The Girl in the Photographs. 2015. Directed by Nick Simon. Screenplay by Robert Morast, Osgood Perkins, & Simon.
Starring Christy Carlson Romano, Katharine Isabelle, Claudia Lee, Kal Penn, Mitch Pileggi, Kenny Wormald, Eva Bourne, Toby Hemingway, Miranda Rae Mayo, Toby Levins, Autumn Kendrick, Luke Baines, Kathryn Kirkpatrick, Oliver Seitz, & Corey Schmitt. Alghanim Entertainment.
Not Rated. 95 minutes.
Crime/Horror/Thriller
★★
This movie is being touted as something special, simply because it was the last film Wes Craven produced before his passing. But outside of that there isn’t a whole lot to talk about. Even though The Girl in the Photographs has a dark, sleek look with some nice cinematography from the legendary Dean Cundey, along with exceptional music from Nima Fakhrara, ultimately there isn’t anything except style here. The writing is very dull, from a story by director Nick Simon, written by Osgood Perkins (son of Anthony) and first time writer Robert Morast. I enjoy the premise, however, outside of that the screenplay’s really a boring rehash of typical genre fare, which eventually leads us to a disappointing finish.
All the grim beauty in the world can’t save this one. Too bad, as it would’ve been nice to have a final film produced by Craven worth talking about. Instead, his name is attached to this less than mediocre attempt at making something different within the slasher sub-genre of horror. The ending is a nice touch. Just too little too late.
When Colleen (Claudia Lee) starts to receive pictures of savage murder scenes, young women brutally killed. Are they real? Are they elaborately staged scenes?
Either way hipster photographer Peter Hemmings (Kal Penn) is interested. He wants to start staging photographs, much like this fellow artist or possible serial killer. Except by doing so he might just have put himself, and everyone around them, right in the way of the one taking those pictures.
And there’s nothing stopping the murders from slowing down.
So immediately, the fact Dean Cundey is the cinematographer on this movie really attracted me. Because you’ve got a guy who’s done everything from classics such as John Carpenter’s Halloween, The Fog, Escape From New York, The Thing, and then there’s his work on lesser, underrated pictures like The Witch Who Came From the Sea, Without Warning, Halloween II & Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Psycho II, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, plus a ton of others like Jurassic Park and Apollo 13, and more. So naturally, if you know his work, you’ll know Cundey has a lot of talent. His eye for horror particularly is incredible. There are some beautiful bits of Steadicam in here, tracking shots that make scenes stand out from the rest of the film. One of the biggest reasons I liked anything about The Girl in the Photographs is due to Cundey and the look he brings to the picture. Everything is beautifully captured, yet even the enormous talent of a cinematographer such as Cundey cannot fully carry a movie into worthy territory.
In addition to the film’s look, its overall atmosphere is definitely aided by an eerie score from Nima Fakhrara. There were scenes where it actually surprised me, catching me completely off guard, and it weighs down the scene with a real ominous, foreboding air. There was a typical feeling at times that takes you back to the usual style of horror score, but still Fakhrara subverts the horror movie score and gives us an enjoyable bunch of music to go along with Cundey’s slick look.
Kal Penn is great as Kumar, fairly shit in all other regards, though. He tries, but there’s something about his acting that falls flat. Especially here. The writing isn’t that great to begin with, and then there’s his dialogue. Which, coming from someone else, maybe could’ve been a little better. Penn is meant to be a pretentious-type, a douchebag. Although what comes out is just a dreary and forced performance from him that reeks of trying too hard, giving too little. Outside of him there wasn’t much else in the way of acting that’s bad. Not much good, either.
The screenplay kills everything simply because even the visuals aren’t enough to float the boat. Cundey is awesome, he’s not that awesome. Without anything new or innovative, the visuals are merely nice to look at. So on top of that there’s nothing interesting in the screenplay to lift things any further. What begins as an interesting premise, and ends in a fairly intriguing manner, falls apart in the middle like something only cooked around the edges and not inside. There’s nothing exciting at all about the dialogue, the characters are all flat, one-dimensional people we’re only waiting to watch die. So in many respects it’s the completely typical slasher horror, except it’s nowhere near as good as any of the classics, nor is it anywhere near the other horror movies Cundey’s touched in his career.
