I'm especially excited to participate in this project since lately I've found myself dissecting more films from the angle of horror. While the line can be blurry, and there's certainly a risk in misdiagnosing films by approaching with this mindset and indirectly forcing them to fit within the paradigm, the blanket of what constitutes a "horror" film has definitely molded in my perspective with age. A theme woven through my own infatuation with the horror genre relies on unpredictable disruptions to the laws of cinema that change the ways we comprehend the world, or the implementation of aggressive provocations against the defense mechanisms that make us feel safe while engaging in the experience as a viewer. Thus, sensory-visual, psychological, and existential disorientation, manipulative in the defining sense of the term but not condescending in the use of manipulative measures that intend to make one see the movie “their” way; rather manipulation that provokes our own unique neuroses, uncovering truths we’d rather not face. It’s difficult to pull off, not to mention pull off well, but the most affecting films of the genre hit these buttons for me.
A few favorites to highlight each of these ideas:
The Thing
The success of this film is in part due to its pacing, with an incredibly slow build to the most terrifying visualization of a monster I’ve ever seen come from one of the most innocent animals. The real power of the horror here is the unpredictability of what the monster will look like. We get heads that turn into spiders, heads that open and spurt tentacles, abdomens with mouths, and whatever else you can - or can’t - think of, surprising us in true horror fashion as jump scares, but more frightening because there is no rhyme or reason to their shape-shifting nature. If the monster was presented as one whole subject each time, that would allow some comfortability in at least resigning itself to a single vessel to tweak its form, but no: it must appear as slight variations on body
parts, hidden and unidentifiable, until they expose themselves after we have met and spoken with the vessel that’s carrying them and judged that person to be sound of body and mind. This undoing of physical law of identification alienates the viewer from their most useful tool to detect danger: the eyes, by redefining the form of the danger unrecognizable. We all become unreliable narrators here, and it’s just as terrifying when that personal distrust extends from the characters in the film, acting as our surrogates, confused and stripped of the power of logic in a fight or flight scenario, back to us. Oh and being trapped in Antarctica of all places doesn’t exactly help anyone feel safe either.
The Trial
Welles does the impossible and makes an adaptation that blows the source material out of the water. I’m a fan of Kafka but Welles’ disorienting techniques were born for this demonstration of the ultimate existential nightmare: consequence with a complete absence of reason or explanation. The communication breakdown between K and all other people in this story, along with labyrinths of physical barriers, sharp sound design, and nausea-inducing photography, reduces his agency to a worth of absolute zero and isolates him from not only other people and his societal structure expected to contain him, but from himself and his own identity. By the end we’re all insane.
City of Pirates
I could probably apply this reasoning to several Ruiz films, and likely will by the project’s end, but this film is (especially) unlike any other, rendering descriptors like “surreal” meaningless, and inserting horror unexpectedly into moments of this dream on film creating nightmarish cuts with little time for brooding. This is a fantasy, but it’s also an existential nightmare presented as psychological. Any purpose for any character, any meaning clung to, is surrendered with or without consent, and even in the moments of serenity one gets from surrendering said meaning and embracing the wild ride, get taken away as characters, and we, get punctured hardest in these vulnerable moments
(Malo’s scream toward the end never fails to run chills down my spine, partly for the juxtaposition between his soft child-voice and this dubbed satanic vocal, but mostly because there seems to be no grounded reason for this response).
There is no safety, for the mind, body, or spirit, in this entrancing magical journey through hell. It’s also one of the most unsettling endings I’ve ever seen,
as we, Ruiz, and Isidore give up hope all at once accepting doom as fate and yet remain trapped in the anxiety of what this will look like, revealing that any acceptance toward the horrors in the world is that of impermanence, and never sustained catharsis.
demonlover
I wrote up an initial reaction to this in its dedicated thread, but what makes this melting pot of genres land in the horror camp for me is the way Assayas uses genre and narrative expectations, coupled with technical comprehension skills of how to operate the camera and sound, and consistently and unpredictably mixes them to create unease, disruption between the viewer and subject on screen, and internal tension. The film’s plot and the experience of watching serve as a reflexive, involving process of the fear born from relinquishing control, and the realization that perhaps we never had any real sense of control to begin with, which results in and from choices to initiate uninvolving separation on a metaphysical level (even the different film stocks create a subconscious disorientation and disintegration of the self!)
