In the Dark Reviews

Switching things up, we're taking a week to cater to readers who spend more time streaming media than screening films in the theaters, especially because it allows me to squeeze in a couple of Halloween-themed reviews.

'Agatha All Along'

The latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been airing new episodes on Disney+ every Wednesday since Sept. 18, and it's scheduled to wrap up its run Oct. 30.

As a lifelong Marvel Comics fan, if you'd told me years ago that a nine-episode TV mini-series would be devoted to centuries-old witch Agatha Harkness, I would have laughed in your face.

Even in the comics, Agatha is an obscure supporting character, most frequently seen training the Scarlet Witch and babysitting for the Fantastic Four, but in "Agatha All Along," she's the star.

This puts a lot of pressure on the talented Kathryn Hahn, especially when she's riding herd over a headstrong ensemble cast that includes Aubrey Plaza, Debra Jo Rupp and Patti LuPone, playing comics characters as esoteric as Jennifer Kale, Lilia Calderu and Alice "Wu" Gulliver, whom even well-read fans might need to look up in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe.

And yet, even as this series parodies niche storytelling genres ranging from rich housewife reality shows to 1980s teen slasher flicks, it remains a relatively simple Dungeons & Dragons quest narrative, with fewer than half a dozen witches traveling the pocket dimension of

"The Witches' Road" to regain their lost powers, with the predatory "Salem's Seven" hot on their trail.

As in the comics, Agatha's Chaotic Neutral alignment makes her an unreliable narrator at best, so her fellow witches are wary of her, especially given what she did to her last coven.

The emerging mystery of the episodes that have aired so far is the identity of Joe Locke's as-yet-unnamed "teen" sidekick, who appears to be connected to one of the MCU's most powerful magic-users, no doubt heralding that character's inevitable return to the forefront.

On one level, "Agatha All Along" is an exercise in advancing the ongoing meta-narrative of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole, servicing the franchise's IP by reminding us that certain characters whom we haven't seen onscreen for a while still exist.

At the same time, it's treating us to inventive tangents of storytelling that not even the current comics could likely get away with publishing, showcasing a clutch of actresses who have long since earned more attention than they've received until recently, and I have no idea where their characters will wind up.

'Late Night With the Devil'

I'd hoped to catch this film in theaters in March, but after having rented it on Amazon Prime Video this past weekend, I can't imagine watching it anywhere but my smaller screens at home.

The premise of "Late Night with the Devil" is that it's compiling the found footage from the lost Halloween episode of a fictional late-night talk show, but its pseudo-documentary framing yields an unexpectedly insightful analysis of the societal turmoil that made the 1970s so rich for horror.

David Dastmalchian, a compelling character actor who's gained visibility on the periphery of several superhero and sci-fi franchises, brings a pitch-perfect layering of authenticity and artificiality to his role as Jack Delroy, host of the Johnny Carson-esque "Night Owls" talk show.

With "sweeps week" threatening to make or break Delroy's career, his 1977 Halloween episode boasts not only stand-ins for debunked psychic Uri Geller and magician-turned-skeptic James Randi, but also a parapsychologist author with a case straight out of 1973's "The Exorcist."

Anyone who's familiar with the classic horror media that are being referenced here is unlikely to be surprised by this film's outcome, since it also borrows liberally from 1968's "Rosemary's Baby," and relies on familiarity with Anton LaVey's real-life Church of Satan, but what impressed me was how well-executed it all was, with a haunting verisimilitude for the zeitgeist of the era.

The "behind the scenes" black-and-white clips that fill in for the show's commercial breaks are the least credible parts of this exercise, since the gory special effects of its final act are hokey by design, keeping with this film's aesthetic as a 1970s horror piece, but in spite of its implausible paranormal phenomena, it feels real for television, if that makes any sense.

I must admit to mixed emotions about the hallucinatory conclusion, but the sense of dread that its scattershot collection of scenes evokes ultimately makes it worthwhile.

Author Bio

Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
[email protected]