| Synopsis: Dr Johnson (Rodney
Beddall), an American surgeon working in the Netherlands, delivers septuplets by Caesarian
section. Driving home afterwards, the doctor stops his car at the edge of a lake. Smearing
his face with clay from the lakebed and wading into the water, Johnson calls upon a
mysterious force to manifest itself. A sheet of fire spreads across the lake as something
rises from the water…. Twenty-one years later, Victoria Lucas (Monique van de Ven)
accepts an assignment to photograph the rare night heron, which lives in a marshland area
known as the Biesbosch. Victoria’s teenage daughter, Emilee (Esmee de la Bretoniere),
suffers a nightmare in which she sees seven identical young boys commit mass murder, then
paint a strange symbol on the walls in the blood of their victims. As the boys reach for
her with bloody hands, Emilee wakes, screaming…. Professor of ethnology Winston
Keller (Kenneth Herdigein) has dinner with his irresponsible, womanising father (Otto
Sterman), during which he learns that his father, who is from Brazil, has been practicing
native ritual and selling "charms". On their way to Keller’s apartment, the
two men stop at the university to inspect some material found by Keller’s assistant,
Angela (Olga Zuiderhoek). Meanwhile, Emilee has another nightmare, this time of a
prison-like building, and seven men in full-head clay masks, who capture and sexually
assault her. Keller and Angela watch a film shot during the 1934 expedition of Henri
Vidal-Naquet, who lived amongst the Mahxitu Indians of the Amazon, who wear clay masks
during their rituals. To Keller’s astonishment, the footage contains shots of a
hideous, embryo-like creature enclosed in a crystal. Angela recounts how Vidal-Naquet
stole the embryo, but shortly afterwards went insane and killed himself; and how the rest
of the expedition was killed when their ship sank on the way back to Europe, the only
survivor being the doctor, an American. It was the doctor’s widow who later donated
the material to the university. Suddenly, Keller’s father, who has been watching the
film in silent horror, interrupts, insisting that the footage be destroyed. On his way to
work the next day, Keller is forced into a van by two men, and finds himself confronted by
a government security agent called De Graaf (Rik van Uffelen). De Graaf tells Keller that
he wants his advice on how to deal with seven psychopaths held in an old fort in the
Biesbosch. The clinic is about to be closed, and no-one knows what to do with them. De
Graaf further reveals that the men have been locked up since a massacre in a
children’s home some fourteen years earlier; they are now aged twenty-one. Victoria
prepares for her camping trip, and Emilee decides to accompany her. On the way, Emilee
tells her mother that she thinks her nightmares are being caused by her anxiety over not
having had her first period. Victoria confides that when she was Emilee’s age, she
was hospitalised with severe menstrual problems. Keller accompanies De Graaf to the fort
where the psychopaths are held. Keller is disgusted with the brutal way the men are
handled, until he sees footage of them attacking and literally tearing their doctor apart.
Although sickened by the sight, Keller’s attention is caught by a strange,
embryo-like symbol painted on the walls by the men in their victim’s blood. De Graaf
asks Keller to explore the symbol’s meaning. Keller refuses to help until De Graaf
tells him more about the psychopaths. Reluctantly, De Graaf confesses that the men are
brothers – septuplets – the result of the world’s first successful in
vitro fertilisation experiment…. Comments:
Though the film is far from perfect, I found watching The Johnsons to be a
wonderfully invigorating experience. In an era when so many horror movies are
simple-minded replicas of one another – same plot, same false scares, same irritating
characters – it was a genuine pleasure to encounter a film whose main virtue is its
creativity. According to the film’s director, Rudolf van den Berg, the original
screenplay devised by Rocco Simonetti and Roy Frumkes was re-written by himself and Leon
de Winter when they found it to be dominated by "grotesque effects without human
feeling." While it is true that The Johnsons contains considerably more
"human feeling" than is to be found in many modern horror films, by the end we
have had more than a few "grotesque effects", as well. Nevertheless, De Winter
and van den Berg’s attempt to craft something carried principally by its story
succeeds to a commendable extent. After the opening sequence, in which we are made
conscious of the existence of the septuplets, and the connection between the eponymous Dr
Johnson and some mysterious supernatural force, the film presents the viewer with a series
of parallel plot threads which slowly, fascinatingly, begin to intertwine. Although we are
aware that there is a link, possibly psychic, possibly physical, between Victoria and
Emilee Lucas and the "seven psychopaths" being investigated by Keller and De
Graaf, anticipating the explanation is satisfyingly difficult. (The connection, when it is
revealed, is one that female viewers in particularly are likely to find very disturbing.)
