Disclaimer: This film was given as a screener for the review use of HauntedMTL. You can find more information about PATER NOSTER AND THE MISSION OF LIGHT HERE or buy it on Amazon HERE.

A few years ago, I was talking with a friend and we got on the subject of meditation. I was just getting into it and was looking for some insight. 

She’s a smart and well-rounded person, so when she recommended a meditation retreat, I was curious. She described a scenic, rural meditation center within Michigan that hosted weekend-long retreats. Especially silence retreats, where no one speaks at all and meditates for most of the day.

Being a podcast co-host/egoist who loves the sound of their own voice, I was fascinated by the challenge. Perhaps, I, too, could be one of those people who could go without talking for a weekend and become a smart and well-rounded person like her. Perhaps, I, too, could find enlightenment and all that shit.

So, I poked around the website of the retreat and I found something interesting…Music. There on the website were songs created by the meditation teachers. You could even buy their CDs.

“But Brannyk,” you must be thinking, “What does weird meditation music have to do with PATER NOSTER AND THE MISSION OF LIGHT?”

Well, everything.

THE PLOT OF PATER NOSTER AND THE MISSION OF LIGHT

Max (Adara Starr) is a happy-go-lucky and go-with-the flow hipster who works at Hear Kitty Records with boss Sam (Morgan Shaley Renew) and co-worker Gretchen (Shelby Lois Guinn). As she says, “I go where the music takes me.” This proves especially true as a regular comes in with one of the rarest records from Pater Noster and the Mission of Light. 

Created by a commune in the 1970’s, this illusive group created multiple albums, most which were lost to time when the group mysteriously disappeared. Now their records are worth thousands, including the very last album they created, said to be cursed. With only four copies made, those who got their hands on the final album supposedly went insane or died. 

When Max is miraculously able to get her hands on all copies – all except that last elusive album – she and her friends (including the lovely Sanethia Dresch and the hilarious Joshua R. Outzen) will go to all lengths to find that missing record. Soon they’re tangled in a web of mysticism, music and murder. Will they be able to find out the secrets of the mysterious Pater Noster (Mike Amason) and the Mission of Light in time or will this adventure be their swansong?

THOUGHTS ON PATER NOSTER AND THE MISSION OF LIGHT

Pater Noster is a strange little gem of a film by writer/director/producer/cinematographer/editor, Christopher Bickel. It’s a love letter to music, records and the weirdos who love underground music. It’s also a strange love letter to the cults who made music in that weird and wonderful time of the 1960’s and 1970’s. 

Much like Mandy, there’s a surrealist atmosphere of the cult. Unlike Mandy, the film is gritty and filthy. You rub it between your fingers and there’s sweat and dead skin. It’s manic, raw energy. It’s a bad trip you can’t come down from. A nightmare which you cannot wake. It smells like vomit and fungus-ridden bowling shoes. It’s the worst hangover you’ve ever had.

And I mean all this in the best of ways. 

The cinematography is an homage to indie films of the 70’s, looking like it was made on super 8 film and sold at an estate sale after being forgotten for years. The effects and makeup are beautifully practical, veering from subtle to ball-to-the-walls, literally puking up your guts. The shit that the crew was able to get away with in terms of action and effects is incredibly inspiring. It easily feels like this is a bigger budget film.

The acting is fantastic for the most part. Joshua R. Outzen as Jay Sin is so funny and honest with his performance. Sanethia Dresch is endearing as Sam’s friend/roommate, and film enthusiast. Morgan Shaley Renew as Sam’s boss is very charming as being like a mother hen for the group. Mike Amason as the eponymous Pater Noster is perfect casting, being able to make the switch from kindly old man to fearsome cult leader .

However, I had a hard time getting a read on Max (Adara Starr). She’s just always so happy and go-with-the-flow. Perhaps a bit naive. And maybe that’s the point. She “goes where the music takes her” and there’s little else that motivates her.

The story is clean-cut and follows a simple, but concise narrative. That’s not a bad thing, either. In fact, I prefer the simplicity. It has a clear progression and rising tension. There’s very little to detract from the story or distract the viewer. It’s smartly edited and the pacing is perfect, never meandering off and never throwing everything at you all at once. 

The ending is gruesome, chaotic and incredibly satisfying. The finale is beautifully and grotesquely shot. There’s a special balance of avoiding showing too much or not enough, especially with gore and body horror. There’s an art to cutting action just right to make sure the audience is aware of what’s happening, but adding to the tension of the scene. Thankfully, Bickel nailed it with PATER NOSTER AND THE MISSION OF LIGHT. 

