Separation (2021) - Review Thread

This movie tried so, so hard.  But it is now forever a subject of the "Movies Dracula Wouldn't Use To Wipe His Ass" series.

So Regal theaters are open again, after that short stint before they turned chicken shit after James Bond turned tail and ran, like the coward he is.  I am forever grateful they opened for those four weeks or whatever.  If they hadn't, I would never have seen Tulsa.

Fuck you, Regal.

My whole schtick since getting my Unlimited pass is that I like going into movies knowing very little about them except the title.  That way they're either a pleasant surprise or...something else.  More often than not, they're something else (see Tulsa).  I went into Separation knowing the title and a brief description that said it was about "A young girl finds solace in her artist father and the ghost of her dead mother."  It was either a horror movie or some supernatural drama, and I didn't really know what I was rooting for.  It could have gone either way if it were either.

So, it's a horror movie.  And holy shit is it a bad one.  I only found out after the fact that this movie was made by William Brent Bell, who made the Boy films and The Devil Inside (which I haven't seen but it's reputation precedes it), and I was like "Yup.  That checks out."  Separation is actually a bit more flavorful than the Boy series, if only because it uses more color and has more memorable scenes in it, but it's plot...let's say there's a lot to unpack here.

So, let's get started...



The movie starts with some fairly cool Tim Burton meets The Babadook opening credits, so I had initial hopes this might be good.  But not to be, as these are the high point of the movie, so gird up.

Once the fatal words "Directed by William Brent Bell" show up, we jump into the movie, which sees a little girl Jenny playing in an attic, while her babysitter Samantha is flirting with her work-at-home artist father Jeff downstairs.  Through an impressive sequence of unfortunate events that are out of the board game Mouse Trap, the daughter somehow winds up hanging on a wooden girder close to the ceiling and falls.  This happens right when her overworked office mother Maggie returns home and also springs daddy and babysitter out of their CFM trance, as they all rush to the attic.  They find Jenny with a cut on her forehead and Maggie flips out on Jeff and Samantha, pushing a boatload of exposition on the audience about how he's out of work, she works for her father, and their marriage has gone to shit.  She then takes Jenny to the hospital and when Jeff tries to help her she responds "I'm taking her."  When he continues to try and help, she's like "You don't get it, I'm taking her!"

Get it?  GET IT?!  This movie implied divorce without stating it!  It's smart!

Divorce proceedings ensue as time passes.  Exciting horror movie stuff, let me tell you.  Eventually during the custody agreements Jeff takes Jenny to a coffee shop to meet her mother, and runs into an old friend who offers him an inking position at his comic office, which he initially isn't interested in.  But he receives a phone call from Maggie who is pissed at him and starts yelling at him about how ugly the divorce will be, how much she hates his guts, how she's going to move away with their daughter and he'll never see her again.

This is one fucking angry movie, y'all.

Then Maggie gets hit by a car and dies.

SEE?!

It occured to me after the fact that this movie was rated R, but it probably could have gotten away with a PG-13 if it weren't for this scene.  The hit and run is epically graphic.  Maggie gets fully knocked down and THUMP THUMP'd completely in camera and it zooms in on her mangled body while the driver races away.  They probably left it in because it's one of the few things in the movie that's effective.  Someone getting roadkill'd hasn't been this epic since the original Final Destination or Meet Joe Black.




In the aftermath, Jeff now has full custody of his daughter, for obvious reasons.  They're at Maggie's funeral and there is a weird scene where Jeff gives a speech but a mural catches fire, and he's all staring at it like "Huh.  That's a thing." before Samantha pulls a fire extinguisher on the giant fire that for some reason nobody noticed.  Anyway, he's confronted at the funeral by Maggie's father, who is played by Brian Cox and I'm all "Jesus, has work gotten so bad he's taking douchebag father-in-law roles in second-rate horror movies?"  Maggie's dad gives him the stink-eye, letting him know his daughter's final wish was for Jenny to be taken away from her dad and now he's going to fight Jeff for custody.  So yes, Brian Cox must have been really desperate for cash to take this role.

Jeff knows that to help win in a custody battle, he should have a halfway decent job, so he takes the shitty inking position he was offered.  Strange things also begin to happen at home, as Jeff keeps dreaming that the house is haunted by ghosts that look like these creepy ass puppet dolls that Jenny has.  This is probably the best thing the movie has going for it, because these puppet-ghoul designs actually look pretty good.  There is a contortionist clown that moves like Kayako from The Grudge if she did a crab walk.  There is also one which is on the poster, which is supposed to be Maggie herself, which has long, wooden ET-like fingers.  This movie has these great designs that are decently brought to life, and they just waste them on this shit script.