In fact, in contrast to far too many modern genre films, which are predictable to the
point of boredom, The Johnsons achieves its effects primarily through the simple
expedient of keeping the audience wondering - What the hell is going on here!?
Where The Johnsons really succeeds is where most of
its ilk fail dismally: on the level of character. As my colleagues and I have said again
and again – and again and again and again – it simply cannot be
that hard to write movie characters that the viewer can like. Yet when you watch as many
genre films as I do, you might well end up thinking that it must be the most difficult
thing in the world, given the number of films populated by unbelievably stupid, boring,
foul-mouthed and foul-tempered individuals – and these, as often as not, are our heroes!
The Johnsons, thankfully, demonstrates that we were right in the first place. The
four central characters - Victoria and Emilee, Keller and De Graaf - are not presented in
any great depth, granted, but the viewer is given enough information, skilfully sketched
in, to understand what each of them is about, and to remain interested and sympathetic.
The presence of the just-turned-fourteen Emilee notwithstanding, The Johnsons is
primarily a film for and about adults - a welcome change in itself. Honestly, I wish I had
a dollar for every horror film I’ve ever seen in which there were no adults
present. Anyone else noticed this? Film after film, stuffed to the brim with
teenagers, yet nary a mother or father to be seen – they’re always "away on
business", or something. Whether the writers have recognised that the presence of
adults might prevent their teen characters from behaving as moronically as the
"plot" requires, or whether these horror films are marketed so relentlessly at
teenagers that even the presence of an adult within the story is anathema, I’m
sure I don’t know. Here, in refreshing contrast, the parent-child relationship is not
merely present in the story, but the very crux of the plot. The by-play between Emilee and
Victoria in the early scene in which Emilee takes a phonecall for her mother, and gets the
details of Victoria’s next assignment – the fateful trip to the Biesbosch –
is enough to delineate the relationship between the two. As parent and child, they truly
love one another; and on top of that, they are the best of friends. They have fun, enjoy
each other’s company. They choose to spend time together. Given that most
horror films, not unnaturally, tend to focus on dysfunctional families, The Johnsons
achieves another level of interest by building itself upon a close-knit mother and
daughter - an aspect of the story helped enormously by the warm and appealing performances
of Monique van de Ven and Esmee de la Bretoniere. When it becomes clear that Emilee is not
just connected with the psychopaths, but their target, the strength and
depth of the relationship between the girl and her mother is ultimately all that stands
between Victoria and death, and Emilee and - something infinitely worse.
The other central characters, Keller and De Graaf, are
interesting in their own right, although it would be fair to say that neither of them is
especially original, as such. Keller in particular treads a well-worn path: in the face of
his father’s devotion to "superstition" and "the old ways", the
younger man has made science his religion - only to discover that it doesn’t have all
the answers, and that his father may have been right all along. De Graaf, the Government
sp00k given the task of deciding what to do with the psychopaths, is hard-nosed,
cold-blooded, taciturn - but not stupid, and perhaps more unexpectedly, not unimaginative.
It is De Graaf who is the source of most of what the audience learns about the seven, each
tiny fact being forced from him by Keller, and a great deal - although we never know just
how much - remaining withheld. From him we learn of the psychopaths’ origin,
"seven embryos from a single egg"; of the massacre in the children’s home;
of the fort in the Biesbosch that has been their prison ever since. The embryo-like symbol
that the seven paint compulsively in their victims’ blood sets Keller on the track of
the truth, leading him to the legend of Xangadix, the source of all evil - and then, to
the truth about the seven. What is particularly pleasing here is how swiftly the two men
accept that truth, not because they are credulous, but simply because no other explanation
is possible. Few things are more alienating than movie characters who carry a refusal to
believe past any plausible limit; who shut their eyes to the evidence and continue to
demand a rational explanation even as the bodies pile up around them. Standing in
the ruins of the home where, as seven year olds, the septuplets slaughtered sixteen of
their companions, Keller and De Graaf almost come to blows, both of them professionally
outraged by being forced to confront things that every rational impulse tells them cannot
be true - and that every gut instinct tells them must be. In the end, the two
believe because they have no other choice. Keller’s advice to De Graaf on "what
to do" with the psychopaths is brief and to the point: "Kill them. All seven of
them." But unfortunately for De Graaf - and infinitely more unfortunately for the
security team in charge of guarding the seven - other forces are at work, and it is
already too late.
