If you are a Jon Ronson fan, are obsessed with sketchy covert government activities, H.P. Lovecraft, Hunter S. Thompson and/or plausible supernatural horror, then you must see Banshee Chapter, but you must give it your undivided attention (no multitasking or cell phone use) and prepare to watch it a couple of times to completely understand what happened. The first time that I watched Banshee Chapter, I knew that it was good and was freaked out, but said to myself, “What just happened?” It used to be available instantly on Netflix, but now it is only available on DVD or you can stream it for $2.99 ($3.99 for HD) on Amazon Video! The second time, I rewound and actually took notes to understand what was going on. I still have many questions! I watched it a third time just to make sure that I got it.
Banshee Chapter uses a real life government experiment, Project MKUltra, as the foundation for a reporter uncovering the mystery of what happened to a college (more than just) friend who was writing about the government experiment in Nevada. Normally when I say that a movie has strong atmosphere, the film has little else to recommend it, but the pairing of the strong terrifying atmosphere and complex, textured story make for a haunting ride that will stay with you long after Banshee Chapter ends. I would even suggest that you watch the movie until the credits are finished rolling. Banshee Chapter takes some classic scary moments and reinvigorates them with fresh terror.
Banshee Chapter has a terrific cast. Katia Winter, who appeared in the first two seasons of Sleepy Hollow as the lamest witch ever, works as a protagonist that is just smart enough to root for her, but stupid enough to keep the plot going. Ted Levine, whom I enjoyed when I watched the first season of the US’ FX series The Bridge, has a great voice and presence for his surprise character. I will take Levine’s depiction over Johnny Depp’s any day. Michael McMillan, who is best known for his role as Rev Steve Newlin in True Blood, does a great job at getting the ball rolling.
My only criticism of Banshee Chapter is that it does not know how to frame the narrative. Initially Banshee Chapter starts like a documentary edited by the protagonist. Then it uses elements of the found footage genre by using excerpts from the video recorded by the reporter, the missing writing and the government. Then it feels like an ordinary movie except the footage is shot using a handheld camera. Because the protagonist and Levine’s character never acknowledge a camera man, and the camera man never reacts to the extreme events, we are not watching a documentary nor is it found footage, but an ordinary film though it is not shot like one.
If you watched Banshee Chapter and would like to know what I thought happened, keep reading my take on what happens in chronological order.
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
Banshee Chapter starts with a title card which references the MK Ultra experiment starting in 1963 and stock footage of Congressional hearings, interviews and news footage. Towards the end, this real footage is interspersed with fictional footage.
Banshee Chapter truly starts in 1973, specifically May, when at least fourteen patients are injected with DMT-19, which is a drug that uses fluid from a dead patient’s pineal gland. The film only shows what happens to three of those patients: Patient 5, Patient 11 and Patient 14. The government scientists strap the subjects to a chair in the dark then inject the patient with the drug. Afterwards the patients, some volunteer grad students, notice beings approaching, the camera footage becomes staticky, and electricity goes out in the room or the entire facility. Patient 11 recites strange things such as “n1, n2, h2, o7, c11.” Patient 14 disappears from the room and reappears elsewhere completely mad. Some patients die; thus the deceased subjects’ brains provide more chemicals for the scientists. Patient 14, who was injected multiple times, dies, but is still moving and screaming long after an autopsy. Patient 14 grabs the doctor sawing her skull open. Even though the scientists have touched her, they never exhibit similar symptoms. Someone places and leaves her in a tank in Chamber 5, the secret government facility in the desert where the experiments took place.
For some reason, when the government facility is abandoned, Patient 14 is left in the tank. Her presence in the tank transmits numbers and the sound of a music box. A nearby short wave radio can pick up the broadcast, but most people have no idea the broadcast’s origins. The region is nicknamed The Lonely Traveler’s Station. “Numbers stations are shortwave radio stations of unidentified origin. They generally broadcast artificially generated voices reading streams of numbers, words, letters, backwards music or cryptic electronic code. They’re in a wide variety, and the voices are usually female for some reason. Sometimes it sounds like a child.” To reliably pick up the transmission, one would have to drive into the Black Rock Desert between 3 am and 5 am. The NSA seems to know about it along with other short wave enthusiasts. This phenomenon also seems to occur in other places around the world. Is the experiment continuing or did the scientists just freak out and leave? I have no idea, but both ideas are plausible. Was NSA a part of the experiment or independently investigating the phenomenon? Clueless.
