HALLOWEEN: Our Best Directors - 6. Ti West (The House of the Devil, The Sacrament)

Postscript: A combination of personal and private matters kept me from completing this list back in October.  I regret I wasn't able to finish this list at that time, but it was the right decision to step back and focus on more pressing concerns.  The top five directors are listed at the bottom of this page.

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6. Ti West

(The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers, The Sacrament)

It's so much more complicated and it's a very dense story. It's really a story about people who were manipulated into a mass murder rather than a mass suicide. And I think that's what's always been most fascinating to me.

- Interview with Film Society Lincoln Center

Where to Start?

The House of the Devil

My brother, watching The House of the Devil for the first time, pointed out that it's just the best possible version of Manos: The Hands of Fate.  He's right.  Both films are about out-of-the-way cults interested in guests desperate enough to wander right into their snares.  Both films feature women who risk becoming brides of the devil.  Both films even have an evil, stocky bearded helper.  In both films, nothing much happens.  West, however, crafts dread like it's a hobby, building on shadow and long takes and a firm command of his cinematic space.  Nothing's happening, but it feels so much like something's about to happen now!... or now!... wait, maybe now!

West seems incapable of delivering that teasing pleasure unless he has the room to build it properly.  His two anthology contributions (one for V/H/S, the other for The ABCs of Death) fail to engage for lack of development - their twists feel trite, unearned.  Similarly, The Innkeepers features a close that doesn't match the previous 80 minutes (the climax isn't underwhelming so much as absent).  But the movie leading up to that?  Oh mama.  In the most frightening scene of West's career, Claire (Sara Paxton) sits opposite Luke (Pat Healy) in a dusty basement and tells him there's a ghost right behind him.  The viewer never sees it, but the scene grows unbearable, so real is his fear, so steady is the camera.

The big reason that scene works is because West focuses on the people who inhabit his movies.  Samantha (Joceline Donahue) in The House of the Devil is a weary, not-quite-punkish girl dealing with that eternal problem of new adults, escaping the awful roommate.  She heaves her backpack like it's loaded with rocks.  The Roost features a trio of college kids who underplay their "types."  Paxton and Healy in The Innkeepers share a convincing, tragic charisma.  Luke gives Claire his sad-sack puppy love, and she pretends to not notice.  Sidebar: how perfect that Luke's webpage for their haunted hotel is covered in ancient Angelfire-era .gifs.  Bats flying and blood dripping.  The good-hearted dope.

West's latest film, The Sacrament, doesn't work quite as well as his two previous stories, partly because he never finds a human presence equal to those in his prior two films.  The "villains" of the film resonate, with Gene Jones and Amy Siemetz convincing as a cult leader and desperate disciple.  Siemetz's disintegration especially gets attention that should've been shared with heroes Sam (A.J. Bowen) and Jake (Joe Swanberg).   If The Innkeepers has the scariest scene of West's career, The Sacrament has the most unnerving, where the avuncular Gene Jones waves to throngs of admirers, plops down on a chair, and turns an ostensible interview into a speech on why people should sell him their hearts and minds.  Listening to him talk, the words hypnotize almost as much as the spaces between.

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Previous Entries:

7. Jim Mickle (Stake Land, We Are What We Are)

8. Rob Zombie (The Devil's Rejects, The Lords of Salem)

9. James Wan (Saw, The Conjuring)

10. Pascal Laugier (Martyrs, The Tall Man)

11. Larry Fessenden (Habit, Beneath)

12. Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, Stuck)

13. Franck Khalfoun (P2, Maniac)

14. Adrián García Bogliano (Penumbra, Here Comes the Devil)

15. James Watkins (Eden Lake, The Woman in Black)

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5. Joe Dante, director of Piranha, Gremlins, Matinee, and The Hole.

The Hole offers Joe Dante's usual mix of kid-friendly scares and slyer commentary (this time on parental abuse), and his Masters of Horror episodes stand as some of the best of that bunch.  His filmography is a legendary run of movies that constantly needle at the fragility of suburban America.

4. Ben Wheatley, director of Sightseers, Kill List, and A Field in England.

Kill List, a droll, discomforting story about hitmen biting off more than they could chew, was my favorite horror film of 2012.  Although his other films aren't as stunning, Sightseers has its sick joke pleasures, and A Field in England will delight people who revere names like Jodorowsky and Brakhage.

3. Lucky McKee, director of May, The Woods, and The Woman.

Of Lucky McKee's films, May best showcases his ability to layer together black humor and horrific feminine revenge, although The Woman is a strong second with its shockingly violent assault on good taste (seriously).  Be sure to watch his daffy "Sick Girl" episode of Masters of Horror.

2. Guillermo del Toro, director of Cronos, The Devil's Backbone, and Pan's Labyrinth.

Del Toro infuses his native-language works with Gothic-soaked dread and despair (and the smallest amount of hope), while his Hollywood productions (Hellboy, Pacific Rim) show a love for monster invention on a grand scale.  And his Simpsons intro is so goddamn awesome.

1. Chris Smith, director of Creep, Severance, Triangle, and Black Death.

A director who varies tone and styles of suspense with almost inerrant success.  Out of these four films, Triangle and Black Death work best.  Triangle especially grows in my mind constantly as an ingenious sort of Twilight Zone dark fantasy/sci-fi/horror nightmare.