#banshee chapter

[No, you haven't missed anything -- I am once again posting out of order for reasons.]

At the top of the Blogtober hour I confessed that I sometimes have a juvenile reaction to movies that have generated too much hype, whether or not that hype is actually deserved. It is probably for the same neurotic reason that I may feel an excess of affection for movies that I discovered without anybody's help, and for which I remain the world's only champion (as far as I can tell, anyway). BANSHEE CHAPTER is one of those rare movies that feels like it's "mine," though I'm not selfish enough to keep it a secret!

This indie mind-bender starts its life as a found footage flick that scaffolds its sci-fi premise with the realities of the CIA's drug-fueled MKUltra program...and then it gets crazy. Wannabe documentarian James Hirsch (Michael McMillian) records his own experience with DMT-19, the psychoactive substance used in the government's grim experiments, and the results shock both his cameraman AND the audience -- if you're me, at least! BANSHEE CHAPTER'S terrifying opening salvo is stunning in and of itself, but it does nothing to prepare you for the movie's sneaky breakaway from the found footage format, nor its slide into the always-dicey horror-comedy mode. This may sound frankly awful on paper, and writer-director Blair Erickson certainly takes some ill-advised swings, but the fact that BANSHEE CHAPTER remains engrossing and frightening throughout is truly impressive.

James' disturbing disappearance alarms spunky girl reporter Anne (Katia Winter), an old classmate who follows the trail of his DMT-19 dose to its surprising source: Counterculture hero Thomas Blackburn, AKA obviously Hunter S. Thompson, AKA Ted "Eat My Shit, Johnny Depp!" Levine. When Blackburn finds out the hard way that DMT-19 doesn't trigger an internal trip, but actually attracts hostile alien lifeforms, he joins Anne's mission to expose Project MKUltra as something much worse than a mind control experiment. Did I mention that this is loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft's "From Beyond"?

There's so much going on here that shouldn't work. It's tough to transition from a straight found footage format, into something you slowly realize would be impossible within the bounds of that subgenre; I don't feel sure whether this was a playful experiment on the filmmaker's part, or if he simply lost control of his movie. It's also dicey to transform your legitimately frightening mockumentary, into some sort of gonzo black comedy -- and while almost all celebrity impressions are cringe-inducing, Hunter Thompson is a particularly hard target. Ted Levine is really pretty good, though, and more importantly, Blair Erickson, DP Jeremy Obertone, and editor Jacques Gravett REALLY know how to scare you. A movie this zany has no business being as harrowing as it often is, and yet here we are!

The hardest part of the movie for me is Katia Winter's characterization of Anne, and I must admit that I cheat a little bit by imagining that I'm watching a slightly different movie. In the real story, Anne is presented as a plucky, ambitious investigator whose drive and intelligence are supposed to impress me, even though she's always making a dumb choice and she's always dressed a little too sexy to be professional. James was never more than a friend, but now that he's in trouble, she imagines a romance that could have been, which is none too compelling. So, I tell myself that this is a more knowing and sardonic movie than it actually is: In my version, James is a brilliant young man who had been friendzoned in college by Anne, an intellectually inferior vanity case (I mean, this "writer" has to have it explained to her who Hunter Thompson is??) who didn't deserve him anyway. She hasn't thought about him in years because she really didn't care, but his mysterious disappearance lends her humdrum life a sense of dramatic meaning, and it just might kickstart her non-existent journalism career. I don't think the actual script is in any way critical of Anne, but these unpleasant characteristics are on offer if you're looking for them. I constantly had the feeling that I knew this person: a shallow, untalented young woman whose only real virtue is her looks, and she might secretly know that, so she gloms onto someone else's tragedy in order to achieve a sense of personal significance, and she even imagines loving him now that there is absolutely no threat that she'll have to actually be with him. If you've seen this movie before, or if you're a first-timer and you find yourself getting frustrated with Anne as the protagonist, just watch it my way and see if it doesn't help!