The Cabin in the Woods

starring Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, and Fran Kranz
written by Joss Whedon & Drew Goddard and directed by Drew Goddard
Rated R for strong bloody horror violence and gore, language, drug use and some sexuality/nudity.
94%

Curt’s (Hemsworth) cousin just bought a cabin out in the woods, and now Curt and four of his college friends (Connolly, Kranz, etc.) are loading up the camper for a weekend of rustic debauchery. The trip begins promisingly, but quickly turns sour as night falls and the friends are systematically hunted and picked off one by one. Horror ensues.

The Cabin in the Woods left me simultaneously wanting to talk and talk and talk someone’s ear off about it, but not wanting to ruin someone else’s pleasure of discovering its many surprises for themselves. So, in consideration of the latter impulse, I could just stop here after noting that, although the film’s hook gives off every appearance of being a slavishly by-the-numbers slasher movie, any horror fan would be doing themselves a grave disservice if they missed seeing it. If you think you might want to see it, and you’re very spoiler-conscious, this would be a good time to stop reading (though, in that case, you should have stayed off the internet entirely). I intend to continue in general terms only, but if you care, don’t take the risk.

During the first 15 minutes or so of the movie, I was beginning to think it would make an excellent double feature with Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, last year’s hysterically clever inversion of the “hillbilly horror” formula. Maybe 30 minutes after that, I began to suspect that it would be a better match with Scream, Wes Craven’s genre-savvy meta-commentary on slasher movies, which went on to spawn its own horror franchise before spiraling into extreme self-parody. Eventually, I realized that The Cabin in the Woods, though it might be at home alongside many classic horror films, is really in a class all by itself.

Film scholars and enthusiasts frequently write essays, articles, and even entire books discussing and dissecting the horror genre and what makes it tick. What is “horror”? Why does it exist? Why do people enjoy horror movies? A lot of what they have to say is insightful and thought-provoking, but the broad appeal of reading an academic treatise is always somewhat limited. Whedon and Goddard have, instead, addressed these questions in highly-entertaining movie form. Their movie simultaneously critiques and revels in the excesses of the genre, and ends up rather cheekily suggesting that horror can save the world, even though (or, perhaps, because) its roots are in a place of primitive darkness and evil from humanity’s shared past.

However, as I said, the interest in hearing all of this spelled out, while fascinating to me, is limited. In The Cabin in the Woods, it is largely subtext, and even when the movie is essentially spelling out genre archetypes and their functions, it doesn’t lose sight of the all-important goal of giving the audience a good time with unexpected humor and storytelling that is full of surprises. It’s also, as near as I could tell, full of holes from the ground up, but getting hung up on that rather misses the point.

It’s great to see Whedon veterans like Amy Acker and Fran Kranz in familiar roles. Even better, though, are Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford as Sitterson and Hadley, thinly-veiled author surrogates, sardonically exchanging wry, self-aware banter as events unfold. They’re like Statler and Waldorf, the Muppet critics: technically part of the movie, but one-step removed, and always ready with an irreverent comment.

Now, given that I have used the word “horror” 10 (now 11) times, I’ve probably given a pretty strong impression that this is a horror movie. That’s not strictly true. There are a few jump moments, some disturbing images, some conventionally scary situations, and a definite penchant for blood and gore. That said, I laughed far more than I cringed. The Cabin in the Woods is a horror movie the way Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, and Army of Darkness are horror . . . by default. This is an exceptionally sharp comedy, packed to the rafters with allusions and inside jokes, from a writer who is known for playfully blurring the lines between genres, and it’s hard to have this much fun and not think happy thoughts about Whedon’s forthcoming The Avengers.

2012: An Oscar Commentary

Another year, another Oscar commentary. This may well have been the emptiest experience I’ve had watching the Oscars to-date. The effort was there, the entertainment, the experience . . . but there was so little life among the contenders. The edgy films, the revolutionary films, the exciting films . . . Those were all shut out in the nomination stage. Now here we are with an Oscar night that lies there, comatose, as they hand the Oscars out, for the most part, exactly where everyone expected them to go. It almost defeats the purpose of keeping it a secret, as it’s hard to imagine less suspense either way.

