A Wizard Reviews: We Are Still Here (2015)

A Wizard Reviews

being the first in a series of sarcastic film reviews

We Are Still Here (2015)

A Guest Post by Fr. Apis Beatus

Hello and welcome to "A Wizard Reviews", a series of guest posts in which various Contributing Authors (over)analyse depictions of the occult in movies. As may be expected, this will undoubtedly contain numerous spoilers, so look away if you particularly care about such things. Content notifications for today's film include (ridiculous) gore, horror, and conducting seances without due care and attention.

We Are Still Here is a fairly predictable bit of horror, starring the ever-present Barbara Cartland Crampton and Andrew Sensible Sensenig as Anne and Paul, a couple mourning the death of their son, who have moved to a new home in Buttfuck Nowhere, New England. Predictably, the house turns out to be haunted as all fuck.

Thanks to a shared prop - a bottle of "B&J" brand alcohol -
it's also the same universe as Hobo With a Shotgun.
Note the potential qabbalistic associations with the pillars of
Boaz and Jachim, as well as the more puerile use of the letters...

Something which is easily missed in a casual viewing is that the film technically takes place within the Cthulhu Mythos universe, thanks to a reference to the Miskatonic River; there's not much in the film that is blatantly mythos-y, but the implied metaphysic certainly isn't entirely incompatible. Neither is the "horrible small town New England" vibe which suffuses the film in its entirety.

It's worth pointing out here that a lot of the film's backstory is only really revealed in fragments, much of which is in the news articles that can be seen behind the end credits. The backstory timeline runs as follows:

• September 27th 1859 - construction begins on the Dagmar's funeral parlour. Unexplained earthquake follows the ground-breaking.
• November 1859 - reports of animal mutilations and crop failures. Locals believe the area to be cursed by God.
• December 27th 1859 - At 01:22 am, the funeral parlour burns to the ground, leaving but a shell. The Dagmar family vanish, and are presumed dead. It is implied that the building was torched by an angry mob.
• 1889 - Presumably the house has been rebuilt, when the pestilence returns, and the house claims its second set of victims, with the wraiths of the Dagmar family carrying out the killings out of rage.
• July 8th 1919 - Second cycle, marked by a severe drought, ends with another set of sacrifices.
• 1949 - Community plagued by mysterious illnesses, Communists suspected.
• October 12th 1949 - following an earthquake, the nearby Miskatonic and Aylesbury rivers run black with some "unidentified viscous black liquid". The town is quarantined shortly after
• October 28th 1949 - A family (mother, father, two children) "go missing" during the quarantine. The rivers run clear shortly after.
• Winter 1979 - Anne and Paul purchase the Dagmar House.

Having arrived in Buttfuck Nowhere in the middle of winter, we are treated to some establishing shots of the house and its obligatory creepy murder cellar. Instantly violating Rule One of Surviving in the Mythos (Don't Go in the Fucking Cellar), Anne goes exploring and finds that it's a bit creepy down there. Like, proper Shadow People creepy - I swear, Lights Out (CN: jump scares) has a lot to answer for.

After a couple of rather ambiguous omens, Anne comes to the conclusion that she can sense the spirit of her son, Bobby, in the house. Paul, as the narrative demands, remains skeptical, despite some escalating weirdness. Things come to a head shortly after, when locals Cat and Dave turn up to greet their new neighbors, and reveal that, inevitably, the house has "a bit of a history". The house was built by the Dagmar family in 1859, and was originally a funeral parlour; however within a few months it was found that the Dagmars were selling the cadavers of their customers to a local university, and they were promptly driven out of town, Dagmar going on to drink himself to death out of shame.

Cat then goes on to attempt to warn the family of the fate that awaits them. I say "attempt"...

"The House Needs a Family. GET OUT!"
"Nah, probably not important"

Just a small favour, dear reader, but if you ever find yourself in a horror movie, and wish to warn the unsuspecting victims of the terrible fate that is about to befall them, perhaps consider being a bit more specific. More "A Sincere Warning About the Entity in Your Home", less "A Vague Insinuation That This Bed House Eats People", please.

In any case, Paul dismisses this as being meaningless nonsense, and doesn't bother mentioning it. Thanks Paul. Thaul. Shortly after, an electrician arrives to repair the presumed problem with the murder-cellar's boiler, and in, inevitably, attacked by shadowy forces. Despite being the only black character in the movie, he survives with only a mild-to-moderate mauling.

Hilariously, Ron Jeremy (right) played Jesus in Bloody Bloody Bible Camp (CN: gore, sexual content, blasphemy), which allows us to
make the requisite off-hand joke at the expense of the OTO per article.

Anne invites her good friends May and Ron Jeremy Jacob, a couple of hippy spiritualists, who also decide to invite their son and his girlfriend to join them at the house. When they arrive, May and Jacob accompany Anne and Paul into the nearby town of Aylesbury, where they find the "Buffalo Bill Lounge", a bar that might as well be named the "We Don't Like Your Kind 'Round 'Ere Bar & Grill". For what is perhaps the first and last time in any similar movie, the psychic - May - has something approaching a hint of common sense, and points out that the entire situation is a Bit Fucking Weird.

