‘The Pale Door’ review: A decent western with a major witch problem
In The Pale Door, a dark western about love and sacrifice, there is a lack of congruence. It throws away a film brimming with backstory, lively characters, and a strained brotherly love to make room for some silly witches that look and act as if they came out of a Roald Dahl book. A great example of wasted potential. I wouldn’t even call it a disappointment, just bland, and certainly not as horrifying as it thinks it is. The film is essentially split in half with one part being a western and another being about witches, but they are not balanced or even compatible. It flows like a river with too many rocks and not enough water.
It starts strong on the road to an exciting drama about outlaws, opening with the violent raiding of a farmhouse where two young brothers are left as the only survivors of a massacre. The elder of the two, Duncan, grows up to become an outlaw while the younger, Jacob, lives an honest life working in a saloon. Duncan runs a loose variation of the real-life Dalton gang from the early 1890s, also called the Dalton gang, that’s wanted all over the country for robbery and murder. Despite his promise to come home for good, Duncan and his gang have one more big score to collect but when they’re one man short, Jake volunteers to help out, becoming a part of the gang.
It’s after the robbery, however, when things start to fall apart. The only goods they find turns out to be a young girl named Pearl locked inside a chest, her mouth held shut with a Hannibal Lector mask. She was seemingly captured by bounty hunters working for a man named Cotton Mather IV, a descendent of Cotton Mather, a name the movie clearly expects you to recognize. In case you don’t, Cotton Mather was a prominent figure during the Salem Witch Trials whose account of the trials to magistrate John Richards ensured the deaths of many innocent women.
Pearl tells them to take her back to her village where they will be given a handsome reward, secretly leading them to a horde of witches that are eagerly awaiting their arrival because as it turns out, Pearl’s abduction was not an abduction at all. It was a staged event to bring victims to her coven ruled by her mother, a woman burned at the stake over 200 years ago. Her mother, Maria, and all the other women are hideously burned monsters hiding beneath beautiful faces.
One significant flaw of the film is its lack of suspense. Everything is placed right in front of you for easy decoding. This is blatantly demonstrated in Pearl’s introduction. There is no question about whether or not Pearl is dangerous, we know she is. The movie wants you to know that her presence has sealed the fate of these people, making the long drawn out reveal of the other witches redundant. We know what’s coming and we’re just waiting for it. Rather than keeping the witches in the dark, hovering like demons in the shadows, their evil is put front and center in an almost cartoonish manner.
Honestly, the robbery was the highlight of the film for me. It kind of goes downhill from there but I would never say that The Pale Door is a bad film because it’s not. All the parts are good, it just has a hard time blending them all together. Everything feels like it’s coming from a different movie. The witches, the brothers, the outlaws; they’re all in different movies that had no correspondence prior to overlapping.
This film had three screenwriters, which might explain the excessive introduction of subplots that went nowhere. They just wanted to put more than they can fit. It’s largely made up of half-baked aborted ideas, backstories, that only clutter the film.
I admire the work that went into the character creations though. It’s clear that they put more work into the characters than they did in the plot. Some of the Dalton members include a mute Native American, a hard-drinking woman named Brenda, a gangster version of Pacific Rim‘s Dr. Hermann Gottlieb, and a former slave that helped raised the brothers. The brothers themselves are their own convoluted mess. They’re devoted to one another in that beautifully overprotective, codependent kind of way that I’m always a sucker for and have whole lives outside of what’s going on in the story. Jacob is even revealed to be gay later in the film, a detail dropped in a single throwaway line that is just used as a further pointless character definition. The witch Maria even has a flashback to her possible baby daddy sentencing her to burn. It’s all drama all around that goes absolutely nowhere. Kind of a waste.
Verdict
In the end, I don’t have any strong feelings about The Pale Door. I don’t like nor do I hate it. I liked parts of it but came to feel nothing by the end credits, but that’s just me. I will give the film credit for taking a different approach to the conclusion. It doesn’t go the way most will expect and I enjoyed that, but otherwise, it’s rather unoriginal.
The Pale Door could’ve been something memorable but it prefers to remain indecisively spliced. It needs to pick a side. Cowboys or witches? Pick one.
(2.5 / 5)
Photos are property of Paper Street Pictures and Storyteller Media
We have come now to the finale of season four of The Boys. And while it didn’t have the literal blood fireworks I wanted, someone did get ripped in half in the air. So, that’s pretty close.
As a note, I will try to avoid spoilers as much as possible. This ending was a hell of a gut punch that should be experienced as blindly as possible. That being said, I will not be able to avoid spoilers and still give a full legitimate review. Proceed at your own risk.