Billy Crystal was clearly a strong choice for hosting duties. He kept things moving, wasn’t obtrusive, entertained the audience, and got in some good jabs without being overtly mean . . . A solid performance from an old pro at this game. I basically approve. There were some genuinely awesome acts, as well, particularly the hilarious “focus group” sketch and the spectacular Cirque du Soleil performance. If there had been a bit more of this, and a bit fewer confusing montages, lukewarm wins, and commercial breaks, tonight would have really sung, but it can’t be said that there weren’t people giving 100% on this one.

The Artist, as best picture winner, finished the night tied with Hugo for most wins at 5 awards apiece (out of 10 and 11 nominations, respectively). That keeps it well out of sweep territory, and just above years when the awards have been even more evenly split (The King’s Speech, No Country for Old Men, and The Departed all won 4). Of the remaining nominees, only The Iron Lady, with 2 wins, won more than a single award. And is anyone really happy about that?

Of the other Best Picture nominees, only The Descendants, The Help, and Midnight in Paris won anything at all. 4 Best Picture nominees went home completely empty-handed, and three of them were films I really liked. It may be a long time before the Academy lives down shutting out The Tree of Life and Moneyball, in particular. Then again, the biggest fans of those films already know better than to take the Academy seriously. Spielberg will be back again soon, I’m sure. His star-studded Lincoln is due out in December.

Looking back at my initial predictions, it looks like I had 8 right, but increased that to 13 when I tweaked my predictions before the ceremony began. That’s a tie with last year, but my record is not improving. Maybe that has something to do with so few of the awards going the way I most wanted them to. Here’s hoping for something better, all the way around, next year!

Full commentary continues below the fold.

The Secret World of Arrietty

starring Bridgit Mendler, Will Arnett, and Amy Poehler
written by Hayao Miyazaki & Keiko Niwa and directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi
Rated G.
96%

14-year old Arrietty (Mendler) is a smart, adventurous girl who stands just 4 inches tall and lives under the floorboards of a large country house with her equally diminutive parents, Pod (Arnett) and Homily (Poehler). These “Borrowers,” as they call themselves, subsist from items that will not be missed by the humans, and they may be the last of their kind. This concern couldn’t be further from Arrietty’s mind on the exciting occasion of her first borrowing expedition, but everything changes when she is seen by a young boy who has just moved into the house.

I spent almost all of Arrietty‘s 94 minutes with a smile on my face. I don’t absolutely love every Studio Ghibli film, but when they hit the mark, there truly is no more enjoyable visit to the theater (or, more often, 3 or 4 visits). The movie rolls past in waves of cathartic wonder and lush visuals and delightful music. This may be Ghibli’s best film since Spirited Away in 2001. The story may feel slight, particularly by comparison with their more epic fantasy outings in the uneven Tales from Earthsea (2006) and the brilliant Howl’s Moving Castle (2004). Still, the plot recognizably follows the major arc of Mary Norton’s 1952 novel The Borrowers on which it is based, and not all stories shake the world.

The best thing about the film is its extremely likable title character, whose energetic curiosity drives events forward, but also provides opportunities to slow down and take in the richly-imagined surroundings. Arrietty is compassionate, ingenious, empathetic, spirited, and a lot of other complimentary adjectives that make her an ideal companion for adventure and exploration. It is obvious from the moment she is introduced, laughing good-humoredly over a narrow escape from the cat, that this is a character we will enjoy spending the rest of the movie with. Her cheerful liveliness and her natural awe in the presence of the mundane accouterments of our everyday lives makes her the perfect audience surrogate, reinvesting our surroundings with the novelty of seeing them as if for the first time.

It helps that everything in this movie looks gorgeous. One of the studio’s greatest animation strengths is in its bright, color-filled rendering of the natural world, whether it be a flower-filled meadow, an overgrown backyard, or an ivy-covered wall. Arrietty’s size gives us plenty of chances to get up-close and personal with the flowers, grass, and leaves that the film reproduces so beautifully. Even better, though, are the startling landscapes indoors; the vast reaches of a cavernous kitchen, the intricacies of an especially ornate dollhouse, and the labyrinthine twists and turns between the walls and under the floors. There is literally something new and exciting to see around every corner.

The music for the film was done by French singer Cécile Corbel, who joined the project after she sent a fan letter to Studio Ghibli along with one of her albums. There is a distinctly Celtic flavor to her music, heavy on the harp (Corbel’s instrument), that coincides spectacularly with the rural greenery and rustic flavor of the movie. The music, which frequently has lyrics (Corbel performed the main song for the film herself in Japanese, English, French, German, and Italian), might seem intrusive at times, but it generally reinforces rather than overwhelms. If the animation were not so good, it might be tempting to close your eyes and simply listen.