I can give this a 2-star rating with a clean conscience. There are a couple eerie scenes, and the masks worn were unsettling. So it’s enough to watch this once, just to say you’ve honoured Craven’s dear memory. After that you’ll likely never put this on again, unless you’re masochistic and want to endure it another time over. It’s not worth it, though. Again, I do dig the ending, and the photograph in the finale is almost otherworldly, it’s scary. But a decent premise and a fun ending does not a solid horror movie make.
Rampage. 2009. Directed & Written by Uwe Boll. Starring Brendan Fletcher, Shaun Sipos, Michael Paré, Matt Frewer, Lynda Boyd, Robert Clarke, Malcolm Stewart, Steffen Mennekes, and Katharine Isabelle. Event Film Distribution.
Rated 18A. 85 minutes.
Action/Crime/Thriller
★★★★ So I’ve been dying to review a couple of the Uwe Boll films that I find are actually decent. As I mentioned in my review of the intense and wild Stoic, I don’t think Boll deserves all the hate he gets online and otherwise. I know that many people see him as an arrogant, egocentric fool, but I don’t see him that way. Sure, he takes the haters by the horns, especially lately with his mad rant online after his funding campaign for a new Rampage instalment failed. I just don’t see why people have pushed him to that point. I agree not many of his movies are good. However, I think filmmakers, and artists in general, ought to be given a chance to get better. Is it easy to make movies? No, it’s not, though fans seem to think it is by the way they treat directors and actors who make subpar movies.
With Rampage, I believe Boll has crafted a damn good action thriller that’s a lot more interesting than so many other movies in that category as of late. There’s a good deal of crazy action, yet what interests me most about the film is the premise Boll has come up with for the main character and what he eventually begins to do as the film goes on.
Rampage is the story of Bill Williamson (Brendan Fletcher). Ole Billy, by all accounts, is what I would call a real slacker. He’s living at home with his parents (played by the fantastic pairing of Lynda Boyd and Matt Frewer), whom he gives a hard time, as if they’re meant to usher him from a boy to a man. Bill works at a garage where he’s not treated how he would like to be treated. Outside of home and work, he beats around with his equally slack buddy Evan Drince (Shaun Sipos who did an excellent job in Boll’s other fairly solid 2009 movie Stoic). The two of them eat chicken and play paintball together.
Lurking underneath all the normality, Bill is a troubled man. Inside him brews a combination of childishness and being unprepared for life, crossed with the injustices of society both actual and perceived. This develops into a boiling rage. Bill pieces himself together a full bodysuit of armour made of Kevlar, as well as the guns and ammo and toys to boot, then heads out onto the streets: the rampage is on and no one is safe. Least of all the structures of society, which Bill – misguided or not – takes aim towards, blasting hard as he can. There are definitely a few faults in the movie’s own logic. Perhaps this has more to do with the fact the script for Rampage was officially only about 10 or so pages long and less with any lapse in reason. Maybe the fact so much improvisation went into the filming made some of the plot get muddled. Either way, there’s not enough plotholes or anything in this movie for me to be turned off. Boll does a pretty good job with the material he brainstormed going in.
What I do enjoy quite a bit is the character of Bill. Not in the sense I agree with the verbal manifesto Bill Williamson pours on us through the camera’s eye throughout Rampage. I think, in my opinion, Bill is ultimately representative of dangerous right-wing logic. Others will say he represents something different, but I think the juxtaposition between Bill Williamson and Evan Drince at so many points speaks volumes. You can tell how Bill is so completely driven by the media, by right-wing flawed logic, and so on, as the television clips & radio stations flick by in the background, like they’re lodged in his brain.
You can tell so perfectly what Bill is setting up as he switches the bag of fake money in for the one with the real stuff, then burns the fake money declaring it is the worst problem of the world. You see how he’s not any kind of left-wing extreme activist. He’s the sort of person who we might see in any school or military complex or theatre, as is so often seen in America today – a sad, lonely, pessimistic soul who only wants to drag the world down to their level. My opinion is that Uwe Boll is making more of a statement about the people who commit these vicious rampages, armed to the teeth, than anything else. While maybe some of the opinions spouted off by Evan are more relatable, Bill Williamson represents the antisocial man in society, the one who just wants to watch the world burn, if I might steal a better written line than I’ll ever write. Even though Bill is an awful person for his crimes, the character is still interesting and I think Bol does well with making statements about this sort of madness. Honestly, he needs to move further away from video game adaptations more and more. If he can do more stuff like Stoic and Rampage, I’d gladly support him even more than I already do.
