1987
John Carpenter
John Carpenter
Donald Pleasance plays a priest who contacts a group of
academics, including Professor Howard Birak (Victor Wong) and his students,
Walter (Donald Dun) and Brian (Jameson Parker). The priest brings the group to an
abandoned church to study a strange cylinder that’s filled with a swirling
green liquid. The liquid appears to be
alive and intelligent. Everyone at the site also seems to be having the same reoccurring
dream that may be a transmission from the future. Whatever the liquid is, it wants out and begins
possessing members of the research team.
It’s nice to see this film starting to get a little more
attention. As much as some of Carpenter’s other works are held up as prime examples
of horror cinema, this was the one film that actually scared me. I distinctly
remember the dream sequences making the hair on the back of my neck stand up,
and the idea of an Anti-God living just behind the mirror haunting me for days
afterwards. From the opening moments there is an oppressive dread hanging over
everything. It’s not Carpenter’s most technically accomplished film or his best
scripted, but for me it at least, it’s the one that really got to me.
I couldn't look at the mirrors in my apartment for a week after seeing this one...
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