The greatest challenge in telling this story, I imagine, would be keeping The Secret World of Arrietty grounded in some kind of emotional reality, and not allowing it to float the audience airily away to a fairy world of near-paradisal perfection. As in many of his other films, Miyazaki deftly weights the happy innocence of childhood with the sadness of mortality and bittersweet joys and sorrows of new friendships that are over all too briefly. This tempers the film’s lightness and brings meaning to the characters’ journey. Arrietty’s story continues, without dialogue, into the credits, inviting the audience to sit quietly and reflect on the film (at least until a Disney pop song, unique to the American release, cuts in). Almost the entire theater stayed through the credits at the weekend showing I attended, which is virtually unprecedented in my experience.

It’s a shame that so few American films feature great female characters like this, or use the freedom of animation to do something more than make cartoon animals reference pop culture and crack wise. It’s an even greater shame that so few of the films the rest of the world is making find their way into a wide theatrical release here, and that it takes so long for those that do to arrive (Arrietty was released in Japan over 18 months ago). That only makes this movie all the more a rare treat. Go see The Secret World of Arrietty while it’s in theaters; first, because it’s important that we support movies like this when we can. But even more significantly, if you don’t go, you’ll be missing out.

Chronicle

starring Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, and Michael B. Jordan
written by Max Landis & Josh Trank and directed by Josh Trank
Rated PG-13 for intense action and violence, thematic material, some language, sexual content and teen drinking.
85%

Three high school seniors, Andrew (DeHaan), a withdrawn outcast with a dark family life, Matt (Russell), his light-hearted, philosopher-quoting cousin, and Steve (Jordan) a popular, outgoing candidate for student body president, all gain telekinetic powers when they stumble upon a mysterious, pulsating object. As their powers grow, tensions and complications arise, all documented by Andrew’s video camera and other bits of found footage.

Orson Welles was only 26 when he made Citizen Kane, so it’s not hugely surprising that 26-year old writer/director Josh Trank has produced such a solid film (though certainly no Citizen Kane) with his feature debut. It would be more surprising to learn that this movie had come from someone older. From beginning to end, this feels like a story that emerged directly from fresh, raw experiences in an American public school during the last decade, mixed with the basic, premise-level conceits of comic books that have been around for far longer.

It would, however, be a mistake to call this a “superhero” movie when it’s really more of a “superpower” movie. Perhaps that seems like too fine of a distinction. A few days before I graduated from high school, I sat in a darkened theater with many of my friends and watched Spider-Man (2002) for the first time. Like Chronicle, Spider-Man is about a high school student who acquires superpowers and must then work out how to handle the enormous responsibility that accompanies them. But, because Spider-Man is a superhero movie, it explores this theme by having Peter Parker don a colorful costume and do battle with an equally-colorful supervillain, who (conveniently) comes into some superpowers of his own at around this same time. Chronicle, on the other hand, ventures to ask what a few real high schoolers attending a real high school (a justification for the well-worn “found footage” device) would actually do if they suddenly had such powers; a question that is simultaneously so compelling and so obvious one wonders immediately why no one has thought to ask it in a film before.

First, there’s basic juvenile mischief: they bean each other in the head with baseballs, use a leaf-blower to lift a girl’s skirt, prank various people in a store. But as they continue to experiment, they realize they’re getting stronger, and for at least one of them, a victim of bullying and insults everywhere he goes, that means a chance to go about righting all of the many things that are wrong with his life. Beyond the novelty of the superpower device, this journey opens up a sad window into the lives of contemporary teenagers, with all of its casual cruelty and pressures to indulge in the pleasure of the moment. Of course, there’s nothing here that we don’t already know, but there is a visceral immediacy that comes from the strong performances of the largely-unknown cast; most of all from Dane DeHaan’s ability to walk a thin line between sweet-but-misunderstood loner and twisted, bitter sociopath.

The use of “found footage,” which is as near as a film can come to the “first-person narration” approach to fiction, has by now been used so frequently that it may have begun to tax the patience of fans and detractors alike. The novelty of the form (which some would cite as its primary appeal) is long gone, and any use of it in a film now had better be well-justified by some necessity of the story being told, as it can no longer hope to captivate simply by being different. Although there is arguably some attempt to justify that choice here, the way the film is edited makes it seem that Trank wanted to have his cake and eat it, too.