Bill: “You think people are equal. They’re not.” Not sure what the budget on this film is, but I’ve got to admit some of the action is great work. As Bill stalks the streets of his city, first disabling the police station with a van loaded up on bombs in its trunk, he starts to mow down anyone and everyone in his path. There are points where I was more than impressed with the raw action Boll was giving us. One scene Bill gets hit with a couple shots from the police, but his Kevlar bounces the shots off him and then he responds with his own gunfire, ripping the cops apart. Vicious, savage action. Got to love some of that!
While disturbing, it’s actually a little funny – of course in a pitch-black sort of way – to see Bill confront a barista in the coffeehouse where he’d earlier been snubbed and insulted by the same man. It’s tense and terrible in the end, however, a brilliant little scene to watch.
There’s a bunch of dark comedy mixed in. Though, most of the film is highly serious. Pretty grim, yet exciting all the same. What I like most of all, though, is Brendan Fletcher. The first time I can remember seeing him was way back now, about 15 years ago. I was watching Showcase and a film called Rollercoaster came on; he blew me away with his performance. After that, I made sure to catch any film or television show I could find him in. He has this incredible capacity for emotion, as well as a knack for dark roles. Here he displays several bits and pieces of those qualities. The mocking way he treats people, walking around town and blasting the citizens to bloody chunks, it’s truly macabre to see. Coupled with the action, its intensity, I think Fletcher’s work as the lead actor helps Boll make a solid thriller out of the material. Not sure how much of the character of Bill Williamson came from Fletcher, and what came from Boll. Regardless, I get the feeling the work well together and I’d like to see something outside of the Rampage movies where they work together. I know Fletcher has been in other Boll stuff, but I’d like a new film; maybe similar tone to this stuff, just a different story altogether. They appear to have similar sensibilities at times. I can’t not give this 4 out of 5 stars because I really do enjoy the film. Sure, there are moments I bet having a script, as I mentioned before with Stoic, might have been a benefit in the end. Although, I believe having an actor as solid as Brendan Fletcher playing the central role is something which ultimately helps the fact much of the “script” comes from improvisation. I’d like to hear the commentary on this film some day, perhaps more would be explained on that side of things.
The best part of it all is what I perceive to be Boll’s take on those who view right-wing extremist policies as the appropriate way to go, and what all these Kevlar, assault rifle toting gun lovers seem to be thinking in their heads. Bill Williamson is in no way a character fighting for the rights of every citizen, he’s fighting both society and the citizens in it. He just wants to tear it all down.
Either way, if you’re looking for something a little different and you’re secretly rooting for Uwe Boll, with every one of his films, to finally come out with something decent, you ought to check out Rampage. You might be pleasantly surprised with the end results.
NBC’s Hannibal Season 3, Episode 9: “…And the Woman Clothed with the Sun”
Directed by John Dahl (Rounders, Joy Ride, Breaking Bad, Dexter)
Written by Bryan Fuller/Steve Lightfoot/Helen Shang/Jeff Vlaming
* For a review of the previous episode, “The Great Red Dragon” – click here
* For a review of the next episode, “…And the Woman Clothed in Sun” – click here Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) has become distanced from Dr. Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) since three years ago, when they were still sickly close to one another, tit for tatting with arterial spray all over the place. Now they’re no longer on a first name basis, as Will seems to completely refuse calling him by name – always doctor, or Dr. Lecter. Evidence of Will truly wanting to have a life separate from their odd connection that once was, and still is – deep, beneath the skin, down in the heart. As always, Hannibal mines for details trying hard to uncover all he can about Will’s personal life: his new life, without Hannibal. It’s intriguing and sad all at once.
We’re served up a flashback from events in the very first season with Hannibal and Abigail Hobbs (Kacey Rohl), as he prepares the crime scene he concocted which framed Will for a time.
Basically we are seeing Hannibal, jealous of Will’s new life/fatherhood, looking back at the closest he’ll ever come to that sort of life – the family life. Abigail became like the child of Hannibal and Will. Hannibal reverts back to moments with Abigail, to both capture that feeling Will has which he is missing out on and also to feel close with Will; like a divorced parent remembering the good times with his child that helps him simultaneously remember the good days with his ex-partner.
“You accepted your father. Would it be so difficult to accept me?” Hannibal asks.
