Now airing Thursdays at 10pm on NBC
In Sickness and In Health
Cast:
Maggie Lawson as Bride
James Roday as Groom
William B. Davies as Priest
Sonja Bennett as Ruthie
Christie Laing as Kelly
Directed by John Landis
Rating: 2 out of 10
Review:
The premise is promising, pure pulp fare that you can imagine within the vivid pages of Vault of Horror or in gritty black and white on Alfred Hitchcock Presents: A bride, minutes before she’s about to meet her man at the altar, receives a note from a stranger that says he is a serial killer. Is this warning a ruse from a jilted ex-lover? A joke from a family prankster? The mystery is perfect fodder for anxiety and chills, Landis, however, does little to build either in what is possibly one of the worst films (in the short format or otherwise) I’ve seen in his career. Worse than The Stupids? Okay, maybe not that bad, but if the Stupids were to watch anything on TV, this would be it.
It’s hard to gauge just how much of Victor Salva’s original script is at fault since we’ve been informed that some severe changes had been made to his draft, but what is on-screen is a complete chore to sit through. Clunky and laughable, Maggie (the Bride) Lawson’s predicament is a ludicrous journey towards a truth with a nonsensical twist. It begins after a meandering introduction followed by the wedding ceremony itself. Accompanied by her bride’s maids, Lawson frets over the note, spooking herself in the process, while attempting to put on a composed demeanor for her guests at the reception. Her now-husband – Roday trying to channel Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman – suspects something is up which leads to an inevitable, insipid confrontation.
Viewers are introduced to details that, in the end, amount to very little and pointless red herrings, including a dual turn from Marshall Bell, that fails to build forward momentum. Landis’ approach to the material is lethargic and you know you’re in trouble when the only cutaways he can offer include either religious symbols (yawn) or the cutesy kids in the ceremony who only serve to throw off the tone with their cutesy charms.
It’s hard to pick Sickness apart without blowing the ending. Once revealed, everything has unraveled in a knot-filled mess complete with the baffling appearance of a dead squirrel. No shit.
Four episodes in and Fear Itself has hit a supreme low.
Eater
Cast:
Elisabeth Moss as Bannerman
Stephen Hart as the Eater
Directed by Stuart Gordon
Rating: 6 out of 10
Leave it to Gordon to walk away from this Fear affair with the least amount of egg on his face.
Written by Richard Chizmar and Johnathon Schaech – here adapting a story by Peter Crowther – Eater adapts to a stalk ‘n kill structure that, if I had to make a similarity, would place alongside Masters of Horror: Incident On and Off a Mountain Road in that you’ve got a lean and mean bogeyman figure and a strong female lead to take him on. Pretty cut and dry. But where Mountain stayed afloat in playing with flashbacks and positing a growing threat to the heroine in the past and present, Eater doesn’t do much to distinguish itself from what we’ve seen before.
Elisabeth Moss is Bannerman, a rookie cop left in her precinct with two colleagues to watch over a recently detained “Eater” – that’s cannibal to you. A tattooed horror movie fan, Bannerman feels a certain level of excitement knowing she’s just downstairs from a man known for torturing and eating his victims, then turning the spare parts into furniture. “Nothing worse than a horror geek,” says one of her co-workers when she has to correct them on a Silence of the Lambs reference (I suspect this sentiment is also being expressed by Fear Itself‘s producers after reading these reviews). Nothing prepares Bannerman, however, when the towering prisoner gets loose and begins to play games with her.
Eater thrives on simplicity and if you’re looking for something more than a cat and mouse thriller, then look elsewhere. The plotting is stretched rather thin, still, Gordon does a fine job maintaining the flow and keeping things moving. It’s helped that he’s backed by a primal, unique score by Bobby Johnston, a composer who contributed to Gordon’s previous efforts Stuck and Edmond. Chizmar and Schaech made the right choice to keep the action confined yet it seems rather implausible that Bannerman would face so many goddamn locked doors that she can’t escape out of. On a positive note, Stephen Hart, this episode’s eponymous freak, is a walking nightmare with his gaunt features and greasy locks – an ideal casting choice to counter Moss’ frame. The latter, sadly, doesn’t turn in a very lively performance.
Gordon makes the most out of what he can with Eater – he has fun relishing in its gruesome bits, too – the outcome is rather mediocre, however. You’ve seen better from him. You’ve seen a lot worse. Eater falls somewhere in between.
