Nightwish (1989) — Triskaidekafiles

NIGHTWISH

WRITER: Bruce R. Cook

DIRECTOR: Bruce R. Cook

STARRING: Clayton Rohner as Jack
Alisha Das as Kim
Jack Starrett as Doctor
Robert Tessier as Stanley
Elizabeth Kaitan as Donna
Artur Cybulski as Bill
Tom Dugan as Wendell
Brian Thompson as Dean

QUICK CUT: Graduate students head out to a remote location to get lots of rest for their final test.

THE MORGUE

Jack - A young college student who just wants to get things over with, and really has his finger on the pulse

Donna - Another student who is always at Jack’s side

Kim - Yet another student who has a thing for beefy men.

Dean - A beefy man who doesn’t like to share his road with fuzzy creatures.

The Doctor - A time traveler from the planet Gallif…wait, no. The lead of the research project who never gets an actual name. He’s a true believer, who will do whatever it takes to prove the existence of the paranormal. FOR SCIENCE!

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! We begin August with an odd little dream logic flick called Nightwish. I've been vaguely aware of this movie for awhile, but finally saw some effects shots, and decided it felt like worth my time. I may have been sorely mistaken, but let's find out.

The movie opens up on a woman leaving a party, and venturing out into the night. She starts finding discarded bits of increasingly bloody clothing, and then a hand. Also, a few points for taking her heels off before going for a run.

She sees a guy chomping down on a body, and she takes off. He gives chase and unfortunately runs into more hungry people.

But it's okay though! As she screams, she wakes up in a sensory deprivation tank and IT WAS ALL A DREAM! The tank also gives them an excuse to have wet tank tops for boobs. Funny how the only person seen using the tank is a woman.

We then briefly meet the cast of colleagues, and the professor who is trying to train them for paranormal research and to have strong minds. It's all a bit Flatliners, but then so is the pulse of this film.

This is all so they'll have the mental fortitude to control the visions they will see when the plot gets going. The professor has a few bad ass lines about facing the grim reaper, but it's really more atmospheric than anything.

I'd make a G vs. E joke here, if anyone but like...three people would get it.

So the research students pile into a van and drive down exposition highway, explaining that the area they're going to had badly tainted water, and that's been the explanation for all the weird shit they're about to see. Oh man, are we gonna visit the farm from Curse?

We also get some theories about UFOs and magnetic lines, all duly made fun of by overly tough Brian Thompson, priming himself to go after Fox Mulder in a few years.

After a really long drive, and more exposition and theories, we finally arrive at the house. The team starts setting up and scanning around, to get things set up for their paranormal investigation.

I don't know what this is, but at least it's a welcome change from the same EMF meter every ghost hunter has these days.

They are going to spend a LOT of time scanning this house, reading out numbers, and writing down data. Not all at once, but buckle up, because we will be coming back to this.

Eventually, we sit everyone down in a circle, and get even more exposition about past investigations into the house, and other seances that have been held.

With that out of the way, they start holding their seance, fire up their equipment, and that's when weird shit starts happening.

And lemme tell you, it is about time.

Santa Claus is able to visit all those homes in a single night because he is actually an imcomprehensible extra dimensional being.

The green tentacle makes its way towards Kim, and the professor urges them to do nothing. But Donna isn't gonna let this turn into hentai, and shoos the ectoplasmic creature away.

We then find out this was all fakery by the doctor, part of their mental training, up until the tentacle, that is. So, we really are just doing the Haunting of Dull House here.

After establishing nothing can be trusted, the students are sent throughout the house to continue taking numbers. Numbers numbers numbers!

"We're supposed to be degaussing the entire house!" Y'all're just making shit up now.

Up in the attic, Donna and Jack continue writing down even more numbers, when they see a ghost child who quickly "dies" in front of them. The professor connects it to the house's history, and we move on.

Down in the basement, they're drawing pentagrams on the floor, nailing shackles to the posts, and the professor continues that time honoured college tradition of chaining up your students.

The entity reappears in the form of a rotoscope scribbled tornado of green lines. The professor tries to call it to him, but it seems more interested in Bill, until it gets bored and disappears again.