Throughout Chronicle, the camera-wielding main characters come into contact with other cameras (we are, as a society, now constantly in danger of appearing on film at a moment’s notice no matter where we are), and those cameras are used to provide additional angles and perspectives on events. For example, there is a girl named Casey, who (like the boys) wields her camera everywhere she goes, ostensibly filming “for her blog,” although there seems to be no real rhyme or reason behind what she is recording. Her presence in any given scene allows the director to cut back and forth during conversations. Late in the film, during a major action sequence, Andrew telekinetically swipes an armload of iPhones and digital cameras and arranges them around himself, allowing Trank 360 degrees of possible angles to play with. And, even though there is a security camera in one unconscious character’s hospital room, the police set up a second camera at the foot of the bed which must be kept recording at all times even though no one is present, allowing for still more angles.

Thus, throughout the movie, it is difficult not to question why any given character would be compelled to film what is going on, particularly when what is being filmed is either highly incriminating or extremely inconvenient. Why (and how) would one of the teens expend the mental energy to levitate a camera around and film himself assaulting a gang of neighborhood thugs, for example? There is also a constant question of who assembled all of this footage, and how. Andrew’s original camera is lost some 15 minutes into the movie, buried deep underground, but we are able to watch everything that he filmed on it. Who went around and collected the dozen or so personal video recorders that Andrew films himself on during the climax? And how did they survive being dropped so many stories when he was done with them?

Questions like this are a constant distraction from the substance of the story itself, which must surely be a sign that the found footage device may not have been the best choice in this case. Still, this apparent attempt at “artiness” or “trendiness” aside, it’s hard to complain too loudly when there is bright, young talent (director, writer, and actors) collaborating on something that, in every other way, feels so fresh and original. Chronicle is a welcome break from the same-old superhero thing, if not from the same-old found footage thing, and I hope the filmmakers behind it have many more stories left to tell, and many more chances to tell them.

2012: An Oscar Primer

I didn’t even prime the primer last year, because the demands of my job make it difficult to watch the announcement of the nominees and respond immediately, but I wanted to go ahead anyway this year. I’ve still been trying (with mixed success) to keep up with the race, but I find myself having to go farther and farther out of my way to see even the films with the biggest buzz surrounding them.

Nearly half of the Best Picture nominees, including the two that are considered this year’s front-runners, have not yet been released in my city. Now, I may not live in the cultural capital of the nation, but there is still a large audience for all things cultural in my city. We, and other large swathes of the population of this country, are consistently excluded from this conversation and fed a steady diet of inane mediocrity and worse. Alvin and the Chipmunks 3 is still taking up multiple screens here (really? over a month and you think everyone who wants to see that still hasn’t made it in? just release it to Redbox already), and I have small hope that many more of the films I most want to see will arrive before Oscar night.

There is a lot of talk about the problems of Oscar ratings and drawing in viewers, and I’ve heard it said that people don’t watch the Oscars because the Academy passes over the films they like in favor of the films they’ve never heard of. The Academy has attempted to fix this in recent years by dramatically increasing the pool of Best Picture nominees, but the real problem is something else entirely. People have never heard of the films that are being nominated because the studios behind them don’t bother to market those films to a wide audience, let alone make them accessible to that audience. I feel kind of lucky that I only have to drive 100 miles to see limited releases, though even that has become largely impossible with full-time work, a baby, and a limited budget.

Anyway, we have nominees to discuss. The Academy has introduced yet another wrinkle into its nomination process, and the number of Best Picture nominees will now vary each year between 5 and 10 depending on how many films meet a minimum “first-place votes” requirement. Basically, it’s complicated, but don’t worry about it because I’m kind of expecting this rule to change next year. In any case, that means 9 nominees for Best Picture this year:

War Horse – Some people might call this conventional, cliche, and sentimental. I’d call it old-fashioned, a throwback to classic films and filmmakers and to a time when sentimentality wasn’t so deliberately cloying. I loved it. And, particularly after the massive disappointment of Spielberg’s Tintin, it was a welcome relief to go to War Horse and get lost for hours in the simple pleasure of being at the movies. It has 6 nominations: Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Music, Best Sound Editing, and Best Sound Mixing. These categories speak to the rich auditory and visual experience of watching this film, and I think I agree completely with the nominations it got and did not get.

