Horror tropes come and go in cycles on the big screen. For a period there’s a glut of vampires or werewolves, aliens or ghosts, exorcists and demons, and of course, shambling zombies. Another recurring feature of the genre is the presence of “It” in the title.
The first It (1927) was most definitely not a horror movie, though IT certainly did horrify some prudish viewers. Bombshell Clara Bow (with a young uncredited Gary Cooper, her then lover, in a very minor role) played an energetic flapper oozing sexual magnetism (not exactly the stuff of horror).
It: The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) evolved into the Alien franchise while Stephen King’s It leaped from an ’80s mini-series to this year’s big-screen blockbuster. Earlier this year It Comes at Night (2017) focused the terror of an apocalyptic plague away from the walking dead onto a terrifying domestic tragedy.
It Stains the Sands Red (2016) returns to zombies but with smart twist about a truly rotten mother’s efforts to redeem herself. In a similar (bloody) vein The Monster (2016), transforms a “monster movie” into a fable about alcoholism as well as a toxic mother-child relationship (generic title aside).
Radically different examples of horror, the two new films demonstrate a welcome originality for such a well-worn genre. In the past, we might have expected the virtuous teenager to be the one who ultimately survives the monster. In these two new films, however, it is the unpleasant female protagonists who manage to salvage both dignity and redemption from the literal jaws of death.
It Stains the Sands Red (2016) was co-written and directed by Colin Minihan whose earlier indie collaborations—including Extrarrestrial (2014) and Grave Encounters (2011) with (co-writer) Stuart Ortiz were credited to The Vicious Brothers.
Those aren’t the most glowing credentials, even for jaded genre fans, but their newest film is a cut above their earlier efforts, though not by much.
The plot posits another zombie holocaust, this time sending Molly (Brittany Allen) on the road with her latest boyfriend away from the ruins of Las Vegas. Car trouble leads to said boyfriend becoming supper for a solitary highway-humpin’ zombie. This zombie then pursues Molly across the desert for nearly half of the film’s running time. And just as the movie threatens to grow boring, Molly and her persistent pursuer run into pockets of survivors.
At first totally self-centered (she has left her son back in Vegas), Molly grows as a character, even as she continues to lose blood and at least one body part. It is her menstrual blood that stains the sands red, a real curse on the one hand (that’s why the zombie follows); on the other, in a clever plot twist, a saving grace.
The last act of the film finds her trying to reassume her role as mother.
It Stains the Sands Red is by no means a great movie, but its good moments outweigh the weak dialogue and occasional plot holes. By contrast, The Monster is a much better film—though more static—its action confined to a single location over a one-night period.
Written and directed by Bryan Bertino (The Strangers), The Monster is character-driven horror about Lizzy (Ella Ballentine), an adolescent girl and her abusive alcoholic mother Kathy (Zoe Kazan) who find themselves alone on the highway one dark and stormy night with a very real monster, in addition to their own inner demons.
Zoe Kazan, granddaughter of the great director Elia Kazan, gives a searing, utterly believable performance as a mother at the end of her rope, ready to give up her maternal responsibilities but not her bottle. On the way to hand Lizzy off to her father, an accident leaves them stranded, prey to a vicious long-toothed rapacious creature that is just there without any explanation or cause.
As the two try to figure out how to survive, unlike the hapless characters that wander by, the film reveals the mother and daughter’s tortured past relationship in a series of brief but telling flashbacks. Together and on their own, each one also rediscovers the love and responsibility they long thought lost.
Suspenseful, creepy, and graphic, The Monster is an effective exercise in terror and metaphor with a very real moral edge. Bertino’s direction, with terrific performances by the two leads, elevates this movie well above its deceptively simple title.
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