Regression
Emma Watson saying “Believe Us!” on TV, while being the villain, Evil incarnate. That’s ballsy. Troll level: Serge Gainsbourg.
This is a great film. Technically, it’s an homage to satanic horror films of past, with the full craziness: evil black cats, hooded people performing a black mass, sex rituals, babies being literally killed and consumed in a ravenous frenzy.
Except it’s all bollocks. Collective hysteria, local journalists amplifying pulp novelists, Dungeons and Dragons, rock bands. Susceptible hillbillies, actual crimes covered up, evangelical churches, non conforming sexualities, a perfect storm leading to all this madness.
The detective tries to help, but it’s too empathic, he flips out and starts to think it’s real. The academic is not empathic enough, thinks he can find objective truth without affecting the minds of his supposed patients. Insanity!
Speaking of insanity, this was funded by the Spanish government for no reason other than the director being Alejandro Amenábar? It’s not set in Spain, features no Spanish actors, no Spanish adjacent plot, nothing. He must have quite the political pull.
Of course, the OG insanity is having The Weinstein Company releasing films dealing with themes of sexual abuse. Bonkers!
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.