The Taking of Deborah Logan

As a horror fan, it’s rare to see something truly disturbing. I saw this one at Hastings and have heard no press about it, I love randomly checking out a film that could be shit or could be gold. The Taking of Deborah Logan starts out as a documentary film mixed with surveillance footage with some scary set pieces. The concept is that a med student is doing a project for her film class and chooses to document a week in the life of an Alzheimer’s patient. The daughter has agreed because she and her mother Deborah really need the cash. I guess a college student is capable of paying the big bucks? All jokes aside, it opens interestingly enough with Deborah feeling like a sideshow attraction and has cold feet. She backs out of the documentary because she doesn’t want to be exploited.
Our main girl talks her back into it, and we are brought into the life of an Alzheimer sufferer. Or is it truly Alzheimer’s? They learn that Deborah is into gardening, and that she does crossword puzzles to keep her mind sharp, and she has her moments of forgetfulness. It seems like a warmhearted affair until she starts to act truly bizarre. Not just forgetting things, but going into thousand-yard stare trances at the wall in the middle of the night.
As the film is intercut with surveillance footage, we are given creepy shots of empty hallways. Shot by shot by shot. Then Deborah appears, looking frail and wearing a nightgown that drapes over her bony frame. At one point, she is observed standing in front of the sink at 2:30 AM and suddenly appearing on the countertop with her head under the stove cover. There is no time lapse. At this point they hear her moaning and growling, facing a wall. When she turns around, her throat spills open with hot fresh blood spilling down the front of her gown.
At this point she is taken to the hospital. The daughter learns that the Alzheimer’s is in a rapidly advancing stage, but they had originally anticipated at least five more years of normalcy. They treat her wounds and send her back home. This is where that whole “Is it Alzheimer’s?” thing comes into play. She’s back at home and the crew hears a commotion upstairs. The daughter goes to check on Deborah. The cameraman waits. He is filming the kitchen, and sees Deborah passing by the door. She is staring at an open window at 3 in the morning now and mumbling. She grabs a hammer and begins to nail the window shut. It’s common behavior for her, according to the daughter. At another point, Deborah rushes to the garden and frantically digs until her fingers turn bloody and raw. As her hands are washed by the leader of the film project, Deborah just blankly looks at her, murmuring in an ancient tongue. The camera guys soon find that she is speaking in an actual language and they translate it.
A side story mentions that the town had a serial killer who brought 4 girls to a cabin and had something to do with earthworms or something. The movie slightly falls apart here. In one scene, Deborah is found collapsed with a trail of black vomit and earthworms that she threw up.
One night the crew is woken by Deborah’s neighbor blasting out their windows and headlights with a shotgun. He blasts and blasts. Through the project, he’s been trying to talk the daughter out of letting the film crew there. He’s drunk and angry. The crew is shaken, and the next morning our titular heroine is back in the hospital, where things get weird. Deb might be possessed by the serial killer from many years hence.
It’s a movie that feeds on some dark, primal fears. Things that all of us worry about. Healthcare for elderly relatives, the mind slowly rotting away until even the woman who conceived you sees you as a strange imposter. The acting is actually really terrific, but that’s just my opinion. I may have a blind spot or something. But it’s a notch above typical horror acting. In the hospital, where she is now admitted for the rest of the movie, she is seen on their surveillance cameras wandering the hallways with a little girl from the cancer ward. She takes her to the hospital’s morgue and then the full-on terror is cranked to 11. Deb begins shrieking and unhinges her jaw, and begins to devour the little girls head. After she is shot by her daughter, she flips out and takes out two cops. She’s a feral monster at this point. She escapes to the woods, and they gather the snakes that flock to her into a burlap sack and set them ablaze. This ends the curse… well, kind of. In the epilogue, the young girl has recovered and Deb is ruled not mentally competent to stand trial. In a news report, they interview the little girl. Her cancer is now in remission. In one look, it’s implied that the serial killer’s spirit may now be in her.
This is a movie that may elicit chuckles if watched with friends. However, I recommend watching it alone or with your bae late at night with all the lights out. For a movie that is a relative of the much-hated Found Footage genre, this one really only loses its footing slightly in the last 10 minutes.