Having begun his career working in television on projects ranging from documentaries like the celebrated The People vs Paul Crump to an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, it is perhaps fitting in a full-circle way that the late William Friedkin would conclude his career with another for the small screen. This would be The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, an adaptation of the 1954 play by Herman Wouk that the author derived from the extended court-martial sequence from his award-winning 1951 book The Caine Mutiny. This is a narrative that has been filmed a number of time over the years—the book was the basis for the 1954 Humphrey Bogart classic while the play was most notably filmed in 1988 in an interesting, if little-seen, take from Robert Altman—and outside of updating the incident in question from World War II to the Persian Gulf, the story remains basically the same. Set entirely within the confines of a military court presided over by head judge Capt. Luther Blakey (Lance Reddick in one of his final roles), the film observe the court-martial of Lt. Stephen Maryk (Jake Lacy), who has been charged with mutiny for forcibly relieving the captain of the U.S.S. Caine, martinet veteran Lt. Commander Phillip Queeg (Keifer Sutherland), of his duties for what he felt was dangerously erratic behavior in the midst of a major storm. Although initially reluctant to take on the task of defending Maryk from the charges, his appointed lawyer, Lt. Barney Greenwald (Jason Clarke), presses on and while his approach is so seemingly diffident at times that the court itself questions his methods, his methods do begin to dig deeper into giving everyone a deeper understanding of what happened that night, especially when he gets Queeg on the stand to try to justify and defend his own actions and behavior.
This is material that has long since ingrained itself in the cultural consciousness but Friedkin has wisely resisted the urge to otherwise rework things as a way of making them more cinematic—this is a chamber piece in every sense of the word. Instead, he puts his focus on the real strengths—the still-potent basic narrative and the points it has to make about things like duty and honor and his strong cast—and the results are generally successful. Friedkin’s adaptation does a good job of getting to the heart of the material—though when characters make glancing references to things like the year 2022 or the Internet, it feels slightly jarring—and his direction (which found Guillermo del Toro reportedly serving as an ultimately unused backup for insurance purposes) is solid throughout and includes a couple of subtle but effective camera moves to suggest character behaviors without underlining them too overtly. The performances are also very good throughout—stepping into the shoes once filled so memorably by Bogart, Sutherland delivers an impressive turn that blessedly does not devolve into look-at-me histrionics. In terms of sheer visceral impact, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial may seem lacking in comparison to such Friedkin classics as The French Connection or Sorcerer or even his recent highly stylized takes on the Tracy Letts plays Bug and Killer Joe. However, as a testament to a filmmaker who, despite the considerable ups and down of his career, never lost his equally considerable touch as a filmmaker, this seemingly minor work is an undeniably effective tribute to Friedkin and his gifts.
Having made a name for himself on the international horror circuit with his last feature, the 2017 creepfest Terrified, Argentinian filmmaker Demian Rugna has returned, just in time for this year’s spooky season, with his latest effort, the icky and occasionally quite disturbing When Evil Lurks. Like this weekend’s big horror entry, it too deals with the concept of demonic possession but this time around, it is one that is readily accepted by the majority of the populace of the Argentinian town in which it is set—so readily accepted, in fact, that those suffering are labeled as “rotten” and the local authorities employ “cleaners” who specialize in performing exorcisms in order to attempt to keep the evil from spreading. After hearing noises during the night on their farm, brothers Pedro (Ezequiel Rodriguez) and Jimmy (Demian Salomon) investigate and find the body of one such cleaner—well, the lower half of it, at least. While investigating at a nearby home where an indigenous family lives, they discover that the eldest son is also a rotten and a bloated, pus-ridden one at that. With the aid of another neighbor (Luis Ziembrowski), they manage to load the rotten onto a pickup truck with the plan of dumping his body far away from town. When they arrive at their destination, they discover that the body is no longer there and it is at that point that all hell breaks loose as a evil is unleashed on the town that can consume anyone (or thing) at any time.
The first half of the film is unquestionably the best as Rugna offers up one grisly bit of business after another, at times going out of his way to establish that even those usually considered to be off-limits from nasty demises (kids, animals, pregnant women) are not spared from their grisly fates. This section of the film is directed with a lot of energy, a refreshing array of seriousness and some extremely goopy gore effects that are at time legitimately revolting. The problem is that the second half of the film, in which the brothers, along with Pedro’s sons and mother, go off in search of a former cleaner (Silvina Sabater) in the hopes that she can help them contain the evil before it spreads any further, is nowhere near as interesting. This section gets bogged down in a mass of undigested exposition that tries to explain to viewers what is going on but only ends up confusing matters even further while pushing any actual scares to the side. When Evil Lurks is not totally without interest and it does contain at least one moment that should have most audiences jumping in their seat. However, it is one brought down by a meandering and undisciplined second half that eventually turns it into something of a near-miss.