“I don’t know if it would be smart,” replies Abigail.
“We don’t get wiser as we get older, Abigail. But, we do learn to avoid or raise a certain amount of Hell. Depending on which we prefer.
“I’ll need to collect some flesh,” says Hannibal. “Not a pound, only a piece.” Incredible exchange here as they play on the phrase of “The King is dead – long live the King“…
Hannibal: “Abigail Hobbs is dead.”
Abigail: “Long live Abigail Hobbs.” Poor Will is being reluctantly sucked back into the entirety of his old life, working with the FBI and Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne). Also there is Dr. Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas) who has brought a Verger baby into the world herself, a true son of her own with Margot Verger (Katharine Isabelle).
But it’s Will who is in the most danger. Everyone else seems sort of sectioned off and encased in their own new worlds, yet Will is always in that danger, the peril of slipping back into the arms of Hannibal. Hannibal: “This is a very shy boy, Will. I’d love to meet him.”
As they work together, Will and Hannibal inhabit the Memory Palace. It goes to show how Will and Hannibal are so intricately linked in their psyches now that the Memory Palace where they go together is something of their simultaneous creation; they are partners, in so many senses of the word. They have rooms in their Memory Palace which are identical, perhaps even meant solely for the two of them and no one else. It’s a great visual representation that doesn’t have to do a big ton of exposition to get the point across.
Furthermore, Hannibal and Will walk around in the crime scene together. A testament to both of their powers to empathize, their twisted minds much alike, and also that connection constantly running strong. It’s as if they hadn’t skipped a beat in those years apart, each living other lives yet yearning to be together in some way. “Have you ever seen blood in the moonlight, Will? It appears quite black.”
A great image of Will standing like Francis Dolarhyde (Richard Armitage) did in the previous episode, painted in the black blood of his victims and naked in the moonlight. Back again is Freddy Lounds (Lara Jean Chorostecki), the awful and immoral tabloid reporter. Snooping around, watching Will Graham. Naughty, naughty. Tsk. How rude, Ms. Lounds!
Will: “You called us Murder Husbands.” – CLASSIC LINE! I fucking loved that. I like the new dynamic between Dr. Bloom and Dr. Lecter. Very interesting. They’ve crossed so many borders in their relationship. Especially when Alana let him go at Muskrat Farm when she could’ve just as easily let Mason Verger (Joe Anderson) eat him, torture him kill him. So it’s fun to see scenes between them both now. Once lovers, now enemies, at odds with one another. Furthermore, Hannibal is in a different position from before. He is uneasy now because of being trapped in that big cell, that fish tank, that observatory – like some bug, there to be studied. And Alana is there, poking, prodding. We also find out that the reason Lecter has cushy surroundings is due to Alana getting some of that Verger cash from the new male heir she gave birth to along with Margot, so that’s how he has been afforded some luxuries. It’s also a way for Alana to existentially torture him, I suppose. More Francis Dolarhyde moments bring us deeper into the psyche of Mr. Tooth Fairy himself. INCREDIBLE MOMENT = as Dolarhyde squirms and groans in his becoming there slithers a dragon’s tail back beyond the projector – amazing little shot thrown in there.
What interests me here is we’re seeing Dolarhyde trying to come to grips with who he is – he does not know, he thinks he’s becoming and he’s undergoing a transformation – meanwhile, Will is trying to get inside this guy’s head. It’s an almost impossible task; surely why Will feels the need to go back to Hannibal. However, it’s still an excellent duality where we’re seeing Will fall apart again, at least slightly, while trying to figure out who this man is: a man who does not even know himself.
There’s some amazing yet brief shots giving bits of insight into the past of Dolarhyde. I’ve included a couple screenshots that show a wonderful scene that goes so quick you can almost miss it. Includes some stuff from the Thomas Harris novel Red Dragon in a real intense, fast moment. I cannot get enough of Richard Armitage as Dolarhyde. I mean, it’s incredible. His physicality, the way he embodies the character and truly becomes him; it’s the essence of the character. Plus, he has several episodes to flesh out that performance. Perfect actor to have chosen for this role. Armitage rules – I am now a believer! Here in this episode, “…And the Woman Clothed with the Sun”, Dolarhyde meets his blind love interest. A perfect fit I always thought, for a man who has truly disturbing issues surrounding his own physical appearance. Rutina Wesley plays Reba McClane, previously a role inhabited by both Joan Allen and Emily Watson – so I’m interested to see Wesley’s take on it and see how well she handles it. From what we get to see in this episode, she will do great! She has a nice presence and tons of charisma.
