Canadian screenwriter and director Sandor Stern, his most recognizable work to date being the script upon which Stuart Rosenberg’s The Amityville Horror was made, presents Pin. . . . , a feature which irrefutably usurps the notorious haunted house tale for it unsettles its viewer in both its unabashed honesty as well as its eerie plausibility as Stern plunges his audience headfirst into the world of the instable mind and, at that, twice over.
When the Lindens (Terry O’Quinn and Bronwen Mantel) die in a car crash, their two children, Leon and Ursula (David Hewlett and Cynthia Preston respectively), remain in their stead. Leon assumes control of the Linden estate as the psychological imprinting conducted on behalf of his father by way of an anatomically correct dummy called Pin manifests itself in the form of new patriarch’s tyrannically overprotective and jealous alter ego.
Many critics compliment Stern’s work for its brutally thorough examination and honest assessment of the disturbed mind as cast through the lens of the character of Leon. However, though fleeting given that the character meets his end midway through the film, Pin. . . . should be equally applauded for its earnest presentation of a troubled paterfamilias in the figure of Leon’s father. The latter character’s influence is arguably the film’s central character for its reverberations are felt until the production’s very succinct, patient, and clever finale.
We watch as Stern begins what will become an exposé and exploration upon Erikson’s hypothesis of Nature verses Nurture when Leon’s mother slaps him and, later, the boy enacts the same violence upon his sister. However, and more important to the film’s premise, learned traits are exhibited in what becomes the film’s most disconcerting facet: the mental instability of Leon’s father, Frank. O’Quinn’s character, a doctor by trade, defers responsibility by teaching and reprimanding his children through Pin (a phonetic abridgement of “Pinocchio”), an office model for patients, by which he implements ventriloquism in order to vocalize the doll’s thoughts and opinions. Very subtly, the audience is left to conjecture upon why the doctor elects to raise his children in such a manner. However, the shrewd viewer will note that the Frank’s phobia of dirt, unsanitary conditions, and disorder in any form (the plastic is kept on all the furniture in lieu of the family’s white collar income) may well be the genesis for his strange parental practices for it is not outside of reason to cite the possibility that the fear of failure, metamorphosed via intolerance for such, is the basis for the doctor’s psychosis (which Leon will later exhibit but, inconclusively, due primarily to genetic inheritance or acquired patterns of action). For example, Leon is shunned for incorrectly counting back by seven from 100 early in the film. However, the trump card in the scenario appears when Frank’s authoritarian influence via Pin is seen in a nurse who is sexually attracted to the doll. Obviously, we can assume that the doctor’s methods extend well beyond the realm of his children.
Stern undoubtedly sneers at both his audience’s apprehension and the doctor’s forthcoming infuriation as we watch Ursula contemplate what sex will be like while still in grade school. However, the filmmaker supercedes the anxiety we feel when Frank forces Leon to observe him conducting a gynecological exam and then abortion upon the boy’s teenage sibling.
As a consequence of such unfathomable rearing (its impact most strongly felt when Leon opts to open a present from Pin before those from his parents), upon Frank’s demise, Leon mimics his father’s dictatorial attitudes, all to his sister’s chagrin. Departed in body, the doctor’s spirit is nonetheless alive and well as Leon dresses his childhood plastic companion in none other than his father’s clothes. Some might at first complain that the young man’s transition from introversion to extroversion is too abrupt yet, given that the iron-clad grip under which the character was raised has been instantaneously released, the knee-jerk reaction and instantaneous transformation becomes readily plausible. Immediately after the funeral, Leon’s severe and absolute outlook creates stunningly similar problems as before, not only for his sister, but her suitors and friends as well. Stern leaves it to his audience to ponder why Leon isn’t more empathetic to his sister after having experienced the same oppression throughout their youth but, alas, such leads both the viewer and Ursula to the same conclusion: Leon is irreplaceably mentally damaged.
Masterfully, though a murderer, Leon is cast in such a sympathetic light in that, as Aristotelian ethics decree, the character cannot be held responsible for something which he is forced to do (his mental instability being a consequence of his father’s slanted instruction). Nonetheless, the situations found within are nevertheless gruesome in that they are, not only all-too-feasible, but the manner in which Stern presents them reminds us that such are eerily plausible. Moreover, in a moment wherein we can all but hear the director yelling touché after a sequence in which Leon and Ursula assume positions at a picnic table that we had previously seen verbatim with their parents, Stern pauses before closing to insinuate that Leon’s sister might well have also suffered similar mental injuries and that they are only now beginning to manifest themselves.
The construction and execution of Pin. . . ., though the events contained within are indeed horrific, are presented in a manner more akin to a thriller than a horror film. Unlike many genre pictures which house a doll as a potential culprit of malicious deeds, Stern never allows there to exist any ambiguity in regards as to whom the responsible party might be. In so doing, the director defers the inherent distraction of the otherwise unnecessary cat-and-mouse game of whether the human lead is the killer or if supernatural forces are at work. Stern does so in order for his audience to more readily focus upon the psychology of what lies in front of them. The only instance in which the slightest degree of uncertainty occurs is during the film’s virtuoso finale in which we pause, at first unsure of what has occurred, only to realize that the most dreadful, as well as most heart wrenching, events have inevitably unfolded.
Sandor Stern’s gem of a film, Pin. . . . , is one of the most criminally overlooked films, not only within the genre, but the whole of film. Few directors are willing to unrepentantly stare into the eyes of the disturbed mind, no less have the courage to chart its progression through two generations. Dauntingly, Stern’s adaptation of Andrew Neiderman’s admittedly Psycho-esque novel is masterfully sparse as every scene and sequence dominatingly lends to the whole, leaving the audience little reprieve from a world which chillingly reflects our own on both microcosmic, macrocosmic, literal, and metaphorical levels.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
