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[Butcher Block] Hell Gets Perverse and Personal in ‘Baskin’

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Baskin

Butcher Block is a weekly series celebrating horror’s most extreme films and the minds behind them. Dedicated to graphic gore and splatter, each week will explore the dark, the disturbed, and the depraved in horror, and the blood and guts involved. For the films that use special effects of gore as an art form, and the fans that revel in the carnage, this series is for you.

Hailing from Turkey, a country that doesn’t dabble in genre cinema too often, Baskin made an international tidal wave in 2016 with its arthouse meets Lucio Fulci and Hellraiser inspired descent into Hell. Based on Can Evrenol’s 2013 short film of the same name, Baskin follows a police squad contending with a night of pain, suffering, and the perverse horror of a depraved Black Mass from Hell when they enter an abandoned building. Turkish superstition, extreme imagery, and a deliberately paced journey for the unsuspecting antiheroes makes Baskin a unique entry in extreme horror.

At first glance the premise seems fairly basic; this is more of a sensory experience than narrative after all. But Evrenol layers in so much mythology, superstition, and meaning to parse out, if you can stomach multiple rewatches that is. After a nightmarish opening sequence set around a little boy and a nightmare come to life, Baskin introduces us to the five police officers oblivious to the hellscape they’ll enter later. It sets up their personalities, and how very flawed each of them are as they tell each other crass stories or pick fights with the workers from the restaurant in which they’re dining.

Of them all, Arda seems the most innocent as the newcomer, while the rest display varying degrees of cynicism and corruption.  But this key scene serves as more than just an introduction to the characters- it reveals a key sin that they’ll atone for later on. Officer Yavuz proudly boasts of a sexual encounter with a prostitute, amusing the others with great detail. His sin, obviously, is lust. Once the officers find themselves deeply entrenched in the gruesome Black Mass, Yavuz’ lust is thrown back at him as he’s tortured, has his eye is gouged out, and forced to have sex with a chained woman sporting a goat skull mask. The rest suffer fates befitting of the sins they represent; rage, gluttony, and so on.

The presiding Father over the Black Mass, Baba (played memorably by Mehmet Cerrahoglu), oversees and leads the way in torture and mayhem. Intestines are pulled out of bellies, throats are slashed, eye trauma, writhing bodies eat gross things that don’t remotely look edible, and pain and suffering run rampant. The blood flows freely. That the Father is named Baba seems fitting, considering Taram Baba is a boogeyman figure in Turkish folklore. Arda proves to be the counterbalance to Baba’s darkness, the one destined to destroy Baba and free his fellow officers from their looping Hells. The underwater scenes representative of Arda’s cleansing journey. There’s a lot of minutiae Evrenol embeds in his surrealistic nightmare, saturated in a sort of Fulci inspired dream logic. It’s just wrapped up in one gnarly package of perversion and gore.

Between Derya Ergün’s makeup design, Alp Korfali’s cinematography, and of course Evrenol’s direction, Baskin is both stunning and repulsive- it’s arthouse infused with gore and grime. It’s brutal, but it’s a brutality that Evrenol eases into, not the rapid-fire onslaught of gory imagery the early trailers indicated. This means that the pacing might be off-putting for some. But for others, it’s a vicious descent into Hell that would make Clive Barker proud, and has a lot going on under the surface, too.

Horror journalist, RT Top Critic, and Critics Choice Association member. Co-Host of the Bloody Disgusting Podcast. Has appeared on PBS series' Monstrum, served on the SXSW Midnighter shorts jury, and moderated horror panels for WonderCon and SeriesFest.

Editorials

‘Leprechaun Returns’ – The Charm of the Franchise’s Legacy Sequel

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leprechaun returns

The erratic Leprechaun franchise is not known for sticking with a single concept for too long. The namesake (originally played by Warwick Davis) has gone to L.A., Las Vegas, space, and the ‘hood (not once but twice). And after an eleven-year holiday since the Davis era ended, the character received a drastic makeover in a now-unmentionable reboot. The critical failure of said film would have implied it was time to pack away the green top hat and shillelagh, and say goodbye to the nefarious imp. Instead, the Leprechaun series tried its luck again.

The general consensus for the Leprechaun films was never positive, and the darker yet blander Leprechaun: Origins certainly did not sway opinions. Just because the 2014 installment took itself seriously did not mean viewers would. After all, creator Mark Jones conceived a gruesome horror-comedy back in the early nineties, and that format is what was expected of any future ventures. So as horror legacy sequels (“legacyquels”) became more common in the 2010s, Leprechaun Returns followed suit while also going back to what made the ‘93 film work. This eighth entry echoed Halloween (2018) by ignoring all the previous sequels as well as being a direct continuation of the original. Even ardent fans can surely understand the decision to wipe the slate clean, so to speak.

