From Within (2008) Elizabeth Rice, Thomas Dekker, Kelly Blatz, Laura Allen, Adam Goldberg. Directed by Phedon Papamicheal Jr. Screenplay by Brad Keene.
Maybe there should be points for effort. On second thought, no.
From Within cannot be accused of failing to try. It does. It tries damned hard. Too hard, I think.
The basic plot is this: a dude offs himself in front of his girlfriend, and then, like some sort of psycho-swine flu, suicide starts catching around the small town of . . . of . . . well, let’s call it Typical Horrorburg. But wait, All Is Not As It Seems. See, dude’s brother saunters broodingly, achingly, Christ-am-I-emo-enoughingly back into town, and it turns out the whole town (or something) killed his mommy the witch (or something). And the only girl who can understand him, who can see through the angstiness to the real, sensitive, Rob Lowe wannabe at his core is our heroine, Lindsay. (It’s worth noting that no character in this film seems to have a last name, not that I can recall. Wait. There’s Pastor Joe. But I don’t suppose Joe is his last name, do you?) And, anyway, there’s this curse, right, and . . . and . . . yeah.
I think From Within is supposed to be set somewhere in the American south, but the only time the film feels particularly southern is when it’s dishing out the usual stereotypes. You know, the redneck no-good doofus in the biscuit cap, the small town hellfire and brimstone preacher, the small minded busybodies. Away from those, this story could be set anywhere, in Generictown, U.S.A. perhaps.
Setting isn’t the main problem. Character is. We don’t care about any of these stumbling stereotypes. There’s no depth to any of these people, not the ones we’re suppose to love, not the ones we’re supposed to hate. In fact, much of the time I wished I’d had a scorecard so I could keep track of who was what and why, because the victims all blurred together and the baddies all blurred together, and after a while I was left wishing for just one goddamned substantial character. A film should have more than that, of course, but I was desperate. I was begging.
And it’s a shame. Because the basic premise of From Within is, while shopworn, one that can still carry some freight. And the film looked really nice. (This is because Papamichael, I have read, was a director of photography on films like Sideways, Walk the Line, and 3:10 to Yuma.) The acting performances weren’t much to write home about, particularly Adam Goldberg as the biscuit hat-wearing, southern perv Roy (no last name) who dates our heroine’s mother but tries to put moves on daughter, yet is still somehow a fundamentalist Christian. It’s a gratuitous performance, but one supposes Goldberg had little to work with in the script. Nor is there much to say about Laura Allen’s performance as Trish (no last name), Linday’s (no last name) boozy, blowsy, yet somehow still a fundamentalist Christian, mother. Allen comes off as a thrift-store version of Piper Laurie’s character from Carrie. Cliches riddle the dialogue in this film like an infestation of Formosa termites, and that doesn’t help us buy into these people either.
Did I mention the Angsty Hunk’s Bitch Sister? Did I mention the Pastor With A Problem? Or the Preacher Kid From Hell? No? No need. They’re not real anyway. Not in this movie they’re not. All is cardboard, all is ersatz, and that extends to the scares, which are borrowed from better films. The plot makes little sense, which is not always a detriment to a tale of terror, but the characters that populate this tale are thinner than the most misty phantom, and that, my friends, will put a stake through any horror story.
From Within veered dangerously close to having some meaningful things to say about the dangers of belief, but in the end it backed off, resorting to the usual boilerplate claptrap about intolerant Christians and persecuted outsiders (I must say, by the end of the movie, I had moved a little bit to the persecution camp; this is no doubt not what the filmmakers had in mind, but goddamnit, how much emo angst are we supposed to stomach?) It’s as though the screenwriter lacked the courage of his own convictions, if you will.
There is a good horror movie buried somewhere in the bland, muddled, half-baked mush that is From Within. It’s a shame it wasn’t found before it was served up.