BRAINROLL JUICE:

I have a longer Brainroll Juice for this one (RIP SEO readability), so I’ve set it into two parts – History of Music and Religion and the Cults in the US during the 1960’s-1970’s. Of course, these are just super brief overviews of each and I’m no expert. But I thought it would help with some of the context of my review and also PATER NOSTER AND THE MISSION OF LIGHT.

History of Music and Religion

Religion and spirituality have been intertwined with music since perhaps the dawn of time. 

The great goddess Kubile/Cybele was a huge proponent of using music and dance for healing, mental health and spirituality. Dionysus often had raves that lead to prophesies, healings and sexy times.

Meanwhile, the Assyrians used music as a war cry under Ishtar, looking for victory to the beat of cymbals, drums and war-pipes. The Egyptian goddess Isis is said to have created the sistrum (which looks like a wicked torture device). And worshipers of the child-sacrifice-friendly god, Baal-Moloch had priests singing hymns of praise during rituals and sacrifices. 

In India, the role of music was relegated to temples, using drums, conches and flutes as instruments to honor the gods. Music was integral in worship and tapping into the realm of the divine. Guy L. Beck explains in Sacred Sound: Experiencing Music in World Religion, “As Brahman pervaded the entire universe, including the human soul at its core, the notion of sacred sound as manifested through chant and music provided a veritable thread binding the human realm to the divine.”

Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, taught through shabads. These were devotional hymns and mantras of the religion, of which many still survive to this day. 

And of course, from my boy Rumi, there are the Mawlawīyah, the whirling dervishes, who dance in a religious mystic fervor to prayers and music. 

Not to be beat, in the Abrahamic religions’ history, God and music are nearly inseparable. Joshua’s trumpets brought down the walls of Jericho; King David’s wrote and performed numerous psalms; Miriam (Moses’ sister) led a victory song and dance party to celebrate their freedom from the pharaoh.

Obviously, this is a very, very brief overview, but it shows the cultural significance of music of spirituality. Music is an incredibly human and old form of expression, dating back around 40,000 years ago. Songs carry power, our history, spirituality, good omens, and warnings. It’s part of our culture and social learning. We weld our songs reverently, dangerously, softly and loudly. 

It’s amazing to think that music today holds just as much joy, expression and spirituality as it did when we as humans didn’t have a written language yet. 

Cults in the US during the 1960’s-1970’s

Well, here’s the other half of Bickel’s love letter. 

During the rise of religions/cults of the 1960’s and 1970’s, particularly within the United States, music was also critical in their teachings and appeal. Through civil unrest, the rise of drug culture, search for personal identity and the global access to new religions of the East, the American youth sought answers to larger questions. They sought community. Conviction. A place to belong.

From the Beatles getting hippie-dippy with Hare Krishna, to the Helter Skelter of Charles Manson, music and cults also intertwined within this chaotic period.

Cults frequently used music as a means to communicate, to prophesize, to heal and to convert. It’s easy to feel like you belong when you know all the words of the songs and the steps to the dance. You feel like you’re in the “in-group”. Like you, yourself, are part of something larger.

On the Children of God’s website, it states that, “the Children of God became famous as their original music gained popularity when their bands landed recording contracts and big-stage performances, particularly in France and Brazil. From radical rock-style songs denouncing the hypocrisy of the establishment of the day, to heart-touching folk ballads about God′s love, original music became a prominent feature of the movement′s outreach and culture.” They even have a playlist.

The Unification Church (aka the Moonies) have a YouTube channel full of songs, including karaoke versions (worst karaoke party ever). 

Bickel created a film that encapsulates the fervor of music and the (sometimes) dangerous allure of spirituality/cults. The quest to find answers and our meaning in the universe. The love of music and its hold on the human soul. The aching desire to be connected with others, with the self, with some kind of higher plane or answer to our questions. 

Sam goes where the music takes her; her religion is music. Her worship is through the collection of these records, regardless of the danger associated with it. Not only does she go willingly into the den of Pater Noster, but follows without any suspicion or hesitation.

Pater Noster and the Mission of Light is enticing, with its cheery psychedelic songs, wrapped up in mysticism and mystery. And Bickel showcases this incredibly human desire for something more, for cosmic connection through harmony (literal and metaphorical), and its consequences.

BOTTOMLINE:

It’s Ghost World meets Mandy but dropped on the bloody floor of a mosh pit. (5 / 5)

PS – Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream is a FINE album

References:

Treitler, Leo. “History and Music.” New Literary History, vol. 21, no. 2, 1990, pp. 299–319. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/469254. Accessed 5 Jan. 2025.

Martens, Frederick H. “The Influence of Music in World History.” The Musical Quarterly, vol. 11, no. 2, 1925, pp. 196–218. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/738578. Accessed 5 Jan. 2025.

