to the possibility that Owen may not have entirely moved on.

Beth’s sustained grief, and her indignation toward everyone who’s not Owen, carries an authenticity that gets us squarely behind Beth’s personal journey. And that pays dividends once the film relies on our belief in what Beth believes. Thanks to Hall, we end up buying in.

4. Insidious (2010)

Director James Wan and writer (and co-star) Leigh Whannell launched a second franchise with this clever, creepy, star-studded flick about a haunted family.

Patrick Wilson (who would become a Wan/Whannell staple) and Rose Byrne anchor the film as a married couple dealing with the peculiar coma-like state affecting their son, not to mention the weird noises affecting their house. The catch in this sleep paralysis film is that we are not with the dreamer. Instead, the dreamer is an innocent, helpless child, combining the hallucinatory imagery with child-in-peril tension.

But what makes this particular film so effective is that we get to go into The Further to reclaim the lost soul. It’s a risky move, but these filmmakers do what few are able to: they show us what we are afraid of.

3. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Teens on suburban Elm St. share nightmares, and one by one, these teens are not waking up. Not that their disbelieving parents care. When Tina woke one night, her nightgown shredded by Freddie’s razor fingers, her super-classy mother admonished, “Tina, hon, you gotta cut your fingernails or you gotta stop that kind of dreamin’. One or the other.”

Depositing a boogieman in your dreams to create nightmares that will truly kill you was a genius concept by writer/director Craven because you can only stay awake for so long. It took everyone’s fear of nightmares to a more concrete level.

The film was sequeled to death, it suffers slightly from a low budget and even more from a synth-heavy score and weak FX that date it, but it’s still an effective shocker. That face that stretches through the wall is cool, the stretched out arms behind Tina are still scary. The nightmare images are apt, and the hopscotch chant and the vision of Freddie himself were not only refreshingly original but wildly creepy.

2. Borgman (2013)

Writer/director Alex van Warmerdam delivers a surreal, nightmarish, sometimes darkly comical fable guaranteed to keep you off balance. It is meticulously crafted and deliberately paced, a minefield of psychological torment.

van Warmerdam offsets his mysterious script with assured, thoughtful direction, buoyed by a fine ensemble cast and crisp, sometimes remarkable cinematography.

Like its title character, Borgman is unique and hypnotic, leaving you with so many different feelings you won’t be quite sure which one is right.

1. The Nightmare (2015)

An effective scary movie is one that haunts your dreams long after the credits roll. It’s that kind of impact that most horror buffs are seeking, but even the most ardent genre fan will hope out loud that Rodney Ascher’s documentary The Nightmare doesn’t follow them to sleep.

Sleep paralysis is the phenomenon that inspired Wes Craven to write A Nightmare on Elm Street. It’s a clear creative root for InsidiousBorgman, and scores of other horror movies. But it isn’t fiction. It’s a sometimes nightly horror show real people have to live with. And dig this – it sounds like it might be contagious.

We spend a great deal of time watching horror movies, and we cannot remember an instance in our lives that we considered turning off a film for fear that we would dream about it later. Until now.

Countdown: Weird Trend of 2014

Weird theme for great 2014 movies: one word titles. The oddest trait we saw emerge in great films this war was the one-word title film. A full 15 of the best films of 2014 had single-word titles – who knows why? Whatever the reason, in no particular order, are the best of the one-word-title films (and some of the very, very best films of the year.

1. Wild: Reese Witherspoon will no doubt garner her second Oscar nomination and quite possibly her second Oscar starring as a woman who walks 1100 miles solo to get her head together.

2. Selma: Ave DuVernay’s powerful, painfully relevant biopic on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the marches on Selma, Alabama delivers all the punch it needs with one word.

3. Unbroken: Angelina Jolie returns to a spot behind the camera for this true tale of Olympic athlete and WWII POW Louis Zamperini.

4. Birdman: Meta-magical-realism at its finest, Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu’s look at the transience and transcendence of fame will scoop up some Oscars this year.

