Twin Peaks is one of many shows my family probably shouldn’t have let me watch as a kid. The reasoning was that it was just TV. A refreshing attitude, for sure (same with just taking us to R-rated films if we wanted to see them since we could keep our mouths shut and not distract other theater goers), but one that led to a whole lot of bizarre early genre influence on my life.
Twin Peaks sparked a lifelong fascination with David Lynch’s work in my young mind. I liked just how weird the show was. It was a little scary, but I was already watching classic horror films at that point and reading any scary book I could get my hands on. I distinctly remember having nightmares about Laura Palmer’s body and the backwards talking dream sequences. Still, I couldn’t get enough.
After a brutal flashback demonstrating one way to eliminate the scourge of the Necronomicon, we jump to five college students arriving at a remote cabin in the woods. They are there to help their friend Mia (a masterful performance by Jane Levy) detox from a nasty drug addiction. Mia complains about a nasty smell for hours and is ignored until her brother David finds the source. The basement is filled with rotting animals, blood, and a book sealed in barbed wire. The friends have unwittingly woken up the evil of the Necronomicon. Now they are in a fight for their lives against a scourge that will stop at nothing to claim them all.
On American Dad!, the gun is rarely a gun. In one episode, where Roger the alien demands a roast for his birthday then traps the Smith family in a revenge fantasy for hurting his feelings, a rare pair of scorpions are introduced during the second segment. They will eat the inside of the human body through whatever orifice they can enter. The scorpions accidentally enter Roger but then burrow their way out during the final few moments for grand comedic effect.
Right away, the characters try to sabotage each other to save their own fingers. When those efforts fail, they fake a mass murder/suicide to convince Francine to light up a cigarette to calm down. The director demands the contract be upheld and sets up an elaborate ritual to remove the finger. Expectedly, the family decides to offer their own fingers in place of Francine’s, ending the contract once and for all. The happily ever after is short-lived as Stan chops his own finger off so the family finally commits to something they agreed to do. It was totally unexpected and led to a dry joke about cartoon hands that ended the episode.
Writer/director Derek Cianfrance and screenwriters Ben Coccio and Darius Marder take a huge risk in The Place Beyond the Pines. It really is three separate films loosely linked by the chronology of core characters’ lives. The style of Luke’s story is different from the styles of Avery and the sons’ stories. Everything from the cinematography to the scoring changes to reflect a new direction in the film.
The final few minutes almost make you forget all the cliched high school drama the characters are put through to artificially raise the stakes at the end of the film. For the first time since Luke’s story, the characters behave in realistic ways. Genuine suspense builds as you don’t know how far the next generation will take the unresolved conflict 15 years in the making. It’s shockingly good considering the hour of pablum and well-worn tropes shoved in after Luke’s story.
