Jesus Was a Cross Maker
A massive surprise. Carpenter manages to elude the usual trappings of a TV budget and create a fantastic little exercise in Hitchcockian modes. His camera is constantly doing way more than it should given the budget (dolly zoom and all) and pushes this thing out of Salem’s Lot territory and into Halloween territory.
In some ways, this film might be the superior to the latter. Most of that is down to how compelling our lead is. Written intelligently and performed stunningly, Leigh is anachronistic in her complexity. She is consistently wrong-footing the expectations surrounding her, grabbing agency in every scene. This whole thing feels nigh on Reithian in its approach to laying out its morals. It will certainly entertain but, it takes little instances to truly inform the audience: Sophie and Leigh discussing the former’s sexuality and landing squarely on mutual respect, Leigh batting away a man only to immediately walk over to Paul. It’s all so good. It stumbles occasionally but credit where credit is due, it gives our lead a peerless autonomy amongst her contemporaries across the 70s horror canon.
Enjoyed this immensely.
Jesus Was a Cross Maker
A massive surprise. Carpenter manages to elude the usual trappings of a TV budget and create a fantastic little exercise in Hitchcockian modes. His camera is constantly doing way more than it should given the budget (dolly zoom and all) and pushes this thing out of Salem’s Lot territory and into Halloween territory.
In some ways, this film might be the superior to the latter. Most of that is down to how compelling our lead is. Written intelligently and performed stunningly, Leigh is anachronistic in her complexity. She is consistently wrong-footing the expectations surrounding her, grabbing agency in every scene. This whole thing feels nigh on Reithian in its approach to laying out its morals. It will certainly entertain but, it takes little instances to truly inform the audience: Sophie and Leigh discussing the former’s sexuality and landing squarely on mutual respect, Leigh batting away a man only to immediately walk over to Paul. It’s all so good. It stumbles occasionally but credit where credit is due, it gives our lead a peerless autonomy amongst her contemporaries across the 70s horror canon.
Enjoyed this immensely.
