Pure

 


Name: Pure

Directed By: Hannah Macpherson

Subgenre: Thriller

Series: Spooktober 2020 entry #19; review #81; Blumhouse's Into the Dark entry #4

Review: Pure follows yet another main dame as she is voluntold by her father to attend the annual Christian Purity Camp. She and the other girls do what every girl does when forced to attend hyper-evangelical camps: making contact with an otherworldly entity. From there, things take a turn for the spoopy. Pure is cut from the same cloth as The Other Lamb but, where that film employs subtle, artistic nuance, Pure knocks you over the head with its Patriarchy Bonking Cudgel™. That said, while the writing is blunt, the characters all feel unique...even if obnoxious at first glance. On the surface, the horror is mostly jump scares and bad CGI smiles, but the deeper horror is the systematic, faith-based gaslighting that takes place at the camp. The film is a 3 out of 5 (in my opinion, per usual), but I'm giving it a bit extra for writing a well-balanced Christian character in a film about weaponized fundamentalist sexism.

Addendum: guess who accidentally watched a 4th "episode" of Blumhouse's Into the Dark series on Hulu without knowing it? For those following along at home wondering how this could happen, let me give you all a peak behind the hastily-erected curtains: as you may know, this blog was spawned following the start of my Spookertober series of reviews in which I watched a new (to me) horror movie every day of October. I wanted to keep things fairly accessible so my friends and family reading along might go check them out afterwards--you know, give us something new to talk about (and I still enjoy it, so leave me a comment below!). That ended up giving way into a bit of an unspoken rivalry between the streaming platforms, specifically Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Shudder, with a few wildcards thrown in to even out the numbers; given that, I wanted to prioritize platform exclusives as well to see what, if anything, each platform brought to the world of horror. So, focusing on new Hulu exclusives...well, I guess I can't be all that surprised that I ended up unintentionally watching a bunch of Blumhouse films given they were exclusively released on this particular platform. Either way, so far the series has been pretty well received--well, at least by this smooth-brained reviewer. And if you're as smooth-brained as I am (welcome, friend!) and couldn't figure out what holiday Pure was riffing on, it's Daughter's Day, which I guess is a thing. Hooray, daughters! Maybe don't send them to purity camps, though. I mean, unless you want them dabbling in a bit of witchcraft--which, hey, no judgments here!




Overall Score: 3.5 out of 5 Chads behaving badly (ie, independently). Did Pure scare you? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

IMDB: Here

How to Watch: Pure is available on these platforms.


Official Trailer



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