Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh

Tag: nigel bach

  • ‘Bad Ben – The Way In (2019)’, by Nigel Bach – review

    I don’t know why I am drawn to this bold middle-aged curmudgeon named Tom Riley, who fashions himself to be a self-professed paranormal investigator. While I liked the Mandela Effect one about which I even wrote because of its refreshingly ingenious takes on a genre of horror film, it never occurred to me that I would be contracted with the uncanny charm of this ireful, cloddish Jersey man’s fiasco of battles with a legion of nine demons commandeering in the same beautiful house to no end. That’s the gist of this hilariously polished offbeat film about Tom Riley, the alter ego of director Nigel Bach, and that’s why he returns with his own legion of demons in this ‘Bad Ben – the Way in.’

    In this installment, Riley goes back to the haunted house of which he was a former owner to rid the demons thereof at the request of a new owner before the family moves in. He accepts the offer for none other than an existential need of money, hence the repertoire of his wrestling with the demons begins: the toy girls still wreak havoc of already edgy borderline neurotic Riley with seven other demons, introducing Clown and Voodoo dolls that look irritatingly menacing without diabolic charisma. Well, that’s the point of this new film by Bach, who seems to render the ambiance of irony fused with comedy and tragedy, which is another stance on life itself according to his view of reality. At least, that is what Bach visualizes his way of weltanschauung with go-aheaditiveness and hubris even though the motives are for lucrative rewards. But then who will pillory the man in need when we all need it to get by?

    Mad, bad and bold Riley is here again to do his job, and he does it with his trademark dour humor and grumpy face that render his continuing saga of ghost-busting all the more realistic and business-like, which is all the more refreshing and oddly attractive and highly addictive. If you do not like the person of Riley for his ill-temper at his worst, you can appreciate his resilience, optimism, and courage against the forces of evil at his best. This is Bach’s finest hour.

  • “Bad Ben-The Mandela Effect” by Nigel Bach – review

    Bad.Ben_.4.The_.Mandela.Effect.2018-poster-frontThe smashing success of The Blair witch Project has spawned its eponymous genre of films with its proprietorial low-budget production consisting of indie directors, unknown (or low-profiled) actors/actresses, limited gadgetry, simple scripts, and straightforward plot to evoke an arch of Realism in Reality in touch with the everyday life of the ordinary. In European films, this neo-realism has already been constituted by the works of Lars von Trier in Dancer in the Dark, the Dardenne Brothers in Rosetta, and Vittorio de Sica in The Bicycle Thief. Maybe it’s because the New World is innately rebellious to anything coming from the Old World for the reason that it is simply too sophisticated to appreciate its artistic sensibilities developed through the flight of times. Whatever it might be, now is different. American Cinema Paradiso has never been so teeming with many an ingeniously creative realistic film made by ambitious directors who are not shy to translate their imagoes or imaginative world on screen in a way that makes it look real as impressively illustrated in Nigel Bach’s Bad Ben–The Mandela Effect.

    The genre of the film blurs on the boundary of comedy and horror. In fact, it delivers the sensuous kicks of laughing and shuddering, putting the viewer on the pleasure roller coaster ride. To begin with, the undeniably irascible bold-headed “Tom Riley,” played by Nigel Bach, who also produced and directed the film, with his thick southern New Jersey accent and the accordant “don’t mess-with-me” attitude is a great subject of comical caricature resembling none other than himself. Then there are the possessed satanic dolls that are more irritable than horrible because they get on Riley’s nerves. Even the profane language Riley employs to covey his frustration and to provoke fear in the evil dolls is not offensive but risible. Besides, the setting of the house, which is also the actor’s real house, renders the plot of the film a sense of verisimilitude, an illusion of watching a non-fiction documentary film based on a real event.

    The real gem of this strangely attractive film is how the plot is unfolded with a wicked deception of the eyes and the ears of the audience even without special effects or ingenious editing. How a man like Tom Riley – the porky bald-headed fiftyish curmudgeon- can commend a screen presence would have been a challenge, had it not been for Bach’s natural way of delivering his lines without overtly dramatic emotions  and his elliptical plot of a plausible story of an everyday man experiencing the supernatural in everyday life. In fact, from the moment Riley gets to his new proud and really beautiful house of dream bought at a sheriff’s sale, we take the plot of the film for granted with a foregone conclusion until it gets us to the surprising denouement thereof with the kind of sensation and sensibility that Riley experiences over and over again. In this manner of empathy, we are in Riley’s parallel universe whether we like it or not during the whole film, come what may.

    It is both fun and worthwhile to watch this one-man act without boredom for what is worth. It is a motion tessera elliptically put together by bits of Child’s Play, Paranormal Activity, and Twilight Zone studded with crude American sense of humor and practicality of the storytelling that does not impart preposterously and pompously supernatural ambiance. Other acerbic reviews of the film notwithstanding, this film deserves of applaud for its ingenuity to employ a modern theatrical version of ventriloquism, fusing Riley’s amusingly jagged story telling voice with the director’s own impetuous gushing of the realistically uncanny atmosphere he tries to create without elaborately intricate scripts or other fantastic cinematic bells and whistles.