Marrowbone, The Nightingale: underrated (folkish) horror at a discount bin near you

Here is something unknown to the majority, but well-known to relatively serious cinephiles (those who prefer their media physical - people who go scrounging for DVDs and such, who perhaps remember the days of the video store "previously viewed" bins): often, the most interesting movies in any given department store, drug store, or (back in the day, when it was still a thing) grocery store video sections are to be found in delete bins. While regular blu-ray and DVD shelves tend to only have the obvious blockbusters, Marvel and Disney and Spielberg, oh my (with the odd welcome digression into Criterion or other boutique labels by London Drugs), the delete bin is the place where you might find an obscure film noir (I've scored Crime of Passion and Moontide for a few bucks each, the first at a Superstore and the second at a Shoppers Drug Mart), classic costume drama (like the black and white "first version" of Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments, or Henry King's Prince of Foxes, with a memorable Orson Welles role, both maybe even now at a Shoppers' Drug Mart near you). I've found 70's action films (like Death Hunt, with Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson - and a young Maury Chaykin! - sourced at a Save-On-Foods on blu for $6.99, at a Save-on-Foods, on a tip from Anthony Nadeau), or other obscurity (I got my blu-rays of the complete Last Chance to See, including the infamously Youtubed kakapo head-humping sequence, and Microcosmos, for $2 each out of two different Dollaramas). The finds that you find are never a film you expect, maybe sometimes not even a film you know about, but it will always come as a more pleasant surprise than anything in the New Releases stand, and not just because the price will be much lower. Indeed, the great Mongrel video dump of 2021 still sees multiple copies of some great films (Small Town Crime and Maudie were our favourites) at $1 each at most London Drugs. You don't always come away a winner, but the consolation is the win-to-miss ratio is surprisingly often in the film's favour, and if it is, indeed, a dog, it cost you less than $10 to find out. 

So here are my two new favourite delete bin finds of 2021-2022, films far too good for this to have turned out to be their main method of distribution (at least here in Vancouver; they may have had screen presence - or not been widely remaindered - elsewhere): Marrowbone (part of said Mongrel dump, but only now just seen by me) and The Nightingale. 

Marrowbone is not really a folk horror film. There are no actual supernatural beings involved - no more than there are in Session 9, with which it shares an obsession over spooky places that house bad memories, that become an extension of haunted minds - and there are certainly no religious elements (though some of the places are imbued with archetypal, quasi-ritualistic connotations). But given that folklore is often bound to places, and often haunted by "the ghosts of the past," as the characters in this film certainly are, there is still something folkish about it, as well as its American Gothic settings. There are even moments where I thought a bit of Lovecraft, though the film isn't really Lovecraftian, either... It is probably a bit too ambitious to have ever been a commercial success -- it is one of those films that holds its cards close to its chest, so it can pull a switcheroo or two on you later -- but the strength of its young cast is such that it probably will not be completely forgotten: George MacKay, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, and Mia Goth are all superb. It may be a film that works best a second time through; I have only done it once, and may not rush to a repeat, but I certainly recommend it, and recommend seeing it in a alert, focused state, because it does ask a bit more of its viewers than most current movies. Spoiler-free plot sketch: a family with a dark past in England arrive at a new home - in New England - and try to come to terms with their history, which is not so far behind them as they hope.  Directed by the fellow who wrote The Orphanage, there's really no more that can be said about the film without spoiling it, but it is one of the more successful films of its kind, really. 

Second recommendation: The Nightingale, directed by Jennifer Kent. Considering the success of The Babadook, the expanded scope and ambition of this project, and said film's timeliness at the present juncture in postcolonial history, you'd think this would have made more a dent on the public consciousness (and/or international box office) than it did. I've had a few distractions these past years, so it might just be me, but it still surprises me that I first learned of this movie when I found a DVD of it in a Shoppers Drug Mark standing rack (at Commercial and Broadway, if you must know, but there won't be any left by now). I flipped it over, and as usual looked straight for the director's name, because often this settles the matter right away (like when I found River Queen - a title that meant nothing to me - and flipped it over to see it was the new Vincent Ward, which has some similar ambitions, though set in New Zealand, not Australia). I didn't even need to read the box description, seeing Kent's name, but I did, and it turned out to be a violent rape-revenge film with a feminist angle intersecting with a postcolonialist one; it involves a Tasmanian Aborigine joining a female Irish settler in tracking down the British soldiers who harmed both their families. It's maybe slightly less gripping than it could have been, especially in the age of unsubtle crassness like Django Kill; you admire the film's "lack of Tarantinoism," but there are moments where the story seems to waver, with Kent preferring subtlety to full-on catharsis, where the average viewer might actually prefer a bit more of that catharsis. Still: it's a major film, and a powerful indictment of both racism and sexism. (Some fairly ugly violence in it, note, and potent depictions of racism; it's not a light entertainment, nor does it pretend to be). 

 

So that's two good films to seek out on the cheap. All I've got at the moment. Pretty swamped, somewhat ill (just a cold, I think) and needing some recovery time after all that Billy Hopeless transcription. Y'all know that FEAR is coming? And all you King Crimson fans are gearing up to see Stick Men at the Rickshaw?