Hansen, Greg (2008) “Sacred Sound: Experiencing Music in World Religions. by Guy L. Beck, editor,” BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 47: Iss. 1, Article 16. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol47/iss1/16

McLeod, William Hewat and Nangia, Tamanna. “Guru Nanak”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 1 Jan. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Guru-Nanak. Accessed 5 January 2025.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Mawlawīyah”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 May. 2012, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mawlawiyah. Accessed 5 January 2025.

Killin, A. (2018). The origins of music: Evidence, theory, and prospects. Music & Science, 1. https://doi.org/10.1177/2059204317751971

Paglia, Camille. “Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s.” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, vol. 10, no. 3, 2003, pp. 57–111. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20163901. Accessed 5 Jan. 2025.

So, I think it’s time for more creepy clown stories. Don’t you? At any rate, here’s Stage Fright by our very own, Jennifer Weigel…

It started with the squeaky shoes.  Not a shrill waning warble emitted by once-wet leather now taut and tired, sighing with weary pain at every step.  No, this was much more… the unhindered squall of a goose honking as it drove a would-be pedestrian from the sidewalk after they’d wandered too close to its secluded springtime sanctuary, goslings barely hidden in the underbrush.  Such a jarringly irreverent and discordant diversion, and at a poetry reading no less, wherein the self-righteously civilized members of the audience took extreme effort to present themselves in being as cultured as possible, snapping their fingers in lieu of cupped clapping as an orchestrated gesture of both being in the know of the current trends in fashionably avoiding faux pas and out of respectful reverence for one another’s pretentiousness.  A roomful of eyes glared over their half-sipped cups of craft coffee at the transgression, staring at the oversize yellow clogs from which the foul fracas emanated.

But it didn’t stop with the shoes.  The noise carried through a visual cacophony crawling up the legs as it splashed hideously contrasting colors in a web of horrific plaid parallels, ochre and mauve lines dissecting what would otherwise be reasonable trousers if not for the fact that they were that unbearable chartreuse color that leaves a residual stench on the cornea, burning itself into the retinas for posterity.  Surely the pant cuffs housed a pair of mismatched socks, probably pink or periwinkle argyle or the like, waiting to flash their fantastical finery at an unsuspecting stranger while engaged in some awkward careening and undignified gesture.  But for now, the socks’ unsightly status remained hidden in the dark recesses of the pant legs.

The plaid danced in awkward angular strokes upwards to a torso draped in a pink and purple polka dotted shirt strapped into place by a set of unaware green and gold striped suspenders, seemingly oblivious to their misuse and standing at attention holding all the odds and ends in place, as suspenders are trained to do.  Or at least they were trying to hold everything in place as best they could, and kudos to them for the effort as that was a hot mess in free-flow lava mode.  Atop the fashion nightmare wearer’s head was a green bowler crowned in faux flowers of all sorts, hearkening maybe to daisies and irises that had lost some of their luster after having been painstakingly assembled by some unfortunate third-world flower crafter who had never actually beheld an iris, the intricacies of its petals flailing in frayed and frantic folds.

The hat crowned a stand of strangely disheveled locks, haphazardly erupting to and fro from beneath its shallow brim as if trying to run in every direction simultaneously.  The stringy strands of hair cascaded across a harrowed face, revealing not a bright and boisterous smile but rather a looming sense of dread made manifest through trembling lips.  Terrified eyes wide as saucers glowed white and wild from within the drapery, staring in suspended animation at the judge, jury, and executioners amassed within the audience.  The fashion plate was topped off with a red bow tie, a gift ribbon bedecking a package that nobody had anticipated receiving and weren’t sure they wanted.

Someone coughed from a table near the back of the room.  The next poet stood ready to take her place at a vigil from the sidelines, fidgeting with her phone and pouting with pursed lips while she glared at the ungainly intrusion, batting her brooding heavily shadowed and mascaraed eyes.  Can you please sit? she posited in gesture without need to call forth words to speak what was on everyone’s minds.  Yes.  Please sit.  Preferably someplace further from the spotlight, where its faint glow cannot cast its judgment upon this interruption, and all can all go on about the business of losing themselves in heartsick hyperbole while sipping their overpriced triple grande vanilla chai lattes and contemplating their harrowing higher education existences.  Whispered words wandered through the meager crowd.

My eyes darted around the room from my slightly elevated vantage point; an alien creature left floundering in confusion at my own abrupt transformation.  Only moments prior I had taken to center stage, adjusted the microphone to better meet my mouth, and begun reciting my latest poem, a meager manifestation of a serendipitous sunset in contemplation of life looming after graduation.  Or was it sunrise?  But three words in, I could feel the change taking hold, and I could see the palpable demeanor of the room shift as I stuttered out some nebulous nonsense in lieu of my well-rehearsed verse.  I tripped over my own tongue-tied tableaux as the metamorphosis continued, watching in horror as my visage shifted to that of the bewildered buffoon.

