Every week, Shelf Life sees Tom White select and talk about a movie that lives on his DVD shelf, one he thinks we should all see.
Mixing genres isn't always an easy thing. Mixing a heavy supernatural element into the lot more grounded world of the police procedural should be nigh on impossible, but this is something 1998's Fallen does with ease. Telling a tale where body swapping demons rub shoulders with serial killers and dogged detectives, Fallen is a solid, wonderfully demented thriller.
Starting with the obiligtory 90's scene of the end of the movie being used as a framing device, the movie properly kicks off with Denzel Washington's John Hobbes attending the execution of serial killer Edgar Reese, a wonderfully evil mad man portrayed by Elias Koteas (a character actor we'll all know as Casey Jones from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie). Through the eerie use of The Rolling Stones' 'Time is on my Side' (repeated to great, creepy effect throughout the movie), and Reese's own crazy, oddly buoyant mood, we twig straight away all is not what it seems. Because it isn't, and Reese is actually possessed by the demon Azazel, who can leap from host to host by a mere touch. What is so great about Fallen is how small it's stakes are in relation to it's concept. Sure, Azazel's end game is to bring about the Apocalypse, but for the duration of the movie, he is content with making Hobbes suffer, because he's the one person the demon can't possess. Azazel's torment of Hobbes (who, with his usual hard edged reserve, Washington plays perfectly) escalates from merely toying with him, to attacking his family and friends (including an always fantastic John Goodman), to finally going after the detective when he's at his lowest. Even though Koteas is onscreen for a short amount of time, his portrayal of Azazel is so memorable it goes onto inform the performances of everybody possessed throughout the movie, his evil smirk being replicated perfectly by a succession of actors. Some of the most memorable scenes in the movie are where Azazel's flexes his powers, jumping from host to host in the blink of an eye, adding up to some truly unnerving scenes, especially a really unique chase scene where he pursues his prey through a crowded street.
With the fantastic opening scene out the way, the story moves forward at a great pace, ratcheting up the tension with each scene, and peppering proceedings with some genuinely powerful scenes.. It all leads to a wonderful showdown between Hobbes and Azazel, where the movie lays all its a cards on the table with a fantastically realised twist. It's a twist that's present for more than just being a twist. It presents a piece of information that was always there, we just not told it was there. Like all good twists, it completely opens up the movie, and, armed with this information, you are rewarded with a completely new movie when you re-watch it.
Fallen has seemingly been lost in Denzel Washington's filmography, but it's a movie that truly is an undiscovered gem, a superbly crafted thriller that definitely deserves to be in your collection.