I find the relationship between her and Dolarhyde so ripe for tension. It just fits so perfectly. Incredible adaptation here of Harris’ work. However, the original characters in the Harris novel are just amazing as is; what a writer. Again, again – love the visuals!
While the conversation between Will and his wife Molly (Nina Arianda) happens, Will uses his Memory Palace to imagine the two of them on the bed together, sitting, in love. It’s an awesome little use of the imagery we so often get on Hannibal. Plus, a nice scene between Will and his loving wife; she is good for him, even if he’s beginning to tear at the seams of his being. The dreams are starting to reappear, he’s sweating: harkens us back to the first two seasons when he descended into madness and instability. Jack: “We’re all in this stew together, Dr. Lecter.”
Such a fitting line for Jack to say. It describes everything so perfectly, almost literally at times as Hannibal has made plenty of stews/other dishes out of people, ones they’ve known, and at the same time they’re all just boiling in one big pot together with their hatreds and their grudges and ill feelings towards one another – Hannibal, Jack, Will, Alana, Bedelia – like a giant circle, swirling in that pot, they all curl around each other. We’re constantly wondering: who’s the next to die, to be eaten, to feel the full length of the horror? The end of the episode is excellent. We get another great flashback involving Hannibal and Abigail; right after Will called Hannibal in the Season Two finale. There’s lots of good things here, giving us more and more insight into the “sensitive” side, if you will, of Hannibal Lecter; if there truly can be one.
Then of course we see another relationship budding – a new one for Hannibal onto which he can latch (because for all he is Lecter is a parasyte). Francis Dolarhyde reaches him by phone, posing as Lecter’s attorney.
Dolarhyde: “The important thing is what I am becoming.”
This moment with Hannibal and Francis on the phone at the end is a creepy bit. There’s a duality again between Hannibal and Francis, just as there exists one between Hannibal/Will and Will/Francis. So much going on, like a twisted and scary love triangle of the worst kind.
Gets really tense especially after Lecter asks him what he’s becoming, to which Dolarhyde replies, in an awful tone: “The Great Red Dragon”
We’re building more and more to see a huge confrontation between Will and Francis Dolarhyde, ultimately another game initiated by Hannibal. This time, I think it’s also a confused bit of revenge/an attempt at bringing Will Graham back into his world on Hannibal’s part. Either way, there are so many things happening and I can’t wait to see how Dolarhyde is slowly going to go further mad and twist things up.
Stay tuned for next week’s episode, directed by Guillermo Navarro, titled “…And the Woman Clothed in Sun”
I hate that this is cancelled, shame once more NBC! I say it again. Such great horror. I hope this will somehow help mainstream horror television, maybe, maybe not. Wish there was some way to #SaveHannibal – alas, it looks as if it is dead. Hannibal, we hardly knew ye.
NBC’s Hannibal Season
3, Episode 7: “Digestivo” Directed by Adam Kane
Written by Bryan Fuller and Steve Lightfoot
* For a review of the next episode, “The Great Red Dragon” – click here
* For a review of the previous episode, “Dolce” – click hereTo start, the episode’s title “Digestivo” comes from another part of the formal Italian meal. The literal meaning is, of course, ‘digestif’, which is an alcoholic drink (sweet or bitter) that is drank after a meal; as you can tell, it is meant to help the digestive process. I think Bryan Fuller and Co. chose this particular name for Episode Seven because this is a transitional episode.
We begin at the precarious position in which Vincenzo Natali left us during “Dolce”, where Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) was forced to watch Hannibal (Mads Mikkelsen) start sawing into Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), right through the forehead. By the end of the episode, we’re miles – literally hundreds of thousands – away from where things started. So, in a way, this episode is the digestif which will help along the process – it helps us to digest the plot and story going forward.
After we pick up, Hannibal is stopped in the midst of his meal preparation (he and Jack were no doubt about to feast on a nice hunk of Will’s grey matter). The new Inspector under Mason Verger’s (Joe Anderson) thumb comes with reinforcements. However, they’re not about to go by the book. They pack up both Hannibal and Will to bring back to Muskrat Farm. Jack is left, along with an officer instructed to “Open him up like he did with the other one.”