Anyway Jeff starts drawing the creatures he's been seeing, and his pics are seen by a writer at the office who is played by the guy who plays the storytelling douchebag on Westworld.  Here he is a TRUE TALENT who needs an artist with TRAUMA to bring his stories to life.  Long story short, Jeff is promoted to comic artist to work on some horror book.  This seems like good news, but daddy Brian Cox doesn't see "comix" as "real job."  Jeff confides his problems in babysitter Samantha, who tries to comfort him, leans in for a kiss and is REEEEEEJECTEEEEEEEEED!  Like full WTF from Jeff here.

What a plot twist!  I was absolutely positive Jeff was boinking the babysitter!  But he's like "Um, no!  Mixed signals here!"

So that awkward thing happened.  Then they just carry on.  Jeff continues to make comics and fight Brian Cox for custody, while Samantha babysits Jenny, though Jenny won't stop playing in the attic, claiming she's talking to her "mother."  Samantha begins seeing the creepy puppet people too.  Jeff gets home that night and sees her visibly disturbed, and he asks her if anything "strange" happened.  She answers this with the best possible response:  "Do you want to get high and watch cartoons?"  When he doesn't, she's like "What happened, man?  You used to be cool."

This is an actual conversation in the movie.

The incidents with the puppet ghosts gets weirder as time passes.  Jeff's artwork gets vandalized and there continue to be sightings in the house.  Jeff starts asking his Westworld boss if he believes in ghosts, and Westworld is all "I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO ASK ME THAT" and they get into an exposition dump about how Maggie's ghost can't leave because she left something unfinished.  Jeff starts believing Maggie wants Jenny to take her to...purgatory kindergarten or something.  I don't know.  Whatever ghost moms do with five-year-olds.  Westworld then becomes Jeff's ghost mentor.

More strangeness happens and little Jenny has an allergic reaction to some Chinese food, and in the aftermath accusations start getting hurdled at Jeff by Brian Cox, who now suspects Maggie may have been murdered.  After all, the driver was never caught.

It was right here I piped up "Oh!  The babysitter did it!"  Let's put a pin in that.

In the aftermath of the Chinese food, the incidents start getting worse, to the point where a chandelier hits Samantha on the head, nearly killing her.  Jeff then decides to clear the house, have Jenny stay with grandpa Brian Cox, and he has a confrontation with Maggie inside the house.  Maggie does scary stuff, then scary stuff stops.  Clearly he has defeated the ghost!

After this fateful encounter, things begin to settle down.  Jeff lets Brian Cox know he plans to move closer to him so Jenny can be near him, which seems to appease him, and the comic office is happy with the book they made.  Brian Cox even says the police have a lead on the person who ran over Maggie, so the case might soon be closed.  Brian Cox heads over to the house to pick up Jenny from Samantha, while Jeff's boss looks over the boom and asks for him and Westworld to change the ending because "Ghosts don't give up that easily."

Westworld then turns to Jeff and asks "Is your daughter okay?" and Jeff runs out of the office.

This is my favorite exchange of the movie.  It's so delightfully stupid.

As I describe what happens next, I feel that I should say that there are points where a movie like this should admit defeat.  Some movies think their ending is so mindblowing that nobody will see it coming because it respects the audience very little.  This film hides its twist in such a way that it thinks its exciting the viewer, but we're five steps ahead of it and every time it prolongs the inevitable, it just makes an ass out of itself.  So let's just say it out loud:  "Samantha killed Maggie."  For fuck's sake movie, it's not that hard to figure out.  Let's reflect on Samantha's role in this movie so far. She's in quite a bit of it, but she contributes nothing.  She makes flirty eyes with Jeff, but Jeff doesn't reciprocate, and other than that she is just present for the entire movie.  Samantha's purpose in this story could be explained in that maybe she was boning Jeff and that would explain some of the hostility Maggie had toward both of them earlier in the movie, but the movie made it clear that Samantha and Jeff are absolutely not doing the nasty, though she is open to it.  She could have even been a blossoming love interest for Jeff after Maggie's death, which may have made the twist ending a bit more of a punch, but the movie decides to not go there. So, if her one possible contribution to the story is not the route the movie goes down, why is she here?  Body count?  Other than Maggie's admittedly awesome death, this movie hasn't really been a body count movie.  Samantha is here, but she has no reason to be here.  The only reason she could possibly be still relevant to this plot is if she either had something to do with Maggie's death or the actress was fucking a producer in exchange for an expanded role in this movie.

