The Taking of Deborah Logan

If I thought I was tired of found footage movies or possession movies - I'm doubly, triply, infinitely tired of movies that are BOTH. The Taking of Deborah Logan is just that: another found footage, possession movie.

In case you're wondering, I'm about to divulge all kinds of spoilers here. If you don't want the movie to be ruined, you should stop reading now.

The plot unfolds like this:
Poor, small town woman (Sarah) needs money to save her house and pay for the medical care of her mother, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. A PhD candidate (Mia) will pay Sarah the money she so desperately needs if Sarah will allow her to film her mother over a course of some months. As the days progress, strange things begin to happen that are clearly supernatural and all hell, literally breaks loose.

The 20 minutes leading up to the ending are COMPLETELY absurd and even jump the shark for a possession movie. If I'm to believe that this movie is REAL, don't present me with a COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE situation in which an old lady tries to swallow a 10 year old child LIKE A SNAKE WOULD SWALLOW A MOUSE. Yup. I'm just going to let that sink in.

The actual ending is completely predictable and could have been written by a child.

So let's slow down here and look at how this movie is supposed to work.

Possession movies, by nature, are supposed to terrify us on a spiritual level. They speak to a belief system I just don't subscribe to. My lack of attachment to the context which creates the fear renders them emotionally moot for me. My guess is that I'm not alone on that front and filmmakers know this.

To combat this lack of spiritual terror, filmmakers rely on something the horror genre is no stranger to, body horror. We need not believe in god to be terrified by abnormalities in the human body. Grotesquely contorted spines, bleeding wounds, glassy eyes, obscenely swollen extremities, broken bones, and peeling flesh can terrify us all. This kind of horror is graphic and bloody.

The Taking of Deborah Logan takes this one step further and tries to horrify us with our ultimate fear: age. The only real message of this movie is that we should all be terrified of getting old AND by those that are old. "Being Old" is horrifying. We lose our minds and control of our bodies.

Now on the other hand, found footage movies are by nature frightening because of the things we DON'T see. Tension is built by teasing the audience with snippets of visual information, sounds with no obvious sources, and quick movements we can't quite track. A found footage movie is actually quite subtle, when well crafted.

When you think about it, paring a possession movie with a found footage movie is like smashing Slayer and Yanni onto an album together. (Wait. Is there a mashup out there already...) It is two ends of the spectrum coming together; on paper, it sounds like a terrible idea, but in practice could create something fascinating.

In this case, I will grant that The Taking of Deborah Logan managed to achieve a few moments of genuine tension but, overall, it was a whopping failure.

Watch it if: you're not burned out on possession movies or you're not yet terrified of getting old.

You can watch the ugly face of age here in the trailer and be glad you've still got enough of your faculties to know what's coming:

Rebuttal: 17 Disturbing Horror Movies You Will Never Watch Again

When I'm not watching movies, I'm reading about movies. I stumble across all kinds of articles, blog posts, book excerpts, etc. in my quest to absorb as much movie knowledge as possible. Now, I'm snotty and loud-mouthed and opinionated but I'd never begrudge another human their opinion. Seriously. You're absolutely welcome to have any opinion about any thing you want. However, I must warn you, if I think your opinion is stupid, I'm absolutely going to say so. I've recently stumbled on an article completely brimming with so many idiotic opinions that I'm actually compelled to craft a response. Here's the gist of the original article: there are some horror movies out there that are so disturbing , you'll only ever want to watch them once. I've have taken her original list and refuted her claims without pulling her entire article over. You can read the original article here . Let's start at the beginning, with her opening statement

Escape From Tomorrow

I love creative people who are willing to take risks with their art. I appreciate the refusal to do things by the rules. I'm also terribly impatient with mediocrity. Enter Escape From Tomorrow . Created by a team of rogue filmmakers, the movie was shot in the video mode of high-end still cameras. Actors shared scripts and shooting locations across their smartphones. Shot on location at Disney World, the parks were completely unaware this was all going on right under their mouse ears. I wanted to love Escape From Tomorrow. More than that, I wanted to be completely taken with its ingenuity and creativity and - oh yes - its originality. And there is really a simple brilliance to their covert plan; all families are roaming around the parks, taking videos and chatting on their phones. Just blend the fuck in, act like you belong, and you won't get caught. Too bad the movie can be summed up as: ambitious but Rubbish. As you can imagine (or possibly know), there was a ton of con

Mother!

Alright friends and readers–this one is probably doubly filled with typos and grammar errors because I wrote it while angry. Good luck and happy reading. There are unpopular opinions in every realm. As a film student, you can truly strike a nerve when you say things like, "I fucking hate the self-indulgence of independent films and the way people idolize them." Or, you know, "Low lighting and slow pacing does not a good movie make." Or whatever. You can of course, objectively, understand how this happens. When you are creating art–when you are outside the system so to speak–you are free to explore things (subjects, techniques, etc.) that may need to be addressed and that freedom can become intoxicating and go to one's head. While it may seem only right or only fair to respect and accept each creative endeavor that every artist undertakes, it is unreasonable to believe that the world will remain forever patient with the self-obsession artists have. Th

i'm kael's ghost

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