5. Calvary: Woefully underseen, this wry, weary and brilliant look at the affects of Catholicism’s abuses boasts the great Brendan Gleeson’s best performance.

6. Whiplash: Holy shit! JK Simmons gets the role of a lifetime as an abusive music teacher who is either trying to push his students to greatness or is trying to get away with absolute sadism. This may be the most tense film of the year.

7. Nightcrawler: Another amazing film, this one positing a weirdly sometimes likeable sociopath (Jake Gyllenhaal at his absolute best) in the context of local news – what better fit could there be?

8. Frank: Another underseen gem, this one has the great Michael Fassbender hiding inside a giant plastic head in an exploration of madness and music.

9. Foxcatcher: Bennett Miller returns with another masterpiece in understatement, a true crime tale of Olympic wrestlers and insane billionaires that could bring Oscar nominations to the unlikeliest of actors: Steve Carell and Channing Tatum.

10. Rosewater: Jon Stewart proved his mettle behind the camera with this touching, insightful and underseen true story of a journalist jailed during the Iranian elections of 2009.

11. Boyhood: The best film of 2014, Boyhood’s filming spanned 12 years and let us glimpse something no other film has ever captured.

12. Wetlands: Underneath the shock and body fluids is a deeply human story boasting a fearless and nuanced performance.

13. Snowpiercer: The best SciFi in a year of especially great SciFi, the film was sabotaged by its own studio and still wound up wowing audiences everywhere.

14. Interstellar: Not Christopher Nolan’s best, but when his intergalactic epic is working, it is a mind-bending ride.

15. Locke: A one man show that highlights the talents of perhaps the greatest actor of his generation, Tom Hardy. See it. Do it!





Mysterious Strangers for Your Queue

If you somehow missed one of Marvel’s very best superhero flicks, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is available today. Check it out. But for the rest of you, there’s a little seen movie from Netherlands we’d like to recommend.

Borgman updates a Dutch folktale, pitting a vagrant against a wealthy couple in a trippy, mind bending nightmare. Remarkable cinematography, assured direction and wonderful performances help make this frightening trip truly compelling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg65TbeHtCE

Make it a mysterious stranger double feature by taking in the woefully underseen Stoker. Chan-wook Park’s first English language feature follows a wealthy family rocked by the patriarch’s sudden death, the surprising presence of his brother, and his adolescent daughter’s truly unusual behavior. It’s a fascinating twist on Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, marked by subtly eerie performances, gorgeous cinematography and strange turns.





Head Games

Borgman

by George Wolf

Before hitting the theater for this one, get your head right, because Borgman is gonna mess with it.

Writer/director Alex van Warmerdam delivers a surreal, nightmarish, sometimes darkly comical fable guaranteed to keep you off balance. It is meticulously crafted and deliberately paced, a minefield of psychological torment.

Jan Bijvoet is quietly riveting as Camiel Borgman, a vagrant on the run from a group of armed men who have discovered his impressive underground hideout. Fleeing through the woods, Camiel comes upon the home of an affluent family and reaches out for assistance.

The moment the front door is opened, the family begins to lose control of their lives.

Borgman is the Netherlands official selection for this year’s Academy Awards, and last year it became the first Dutch movie accepted to Cannes Film Festival in nearly four decades. A little background in European folklore will help to understand Camiel’s unusual behavior, and the effect he has on unsuspecting targets.

Still, don’t expect any concrete answers. van Warmerdam channels Michael Haneke but becomes even more cryptic, to a degree that occasionally threatens to derail the film’s compelling nature.

But the skills of all involved ultimately win the day. van Warmerdam offsets his mysterious script with assured, thoughtful direction, buoyed by a fine ensemble cast and crisp, sometimes remarkable cinematography.

Like its title character, Borgman is unique and hypnotic, leaving you with so many different feelings you won’t be quite sure which one is right.

Verdict-3-5-Stars