The story
The main storyline for this episode is the attempted assassination of President-Elect Robert Singer. The Boys join forces with the Secret Service to protect him. But, as we learned last episode, Annie has been replaced with a shapeshifter. A shapeshifter that was welcome not just into Hughie’s anus, but into the protective bunker in which the President-Elect is hiding.
What worked
The first thing I want to discuss about this episode is the ending. But we need to do this carefully.
The important thing here is that the ending breaks your heart on so many levels. So many terrible things are happening to characters that it’s almost hard to keep track. And each moment is significant to each character.
I cannot give a specific example. But no matter who your favorite character is, you’re going to weep for them.
Unless your favorite character is Sage. And this is the next thing that made this episode so fantastic.
I don’t think I’m spoiling anything to say that Sage’s plans worked out exactly as she wanted them to. And she got exactly what she wanted.
What she wanted wasn’t power. It wasn’t money or fame or vengeance. It wasn’t to win the love of anyone. She just wanted to see if she could do it.
That is a terrific, terrifying motivation! Because all she wants is to play a massive game of chess with people as pieces. She doesn’t care about anyone. She just wants to see how many people she can manipulate. She just wants to set things on fire to see if she can.
Fantastic. A plus villain work.
The next thing I want to discuss is a cornerstone of the whole series.
The morality of The Boys shifts through the series. While it’s very much a battle to save the world from overpowered super monsters, it’s also a battle for the souls of our real heroes. And in that battle, there are two warring factors. We have Hughie, always trying to bring everyone up to a better level. And we have Butcher, who has no problem at all hitting rock bottom with a shovel in hand to do some more digging.
In this episode, we saw almost every member of The Boys challenged. Will they rise to their higher angels, or sink with their demons?
On a similar note, I am so glad that the writers kind of addressed my issues with Annie. They did this by having the shapeshifter get right into her face and accuse her of thinking that she’s better than everyone.
While that was devastating for the character, it was a little cathartic for those of us who felt like Annie was a little too good of a good guy.
What didn’t work
This is a small matter, but it is an issue that I want to address. After Annie finds out that Hughie slept with her doppelganger, she is furious at him.
In addition to this being unfair, it’s also a very cliche element to add. In almost every instance of a lookalike in fiction, there’s a moment where the love interest of the victim is fooled. Or almost fooled. And it’s always the same fight. It’s just played out and predictable. I’m just glad that it didn’t last very long.
Now that we’ve come to the end of the season, I can officially say that it was amazing. The story was deep and rich. The special effects were a stomach-turning good time. The character development was spot-on and satisfying. And, of course, it left me just about gagging to see what happens next. Unfortunately, it looks like we’ll have a bit of a wait. Because as of right now, the fifth season isn’t expected until 2026.
(5 / 5)
We’ve reached the second to last episode of The Boys, season four. And, as is appropriate for the penultimate episode of any show, things have to get a lot worse before they can get better.
Let’s discuss.
The story
Christmas is coming, and the whole world is getting ready. Ryan, despite being very clear that he didn’t want to appear on any TV shows or movies, has been strong-armed into participating in a Vought puppet Christmas special. He draws the line, though, when asked to sing about turning one’s parents in if they start talking about woke things.
Meanwhile, The Boys are trying to keep each other together. Butcher decides to take Sameer to the rest of the team. He also gets Frenchie out of prison, hoping they can make the Sup virus necessary to finally take down Homelander. Instead, this decision means disaster for one member of the team.
What worked
I first want to talk about Ryan’s speech near the end of the episode. Because it was exactly the moral of this whole story.
Ryan’s dad is a monster. His stepdad is also kind of a monster. But Ryan is a good kid. He cares about people, about family. And while he loves Homelander and Butcher, he doesn’t want to be like them.
Even better, this speech sounded like something a kid would say. Ryan didn’t open his mouth and start sounding like a college student all of a sudden. He sounds like a kid who misses his mom and wants to live up to the good standards she set for him. And I think that’s terrific.
Speaking of Homelander, he shot himself in the foot in this episode. I said earlier in the season that his hubris was going to be his downfall, and I was right. Without Sage, he just has the same weaknesses he’s always had. He’s going to fail because he just isn’t clever enough or patient enough to succeed.
Without Sage, I think a win is in the bag for The Boys. This isn’t to say that Homelander by himself isn’t dangerous. It’s just that he’s more like a wildfire than a controlled burn. He’s going to cause a lot of damage, but not get anything he wants out of it.
