devils and daughters

Last week, we took in a double feature of two of this summer's ample horror offerings--awesome in a season when you you usually can expect really only to find the latest Marvel/DC/Disney schlock and big shoot em' up action flicks. There is much more to come from the previews I am seeing before movies this summer and I am here for it--coming from all corners, including a lot of indie films that look not only spooky, but artfully done. 

I had high expectations going into Maxxxine--to be expected considering how much I have been waiting for this last installment of the trilogy every since buzz started circulating around the time I was writing horror content for Game Rant. Especially since seeing Pearl which may be a horror movie unlike anything I've ever seen with its cheery 40's musical aesthetic, ample gore, and Mia Goth, who plays things perpetually with just enough vulnerability and batshit craziness in every movie she graces. This new one did not disappoint in any of these things, and added a swirl of 80's cocaine-infused magic set in the shadow of the Hollywood sign...complete with killer cults, sleazy sex clubs, and a menacing creepiness lingering under the film slick facade of LA. The villain, of course, turns out to be closer to home, in the form of Maxine's estranged preacher father, who has been hunting his daughter for years and now has started a crusade against motion pictures and the pornos where she got her start--the evil and seductive allure of showbusiness and Hollywood being the center of his obsession. 

The second film., Longlegs, we saw at another cinema amidst stormy weather and tornado alerts on a night with over 20 funnels spotted in the city's environs (and on the way home encountered limbs down and furniture from a beachside cafe blown onto LSD. ) This one had some really disturbing trailers and teasers popping up since early this year. People have described it as a satanic take on Silence of the Lambs, and it definitely has a similar feel.  It might have been the presence of lead Maika Monroe, but it also visually had a feeling not unlike It Follows in terms of camera shots and mood--a movie I adore.  This film is a slow creep toward revelation, with Nicholas Cage in perhaps his most unhinged performance (and that is saying a lot.) Also terrifying enchanted girl-sized dolls that serve as vessels for evil spirits. 

While the main character, an FBI agent pursuing a bunch of strange murder/suicides in this one is not the daughter biologically of the villain (at least not the main villain), But because of her mother's involvement in the crimes (done to save her own daughter), the villain does become a de-facto father-figure to the heroine and she has to face off with the evil (though not in the way you might expect.)

This similarity of the two films, the dynamics of daughters and fathers/mothers, good and evil, made the films oddly a serendipitous par to see the same night, even though we didn't know it going in.  In the first, Maxine is lost and struggling adrift and under threat, a threat that comes from her own family. Ditto with Longlegs, where the threat is something in your own home. One a deflection and prevention of "evil," used as a justification for crimes, the other evil incarnate already in the homes of its victims.