Review of Christine (1983) by Dillinger P — 28 Oct 2015

If most people are touting you as the master of terror, taking on a Stephen King novel is one tick box you really want to be checking off your to do list. Although not the only, but probably the most notorious horror writer, cinema has treated King's work well throughout time, although King himself hates Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining, but what does he know? So it really comes as no surprise then that John Carpenter would tackle his material at some point and although the final product is far from perfect, it has an abundance of character and unease to steer home a watchable and enjoyable film.

Arnie isnt a popular boy at school, he lacks confidence, he is a bully victim and his only best friend is a highly successful football player, Dennis. After a rough patch, he decides to treat himself and buys an old beaten up car that no one can really understand his reasoning behind.

After working wonders on the renovation and pulling some strings, Arnie has soon transformed into a completely different person, with some suspicious allegations arising about his new found love, Christine the red car.

The story is wildly preposterous and its a good thing that Carpenter and co realize this before tackling it head on, Christine has a wonderful sense of black comedy about it, littered with tongue and cheek dialogue, that at first can seem slightly over the top.

Although the script is far from perfect it has an enormous amount of charm and tries its best to deviate from normal teen stereotyping the best it can. The cool kid is best friends with the kid everyone hates, the school bully is a knife wielding maniac and the love interest is an intelligent girl, rather than some fake barbie doll who screams the entire way through the movie, its not wildly original but it deviates enough to feel overly familiar and watching Arnie's transformation throughout the run time is brilliant fun and actually gets psychotic the further down the rabbit hole he goes.

Keith Gordon really is the star of the show here and luckily Carpenter realizes this early on and allows him to flourish, building a brilliant character arc and undergoing a monumental transformation during the films 1 hour and 45 run time.

However Carpenters movie would crumble if Christine was any less than perfect, in a story about a possessed car, you really need to inject as much character as possible into a motorized object and the work he does here is truly breathtaking.

Christine feels like a person, albeit a very shy person, Carpenter blurs the lines constantly between who is the driving force behind her rampage, but his wonderful moments with the car behaving on its own are superb.

Christine loves to blare 50's rock and roll music to suit her situation, giving the film a huge percentage of its gut wrenching laughs, her ability as well to be utterly terrifying is also to be applauded.

Carpenter treats her like another actor in his piece and luckily he spends enough time and energy on her to make her truly stand out, one scene in particular with her engulfed in flames while chasing a character down the road in cinematic bliss.

And Christine is a good looking film, the effects work is all top not, everything is done in camera, Carpenter pulls out all his usual tricks, use of lighting, sound, jump scares, he really is the master of suspense and here you will find yourself constantly suckered into the story and feeling uneasy, which yet again is no easy task, given the stories subject matter.

Christine is far from perfect however, some characters are hugely underused, Harry Dean Stanton for example is kind of wasted as a police detective, who just shows up in a handful of scenes, Dennis misses the entire 2nd act of the film and Buddy, the school bully, misses just about the entire film.

The film jettisons through a huge period of time in minutes and it becomes noticeable how absent some of the plot points feel. Arnie's transformation is acted well but I feel we could have seen more from his family, more from the police detective, more from him being bullied, in making the choice to steam roll ahead, Carpenter touches on just another horror movie over substance slightly, which is a shame cause there are themes here that would be a nice addition, had they been fleshed out.

The main issue of course is how completely preposterous the movies story really is, if you are capable of suspending disbelief then Christine is most likely going to grip you from start to finish, however people who prefer their entertainment more grounded in serious realism, will no doubt have huge difficulty enjoying this imaginative outing.

It's by no means perfect, however with so much character and charisma, Christine is a hugely entertaining watch.