When the experiment ended, Patient 11 survived, but the scientists administer electroshock therapy to produce memory loss so he could not reveal what the government was doing. This treatment is called depatterning. The drug and the depatterning have unknown side effects, but the scientists’ priority is secrecy, not the patient’s well being. Patient 11 is returned to the campus.
Patient 11 becomes a famous writer called Thomas Blackburn, who bears a striking resemblance to Hunter S. Thompson. Blackburn is extremely aggressive, takes drugs, becomes a counterculture hero and associates with hot women who like to sleep with him and take drugs. His books are called, “I Am Number Eleven” and “Friends in Colorado.” He seems to have no conscious memory of the experiment though occasionally he will mention something from that time, and when questioned, has no idea how he acquired that information. He is not a discreet individual so if he says that he does not know, he is probably telling the truth.
A woman named Callie, who has a PhD in chemistry, has audio recordings of the MK Ultra experiment, specifically of Patient 11 reciting “n1, n2, h2, o7, c11,” and interprets this as dictation for a drug, which she decides to make in the basement of her seemingly deserted home. She also found Chamber 5. She has brains in her basement. She seeks out Blackburn probably because she figures out that he was part of the experiment. Blackburn just enjoys taking drugs with her among other things so he is unaware of the origins of this new drug. Blackburn gets a letter from James Hirsch, a writer who is working on a book about MK Ultra. Callie makes a batch of the drug, and Blackburn sends the drug to James and signs his correspondence, “Friends from Colorado.” Callie is probably the one figure closest to the figure in HP Lovecraft’s story who is just doing all of this for fun and freedom.
On September 21, 2009, James decides to take the drug as research for his book. His friend, Renny, acts as an objective viewer who will record the drugs’ effects, but not take any. Unlike the 1973 experiment subjects, James ingests it at home. It takes a longer time to happen. The camera experiences the same static problems, but they hear a music box and numbers being recited by a woman or child’s voice. James freaks out and says something wants to wear him. A black figure appears in front of the window. The recording experiences visual disruption. Renny looks for James, leaves the house and finds a trail of blood that leads to James. James’ face is hanging, to the side. His eyes are black. The police suspect and question Renny, but release him because they can’t find James’ body. Renny disappears three days later, and Banshee Clapter never reveals what happened to Renny. Did he transform, is he dead or is he hiding?
Anne, James’ friend, decides to investigate her missing friend, James. She goes to James’ home, hears a loud thud indicating that someone is in there, but she sees nothing. She retrieves a videotape of government footage of the experiment from his home. She visits a shortwave radio expert and possible former NSA employee and learns that she can pick up the signal featured on James’ recording of his experiment. She goes to the desert, and her car radio picks up the same transmission that James’ videotape recorded after he took the drug. She is frightened by a murky figure in the distance and drives away. She watches the government footage at work and discusses her discovery with her supervisor. Her supervisor recognizes the signature on the letter sent to James and turns Anne on to Blackburn.
Blackburn refuses to talk to reporters so Anne pretends to be an email correspondent and bumps into Blackburn at a bar. Blackburn takes her to his home, and introduces her to Callie. Anne pretends to drink the drug, but Callie and Blackburn do. Blackburn lies and tells her that he slipped her the drug. Anne leaves Blackburn to trip with Callie, who seems relatively safer, but Callie is freaking out that something is coming, and unknown beings can see her. They hear the numbers station. A being appears at and breaks the window. Blackburn initially dismisses the women’s reaction as a hallucination and investigates the presence. The lights go out. Callie vomits blood. Her skin is pale. Her eyes are black. Anne and Blackburn pass out while Callie returns home.
