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Wednesday, October 12, 2016

31 Days of Halloween 2016 - Day 12




The Pyx
1973
Harvey Hart

In Montreal, a man witnesses a woman fall to her death. That woman is Elizabeth Lucy (Karen Black), a heroin addicted prostitute. Detective Pierre Paquette (Christopher Plummer) is assigned to the case. As he uncovers a strange plot around her death, the suspects begin dying before they can reveal much of anything. We follow Elizabeth’s past and see how she came to be entangled in an occult conspiracy. Past and present converge, as the police slowly uncover the dark forces behind the murders.

The Pyx is a grim, serious film. It opens with the death of Elizabeth and tells its story by jumping back to the time leading up to her death whle inter-cutting with the present as Pierre tries to discover what happened. The end result is that we are watching a woman’s downward spiral towards her inevitable demise. It’s heavy stuff, punctuated by a choral soundtrack, and the grey weather of Montreal. The story is a very slow burn with the supernatural elements never coming to the forefront until near the end. When it does come, it drips with reserved yet eerie menace. Despite the potentially confusing time jumps in the story, the actual plot is simple enough to keep things coherent. The film does move a little too slowly, and I think twenty minutes could probably have been trimmed from the finished product without harming anything. If you can handle some low key doom, The Pyx is a minor treat in the Satanic horror sub-genre.

Today's Really Quite Tasty Sugar Rush:
Pyx Styx

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