"Niiiiiice"

Meanwhile, Pete-Doherty-on-a-Bad-Heroin-Day-lookalike Harry and his girlfriend Daniella arrive at the house. Showing precisely zero genre awareness, they proceed to drink and make out on the sofa, before being interrupted by a strange noise. Harry traces this to the Creepy Murder Cellar, which he declares to be "niiiiiice", further conforming his inevitable doom. Which occurs approximately five seconds later, courtesy of demons. Daniella has the self-preservation instincts to flee, but gets eviscerated as she drives away. Which is a shame, as she has been more or less the only genuinely likable character so far.

That night the four return to the house, and May and Paul have a selection of horrible nightmares. Meanwhile, Dave turns up to Buffalo Bill's, shooting the waitress who answers the door for no adequately explained reason, before expositioning at the manager about how the residents of the Dagmar House need to be sacrificed to the (unnamed) entity below the house, or else the town gets cursed. So, standard Lovecraft cult stuff, really.

The next day May and Anne go back into town and end up confronting Dave, May having intuited that the story about the Dagmars being run out of town was bullshit, and that they had actually been murdered by the townsfolk. Meanwhile, Jacob and Paul conduct the world's most ill-advised seance. If you want to watch the idiocy yourself, it begins around the 57:50 mark. I'll deconstruct the ritual here in any case.

Jacob leads the ritual, with Paul seeming to be there as a passive observer. It's possible that he's intended to be an amanuensis and record whatever utterances Jacob channels whilst acting as a medium; in any case, Jacob doesn't bother explaining. Jacob lights four white votive candles which are placed in a rectangle on the coffee table, which the pair sit on opposite sides of. He has a book, possibly a Bible, which he opens to a specific page - but never actually reads from. Perhaps he just likes having it around. There seems to be a vague suggestion that Jacob doesn't really know what he's doing; he admits to Paul that he only wants to do the seance right then because May would absolutely refuse to do it if she was around kind of confirms this.

Neophytes and apprentices of all stripes be warned - when the seasoned psychic takes one look at the emotional resonance of a place and immediately impersonates the Nope Badger, you probably shouldn't poke it.

With nary a cleansing ritual, circle, or any form of protection or preparation whatsoever (aside from telling Paul to "close your eyes and try to believe"), Jacob begins the ritual:

"We're addressing any spirits here. This house belongs to the living. Their names are Paul and Anne, and they have a connection to your world. Their son Bobby is with you, and if it's Bobby's spirit that we have felt, please give us a sign"

Half-arsed doesn't even begin to cover it, really. If sending this kind of informal open invitations to any passing spook is his normal modus operandi, it's probably a testament to his wife's skill that Jacob hasn't been reduced to a small mound of dribbling idiocy yet. In any case, after a few seconds there are some Noises Off, which he takes to be a Sign.

"This house welcomes his spirit and asks him to to join us, with love and compassion we will help him to cross to the next realm... and... peel the skin... off his bones..."

"... well, that escalated quickly."

Baffled at Paul's confusion, Jacob begins to explain that it's a "welcoming":

"It's a sacred blessing that we hold dear, so we ask Bobby... to rot... like wasted meat..." 

Do you want possessions? 'Cause this is how you get possessions.

Jacob eventually realises that he done fucked up, and asks Paul to tie him up, which he obligingly does. May and Anne then return, to find the men indulging in a spot of demonic BDSM, Paul having also decided to stuff a sock in Jacob's mouth. Which Jacob then eats. As you do.

It's at this point that things really go to shit.

Inhabited by Dagmar, Jacob taunts May with the news that their son is dead. The phone rings and Paul and Anne rush out to answer it - it's Cat, attempting to warn them to flee. A quick cut to Cat shows us that she has been stabbed, presumably by Dave McMurderer. Cutting back, we see May attempting the tried and tested "hit 'em with a frying pan" method of exorcism on Jacob, to little effect. Dagmar!Jacob eventually breaks free, plot dumping about how his family were murdered by the townsfolk as a sacrifice to "the gods that they dug up when they built this place", and that he has been getting revenge by... murdering random people... okay, sure. Ghost priorities, I guess? He then stabs himself through the eye with an iron poker, because FUCK YOU BUDDY.

The three survivors decide to get the hell out of there, and rush for the door, only for May to open it straight into Dave's shotgun. This ends about as well for her as might be guessed, and Anne and Paul make a run for the stairs as the townsfolk besiege the house with murder in mind. Why Dave is the only one carrying a firearm, when everybody and their cousin in New England has a gun, is beyond me, but there we are.

There's then a protracted and gory fight scene with the locals being horribly massacred by the ghosts, in which several gallons of fake blood are liberally sprayed all over the set. It's probably a contractual obligation for Barbara Taylor Bradford Crampton or something. Eventually, Anne and Paul end up in a stand-off with Dave, who seems to have at least temporarily talked the ghosts around. However, before he can finish the pair off, Dagmar decides he's had enough of his shit. resulting in a Scanners-worthy headsplosion.

Aaand then... the ghosts. Just. Leave. With a final, confusingly ambiguous plot twist that I'll leave a mystery.

"So long, and thanks for all the death"

So - overall, this is a fairly decent movie. Low-key Lovecraft, relatively coherent, and with a good moral. Namely, if you don't know what it is, don't fucking summon it.