a word on patrick wilson, scream queen
a year or so ago, in a different universe, a friend and i unthinkingly ushered in the collapse of decent society when we decided that a fine and moral thing would be to project netflix original/perverted uncle steve potboiler in the tall grass (2019) onto the wall of my flat - the bounds of a laptop screen being apparently too confining for our dense and grotesque passions. i have nothing to say about this other than that i'm sorry - i didn't know that we should have been out doing anything else with our last weeks of freedom and i likewise didn't know that i would later end up writing this tinyletter, thus subjecting you all to my original error like the videotape in the ring that just keeps getting copied and copied and sucking more people down into the well of my garbage behaviour. i accept full responsibility, i pay for it daily, i don't know what more you want me to say.
i would tell you what in the tall grass is about, but i'm not entirely sure i can be bothered and also you would think i'm making it up. you would scoff, i'm quite sure, if i told you it's a netflix adaptation of a stephen king take on groundhog day as refracted via the lens of a large field of wheat, in which an assortment of people wander around endlessly looking for the exit and coming upon large alien rocks and falling over, and also patrick wilson is in it, and also that is the whole film. at the beginning of this movie which is somehow only 90 minutes and yet in a truer sense never gets going or ends, the pregnant heroine and her brother - the latter of whose single clear characteristic appears to be the word incest writ large across his face - stare into the field of wheat like that's a big field of wheat, little understanding that it is actually the most wretched patch of grass to ever grass, and this is really the last point at which even the barest attention is paid to reason or coherent storytelling. things happen, seemingly at random and largely at the mercy of an aggravating dream logic - at one point someone's uterus is forcibly entered in what can only be described as a sort of protracted grass-rape and this is not even the most unpleasant visual in the film. the whole thing plods along, somehow simultaneously marking time and losing its shit all over the place until we culminate with an operatic eye-gouging alien stone henge worshipping extravaganza in which someone appears to feed someone else a live baby and then it ends the way all goundhog day narratives must: back at the beginning, and with little to no explanation as to why any of that was necessary.
anyway.
the thing is that this isn't actually a tinyletter about the movie in the tall grass. it is, however, a tinyletter about actor and overly symmetrical face-haver patrick wilson, who lends in the tall grass a much-needed shot of actual professionalism really just by showing up, knowing his lines and delivering them as though he has actually done so before, for money. patrick wilson, you see, is the sure thing, the safe bet and also possibly the purest scream queen of modern cinema, and i want to talk about that a bit before i get all confused and start explaining the plot of in the tall grass to you again, the way that groundhog day demands.
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i have in the past had cause to describe the conjuring series as the typhoid mary of the breed of horror movie with which this tinyletter is most intimately concerned, and i stand by this. a series of movies and production-line doll-based spin-offs in which celebrated seventies spook-fanciers ed and lorraine warren wander around getting into messes and pissing off the spirits of dead nuns, the conjuring et al. have been the belligerently competent core of mainstream horror cinema since the early 2010s - and so, as evidently, have been its stars. i will no doubt write about vera farmiga at some other point - not least because i frankly cannot believe i have not once brought up orphan in the brief but reliably diseased history of this tinyletter - but for today, we'll focus on patrick wilson, because i want to and because i have things to say.
as ed warren, patrick wilson brings a sort of benighted himbo energy to the conjuring series which makes everything that happens about three times as sexy and five times as stupid as it otherwise ought to be, and i respect him immensely for this. ghost in the wall? patrick wilson will punch his way through that wall. psychic wife possessed? patrick wilson will strenuously embrace the demon out of her. adorable enfield moppets being menaced by a poltergeist? patrick wilson will i guess sing an elvis song at them, self-accompanied on guitar, until nothing in particular is fixed but at least everyone can say they had a cute time. everything he does, he does in a manner which implies he's ten seconds from throwing his whole big body through a plate glass window and i think that's what makes these movies great.
i'm not saying that patrick wilson is the spiritual core of the conjuring series, so much as that he is the large and reassuring piece of wood around which the series is built. penelope said come, eurycleia, move the sturdy bedstead out of our bridal chamber and odysseus said hey baby that's a trick question, our bed was carved out of patrick wilson and cannot be moved.
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stray observations:
un: patrick wilson has been in a number of horror movies aside from the conjuring series, all of which unfailingly seem to capitalise on his ability to be both daddy and the one true heir to jamie lee curtis. i couldn't tell you what i mean by this or why, but in every project he inhabits, he has an affect which simultaneously says hey baby i felled this tree for you and happy birthday mr president, and i think that's cool.
deux: young adult is a horror film and should be recognised as such
trois: in insidious, a movie i actually do not think is very good, he is frankly the only thing that keeps things going because i do not think rose byrne is any use outside of comedy settings and i'm sorry to have to say it out loud.
quatre: patrick wilson is not to my knowledge a lesbian, and yet--
cinque: i have not seen the movie bone tomahawk but i have heard it is excellent and one day when i am not watching the wrestler over and over again like someone who got depressed at the overlook hotel and stayed in her room with the tv on for decades, i will actually watch it.
six: at the end of in the tall grass, i have this very strong sense that patrick wilson tries to have sex with the alien henge and then dies but i cannot verify this information and may well be misremembering it.
sept: i would love to watch patrick wilson in a shark movie
huit: did you know that patrick wilson is in flashback footage in prometheus, because he is and it is by far and away the weirdest waste of an actor perpetrated by a movie which also casts guy pearce in distracting Old makeup because apparently they intended to show him young at some point but never did, so they actually could have just cast james cromwell or something.
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the thing is that i really don't have much of a direction for this tinyletter and i'm starting to feel like maybe you're onto me. suffice it to say, i love a good scream king - skeet ulrich is not one but bruce campbell is, and matthew lillard probably would have been one if he'd made fewer freddie prince jr movies in the mid 1990s and followed up on his inspired turn in scream. michael biehn is a scream king, despite literally playing the same marine with no apparent vocal chords his whole career, and so is james ransone. robert englund and christopher lee are both scream kings, despite perdominantly playing monsters, which i always think means something slightly different. peter cushing is definitely a scream king, and also my real granddad, and also the father of all modern scream kings, a role he shares with vincent price, of whom more at some future date. there's a video somewhere on youtube in which an elderly cushing and price sit together in costume - price having apparently been quite recently set on fire and then put out again - and discuss what it is that makes a horror movie successful. i always think, says price, in that voice he has like hot vinegar, that the best setting for a horror movie, a spooky picture, is always london in the fog, and cushing smiles and says yes london in the fog is wonderful - sherlock holmes and all that - but you know what they haven't used in a few years is an old castle. price nods, rubs his hands together - really good castle, he agrees and you can tell this is shakespeare to both of them.
i think that's what makes a real scream king or scream queen - the act of taking it seriously, of treating a horror movie like a place you've decided to be on purpose. this is what i think makes patrick wilson so great. whether in insidious or nightmare cinema or annabelle comes home or in the tall grass, he is absolutely there and absolutely doing his damndest and for that i salute him now.