#6 - The Veil (2016)

I'll be honest.  I only picked tonight's movie because it has Jessica Alba in it.  No, she doesn't get naked and make all sexy-sexy with herself before getting axed to death in a lake, but I watched the entire film anyway, just to make sure.  And she doesn't.  So, if that's what you were hoping for (like I was), then be warned.  It doesn't happen.  Sadly.  :-(

The Veil (2016) starts out with a fairly well-known story, one that we've heard at least once or twice before.  A charismatic cult leader gathers his followers onto a little plot of land in the woods, and there he preaches them to death, with the assistance of psychotropic/lethal drugs.  This movie is about a film crew who heads to the nearly-abandoned property 25 years later, to find out just what exactly happened in those fateful hours leading up to the deaths of an entire cult full of people...  Except for little 5-year-old Sarah Hope, sole survivor of the mass suicide, who says to the FBI who come upon her next to the bodies:  "It's okay, they're not dead.  He's going to bring them back."

This flick is a mix of found-footage (thankfully, very brief interludes where the film crew finds and plays snippets of old films from the days of the cult's livelier times), and typically cinematic movie-film style, where the camera sees all, but isn't part of the film.  Lily Rabe plays the now-adult Sarah Hope, the sole survivor of the Mass Suicide, who is convinced to return to the site by Maggie Price, head of the film crew.  The charismatic cult leader is played with abandon by Thomas Jane, who looks like he's having a blast playing a preachy villainous-type guy.  The rest of the cast is walking redshirts (WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO DIE, SALUTE YOU!) and unknown actors.  I've heard complaints that the movie is basically just a bunch of people sitting around watching some old movies, and that does happen in brief interludes, but I think that's doing a disservice to what's actually happening in the film.  There's actually a lot of killing going on between the movie-watching scenes, though it's usually done so quickly that you'll miss it if you blink, so I suggest you don't blink.  No, just stop yourself from blinking.  Use toothpicks if you have to.  Actually did you know, not blinking is a leading cause of computer-related eye strain?  Yeah, we're apparently so focused on our screens, that we forget to blink as much as we should, and our eyes dry out.  Stupid humans.

Okay, so, bad stuff first.  No nudity in The Veil.  Little bit of found-footage type stuff, but very tolerable, and you guys know I hate that shit.  If I can tolerate it, you know it's not bad at all.  The killing is done at a very breakneck pace (heh, breakneck, geddit?), and there's not much focus on it.  Most of the time, you don't even see the actual deaths on-screen.  Instead, you get a few scenes leading up to the death, just enough to indicate that there's some wanton violence about to occur, and then POOF.  Next scene.  Other times, you find out about the death afterwards, with no lead-in at all.  For a horror movie, they kind of gloss over the whole "dead bodies" part.  Also bad:  Jessica Alba is covered up in loose jeans and a heavy sweater for the entire film.  Yea, I know she's super-rich and doesn't need to show off her bod for a paycheck anymore, but throw me a bone, here!  Some of us dogs are still poor and starving.

Good stuff.  Not a bad little horror film, honestly.  I could see where the whole thing was going, but it wasn't a bad ride getting there.  Thomas Jane makes an awesome cult leader.  Might watch this one again if there's going to be a sequel, just to brush up on the movie-facts.  Check it out on Netflix if you want to, but again, be warned, there's not a ton of horror, not a lot of killing shown onscreen, and no nudity, so, pretty much missing everything that I love in a horror movie.  But there was a decent amount of atmosphere, I guess?  Meh, hard to explain.  If you had to make a decent horror movie without bloodshed, nudity, a monster, or anything actually scary, I'd say this one is as close as you can get.  I hope that explains it well enough.

In other news, now that I finished Luke Cage and was thoroughly disappointed, let's recap the series that I am still interested in.  Sundays: Ash vs  Evil Dead (8pm starz) and Westworld (9pm HBO).  Mondays: Lucifer (9pm Fox).  Tuesdays: SHIELD (10pm ABC).  Fridays: Exorcist (9pm Fox).  I'm not sure what it is about wednesdays, thursdays and saturdays, but there's never anything interesting on those nights.  Maybe the TV channels just assume we're going to be too busy drinking ourselves into a stupor just to get through our work weeks, and celebrating the fact that we survived them, on those nights (and perhaps rightly so).  Oh well.  Still waiting on Grimm to premiere its last few episodes mid-season, and there's always the spring's new shows.  Winter is coming, or, so I've heard.  Today, it hit 77 degrees Fahrenheit where I am, so Winter seems a long way off.

I've heard people complain about the violence in Westworld, but I don't have a problem with it.  As an adult horror movie fan, the violence in Westworld seems pretty tame, so far.  There's also a lot of nudity and women-bashing, but since the westworld "amusement park" is focused on the old west theme, that sort of behavior is pretty much expected.  I highly doubt that Dr. Ford's assessment of the "real world" outside of the park is entirely accurate, however.  I mean, think about it.  He mentions how they've solved all the world's problems with diseases and may someday even be able to bring people back from the dead, so I guess he's trying to put forth the idea that Westworld occurs in some future time where our technology is quite advanced, and we've overcome our more basic human natures.  But, if just about every visitor to the park is talking about how they have "gone evil" and will randomly kill their westworld robot guides, just because they are bored, I highly doubt Dr. Ford's view of the outside world is entirely correct.  Any society that advanced would probably shrink in horror at the sight of armed gunmen slaughtering each other in the streets, even if they are just robots. And that's not even mentioning the serial-killer level of torturous methodology that Ed Harris's character (the ominously referenced "man in black") displays.  Are we to believe that the only people who can afford to vacation at westworld are the villainous super-rich, people whose moral compasses are so skewed that they don't even blink at shooting and killing a robot, despite how humanoid and lifelike the robot looks?  If so, it paints a sad picture of how the rich folks get rich in the distant future, and an even sadder picture (if only guessed at) of those who can't afford to attend the park.

Wow, who'd have thought I could get so deep, talking about a show featuring killer robot cowboys?  Not me, that's for sure!  I think I wore myself out.  That's all for tonight.  Finally finished a review before midnight, yay!