Fortunately, Chiyo (Tao Okamoto) is still looking out for Hannibal, and in the process saves Jack – in turn, he gives Chiyo the exact location of where Hannibal is being taken. This speeds things up nicely. The digestif has begun to work its magic. At the end of “Dolce”, we saw the Hannibal/Will duo hanging upside down like sides of beef, or in this case pork. Mason has had them relocated to Muskrat Farm, where Cordell Doemling (Glenn Fleshler) will begin to ready them for their respective fates.
Hannibal, all smiles, and Will, less smiley, are dressed to the nines and wheeled out to Mason’s beautifully set grand table. There, Hannibal is brought some small appetizers, as Mason remarked earlier (while jabbing his dearly departed father’s pocket blade into Hannibal’s thigh) the naughty doctor was looking “a little lean“; he needed to be fattened up. Meanwhile, it is revealed Cordell will be transplanting Will’s face onto Mason – he will then proceed to eat Dr. Lecter with Will’s face on. Twisted. When Cordell goes to apply some moisturizer to Graham, as he is “looking a little dry“, Will surprisingly takes a nice bite out of Cordell’s face. He spits a hunk of cheek out onto the plate in front of him. There’s certainly lots of fight left in Mr. Graham.
As I said before in one of my previous reviews, I love how Bryan Fuller and Co. have tweaked Mason’s revenge slightly. We got bits of the mandating pigs in Season Two, so I think it’s genius how they decided to make Mason decide on eating Lecter. It works in well with the whole fixation of Mason’s on transubstantiation, the risen Jesus Christ or “The Riz” as Mason so lovingly calls him: for those who don’t know, transubstantiation is the concept in the Roman Catholic Church that by eating the bread and wine at Holy Communion, you are not just figuratively eating the body and blood of Christ, you are literally eating it. The way this plays into Mason’s decision is perfect, as even in the Thomas Harris novel Hannibal he is, while simultaneously a sadistic paedophile, a raving fan of Christianity – mainly Catholicism and how confession can absolve one from their heinous acts. Great work on the adaptation here, once more; I feel I’m wearing that sentence out, but whatever. It’s true. As Will is mostly just waiting around to have his face removed, sitting at the big table and getting in a chat with his old flame Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas), there are far more torturous plans for Dr. Lecter. Out where the pigs are kept, Cordell (his face patched up) ties Hannibal up in a pen, amongst the hay and the pig shit. He brands Hannibal at the centre of the back; just the same as any other pig. What I find ironic is how Hannibal ate people for being rude, or rather ‘piggish’. Now we find the cannibal stuck exactly in the metaphorical place of his victims – he is now a pig himself. We get another glimpse at how controlled Hannibal is, most of the time, in his mental process. The pain of the brand barely registers; he closes his eyes and wishes it away. Still, all the time he is awaiting his death, Hannibal flashes those smug, defiant smiles. As if he knows something; something nobody else knows, something we will never know. One thing I really loved about this episode, aside from the obvious intensity and excitement, is how Alana is basically faced with the prospect of watching Will die, horribly, or letting Hannibal go. Though it seems like a quick decision for her, as she comes into the pig pens where Hannibal and Margot Verger (Katharine Isabelle) are having a quiet discussion, I think it’s the earlier scene between Alana and Will which really pushes her to action. Will’s shaming of Alana makes her realize that, though there is no doubt Hannibal deserves whatever he gets, and more, by being complicit with what happens to Hannibal (and in turn Will because of the situation) she is no better than him. There’s a lot of morality flying around, and perhaps Will is not perfect when it comes to morals, but what he says works. The moment Hannibal is let free things start to become more terrifying by the moment. But first, before I discuss the finale of the episode and all it entails, let’s take a step back… The part of the episode I found most disturbing was the surrogate – the pig. Now, the reason I found this so effectively creepy and unsettling is because of how vicious it shows Mason to be. We knew this anyways, but in the novel Hannibal there is so much more to Mason, as well as Margot, than we end up with in either the film adaptation, or the series. While Mason is fleshed out more here in the series, obviously, as opposed to the film adaptation of Hannibal directed by Ridley Scott, there are aspects we don’t full-on see too much about.
For instance, we only get a small inkling in the Second Season about Mason’s predilections: he is a terribly sick and violent child molester. That’s where the whole “taking the chocolate” thing comes from, as well as the games he played with Margot when she was little. However, Fuller and Co. have certainly stuck with the whole plot of Mason treating Margot like absolute filth.
