The Parish (2019, dir:
David S.
Hogan; script: Todd Downing; cast: Angela DiMarco, Sanae Loutsis, Lucas Oktay, Gin Hammond, Bill Oberst Jr.)
Twenty
years ago,
The Sixth Sense,
The Ring, and
The Grudge revitalized
the ghost film, redefining it with new tropes and visuals. Until
then, with rare exceptions, ghosts were diaphanous spirits that
did little other than scare people. In the 2000s, they turned
gruesome and violent.
But since then, and apart from a few original gems like Insidious,
ghost films have mostly just sleep-walked through the motions,
repeating scenes from the past twenty years.
The Parish is one of
these somnolent efforts, well made but unoriginal. Its
cinematography, sound, and visual effects are slickly
professional. But the story is nothing we haven't seen many
times before. There are no surprises. Worse, the attempts at
scares are tepid.
Liz (Angela DiMarco, who I liked much better in
The Last Laugh) is
a single mother who moves into a new house, in a new town, with
her daughter, Audrey (Sanae Loutsis). Why Liz moved "a
thousand miles" from San Diego to small town Washington is never
made clear. Yeah, her husband died, but why move?
Naturally,
Audrey hates the house, hates the town, hates her school. Mother
and daughter squabble, though there is much love. Sound familiar?
Audrey befriends a new boy at school, Caleb (Lucas Oktay). Horror
fans will quickly guess that Caleb is a ghost. Shyamalan cleverly
hid that Bruce Willis was a ghost in
The Sixth Sense, but
The
Parish doesn't even try to hide it. When Liz can't find
Caleb in the school basement, early in the film, we can guess why.
Later, when Liz tells a teacher that Audrey is outside talking to
Caleb, and the teacher says that Audrey is alone, we are not
surprised.
The villain of The Parish is Sister Beatrice's ghost (Gin
Hammond), but she barely has any screen time. She's seen a few
times from a distance, but doesn't really enter the film until the
last ten minutes. Father Felix (Bill Oberst Jr.) engages in
a hurried exorcism. Sister Beatrice retaliates with a few
well-crafted but unoriginal visual effects -- and then poof!
-- she is gone.
I think Sister Beatrice's ghost is supposed to be a metaphor for
Liz's own personal demons -- her grief over losing her husband,
her guilt over uprooting her daughter from her home town.
Father Felix often tells Liz about the need to work through our
grief, that it can't be suppressed. Father Felix ends the film
with a similar speech, as he gifts Liz the crucifix he used to
exorcise Sister Beatrice.
The Parish spends way too much
time on these domestic issues at the expense of creating any
horror. Too much context, too little payoff.
At 81 minutes, The Parish is a short feature, but it felt much
longer. Like a mediocre film that you've seen before. You know
what's going to happen, you aren't especially excited to see it
again, but there's not much else to do right now.
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