Samantha killed Maggie.  There is literally nobody else it could be.  Maybe if you had a red herring for a misdirect, this would stronger, but you don't and she's the killer. The only question left is if she did it by accident and it's her dark secret or if she did it on purpose because she wants to fuck Jeff.  Let's stop fucking around, movie.

Okay, so Brian Cox is picking up Jenny from Samantha, right.  He gets a phone call from the police claiming they ID'd the driver of the car that killed Maggie. They send him an email with the picture of the suspect and he's like "Oh my god" (me in the theater: "Yeah. He's shocked because it's the babysitter."). He then tries to call Jeff but Jeff doesn't answer. He leaves a voicemail saying he's going to forward the email to him, when something hits him from behind, framed to make it look like it might be a ghost, and sends him flying down the stairs ("Ooh! Babysitter got him!").

Jeff soon arrives and finds Brian Cox royally fucked up, his neck twisted and everything. But he's still alive and whispering about Maggie's killer ("Yep! She's upstairs!"). He feebly hands Jeff the phone as Samantha comes running down the stairs ("MURDERER!") claiming they need to get out of the house in a hurry. Jeff shows her the phone, which has her picture in the email.

OMG I DIDN'T SEE IT COMING

I feel like pointing out that after this point we don't see Brian Cox again, so it's never concluded whether he died or not. I must humbly request that any sequel resolve this matter. Like shoehorning Danielle Harris into Rob Zombie's Halloween II.

Now, up until this point Samantha has been a fairly meek, girl-next-door type, who's only real personality flaw was that she flirted with married men. Once the reveal takes place, the actress goes full zero-to-sixty into full blown psycho bitch territory which would have made Lucy Hale's Fantasy Island performance envious. She breaks a picture on the mantel and holds a glass shard in her bloody hand and starts monologuing about how she watched every day as Maggie was making Jeff miserable, and how she had to take her out of the picture. She also reveals she was responsible for Jenny's allergic reaction earlier in the movie, and she wanted to take the things that were making him miserable and get rid of them, and since the custody battles were a part of the problem, she needed to get rid of Jenny too.

The entire time Samantha is going on about this, the big wooden puppet Maggie ghost sneaks up behind her. When she's done unveiling her master plan, Samantha is all "SAY SOMETHING!" Jeff responds "Bye, Samantha."

Sigh. ::rubs temples:: I just can't...gah! Even just saying "Hello, Maggie." would have been a better quip than this!

Anyway, Maggie grabs Samantha and stabs her in the neck with the glass shard she's holding. Then a bunch of cool stuff happens, like the sky turns blood red and the trees start moving like they're alive, and Maggie is still present in the house. Both she and Jeff follow Jenny to the attic and Maggie tries to take her, but Jeff starts screaming at her. Maggie then grabs Jeff by the throat and tries to choke him, but Jenny, sitting in the attic window, screams "STOP! I HATE IT WHEN YOU FIGHT!"

This is the most hilarious resolution to this conflict this movie could have asked for.

But Maggie still wants to take Jenny with her and holds out her hand, so she can take her out of the attic window. Jenny falls out of the window and Jeff jumps after her and catches her, resulting in a bunch of trippy imagery where they're lime swimming through the air. Next thing we know Jeff's lying on the ground outside while Jenny stands above him. Jenny informs him "You fell."

Lol.

The movie pretty much ends right here, but there is an early credit scene where Jeff is tucking Jenny into bed and then leaves her room. After she falls asleep, the door opens and the crab walk clown crawls on the ceiling and watches her.

Sequel? Mighty optimistic.

So, this movie has some stuff I like. I like the ghost designs and some of the effects work is kind of good and fun, and a lot of this stuff looks cool. This script though...holy shit. This thing reads like the screenwriter is going through a nasty divorce and demonizing the ex in this movie was therapeutic for him. Maggie doesn't often come off as a character, but rather a caricature of angry evil exes, while Jeff himself is a caricature of clueless guy caught up in a whirlwind of an evil bitch trying to ruin his life. Then then the screenwriter adds a subplot about making the babysitter the villain because he put the moves on his own hired babysitter and she was like "Ew! No!" (Maybe that's what sparked the divorce) Then he works a babysitter in the movie and he's like "Well MY main character has a babysitter that wants to fuck HIM, but HE'S the one who turned HER down!"

It's so dumb and childish. The production design and effects work deserve better than this garbage screenplay.

To put all of this into perspective, after I saw this I watched The Unholy. That movie sucked. This movie sucked more.