Leprechaun Returns “continued the [franchise’s] trend of not being consistent by deciding to be consistent.” The retconning of Steven Kostanski and Suzanne Keilly’s film was met with little to no pushback from the fandom, who had already become accustomed to seeing something new and different with every chapter. Only now the “new and different” was familiar. With the severe route of Origins a mere speck in the rearview mirror, director Kotanski implemented a “back to basics” approach that garnered better reception than Zach Lipovsky’s own undertaking. The one-two punch of preposterous humor and grisly horror was in full force again.

LEPRECHAUN

Pictured: Linden Porco as The Leprechaun in Leprechaun Returns.

With Warwick Davis sitting this film out — his own choice — there was the foremost challenge of finding his replacement. Returns found Davis’ successor in Linden Porco, who admirably filled those blood-stained, buckled shoes. And what would a legacy sequel be without a returning character? Jennifer Aniston obviously did not reprise her final girl role of Tory Redding. So, the film did the next best thing and fetched another of Lubdan’s past victims: Ozzie, the likable oaf played by Mark Holton. Returns also created an extension of Tory’s character by giving her a teenage daughter, Lila (Taylor Spreitler).

It has been twenty-five years since the events of the ‘93 film. The incident is unknown to all but its survivors. Interested in her late mother’s history there in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, Lila transferred to the local university and pledged a sorority — really the only one on campus — whose few members now reside in Tory Redding’s old home. The farmhouse-turned-sorority-house is still a work in progress; Lila’s fellow Alpha Epsilon sisters were in the midst of renovating the place when a ghost of the past found its way into the present.

The Psycho Goreman and The Void director’s penchant for visceral special effects is noted early on as the Leprechaun tears not only into the modern age, but also through poor Ozzie’s abdomen. The portal from 1993 to 2018 is soaked with blood and guts as the Leprechaun forces his way into the story. Davis’ iconic depiction of the wee antagonist is missed, however, Linden Porco is not simply keeping the seat warm in case his predecessor ever resumes the part. His enthusiastic performance is accentuated by a rotten-looking mug that adds to his innate menace.

LEPRECHAUN RETURNS sequel

Pictured: Taylor Spreitler, Pepi Sonuga, and Sai Bennett as Lila, Katie and Rose in Leprechaun Returns.

The obligatory fodder is mostly young this time around. Apart from one luckless postman and Ozzie — the premature passing of the latter character removed the chance of caring about anyone in the film — the Leprechaun’s potential prey are all college aged. Lila is this story’s token trauma kid with caregiver baggage; her mother thought “monsters were always trying to get her.” Lila’s habit of mentioning Tory’s mental health problem does not make a good first impression with the resident mean girl and apparent alcoholic of the sorority, Meredith (Emily Reid). Then there are the nicer but no less cursorily written of the Alpha Epsilon gals: eco-conscious and ex-obsessive Katie (Pepi Sonuga), and uptight overachiever Rose (Sai Bennett). Rounding out the main cast are a pair of destined-to-die bros (Oliver Llewellyn Jenkins, Ben McGregor). Lila and her peers range from disposable to plain irritating, so rooting for any one of them is next to impossible. Even so, their overstated personalities make their inevitable fates more satisfying.

Where Returns excels is its death sequences. Unlike Jones’ film, this one is not afraid of killing off members of the main cast. Lila, admittedly, wears too much plot armor, yet with her mother’s spirit looming over her and the whole story — comedian Heather McDonald put her bang-on Aniston impersonation to good use as well as provided a surprisingly emotional moment in the film — her immunity can be overlooked. Still, the other characters’ brutal demises make up for Lila’s imperviousness. The Leprechaun’s killer set-pieces also happen to demonstrate the time period, seeing as he uses solar panels and a drone in several supporting characters’ executions. A premortem selfie and the antagonist’s snarky mention of global warming additionally add to this film’s particular timestamp.

Critics were quick to say Leprechaun Returns did not break new ground. Sure, there is no one jetting off to space, or the wacky notion of Lubdan becoming a record producer. This reset, however, is still quite charming and entertaining despite its lack of risk-taking. And with yet another reboot in the works, who knows where the most wicked Leprechaun ever to exist will end up next.


Horror contemplates in great detail how young people handle inordinate situations and all of life’s unexpected challenges. While the genre forces characters of every age to face their fears, it is especially interested in how youths might fare in life-or-death scenarios.

The column Young Blood is dedicated to horror stories for and about teenagers, as well as other young folks on the brink of terror.

Leprechaun Returns movie

Pictured: Linden Porco as The Leprechaun in Leprechaun Returns.

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