Thursday, February 26, 2015

THAS: "I would always go to Sacred Chow on Sullivan... and Mama's over on Avenue A..."


What is this thing we have before us called Djinn?  It is a horror movie with actual characters, actual real world circumstances.  It is a product, made to bring the joys of horror entertainment to a foreign market, but far removed from the hard definitions belonging to a product, instead seemingly engineered backwards: the characters, a relationship to the real world, and a diversity of social intimations conceived of first and with seeming priority, with the audacity and truthfulness only to intimate and leave purposefully fractured and unresolved its sense of involvement in the quotidian aspects of the world, the horror elements laid atop (a series of ritualistic and indeterminate occult scenarios) onto the dramatic and emotional landscape meant to be exploratory and inquisitive rather than means to a result.


Djinn is a film of carefully modulated performances above all.  Carefully decided upon, that is, but Hooper's direction otherwise renders emotions as boldly individualistic, Razane Jammal's multi-faced Salama most of all used to define the swings of Djinn's moods and noncommittal emotions in the face of deeply (but by deferential, wisely overcome design) obfuscated and indeterminate points-of-view.

"Gli interni delle stanze sono messi in relazione con i personaggi e ogni arazzo e ornamento a Salama ricorda metaforicamente il figlio, creando una psicosi reiterata." ("The interiors of the rooms are placed in relation with the characters and each tapestry and ornament to Salama recalls metaphorically the child, creating a psychosis repeated.") - Fabio Zanello

Tobe Hooper's newest work is truly unique, novel, sui generis, an adventure, its "soft definitions" resulting in a film utterly permeable to the real world.

You may have to be patient, I am almost sure of that, but more to come on Djinn.

 
  
"It's time."

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I watched Djinn on Youtube. I held out as long as I could just because I wanted to see it released properly but I was really wanting to see it. Djinn is pretty good for what it is. It isn't any real innovation but is well crafted. It is a shame that politics came in to play to sideline Hooper once again.

JR said...

It's interesting to think of the film as Hooper's return to the ghost film, his first since POLTERGEIST. Putting the sensibilities of the two up against each other shows his range, though their affinities are also illuminating.

Anonymous said...

Yes, there some comparisons with Djinn to Poltergeist but I think that Poltergeist is more polished and follows his earlier film camera moves more. I think Djinn has more aesthetics of stuff like Toolbox Murders and his Masters of Horror efforts. Still ghosts, chainsaw wielding cannibals, vampires (both classic and space), aliens, zombies, and a laundry press are a wide array of antagonistic foes. Props to Hooper.

JR said...

No, you're definitely right, Djinn is more in line with a looseness characteristic of his later work. Toolbox Murders is actually his most precise work of late, his most "Poltergeist-ish" film, even though I feel Djinn is his true achievement of the current century.

Don't forget possessing oil monster and Freddy Krueger! (Or actually, let's forget Freddy Krueger.)

Anonymous said...

Yes, his Freddy Krueger wasn't very good but definitely better than the rest of that TV series. I grew up on the Nightmare on Elm Street movies as I was a VHS kid in the 80's getting freaked out via horror movies. I like The Damned Thing and thing that no special effect could really do the oil monster justice. It would have reminded everyone of the Raft segment in Creepshow 2. I have chimed in on the Poltergeist authorship a lot on here. There was this guy online called Ben There/Teen Herb who claims to have worked on the movie and asserts that Hooper barely did anything and it was all Spielberg. I have found inconsistencies in what he says though so I hardly believe it. I think Poltergeist fits in with TCM 1 and 2, Funhouse, and the other Canon films. Djinn may be a spiritual successor and I think it deserves to be seen instead of politically buried.

JR said...

I concur with everything you said. I've even come around on The Damned Thing, a valiantly doleful piece marred by generic obligations.

Anonymous said...

Hooper's Masters of Horror stuff was leagues better than the rest of what came out of the show. But that's just my opinion. Someone shuld give Hooper a project to do one last time as he is getting old.

JR said...

Hooper keeps on saying he's developing a "not really horror" thing. Someone let him do that!

Anonymous said...

That's fine as something like the Apartment Complex isn't horror, nor is his Amazing Stories, or Taken. There is just so many undeveloped horror projects that he should have done as well as stuff that he was offered or had a part in the genesis like Motel Hell, Return of the Living Dead, and etc.