Film Review - Christine

Film Review:

Christine

CERTAIN brands, and certain authors with very strong brands, seem inextricably linked to adaptations. Defined by them, sharpened by them. Before the film market became over-saturated with comic book films, Scottish writer Mark Millar couldn't so much as twitch his pen without studios clamouring to buy the rights, and referring to James Bond as originating in novel form feels positively anachronistic at this point.

Surely, this is true of no one else more than it is true of Stephen, King of Horror; Christine went into production before the finished book had even been published!

She's a Beaut

YOUNG Arnie is a shy young nerd lacking in confidence, and suffering under the yoke of overbearing parents. His best friend, superchad and quarterback, Dennis is trying to drag him out of his rut, but alas no can do. Doesn't help that the two of them are targeted by a gang of high school bullies and there's a new girl at school who's a real good looking doll, despite being a total nerd. Dennis is even willing to spurn the advances of the lead cheerleader in pursuit of her.

Then Arnie is struck by love at first sight. A red '58 Plymouth Fury that has seen better days. There's a nice little detail when he first sees her: 'Stop,' he says, 'back up. I want to see her again.' He instantly recognises her gender, and immediately purchases her from her archetypal Ominous Hick Old Man owner. Before long he's full of confidence, dating the new girl Leigh and standing up to his parents. The driving force for this change however, his relationship with the mysterious Christine, turns out to be underpinned by dark obsessions and even the supernatural.

Silliness Abounds

LOOK, we get it, we've all been there. Puberty has set in and the last days of a hot summer have not long faded into autumn. The kids-cum-young-adults are embarking on a new year at high school, so when Arnie and Dennis are talking about getting laid at the start of the film it all makes sense. Their classmates, too, makes sense, as the other boys slaver over the girls and the lead cheerleader makes eyes at star quarter back Dennis. It all becomes rather strange, however, when we are introduced to new girl and love interest Leigh being given a tour of the school by presumably a teacher or even a principal? Whomsoever he is, he recommends the school's marching band; 'a good way to meet boys,' he assures her in a very King manner of inappropriateness. Even the creepy old man who sells them the car seems to be in heat: 'She had the smell of a brand new car. That might be just about the finest smell in the world, except maybe for pussy.'

Aggression seems to be going about too. King seems to have a thing for turning schoolyard bullies, who would normally be portrayed as petty cowards deep down, as violent sociopaths. It takes the generic high school drama bully (who looks 10-15 years older than everyone else) barely thirty seconds to go from stealing our main character's to drawing a switchblade on him. When the teacher saves our plucky heroes he proceeds to violently manhandle the bully. Later, when Arnie takes Christine to be stored and fixed up the garage owner is inappropriately overbearing and threatening to a paying customer. It's a silliness that all feels part and parcel of King's writing, and part of the reason that it is more or less impossible to divorce the creator from the creation.

It's All Character Building

WHEN King is really on his game, King's character work can be really good. Certainly, the ground blocks are there - that we see who Arnie is outside of his home life and then have it contextualised by his home life is a nice touch. It strongly evokes, to my mind, Eddie from It. There's not enough joining dots however - when is transformed by power of love into a teddy boy, it more or less happens off-screen. Scenes where he confronts his parents come well after the transformation has happened, and the scene where he becomes romantically involved with Leigh is used a character beat in Dennis's story. We're told over and over about the obsession, but that we don't see it develop slowly robs it from much of its power.

Dennis is framed oddly within the film. At first, he is positioned as a co-star at worst within proceedings. He interacts with more characters and has more solo lead time than the main character. There's a humility and shyness to him that makes him unusually likable for his character archetype. Then the narrative seems to more or less lose track of him for the midpoint of the movie, as all of the high-school drama elements of the script are left by the wayside. Leigh has no real personality beyond the men in her life - early on one character says she seems smart, and in another scene she is in the library reading a book.

Go Grease Frightning!

For a reasonable amount of the movie's run time, the story eschews traditional horror structure. Were it not for the opening sequence, the audience would have to wait more than half of the movie for the first recognisable horror set-piece to come along. Almost of the plot movements follows beats that are straight out of a high school drama playbook, until they aren't.

Much of the lack of traditional horror drive in the story is the lack of obvious threat on any of the main characters. Aside from one moment when the car makes an early attempt at Leigh, there is very little in the way of overt threat - and when the overt threat happens, it is overwhelmingly targeted at the film's more obvious antagonists. This could have been a subtle and ambiguous, but instead leaves the film feeling muddled and unfocussed. It's a half-eaten bildungsroman, a psychological thriller light on the psychological, a horror without much supernatural threat. 

Prowler

On the flipside, the actual handling of the car, the centre piece of the movie, is absolutely nailed. There's an old adage in horror that you shouldn't show the monster; fear's greatest weapon is the imagination. Christine, by nature of the premise, makes that a tall order, so the movie never tries hide her. Instead, it lets her sit there, not moving. The way she is framed in shots gives them impression of a predator, waiting patiently.

In this inaction, the nature of the threat she poses remains obscure, and as such it suddenly becomes the case that we haven't seen the monster yet. Most of the tension film comes from her silent and unmoving presence, the unspoken idea that she is silently affecting the world around her. Unlike the book, the movie never chooses to really explain much about Christine, meaning that even as she pounces she remains unknowable. In many ways, she's underrated as a classic movie villain.

Style is Substance

Long before JJ Abrams was a lens flair in his father's eyes (although technically he was seventeen at the time), John Carpenter's use of lens flairs coupled with his signature music style that defined 80s horror and action helps to lift Christine. For all my writing of how King's hands define the story, Christine is the child of two auteurs, and many of Carpenter's directorial signatures are to be found in Christine. If the substance of the story has King's fingerprints all over it, the filmic choices made are pure Carpenter.

Carpenter is an interesting director because he so clearly embodies (and in many sense, created) most of the cheesiness found in 80s genre movie. Coupled with a premise so ridiculous as an evil car that a young teenager falls (romantically) in love with, this could have been a recipe for disaster. Carpenter, however, has a flair for being on the right side of cheesy. It's enjoyable and even unironically cool, whilst also being ironically enjoyable. Ultimately, it's the visual and audio storytelling that really elevates this movie.

There's a specific sound synth cue that plays whenever Christine is introduced in the screen that positively makes me tingle. If for no other reason, watch it for that. You'll have a fun time.