William Peter Blatty
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Filmography
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Connections, in both directions
Freeman is kind of on autopilot in an underwritten role and Malkovich seems to be channeling Jason Miller in The Ninth Configuration (1979), but there are certainly worse people and performances to channel.
In doing so, Blatty has his cast of colorful lunatics reference a multitude of movies (The Treasure of Sierra Madre, Frankenstein, The Jazz Singer, The Great Escape, Spellbound, and many others), pop culture events, and historical occurrences, in an attempt to expose them all as folly.
But Bayona’s handling of the material more than compensates—with the exception of an unnecessary tag scene cribbed from William Peter Blatty’s The Ninth Configuration (1980).
In William Peter Blatty’s underrated 1980 mystery-thriller The Ninth Configuration, a grounded lunar astronaut played by Scott Wilson (who sadly died last week) delivers a heartbreaking soliloquy that perfectly encapsulates the existential crisis at the centre of much space-travel cinema.
Blatty opted to grant Morgan Creek the rights instead, but fearing studio interference, he also decided to helm the film himself after his experience making The Ninth Configuration (1980), despite luminaries like John Carpenter ( Halloween , The Fog ) being in the frame.
It recalls films as eclectic as The Ninth Configuration and Jacob’s Ladder in its use of symbolism, tone and imagery and Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York in the way Aster plays with ideas of artifice – particularly the overtly theatrical scenes in the forest and the sound-stage setting of the final “trial”.
Hardcore genre fans will appreciate visual shout-outs to shriekers like The Exorcist III and City of the Living Dead, while Conjuring devotees will enjoy the “aha” moment of a concluding callback that brings the saga full circle.
The biggest jump scare is a riff on The Exorcist III and the climax climax flogs a major beat from Demon Knight.
In doing so, Blatty has his cast of colorful lunatics reference a multitude of movies (The Treasure of Sierra Madre, Frankenstein, The Jazz Singer, The Great Escape, Spellbound, and many others), pop culture events, and historical occurrences, in an attempt to expose them all as folly.
Stonehearst Asylum (2014)
Directed by Brad Anderson
influenced by The Ninth Configuration (1980)
Themes
At best it’s hammy, Hammer-ish fun, although it has none of the tension of Brad Anderson’s underappreciated potboiler The Call, and none of the wit of The Ninth Configuration , which remains the best screen tale of lunatics taking over an asylum.
Just as The Ninth Configuration, with its visions of a lunar crucifixion, wrestled with the existential loneliness of the godless void, so Gravity presents space as a yawning limbo from which only transcendence (philosophical, religious, musical) can save us.
But The Raid 2 has to culminate in an actual raid, presumably to justify the title (it's The Exorcist III all over again).
Better movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo�s Nest and Shock Corridor have used the insane asylum as a microcosmic metaphor of our national lunacy, but those films worked to a degree because they didn�t feel like they were exploiting the madness of their characters to make a screenwriter�s statement hold water.
Shutter Island (2010)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
influenced by The Ninth Configuration (1980)
Visuals
The movie plays like a loopy fever-dream Scorsese had after a marathon of Hitchcocks Vertigo, Val Lewtons Bedlam, Kubricks The Shining, and William Peter Blattys The Ninth Configuration.