Rating: 2.5/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2018 | 19/52 | 80s Horror
It begins with a doting daughter, Cathy Dollanganger, who idolizes her mother, Corrine. For their father’s 36th birthday, Cathy and her siblings — her brother, Chris, and the 5-year-old twins, Cory and Carrie — throw a humble but festive party. When they hear someone at the door, they prepare to greet him, but instead, see two police officers, who inform them that their father has died. Corrine sells everything to care for the family, forcing them to move in with Corrine’s parents, the Foxworths, who disowned Corrine years ago. Corrine intends, in her father Malcolm’s final years, to win back her father’s love, so that the family may inherit his wealth.
They travel to Foxworth Hall, a looming Victorian mansion overlooking an immaculately manicured lawn. In the vestibule, lined with statues and paintings, stands Corrine’s mother, Olivia, holding a Bible. The Dollangangers follow Oliva up the stairs to a bedroom with two beds. Although the twins usually sleep together, Olivia insists that the boys, Chris and Cory, sleep in one bed, while Cathy and Carrie sleep in another. Oliva sets up strict rules, including keeping the children locked in the room. Corrine beseeches her children to obey Olivia, no matter what the circumstances.
Olivia, alone with the children, reveals why they disowned Corrine: their father was their mother’s half-uncle. Also, Corrin’s father, Malcolm, does not know that the children exist, so as long as he is alive, Olivia will do anything possible to hide the shame of grandchildren born of incest. And to show the children how they dole out punishment in this house, Olivia bullwhips Corrine and forces Corrine to show them the seventeen lashes, one for each year she lived in sin.
The film follows the children as they figure out how to survive and possibly escape the house.
Remember, God sees everything. God will see whatever evil you do behind my back, and he will punish you for it.
The book is part of a series written for a young adult audience, but you can get away with a lot more in print than you can on screen. So, the producers went to great lengths to tame the source material. Even mid-production, writer and director Jeffrey Bloom had to handle multiple drastic changes to the script. At one point, Wes Craven was attached, having written a script. But the producers were horrified by the sex and violence, once again proving how Hollywood never understood Craven’s career-long exploration of the family in crisis.
Still, despite the cutting, the remnants of the earlier film version are evident throughout. For example, a scene where Chris watches Cathy get in the bath still has him rubbing her back while she’s in the tub. And, there’s still a moment where Chris sees Cathy changing.
As a result, the film isn’t about much beyond child abuse and repression. Throughout, we get hints at the role of repression in childhood on growing minds—take something away without any explanation, and watch youth fixate on it. Add to that violent repercussions, and how do you think children will learn to respond to their problems?
That isn’t to say the movie is terrible. Yes, you have to draw in some characterization on your own for the story’s trajectory to make sense. But the end of the second act, leading into the third, sets up a tense, albeit silly, final act. And to be clear, I don’t care about the cut salaciousness — I just wish this weren’t so dang boring.
From a distance, Jeb Stuart Adams looks like Robert Sean Leonard.