All the students want to be unshackled, for obvious reasons, but instead there's more yelling between the professor and Bill, as the latter threatens to get the doctor fired for his rather questionable behaviour.

We also meet a new member of the group, the less than intelligent Stanley. He's been helping the professor continue to fake things. If you're so insistent on summoning this entity as scientific proof, and have seen it on multiple occasions, why continue with the fakery?? it just muddies your findings!

The professor finally has enough of Bill's threats, and commits the first death of the movie, halfway through. What happens if you FAIL this class??

While the professor goes to clean up, he has Stanley take care of the body, and tells him to unlock everyone. Which he takes his sweet time doing. Seriously, we spend a shocking amount of time literally chained to a single room.

Stanley also decides he wants a trophy, and chops off one of Jack's fingers, because why not at this point?

As Stanley brings in his steamer to clean up the mess Donna made by throwing up after that, the doctor finally returns, and says we need to get back to work. FINALLY we are out of this room.

Unfortunately, it just means more scanning the house and reading off numbers. Fuck this is dull.

Kim distracts Stanley and escapes from his watchful gaze, and meanwhile the others are still reading out numbers. *sobs*

But then Donna has an episode where she envisions Jack grabbing her and encasing her head in a container filled with spiders. Which isn't really happening, and is all in her head, rendering this all pointless.

Oooh, a new Donna head for my collection.

I feel like if the movie really wanted to do something with "characters face their fears" we could have, I dunno, set this up more better in the nothing happening so far. Instead of just making it random bullshit go time.

Kim soon enters the caves beneath the house, and wait. You know what this movie reminds me of? This is like if Mutilations had a much higher budget. People wander around a paranormal infested house, weird shit happens, they fall back to another location deeper under the house, wait for weird shit to happen, fall back to another location. Gosh, I'd much rather be watching THAT movie...

But anyways, once she's in the caves, she runs into Bill who isn't so much dead, and it's brushed aside as more training and fakery for the students. But everything still feels a little bit off.

They have found a deep vein of the more purest green.

Oh, and Kim starts ranting about how she is sure the professor is an alien. Is she right? Is the effects of the house messing with her? Does it even matter? A clue: No.

Bill takes her deeper still, and into a cave where people are hanging up like they're captives of the Syngenor. He says Kim is right, but it's not just about studying humans, but also a breeding program. I KNEW this was gonna become hentai...

He then pulls out a hook, and his other arm schlurps off at the elbow. As he goes to pick it up, Kim brains Arm Fall Off Boy and makes a run for it. And we see his skull crack open like he's a master of flesh control.

Suddenly, Kim is on the ground, writhing and groping herself in the fog, like it's a sex ghost from Star Trek. The hentai has arrived.

I haven't mentioned Dean much, because his plot has mostly been driving the road back to the house, hitting animals, and at this point, meeting the tentacle. There’s one other character he interacts with, and their scenes are some of the few genuine delights, but they’re so far removed, I just didn’t bother talking about them.

As Kim exits the alien sex caves, she runs into Donna...who takes her right back to them! This movie likes going nowhere fast.

They come across Jack in the caverns, because location doesn't matter and the plot isn't real. He's twitchy, and oh, his finger has returned. He also sees the girls as hideous creatures.

Kim tries to tell the others what she saw, and how this is an alien plot to breed humans! And they don't bleed! They are filled with bugs!! And it all sounds as ridiculous as it does with me recapping it.

The others want to take Kim to see the professor, he can explain everything, this is all the entity messing with their heads, and my dudes, I think you ALL are full of shit.

Jack tries to tell Kim this isn't aliens, this isn't Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Of course not, that was a MUCH BETTER MOVIE!

They then rip off another much better movie, by explaining to Kim that if they bleed, they must not be aliens, by her own logic. They bleed for her, and like a good brainwashed cultist, she shifts the goal posts. If they bleed, she can kill them.

Fortunately, the doctor shows up and grabs Kim, before she can act on her ideas. He drags her off to show her the "most important scientific discovery" in the basement of this abandoned house.

This is the last time I take my class on a field trip.

We bounce between you got your aliens in my paranormal, and you got your paranormal in my aliens! until the tentacle creature shows back up. Everyone freaks out, and Kim makes it out of the basement, as the tentacle devours the rest.

