Catholicish directors…

I feel that if I choose to believe the Perron family’s story as fact, I also feel that I have to accept the entire Catholic faith as fact, too.
Well, let me ask you: A lot of people just go along with “The Exorcist,” right? And that is an extremely faith-based movie. But even non-believers just kind of go along with it, just because they love the film. I guess what I say with this particular movie is, well, I’m not here to ask you to believe in what they believe, so to speak. But this is who the characters are and this is what makes them tick. And this is the journey they’ve gone on.

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lickona says

July 16, 2013 at 9:48 am

WAY BACK WHEN I had a contract to write a book about the devil, a fella came to me – one of those philosophical types, without much use for the supernatural side of Catholicism. “Get the Warrens’ book,” he said. I did.

Quin Finnegan says

July 16, 2013 at 11:02 am

Saw was awesome. I have fond memories of freaking myself out with “The Amityville Horror” as a teenager. Looks like I’ll have a chance to do it again. In a somewhat similar vein, “Exoricism of Emily Rose” is worth checking out. The German movie “Requiem” (about the Emily Rose case as well) is also very good. Thanks for the head’s up, JOB

JOB says

July 16, 2013 at 11:21 am

We’re all necromantics at heart…

JOB

Ellen says

July 21, 2013 at 10:47 am

I saw The Conjuring on Friday. According to Andrew O’Hehir over at Salon, because the demonic possessor in the story is a woman, and because she possesses other women, this story promotes “profound misogyny.” According to Andrew O’Hehir, belief in any kind of spiritual reality (in good and evil “that you can’t see”), is dangerous, because it leads to things like persecution and racism. According to Andrew O’Hehir, this is a “right wing” movie with “retrograde politics,” presumably because both (heterosexual) couples in the movie are married and because there is one — count it, one! — mention of Christian Baptism.

I just love this, because he makes these assertions in the first paragraph. One would expect him to somehow explain or support these assertions in the body of the essay. nope. The body of his essay then consists of one paragraph of plot summary, one paragraph of character summary, two paragraphs of analysis of the movie from a cinematic perspective, two paragraphs on the factual basis of the story and criticism of the Warrens’ website. By paragraph seven, we assume he is ready to substantiate, explain or expound on his initial claims about the secret messaging contained in this film which, according to him, are not only secret, but patently erroneous, but downright dangerous! Nope. In paragraph seven, he goes off on a tangent about the sexual appeal of Lorraine Warren’s character. Then he reasserts his claim that the movie is “retrograde” and “reactionary.”

Maybe he’ll explain himself in the last paragraph?

Nope. Based on nothing, absolutely nothing but his own previous claims that have gone thus far unexplained and unsupported, he says the movie wants to take us back to the days of the Salem witch trials and infiltrate our consciousness with the message that there was really something to it!

In the last paragraph, he throws out more terms like “hard right family values messaging” (again, both couples were married and had children?), and says The Conjuring is “somewhat akin to making a movie that claims, in passing, that slavery was OK or that the Holocaust didn’t happen.”

It is “reprehensible and inexcusable,” according to Mr. O’Hehir to make a movie “that claims in passing” that that the Salem Witch trials, slavery and the Holocaust were okay; however, it is perfectly acceptable to write an article that claims, in passing (without any explanation or substantiation), that The Conjuring claims that the Salem Witch trials, slavery and the Holocaust were okay.

All I can say is: Thank goodness we have people like Andrew O’Hehir to decode this film for us, otherwise we might be left thinking that the real message of the film was something like the message in the quote that appears in the last shot of the film and remains on screen for at least a minute:

“The devil exists. God exists. And for us as people, our very destiny hinges upon which one we elect to follow.” — Ed Warren

Yes, indeed, how “right wing”! How reactionary! How misogynistic! How retrograde!

Secret message of Andrew O’Hehir’s article on Salon: Christians are superstitious “moonbats” and their beliefs are the root of all evil in the world.

- lickona says
  
  July 21, 2013 at 1:27 pm
  
  Did you like the film?
  
  Mr. O’Hehir might could be a lapso. Ipso facto?
  
  - lickona says
    
    July 21, 2013 at 1:34 pm
    
    Never mind. I see that he’s a descendent of a convicted Salem witch.
    
    - Ellen says
      
      July 21, 2013 at 1:56 pm
      
      I thought the film was pretty good. Did I like it? No. No! I didn’t sleep a wink on Friday night. Not a wink. A large branch fell on my tin roof sometime around 3:00 and I swear I almost literally had a heart attack. I’m a chicken. I dislike it for throwing off my sleep patterns.
      
      Last night I slept better, because every time I saw in my mind’s eye Lili Taylor possessed by a demon I tried to replace that image with her character Corey Flood in Say Anything committed to singing on graduation night the 65 songs she wrote about her ex-boyfriend. It worked! I can only take fear and trembling in small, small doses.
      
      - job says
        
        July 22, 2013 at 6:57 am
        
        This is good news.
        
        I like being genuinely scared – and hate being insulted with cheap effects (CGI is now considered “cheap” I would think). All reviews, even the ones that didn’t like the movie (Mogenstern, WSJ) had to admit it tests the genre and challenges audiences NOT to find it one of the scariest things to come out in a while – mostly because it relies more on the traditional conventions of a horror movie.
        
        I’d like to see it.
        
        JOB
        
        
        lickona says
        
        July 22, 2013 at 8:14 am
        
        The murderous drifter in act three is a bit of a diablo ex machina, though.
        
- Angelico Nguyen, Esq., OP says
  
  July 21, 2013 at 2:45 pm
  
  Semi-related.