While the strength of its story and characters are its
main virtues, there are other things to enjoy about The Johnsons. For one thing,
although the plot centres upon the threatened sexual violation of a fourteen year old
girl, and Emilee is briefly glimpsed nude, the film, remarkably enough, never feels
exploitative. Although an "explanation" for the story’s events is
eventually forthcoming, an agreeably disturbing feeling remains after watching the film,
largely because of all the tangential issues that are not explained: just why Dr
Johnson was so eager to "veil the earth in darkness", for instance (we are left
to assume some kind of Lovecraftian pact); or how the seven ended up in a "home"
in the first place (did they mean to adopt them out!?); or the significance of the
repeated, ominous mentions of the septuplets’ "mother". Then, too, there
are several quirkily funny moments that perversely succeed in adding to the horror, such
as the security team being fatally distracted from their task by - of all things! -
a Laurel and Hardy film. The Johnsons is a richly atmospheric film, and director
van den Berg achieves some startling imagery, particularly during the opening sequence -
the birth of the septuplets shown from inside the uterus! - and throughout
Emilee’s nightmares. The score by Patrick Seymour is also noteworthy. Most
importantly of all, the seven psychopaths are quite terrifying, all the more so because
they never make a sound. The final sequence, in which they lay siege to Victoria and
Emilee’s apartment, is nerve-wracking in the extreme. (Watching the seven go
silently, relentlessly about their bloody task, I couldn’t help wondering whether
someone connected with this film had been frightened by Ken Wiederhorn’s wonderfully
creepy Shock Waves at an impressionable age.)
There is a lot of good stuff in The Johnsons,
but unfortunately the film falls apart badly during the home stretch. Particularly
disappointing is the way that the strong story is suddenly shunted aside in favour of
full-on gore effects. This is a phenomenon that strikes me as all too common - as if
horror directors feel under some kind of obligation to conciliate any disappointed
gorehounds. During the first two thirds of the film, the violence is certainly present,
but it is handled with a degree of subtlety. However, from the moment a machete is left
lying around in a terribly suggestive manner, we know it’s only a
matter of time.... The gore itself, plentiful though it is, is not really the problem, but
rather that simultaneously with the (literal) explosion in violence, the film loses
its grip on both its plot and its characters, finally putting way too much of a strain on
the old suspension of disbelief. For one thing, all the sidelined characters suddenly turn
out to be connected to one another - for instance, the woman in charge of the medical
records that Keller and De Graaf must search through conveniently turns out to be the aunt
of Emilee’s boyfriend, allowing the two men to track Victoria down in minimal time.
Still more problematical is the sudden switch in the handling of Keller’s father, who
the audience is encouraged to laugh at for most of the film, and then suddenly asked to
take deadly seriously during the climactic scene. Even the violent scenes becomes a bit
too much to swallow, unfortunately progressing from the serious and unsettling to the
ludicrously outré. By the time we’ve suffered through death-by-television, The
Johnsons has almost descended to the realm of yet another ho-hum "it wasn’t
meant to be taken seriously" non-horror film. The biggest problem of all,
however, is the final scene, which is terribly weak - and doesn’t even make sense on
its own terms. (How, might one ask, did Christian ritual manage to get tied in with the
legends of Amazonian Indians??) Clearly, not one of the four writers who worked on this
film could think of a satisfactory way to end it. This is disappointing in itself, but
even more so simply because so much of what has gone before has been so good - strong,
imaginative, daring - all the things that horror films so rarely are these days.
|
Director: Rudolf van den Berg