Kim wanders through the house and finds Dean's limbless body, groaning and convulsing. She makes it to his van, and drives off, and into the cred...

Wait.

What. Oh. Oh NO. *flips over tables* IT WAS ALL A DREAM and this was all Kim's session in the sensory deprivation tank, since the beginning of the movie. FUCK THIS.

If you kids don’t keep i down, I will turn this movie around RIGHT NOW!

The movie tries to get philosophical, with the old adage about a man who dreams he's a butterfly, and the butterfly who dreams he's a man, and so which is the real, when the dream dreams the dreamer?

We see a bunch of the odd characters from the rest of the movie wander in a la Wizard of Oz, they are actually employees at the university that Kim's mind planted into the dream, as we do.

She decides she doesn't need a college degree this badly, and heads out into a door, behind which is another door, which leads to another door, and eventually into a green glowing room where Donna is hanging, and Kim screams about wanting to wake up...so even THIS was a dream and I want to hurt people.

Oh, sorry, I didn’t know this nightmare was occupied

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It looks really good, if I’m being honest. Nice, sharp, the effects look decent enough for the methods. It blends together very well.

Audio: Perfectly good audio.

Sound Bite: “That moment when the Grim Reaper's cold mouth presses against yours, you must welcome death, out of curiosity." That line goes unexpectedly hard.

Body Count: In one interpretation, not a single person dies in this movie. And that is the truest statement. But, I will at least drop the dead bodies we get to see, since that’s something. And even this is incomplete, because of the dreams within dreams, we see different dead bodies of most of the characters. This is mostly those we see in the “main” narrative.

1 - 45 minutes in, and the professor kills Bill?
2 - Wendell is found dead and gooey with his back ripped off.
3 - The professor gets covered in tentacle
4 - Along with Jack
5 - And Donna
6 - Dean is found limbless and gooey with pustules.
7 - Kim goes off the road

Best Corpse: Has to go to Dean. The effects on his torso are ace.

Blood Type - B: And that all goes to the early days of KNB effects being in full force here. Any practical gooey effects they do, are all top notch.

Sex Appeal: A few moments of nudity, and several wet tank tops.

Drink Up! Every time someone reads out a number to be written down.

Movie Review: Ugh. That much should be clear. Let me just set aside the final reveal, so I can cogerently talk about what the movie DOES have. This is such a weirdly dull strange movie. It has a been awhile since I have seen a movie with so much, and yet at the same time, so little going on. The movie feels cobbled together from a dozen other better movies. I went into this thinking, Demon Wind, what with the strange remote location and silly effects, and it scrapes up against that movie in it’s moments, but never quite reaches the bizarre highs of Demon Wind. The plot itself feels messy, even without the IT WAS ALL A DREAM aspect. It feels like there’s stuff missing, as some moments just kinda…happen. And they wisely review proofed the logic of the movie by revealing it’s all a dream, so it doesn’t HAVE to make sense! but no, I deny that narrative! If you’re gonna go for that angle, you gotta go for coherent, but things feel off, not “whoops, random bullshit, but it’s okay, it doesn’t have to make sense!”. The movie is just so narratively unfulfilling. It doesn’t set up stuff it doesn’t pay off, it just meanders around a house, measuring numbers that don’t matter, and occasionally stumbles into dream logic weirdness. ALL THAT being said, there is an actual solid cast here, and they are giving their best. They’re not going to win Oscars for the performances, but it could be so much worse. It’s a well made movie, that has a lacking foundation in a script that just doesn’t work. Two out of five green tentacles.

Entertainment Value: At least when weird shit is going on, it’s pretty decent weird shit. You will ask yourself what is going on?? several times, I’m sure. I love the cruelly determined unhinged Doctor. I wish I had taken the time to mention Wendell, the character Dean interacts with most, because those scenes are genuinely weirdly comedic gold in this movie. The weirdness is so good, it’s a shame to get to it is such a slog. If not for the infuriating twist ending that this was all ALL A DREAM it might almost be worth a watch, speeding through the more boring scenes. If not for all that, I’d give it a higher rating, but still two out of five degaussers.