Finally, 30 Days of Plight has come back to the United States for 2014's Mercy. I feel like at this point in my life I should know that when I see either A) a star-studded cast, or B) "based on a work by Stephen King," then great fuckery is afoot. Also, why is Mark Duplass seemingly cast as a creep and/or jerk so much? Is it typecasting for how he is in real life? I want to think Mark Duplass is a cool guy in real life. #Iwanttobelieve
Mercy is based off the Stephen King short story "Gramma" which I have never read. Although, it's now added to my list of things that I say I kind of want to read but probably never will if I'm being honest with myself. This movie starts out pretty strong with a man walking into a room with an axe, spinning it around in his hand, and promptly splitting his own skull with it, all in front of his wife. This movie could have ended here and I would sing it's accolades from the highest of mountain tops. Too bad there was still another hour and 17 minutes to go.
Our main character is George (Chandler Riggs of The Walking Dead fame and "hey Carl" memes). His grandmother has a seizure and is put in a home. Then, a year later, she has a stroke and George and his brother and mother return to fake West Virginia to take care of their ailing family member. We meet George's creepy asshole uncle (Mark Duplass) and this married friend of George's mom that both George and his brother state they have no problem if this dude (Dylan McDermott) and their mom banged. I feel like Dylan McDermott hasn't changed his look since the first season of American Horror Story and everyone is afraid to tell him to with each passing film. To pull this back to the film, the long and short of it is that the in her youth the grandmother found this made-up witchcraft item known as a "weeping book" where if you cry on the pages while thinking of your wish it will make the ink appear. She made some agreement with a demon named Hastur and had triplets. The beginning scene with the axe was her and her husband. Now Hastur has come to apparently try to use her body to possess George. I'm kind of confused on the whole Hastur thing here, especially since I know that name from the Cthulhu mythos, and when they show him he looks nothing like the rad drawing of him they showed earlier. He looks more like a dark variant of Moss-Man from the He-Man toys. George defeats Hatsur by being brave and crying on the book while stating that he loved his grandma. For real, the big "saves the day" thing is that weak.
Mercy was very good visually and talent wise, but I feel that the storytelling of it could have been done much better. What it lacked in substance it tried to make up for with suspense-by-omission. In this case it came off as poor writing, at least to me. I can't really damn this film just because I didn't really like it all that much, but technically I can as this is a horror film review blog... so, suck it, Mercy!
I give Mercy 1 Dylan McDermott ass shot out of 5:
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