More’s the pity for him and everyone else who has to share his world.
Finally, I am thrilled with A-Train’s redemption story. I love that he wants to be a good person not to save himself, but to be a good person. His honest, pure and warm reaction to that little kid smiling at him in the last episode was heartwarming. It changed him in a moment, bringing to light a goodness that he’s been keeping under wraps for a long time.
This, along with Ryan’s courageous speech, proves once again what The Boys does so well. Yes, it’s gruesome. Yes, there’s blood and balls and batshit events. Yes, someone occasionally gets ripped in half. But there is a true human goodness in the story. One that we catch glimpses of. There are good people among the monsters. There is hope for redemption.
What didn’t work
Of course, so few things in this life are perfect, and this episode was no exception. For instance, I was irritated by the insinuation that Butcher cheated on his wife.
That just doesn’t make any sense. We’ve seen flashbacks of Billy and Becca. They were happy. He was happy. He was head over heels for her. And I don’t think it’s realistic or necessary for the character to throw in that he cheated. It does nothing to add to the story, it’s just a weird and offputting moment.
Doesn’t Butcher have enough to hate about himself? Can’t we just give him that at least he was a good husband?
Finally, I kind of hate that we ended up with Annie being caught. It’s just cliche, which is something I don’t normally say about this show. It feels lazy unless they do something very clever with it in the last episode. Which, I suppose, they might.
Next up is the season finale. And with this season being as insane as it has been, I’m expecting nothing short of bloody fireworks. And I mean literal fireworks of blood. At this point, would it surprise anyone?
(4 / 5)
Episode six of The Boys was one of the most surprising episodes of the series so far. And that is certainly saying something. Because this season has so far been bonkers.
The story
Our episode today revolves around a party at Tek Knight’s lovely mansion. Yes, it does look just like Wayne Manor.
The Boys know that Tek Knight is working with Homelander on something, but they don’t know the details. So they decide to send Hughie in to bug the mansion.
Because that’s worked so well the other two times he’s tried to hide a bug!
It should surprise no one that this time goes no better. Hughie finds himself in Tek Knight’s basement. And by that I mean his BDSM dungeon.
Meanwhile, the party upstairs is no less disturbing. Homelander and Sage are trying to convince some well-off political donors to support a cue after the election. When pressed for details on his plan, Homelander freezes. He looks to Sage for help, but she wasn’t recently shot in the head and still in the junk food stage of her healing.
Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your point of view, Neuman jumps in and saves the day.
What works
If I’m going to say one thing about this episode, it didn’t hold back at all. I didn’t expect them to show a character masturbating, sitting their bare behind on a cake, or spraying breastmilk into someone’s face. But every time I thought they’d cut the scene and let something be left to our imagination, they did not do that.
This is a dangerous move. Whenever you show the monster, you run the risk of them not being scary enough, or gross enough. As Stephen King says in Danse Macabre, to leave this sort of thing to the imagination if the reader makes things so much worse. So when they finally experience the monster, they might say that this isn’t so bad. It could have been so much worse.
But in this case, they managed to avoid that by making the scenes, especially the ones in Tek Knight’s dungeon, so much worse than I imagined it would be.
What doesn’t work
While this was a deeply disturbing episode in many ways, there was one really innocent and sweet moment.
And yes, I did have a problem with it.
Confronted by Firecracker, Annie decides to apologize for spreading rumors about her when they were kids. She tells her that she is genuinely sorry.
And I believe her. I don’t think Firecracker did, but I did.
So why is this an issue? Because I’m starting to think that Annie is maybe too nice. She is too good.
I know that Annie is our good guy. But every one of the other good guys has flaws. Hughie let his pride get in the way and took Temp V. MM hid himself from his daughter instead of teaching her to work through her emotions. Kimiko is far too closed off and has a hard time trusting others. Frenchie numbs himself with drugs. And well, what hasn’t Butcher done?
It is unrealistic that Annie is just so kind and so flawless. We all have shadows in our personalities. We all have weaknesses, we all mess up. We all do things we wish we could take back. The fact that Annie doesn’t seem to have anything like that is not just unrealistic. It’s infantilizing.
Give her some deep dark secrets. Give her something real to regret.
This was a shocking episode, even for someone fairly jaded like me. I wasn’t expecting the sort of weird sexual depravity, though I guess maybe I should have seen it coming. It was dark, upsetting, tense, and funny as hell. And with just two episodes left in the season, I can imagine the stakes are only going to get higher.
(4 / 5)
By the way, if you like my writing you can get my short story, Man In The Woods, on Smashwords and Amazon.