Anne and Blackburn wake up later passed out on the floor. Callie is missing. They decide to get the hell out of there. After they get away, Blackburn tells Anne that each batch of the drug is different. It is unclear whether or not Callie and Blackburn ever took the drug before, but if they did, they never had such a negative reaction before and never imagined the terrors that this drug could unleash. Why do some people recover eventually, and others die immediately? Why is Anne fine long after the initial dose and others react immediately? This drug may take longer to act than in 1973, but it is different and deadlier now.
While they are talking, a red face appears in the side mirror. It is unclear whether we’re finally seeing one of these other dimensional beings or Blackburn’s face in the middle of an attempted transformation. Blackburn’s eyes go white, not black. He bleeds from his eyes and nose. Anne drives away screaming, and they head to Callie’s house. Blackburn explains that the drug turns the human brain into a receiver, and IT wants to find them. He has no idea how he knows this, but as Patient 11, he explained this to the scientists.
He gives a walkie talkie to Anne and recounts HP Lovecraft’s story, “From Beyond,” as she explores Callie’s house and discovers her lab. She deciphers’ Patient 11’s rambling, “n1, n2, h2, o7, c11,” into nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon. She reviews Callie’s surveillance footage, and in the most terrifying sequence, discovers that she is in the basement with possessed, distorted Callie, who grabs her leg through the stairs.
Anne escapes the basement. Anne and Blackburn freak each other out. Blackburn admits that he never gave the drug to Anne, but Anne tells him that she wants to stop the signal since Renny never took the drug and disappeared. Anne admits that even if she did not take the drugs, she has been seeing things since she arrived.
They go to Chamber 5 with a tank of gas. Blackburn is clearly struggling, exhausted and bleeding, but refuses to go to the hospital. He takes a gas can to burn whatever they find, but is scared and armed with a revolver. They find the broadcast towers on top of an unlocked bomb shelter with a sign on an inside wall saying Chamber 5. Blackburn appears to seem vaguely familiar with everything as if he remembers. Everything seems like it was abruptly left as is. Blackburn sees the experiment room and tells Anne that scientists used to tie people down and observe them after administering exotic drugs.
They hear a heart beat and see a bunch of machines hooked to a tank that is emitting a red, pulsating light. When Anne looks into the tank’s window, she sees a face with black eyes. When the face sees her, the numbers station music box starts playing and reciting numbers. Anne sees a distorted figure coming. Blackburn knows that it wanted them to come, and he starts to bleed and convulse profusely. He apologizes to Anne and shoots himself in the head. He probably knew that he could not recover from this assault from the dimensional being trying to possess him and only resisted as long as he did because the depatterning process changed his brain.
Anne escapes from the distorted being, and the transmission is now droning, “Please come back,” repeatedly. She recovers the gas can and screams when the distorted being is standing nearby. She burns the being in the tank. The transmission repeatedly pleads no as the distorted being pounds on the door. After the explosion, she finds James’ clothes near the door. It is implied that James, Callie, and possibly Renny if he transformed disappeared once Patient 14 was burned in the tank. Since the beginning of the film, the distorted being was James, and he was following her around, but she could only see him when she was near the signal. Was the dimensional being influenced by James and tried to communicate with Anne, but she was too (understandably) terrified? Is that why she never got possessed or harmed like the others? The other dimensional beings are awful communicators and just want to travel to our space and time with disastrous consequences. Why the government would just randomly take dictation from an unknown force and make it happen seems unbelievably stupid and plausible.
Anne is at the police station in the same creepy interrogation room that Renny was in with the same creepy don’t do drugs posters in the background. Her supervisor reassures her with a hug and pats her hand. The same creepy music box noises appear, and the number stations’ transmission resumes in that room. The drug is now transmitted through touch so Renny may be alive, but now he and Anne are transmitters like Typhoid Mary. Even if they are not susceptible to being possessed, Anne didn’t take the drug, but she touched people who did, and because her supervisor touched her, her supervisor becomes possessed. The dimensional beings still have a passport!
Banshee Chapter is an utterly tragic exploration of the human consequences to unfettered exploration without caution. If a movie makes me feel sympathy for a Hunter S. Thompson figure, it is a good one.