Girl 27 (2007)

It’s sort of insane to me, in 2012, what power the music and film industries have over society. Fame is everything. Status is everything. In the 1930s, though, the film industry truly did rule. During the Depression, the film industry was the only industry to record a profit. People actually made money when the whole country was desperate. The biggest of them all was Metro Goldwyn Mayer, or MGM, led by the infamous Louie B. Mayer.

What this film reveals about the industry, and what they so carelessly did to innocent women — specifically Patricia Douglas — and how they just about turned back the clock and made it so the whole thing never happened, and nobody ever even heard about it, is… it’s inconceivable. Louie B. Mayer sent out a fake casting call to 100 young girls… 13 and 14 year old girls. Even sent them to get costumes. But there was no film. Their entire job was to be entertainment for a writer’s convention. Patricia Douglas was raped by an executive of MGM, and she was the only one to come out and fight. And the media ripped her to shreds, sent her into hiding. Her story dropped off the radar. Her attacker was never served, charges never filed, records destroyed. Nobody knew her name or her story by 1939. Until now.

What an incredible story.

See it on Netflix

The Woman in Black (2012)

Harry Potter does a horror movie!

Okay, I know Daniel Radcliffe has done other things, and even had a stint on Broadway. I know that it’s not right to typecast. But for crying out loud people, this is Harry Potter, and this will always be Harry Potter.

Getting past Harry Potter…

This movie was pretty creeptastic. Much like the woman in Insidious, the woman in this movie scared the bejesus out of me. What is it about old women spirits? I also don’t know why I’m freaked out by apparitions in windows. Especially if it’s an apparition in a window in a photograph.

My only complaint is the resolution. Without giving anything away, when Harry Potter physically uncovers the solution… there’s no way. No freakin’ way. Too easy. I call shenanigans. And the ending was a little frustrating/confusing. I’m going to need to Google it. I didn’t understand why it happened.

But, old woman spirit = freakin’ scary. That is all.

See it on Netflix

The Possession (2012)

Despite getting stuck in a theatre full of moron teenagers who whooped and hollered and screamed every time someone blinked their eyes, I still really enjoyed this movie.

We’ve seen the exorcism done a million times. The Rite, The Last Exorcism, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and most notoriously, The Exorcist. But never a Jewish exorcism. The idea of a Dybbuk box (a box said to hold a demonic spirit in Jewish folklore) is certainly interesting, and in the case of the box in the film, the contents themselves can be rather ominous.

But at any rate, the movie was quite good. Jeffrey Dean Morgan was great, and Natasha Calis was fantastic. She has a face that looks perfectly angelic one second, and can chill your blood the next. The scene when she’s talking to her father about the box while she’s scarfing food was especially creepy, and also the kitchen scene with her mother. My feet hurt for a little while after that.

Definitely worth a trip to the movies, I think. Just make sure you’re in a less rambunctious group. I think I would have appreciated it even more if it hadn’t been so heavy narrated by the peanut gallery.

See it on Netflix