The Artist – By now it’s no surprise to anyone who is paying attention to see this title on the list. But if you had told me last year that a foreign silent film would score 10 nominations and be considered the front-runner of this year’s race, I would have laughed and reminded you that it has been 83 years since a silent film was nominated for Best Picture, and that foreign language nominations (does this count?) are rare and never win. And I think Schindler’s List, nearly 20 years ago, was the first black-and-white film to win in decades. If I had somehow believed this could happen, I would then have lamented that there was no chance of the film coming to a theater near me, but I guess I’ll stop whining about that. Since I haven’t seen it, I don’t have much to say about it, except that I really hope I get to see it before Oscar night (it looks like it will be coming to town in early February). The other nominations are: Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Costumes, Best Editing, and Best Music.

Moneyball – I am really not into sports films, but Moneyball offered me a glimpse of why people care so much about sports and think they matter. That’s an accomplishment that has to count for something. It’s a highly-enjoyable and well-made film, based on actual events, with some great performances, and a strong screenplay. Very solid pick for this category, and a movie I wouldn’t mind seeing again. And now we’ll start seeing trailers that mention “Academy Award Nominee Jonah Hill,” so that will be weird. The film has 6 nominations: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Editing, and Best Sound Mixing.

The Descendants – This film has some major acclaim behind it, and is surrounded by rave reviews, which was confusing to me until I saw it. Well, it’s still a little confusing. There is something unique about the delicate, graceful way that it navigates a string of painful and emotional situations, transitioning seamlessly between laughter and tears. The writing is strong, and the performances are strong. It’s a good movie. But a great movie? I don’t know. I don’t think so. It’s still the best Hawaii movie since Lilo and Stitch, though. The Descendants has 5 nominations: Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Editing.

The Tree of Life - I think it’s fair to say that this is the movie that inspired the most conversations, and the most passionate conversations, this year. Although he is showing signs of becoming more prolific, a new film by Terrence Malick is rare enough to be considered An Event. This is his most ambitious project yet, a semi-autobiographical meditation on birth, childhood, death, creation, evolution, life, the universe, and everything. I was fortunate to have a chance to see it in the theater, and I found it challenging and thought-provoking, but also dense and murky at times. It is certainly not a film with an obvious point to make, or one that reveals all of its quirks and mysteries on a first viewing. That can make for either a rewarding or an irritating experience, depending on the spirit you approach it with, but the most serious criticism that one could charge it with, in my opinion, is that it swings for the stars and only hits the moon. It only has 3 nominations: Best Director and Best Cinematography.

Midnight in Paris – Everyone says this is Woody Allen’s best film in years, and they’re right. When Allen is on, he is on fire. This is only his second screenwriting nomination in a decade (his 15th nomination), his first directing nomination in nearly 2 decades (his 7th nomination), and his first film to be nominated for Best Picture in a quarter of a century (his 3rd nomination). All are well-deserved in this case. This is one of those Woody Allen movies that leaves me wanting more, and sends me looking for more of his films that I haven’t seen. It has 4 nominations, with the last being Best Art Direction.

The Help – I passed on several chances to go see this film because I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to. It is clearly a popular favorite, and the way it was being praised and reviled reminded me very much of the reception for The Blind Side a few years ago. And I hated that movie something fierce. In any case, I caught it on DVD over Christmas, and found the comparison to be somewhat apt. Both films pander to mainstream white audiences’ smug complacency about race and racism, are loaded with cliches and feel-good chuckles, and feature a stand-out performance by an actress that even detractors of the film are willing to praise. I liked The Help better than The Blind Side, but I also had a serious academic interest in it, as I wrote my thesis on adaptations of Southern novels into films. The movie has four nominations: Best Actress, and two for Best Supporting Actress.

Hugo – I can say with no reservations that this is my stand-out favorite film of the year. Martin Scorsese’s first children’s movie is also a passionate plea for film preservation, and it turned out to be a strong justification for the existence of film critics, as well. The advertising for the movie was so spectacularly inept that I probably wouldn’t have gone to see it if it had not been championed by so many. It is a lush and glorious cinematic experience that reminds us all why the world first fell in love with the movies and their wondrous magic over a century ago. It leads the field this year with 11 nominations: Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Costumes, Best Music, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Editing, and Best Sound Mixing.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close – This is the one film on the list about which I am genuinely baffled. I had not seen anyone predict its inclusion since it was released to decidedly poor reviews some weeks ago. And I’m not really happy that I’ll now feel obligated to see it. I guess the Academy just can’t resist Stephen Daldry. This is his 4th film, and he received a Best Director nomination for the previous 3, along with Best Picture nominations twice. The movie has a very weak 2 nominations, with the other being Best Supporting Actor. Seriously, what is this movie doing here?