What I found disturbing about the whole surrogate scene in “Digestivo” is how it takes things up a notch from the book. Harris’ novel has Margot as infertile, as well as a lesbian, but in the series Mason has actually taken out her reproductive parts – he’s literally ripped the ability to give life out of her. So then by further going ahead and planting Margot’s baby (for those who don’t realize it: the baby is that of Margot and Will – notice how big it is? Looks to be about a 9-10 month old infant + the time jump earlier between Will waking up from a coma and his trip to Italy was 8 months… not hard to put together) into a surrogate, a pig, there’s so much malice. It not only represents just utter disregard for Margot and her feelings, her wishes to have a Verger baby, by having the pig as the surrogate Mason is saying that the pig is more worthy to carry a child with a Verger name than Margot – that the pigs are more family and more Verger than Margot.
It is so vicious that it’s perfect. Worked wonders, these scenes. Especially while the baby is being removed/a face is being removed while Will sits strapped into a medical gurney next to Cordell. Disturbing yet incredibly visual. The imagery here was unreal. BIG TIME SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT! In the novel Hannibal, Margot talks with Hannibal, just like in this episode – he offers to be the scapegoat for Mason’s murder, should Margot decide on committing it. Hannibal tells her it wouldn’t matter for another charge to be laid on him, that he will write a letter boasting about enjoying the murder of Mason Verger; he offers some hair, right from the scalp, to lay in Mason’s hands after he is dead.
I like how Alana Bloom is present here, as opposed to it just being Margot in the novel – seeing Alana rip the hair out of Hannibal’s scalp is a perfect, tiny little blow on her part, at least she get some kind of revenge even if it’s not much. Also, in the novel Margot kills her brother by jamming the eel down his throat, as well as milking his prostate with a cattle prod to gather some viable sperm samples to make a true Verger baby later on.
Here, I like that Margot and Alana had a hand in the murder. I also thought it was just perfect that the eel went on in Mason’s mouth by itself, without being shoved down his throat. Sort of shows how everyone/everything around Mason hates him and knows how disgustingly cruel/sadistic he can be deep down – even the eel wanted to be a part of his death. Very fun, highly macabre stuff in this episode! What a scene left at Muskrat Farm. The end of the episode is what works most wonderfully to me. I won’t spoil how Will is sprung loose, however, Hannibal brings his dear friend back home, lays him in bed. Chiyo and Hannibal have a brief chat outside – Lecter tells her she is stable, on the periodic table of elements “between iron and silver“.
Inside, Lecter tries to take things back to the old days: him in the chair, Will laying back and recounting his darkest thoughts. Unfortunately for Hannibal, his friend does not want the friendship anymore. Will has realized, after all that’s happened, no matter how bad he feels close to Hannibal they are no good together, in any way. Will tells him that he doesn’t want to know where Hannibal is, he won’t look for him, because he does not want to know where he is; he has had enough. Clearly hurt, Hannibal leaves to seemingly vanish. Jack Crawford and the FBI show up, but Will says that Lecter is gone. Hannibal willingly surrenders. He gloats in his own way, telling Jack: “You’ve finally caught the Chesapeake Ripper.”
Jack replies by saying Hannibal wasn’t caught, he gave himself up. Hauntingly, Dr. Lecter looks at Jack first, then Will and says: “I want you to know exactly where I am. That way, you can always find me.” To hear that – to see Hannibal in this Fuller and Co. adaptation of Thomas Harris giving himself up willingly – is so refreshing. It is the truly disturbed, sick, haunted relationship between Will and Hannibal which drives everything. Will hurt Hannibal by rejecting further friendship and saying he didn’t care where Lecter ended up.
Therefore, Hannibal spited Will by turning himself in, so that the thought of knowing exactly where he’d be, locked in a cell somewhere, would always be with Will. That way, Hannibal ensures he will always be a part of Will’s life.
The most exciting part is the next episode – “The Great Red Dragon” – because there’s a time jump. We go forward, and yet somehow backward (to Harris’ work in a sense). We’ll get to see exactly how haunted Will is when Jack has to pull him back into a murder investigation, and how desperate will it make them: desperate enough to go see Dr. Lecter again?
Stay tuned and check out for Episode Eight’s review!
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