You Can Forget About Atari: Pitfall

Pitfall is a movie with ghosts but no haunting. It has more in common with a police procedural than a horror movie. I thought about not including it with the other write-ups but I figured that there has to be room for a supernatural drama in October at some point. Plus, I've already covered other thrillers and this one isn't so different. In fact, more people are killed in this than in Special Effects. And like Special Effects, Pitfall features doppelgangers, though much more effectively.

There is a startling amount going in in the 97 minutes of Pitfall. I hesitate to even try to write a synopsis. Briefly, a migrant miner is working for work and is killed. A reporter examine follows up on some leads and discovers that there is a head of a union that broke off from the main union who looks exactly like the murdered man. The reporter, the deceased, and the look-a-like are all trying to get to the bottom of what's happening for their own reasons. It's damn near remarkable that the film isn't a garbled mess by the end and wraps up quite nicely (some might say too nicely).

Pitfall loses steam when it tells the back story of the two unions, but then I've never been much for union talk. It's essential to set up what's to come, but very dialogue heavy and some interesting staging does little to pep the scene up. However, the rest of the film is cracking; steeped in dramatic irony. It's very easy to empathize with the characters and you almost want to shout out at the screen to explain what they can't (because they are dead and all). Having so many people with an interest in the murder really helps to keep the pitfalls of procedurals at bay. Pitfall also does some pretty ingenious things with the doppelganger (I particularly like when the dead man returns to the woman's store late in the film).

The music is terrific and interesting and the film is beautiful to look at with lots of really neat tracking shots of people moving through reeds and ghost towns and the like. Director Hiroshi Teshigahara has a masterful eye and I only wish that they'd spent more time cleaning the lens before shooting. Pitfall feels like it takes place in another time as it starts and the mention of a bus early on was very jarring. As the film progresses, we move into more modern spaces of industrialization. It's a little bit like moving through the evolution of mining. There's even some documentary footage of mining incidents in there for good measure. 

At one point, a (dead) character says to our dead man, "The more you know, the worse it'll be" (no wonder NBC dropped the last half for their PSAs). And of course, that appears to be true for everyone by the end of the film. The ultimate irony is that no one really knows anything at the end of Pitfall for all of their efforts. Save for one person who knows everything but never says a word during the film.

So, it's not scary, the ghosts don't haunt, and it's heavy on union politics. But it's beautiful, and involving, with great music and solid direction. Yeah there's definitely room in October for supernatural dramas.