And now for a brief look at the other nominees, beginning with those which I have already seen:

Enjoying the Scenery: Waiting for the Train (Once Upon a Time in the West)

The year is 1967, and three Italian film aficionados, Dario Argento, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Sergio Leone, having spent several months watching and discussing Westerns, are collaborating on a story. Argento will one day be famous for his influence on the Italian giallo genre of slasher films, but his directing career has not yet begun. Bertolucci will go on to achieve enormous critical success, sweeping the Oscars with his 1987 film The Last Emperor, but he has yet to make his mark. Leone has recently released The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the third of the Italian-style horse operas in his “Dollars Trilogy,” already widely known to American audiences and critics as “spaghetti Westerns,” and the story the men are working on is for him.

This story, too, will look to the most quintessentially American film genre for inspiration. Pooling their vastly different creative sensibilities, their shared passion for the art of cinema, and their encyclopedic knowledge of classic Western films, the Italians complete a story treatment. And, in due course, this story will become Leone’s masterpiece: C’era una vota il West (1968), or Once Upon a Time in the West, as it is known in America.

In fact, a more slavishly literal translation of the Italian title would be “There Was Once the West.” Of course, that lacks the idiomatic flair of the American title, but it indicates the film’s depiction of a closing frontier, bustling with the activity of new settlement, encroaching civilization, and the construction of the transcontinental railroad. Very little time remains for the wandering, just-but-lawless mythic hero to roam this land. The film is a fairy-tale clash of primal good and evil archetypes, as “Once Upon a Time” suggests, but it is also about the end of “The West” as the physical location embodying An Idea about American exceptionalism and rugged individualism; An Idea that will be endlessly discussed, depicted, and reinvested with new meanings by artists and historians alike. “There Was Once the West,” but not anymore.

By the end of the first scene, a great deal about the story and the characters remains obscure, but all of this thematic and genre baggage is in play. Although it does eventually introduce the protagonist, this scene is really more of a prologue than a proper beginning to the story. It is a spectacular exercise in sustained tone, quietly and gradually immersing us in the world of the film for ten hypnotic minutes during which three men wait for a train to arrive. Real life is like this, sitting and waiting for something to happen, but those in-between times are easily forgotten or overlooked when we watch movies where every scene begins as something is happening and ends after that something has happened so that we can move on to the next scene and the next event. The idea that normal life stuff is happening whenever the characters are not on the screen is one of the great illusions of the cinema.

Franchise Files: Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)

The original1968 Planet of the Apes doesn’t seem like an obvious candidate for a sequel, at least until you learn that it actually made quite a bit of money. Certainly, sequels have been brought to the screen with far less to go on, but the screenwriters faced a challenging task. Although the story does end on something of a cliff-hanger, it is not immediately clear where another outing with these characters in this world could logically go. Watching Beneath the Planet of the Apes, released two years later, it becomes clear that logic didn’t really enter into the equation at all. Even by comparison with the three Apes movies that followed, one each year, this is thin stuff, and easily the weakest entry in the franchise.

Beneath went into production with a critical handicap: Charlton Heston was unwilling to play a major role in the film. As Taylor was the only sentient human character left alive at the end of the first movie, Heston’s decision left any potential sequel without a protagonist mainstream audiences could relate to. Of course, this needn’t have been a handicap at all. Any number of interesting ways to approach such a problem and take the story in a bold new direction consistent with the edgy, ambiguous ending of the original immediately suggest themselves. Unfortunately, the filmmakers decided to go completely the other way instead.

The new protagonist is Brent, played by James Franciscus, yet another astronaut from Earth’s past, the sole survivor of yet another crashed spaceship, this one sent in search of Taylor and his crew. Brent immediately encounters Taylor’s mute girlfriend Nova, still carrying his dog-tags, then stumbles his way through an onerous retread of Taylor’s experiences from the previous movie that occupies roughly half of the runtime of this one. We learn via flashback that Taylor and Nova, after riding off together into the Forbidden Zone, encountered a series of strange phenomena (walls of fire, lightning without clouds, earthquakes), and then came upon a large cliff-face where nothing had been before. Taylor, apparently acting on impulse, dives right through the seemingly solid rock wall and vanishes until the end of the movie.

