When perfect(ly annoying) little sister Karen (Brooke Shields) is murdered on the day of her confirmation, suspicion falls on older sister Alice (Paula Sheppard). Her mom (Linda Miller) is quick to defend but as the bodies keep piling up, it seems more and more certain that Alice is a murdering psycho.
Chalk this up as Catholic horror. There's a lot of allusions to women's bodies being gross, inherently lustful, and how they exist to destroy strong men. It's... a lot. You could just have easily called this Internalized Misogyny: The Movie and it would have been accurate. Apparently, the director's only previous credit was an adult film that got him charged with obscenity and excommunicated by a New Jersey diocese. Now, you could argue that Sole purposefully villainized the Roman Catholic Church's rhetoric but that does not explain his choice to make the creepy landlord (Alphonso DeNoble), clearly coded as gay, overtly feminized, slovenly, and a borderline pedophile. It does not explain a cop bragging about feeling up a 12-year-old girl while fitting her for a polygraph.
This film has gained a cult following since release and it is very effective as a slasher. The kills are stark and brutal, the paranoia and dread palpable, and the villain reveal both shocking and imminently predictable. A++. But the rampant misogyny and homophobia just ruin it for me. It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
This was supposed to go up last Monday but I didn't get to it. If I have time this weekend, I'll try and get an extra one in to make up for it. I tried to watch The Eye (2002) this morning on YouTube but there was an ad break literally every minute so I gave up. It was some bullshit. How can you have a horror movie with that many interruptions? So I'm going to try and find something else. One more week til Halloween!
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