As we rise to the sun-set
waning weary motion of our un-be-coming
beckoning reckoning,
graduation looming stranger-danger,
like wet and bewildered Beagles
unsure of when/how/if
they became thusly domesticated
and wondering where/what/who
the wolves wandered off to ward…

I shifted my weight ever so slightly, pooling my cartoonish mass over my left foot, and my shoe honked.  Everyone in the room was aghast, their blank condescending stares drilling further into my psyche.  After several seeming minutes of stoic silence, the Goth girl waiting her turn in line edged a chair towards the forefront, its wooden form grating against the faux plank flooring with a long droning whine, fingernails to a chalkboard.  Sit.  I raced to its sweet salvation, sloppily surrendering the circumstance to she the next reader and taking account of my own misbegotten musings.  Upon returning to the shadows, my ridiculous and outlandish adornments subdued, losing the honking clopping clogs, unseen argyle socks, plaid pantaloons, polka-dotted blouse, suspenders, green garden bowler, and red bow tie to my regular simple black shirt and slacks performance getup.

At least I wasn’t naked this time…

Maybe that wasn’t the sort of creepy clown story you had in mind. So check out this found junk store post from before. And feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.

Goosebumps is back with season two, The Vanishing. All eight episodes dropped yesterday, January 10th.

Today, we’re talking about episode one, Stay Out of The Basement Part 1. This episode gets its title from the second of the original Goosebumps series. How much else does it get from this source material? Let’s find out.

The story

Our story begins in 1994, with a group of teens planning to spend the night in an abandoned building called Gravesend. And we are surely made aware that it is indeed Ye Olde 1994 with Beastie Boys blaring and references to X Files. Thank you, show writers, for making me feel as old as possible as quickly as possible.

For reference, the flashbacks from season one took place in 1993. I don’t know if these two stories exist in the same universe, but it stands to reason they do. So it couldn’t hurt to keep track of a timeline.

The teens’ plans are ruined when one of them, a boy named Matty, is infected with some horrific thing that seems to melt him before the very eyes of his friends.

We then cut to 2024, where our story really begins. Two kids, Cece and Devin Brewer, are coming to spend the summer with their dad, Anthony. Anthony is Matty’s younger brother. He is now an adult and excited to have his twins spending the summer with him. He only has one rule for them.

Don’t go in the basement.

As it turns out, nothing in the basement will hurt the kids. Until Devin and Cece end up in Gravesend, and accidentally bring home the exact entity that killed their uncle thirty years ago.

What worked

The first thing that stood out to me was the connections that Cece and Devin have to this town, while still being outsiders.

Their dad, Anthony, lives there full-time. And while the twins seem to spend some time there, they really haven’t in years. This puts them in a liminal position of being both newcomers and having ties to the place. They know some people, but not most of their peers. But everyone knows their family, because of the tragic death of their uncle. This is a good way to have some flexible characters. They are both from there and not from there. It works.

I also liked that this first episode has clear ties to the book it’s named for, while not being bound to it. In Don’t Go In The Basement, the kids have to save their father, Mr. Brewer, from the terrifying plant clone trying to take over his life. (Sorry for the spoiler. But the book did come out over thirty years ago.)

While this storyline is going to inspire at least some of our storyline, it’s clear that we’re going to go far above and beyond that. I appreciate that we’re keeping the integrity of the source material, while not being shackled to it.

Finally, I like that Anthony seems like a good dad. He’s worried about his kids. He’s excited to spend time with them. He’s quick to not involve them in fights with his ex, their mom. When he asks them not to go in the basement, he then takes them down to show them that he’s not hiding anything, it’s just not a safe place for them. All good dad points. Even better, we see that Devin goes to his dad when he’s scared. We get the feeling that Anthony would have listened to him if he hadn’t been fending off a homicidal vine at the time.

What didn’t work

I only have one complaint about this first episode. In the very beginning, we see the death of Matty. But, it’s really fast.

Not that I wanted to see a teenager suffer, but we see his face go dark and melt so fast, you’ll blink if you miss it.

For one thing, that lets the viewer off too easy. This is our first dark moment. It should be a little slower. We should focus on the fear and anguish for a few more moments. Especially since this death is going to be the cornerstone of our story for the season.

While I am disappointed that this means we were in fact left on that terrible cliffhanger from season one, I’m happy with how this season is starting. The characters are interesting, the story is dark, and I’m excited to see how it plays out.

(4 / 5)