Meanwhile, Brent observes the gorilla army preparing to invade the Forbidden Zone (to confront the someone or something that apparently inhabits the region) before he and Nova escape from Ape City using the long-abandoned tunnels of the New York Subway, learning for the first time that he has arrived on a future Earth rather than another planet. Traveling deeper into the huge system of tunnels, Brent finally stumbles upon an underground society of mutant humans with powers of telepathy and a religion based on the worship of a nuclear “doomsday” bomb occupying the altar amidst the ruins of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Here Brent is finally reunited with Taylor, who has been taken prisoner by the mutants. The mutants then nearly succeed in forcing them to murder each other using their telepathic powers, but the pair manage to escape. The gorilla invasion is successful thanks to the leadership of the orangutan Dr. Zaius, who sees through the mutants’ telepathic illusions. As the gorillas charge in and lay waste to the mutant society, Brent and Taylor attempt to prevent the mutants from purposely detonating the nuke, and the gorillas from accidentally setting it off. Their efforts backfire horribly when Taylor is riddled with bullets and falls on the activation switch. In the film’s final seconds, the screen goes completely white and a solemn voice intones, “In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead.”

Apart from being a total downer, the film’s destruction-of-the-planet ending is rendered absurd in retrospect. What looked like a definitive end to the series was actually only the second of five films. Beneath the Planet of the Apes also tries very hard to be more action- and effects-driven than its predecessor, which just ends up making it far less thoughtful. There are, however, a few glancing attempts at social commentary. Most notable is a scene where a small chimpanzee peace protest is forcibly removed from the road to allow the gorilla army to pass. The soldiers grappling with the protesters is shot up-close with what seems like a shaky, hand-held camera, presumably meant to evoke news footage of Vietnam War protesters. The army then proceeds, trampling the peace banners under their horses’ hooves.

The heavy-handed evocation of Vietnam is nothing, though, compared to how this movie tramples on the first film’s rich thematic discussion of the tension between science and religion. Someone seems to have realized that the apocalyptic ending of the first film rendered its defense of science over religion fascinatingly ambiguous: Sure, religious dogma in ape society deliberately holds back scientific progress, even to the point of repression, but if the alternative is the complete destruction of civilization itself, which is really the lesser of the two evils? Beneath the Planet of the Apes works overtime to redeem science from the onus of nuclear devastation established in Planet of the Apes and shift the ultimate blame squarely onto religious fanaticism.

In mutant society, religion is depicted at its most absurd extreme in the mindless adulation of an inanimate object. That these bomb-worshiping nitwits also happen to be a race of hyper-intelligent beings with the power to control minds and the intellectual sophistication to turn the apes’ own religious superstition (the gorillas’ one significant handicap) against them doesn’t seem to have struck anyone behind the making of this film as a significant contradiction. Ultimately it is the wild-eyed nihilism of the faithful that dooms the world to nuclear destruction, rather than the cold, emotionless logic of the scientists who created the doomsday weapon that does the job.

For all that it gets wrong, though, Beneath the Planet of the Apes somehow manages to be memorable in a so-bad-that-it’s-good sort of way. Sure, it’s not particularly coherent, but it does bring a number of indelible images to the screen, mostly having to do with the telepathic mutants, the hideous visages they hide under their normal-looking human masks, the shining, phallic bomb they worship, and the wild illusions they produce to confound their enemies. The scale is also somewhat grander in this film, with the impressive gorilla army seen training for battle, traveling in formation, and marshaling for the final attack. Their leader, the charismatic, war-mongering General Ursus (who loudly declaims, “The only good human is a dead human!”) is an interesting new addition to the cast of ape characters.

It’s hard to deny that the film is a failure by any real standard of movie quality, and this remains the easiest of the series to skip without missing any essential details of the overarching plot (which the filmmakers were just making up as they went along anyway). Nevertheless, there is actually plenty of good, campy fun to be had in the watching of it, and any true Apes fan won’t want to miss out. And you’ve got to hand it to that ending: For all their threats to humanity, how many movies actually follow through with the total destruction of Earth and all human life?