“I don’t like this. It can see me.”
Your mileage with Banshee Chapter will vary depending on how you respond to ekphrastic work. If you didn’t waste your time in literary programs, first of all, congratulations on what I imagine is a satisfying, well-paying job; second of all, ekphrasis is the practice of art responding to art. Some dismiss it as fan fiction, while others (myself included) see it as valid engagement with art. Cover songs and remakes are a form of ekphrasis, and while there’s no shortage of bad examples of both, the great ones do enough to justify the practice. The reason I’m prefacing this article by bragging about my fancy, useless degree is because Banshee Chapter is, at its core, an ekphrastic film. It’s H.P. Lovecraft’s From Beyond, almost beat for beat. It even acknowledges its debt to Lovecraft’s story; whether that makes it better or worse is something I haven’t decided yet.
The framing device is pretty neat. Banshee Chapter revolves around the MK-ULTRA program, in which unwilling subjects were dosed with LSD, which the CIA planned to use as a form of mind control. There’s one variant of the chemical, kind of a super-potent DMT, that induces insanity and horrific visions. Writer James Hirsch gets ahold of a vial of it (courtesy of vaguely mentioned “friends from Colorado”), and plans to ingest it as research for a book. He has his friend, Renny, video tape it. Before long, he starts hearing odd sounds: chanting, humming, and some atonal melody that sounds like a riff on the theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. (The noise is audible on the recording, which is an incongruity that the film doesn’t address.) We get one glimpse of James, his mouth agape and eyes blacked over; after that he disappears.
We meet journalist Anne Roland (Katia Winter), erstwhile college pal of James, who looks into his disappearance. If you’ve ever heard the podcast The Black Tapes, this is in the same league (although it meanders a lot less). The central mystery of James’ disappearance is intriguing, but it would mean nothing without the weight of his friendship with Anne. “I decided James and I would work on one last project,” she narrates, and I think that’s a very sweet way to describe her investigation.
The course of events lead her to author Thomas Blackburn, a kind of counter-culture Ken Kesey/Hunter S. Thompson type, who wrote the book Friends From Colorado. Anne deduces (correctly) that Thomas was the person who supplied James with the chemical. Thomas is absolutely the bright spot of the film, as he’s played by Ted Levine with verve and gusto. Levine is unfairly known for his villainous roles, so it’s nice when he gets a chance to let loose like he does here. He’s clearly having a blast; Thomas sees right through Anne’s charade, and just starts relentlessly fucking with her, dosing her whiskey with the chemical. Things get a lot less fun when Callie, Thomas’s assistant who also synthesizes the chemical, says that not only can she see things, but they can see her too.
It’s here that the film is in danger of losing certain viewers. As Thomas and Anne go to Callie’s house to investigate her lab, Thomas makes overt reference to From Beyond, stopping just shy of mentioning the Lovecraft story by name. But the bones are here: something taps into the human pineal gland, allowing for a kind of second sight, a visual gateway into another dimension. I can’t repeat this enough: it’s the exact same thing.
However, that’s not enough to completely undo the film. Admittedly, it was a hiccup for this particular viewer, but unless you’re a fan of ’80s horror or ’30s horror, it might not be an issue. The government conspiracy angle is a good one, something you see more in mysteries than in horror. Although the film relies a bit too heavily on jump scares, the design of the monsters is pretty great, all elongated faces and digits. And the reveal that the monster chasing Anne turns out to be James is a nice melancholy touch.
It’s worth checking out Banshee Chapter if you have a chance (and the means; this isn’t an easy movie to find a physical copy of). It’s not perfect, but it’s intriguing, and director Blair Erickson could be someone to look out for (IMDb says that Christopher Nolan chose to direct Interstellar instead of this, which I, uh, have trouble believing). Look, this is From Beyond, there’s no doubt about that, but as far as cover songs go, this one ain’t bad.
10/1: Hellraiser / The Invitation
10/2: Splice / Banshee Chapter
10/3: Jennifer’s Body / Raw
10/4: Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist / Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
10/5: Kill List / A Field in England
10/6: Halloween II / Halloween III: Season of the Witch
10/7: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge / A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
10/8: Ginger Snaps / Creep
10/9: Cube / Creep 2
10/10: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) / The Ritual
10/11: Hell House LLC / The Taking of Deborah Logan
10/12: Re-Animator / From Beyond
10/13: Beetlejuice / Sleepy Hollow
10/14: Idle Hands / The Lords of Salem
10/15: The Ring / Noroi: The Curse
10/16: I Know What You Did Last Summer / The Monster
10/17: Night of the Living Dead / Train to Busan
10/18: The Devil’s Backbone / Southbound
10/19: Event Horizon / Dreamcatcher
10/20: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari / The Bad Seed
10/21: Eyes Without a Face / Goodnight Mommy
10/22: The Strangers / The Strangers: Prey at Night
10/23: In the Mouth of Madness / The Void
10/24: The Amityville Horror / Honeymoon
10/25: Gerald’s Game / Emelie
10/26: The Monster Squad / Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
10/27: Veronica / Jacob’s Ladder
10/28: High Tension / You’re Next
10/29: The Innkeepers / Bug
10/30: The People Under the Stairs / Vampires
10/31: Saw / Saw II
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