This is not to say that the film is full of weak characters, quite the opposite, and that’s intentional. The story relies on strong-willed people seeking and attaining power, taking control over their and others’ lives continuously as if control were air or food. The problem is that after these instances, a variable will present itself that serves to block or undo such acts, and render one - often our heroine- powerless, more confused and disoriented than before; but she keeps getting up and trying, as is the drive of human nature, to futile and devastating measures. On a larger scale, the film’s plot is about globalization, where people are reduced to meaningless objects, and the collective masses have been desensitized to the horrors people commit (an idea rooted in truth, itself quite horrific) while rapidly diluting individualism, or any sense of authenticity in identity. Self-actualization appears to be reached and even maintained by confident characters throughout the film, but this slowly becomes apparent as a facade, for we never get the sense that this attitude is possible to sustain in the world of the film. All personality is artificially constructed and contingent on capitalist ideologies, and any catharsis from selfhood is smashed by the unstoppable force that crushes the need within the human being to be visible beyond their status as commodity.
I’ll stress that this is the least “safe” I can remember feeling while watching a movie: unsafe from where the narrative is taking me (Ruiz is the master of this, but his films are predictably unpredictable in spirit), and unsafe from myself; my own psychology and existential pain with isolative separateness set off and muddied in a blend of chaotic ‘fullness’ of everything a film can include (in eclectic blend of genres, themes, film form, film materials, hell- even the globalization elements allows us to experience places and cultures throughout the world) and yet complete 'emptiness' within, as cultures and (consequently) individuals assimilate, broken of their separatist, unique natures into a melting pot of absolute value- or the absence of value. By reducing distinguished cultures, morals, and political systems to one blurry construct, the subjects become even more separate and disillusioned, as they have no belief systems, unique traits, or special tools to to hold on to, navigate, or comprehend the complexity of the world; a juxtaposition so intense that it alone creates depersonalization by obstructing identity contingent on meaning.
If cinema is often designed as a safe space for audiences to achieve catharsis through mastery over the image, with some slight alterations to provoke emotional, cognitive, and physiological (especially in horror films) responses, this movie takes that purpose and twists it until it’s completely inverted, like the inside-out dog in
The Thing. Assayas’ maintenance of a consistent narrative is key to allowing the sheer dread to unfold, as we remain bound to the film in some aspect of reality while gradually losing our own identity right with our surrogate. It’s a cinematic ride unlike any other, and redefines the horror film as it pierces the senses we’re accustomed to, in ways we are not, to relentless degrees that reach the vulnerability of the mind and soul, unequipped to handle the charge of abrasive philosophical violence they’re forced to combat, hence unsafe passage through the meaningless, yet scarily familiar, aspects of the social milieu in which we live. We end the film so far removed from the reality of the film, or from understanding our heroine, that it feels like a dream. But then, in the final images, we’re snapped back into the reality of
our world, and we remember that this is not escapism we are experiencing, but a confrontation with ourselves. The one we never expected or ever wanted to have.
I recently wrote some thoughts on
The 7th Victim for the 40s project. I believe the film fits this categorization of horror, even if many of the actual genre devices fail- though this may be intentional, or even a red herring, to highlight the actual, much scarier point that our inescapable society is our hellish prison, not an outside force or group of subjects that can be contested.
And a few newer watches that hit these themes, which will almost certainly make my final list:
Triangle
I went into this blind and thought it was terrific. Melissa George (unrecognizable from “the Girl” in
Mulholland Dr.) hooked me right away amidst a group of dramatically weaker performances in a seemingly paint-by-numbers plot setup with dynamics and potential dynamics in place and obvious. These perfs and plotting were clearly intentionally downplayed and overly specified as much to heighten George’s aura as to manipulatively fasttrack our reversion to complacency in the horror genre. Of course all elements of this film get better, and stray further from comfort until we’re lost at sea from any tangible bearings.
Not only are all initially developed characters completely forsaken prematurely, but our protagonist becomes the most unreliable narrator. She was already unreliable based on her suspiciously unexplained emotional dysregulation at the onset of the film, but at a certain point I wasn’t even sure which version I was watching, splitting this already unsafe character into undefined shades. When all trust goes out the window, some may disengage completely, and I wouldn’t fault anybody for having that reaction to this, which admittedly is a tough film to like because it’s easier to dismiss, based on the film’s own dismissal of the participatory expectations of film (and this is not an attack on the viewer- I watched this with a group of horror fans whose tastes I respect and none liked it but me).
The deeply psychological and existential horror films have come to be my favorites over time; “deeply” being the key word, as these provocations exist within all horror to some degree. However these “deep” few fearlessly dig in areas the others only superficially touch on, in a way that appears safely digestible until it’s too late to unsee and unfeel the vulnerability and trauma that you’ve been forced to engage with, and must sit with the experience. This weighs heavily on the psychological side (while something like
demonlover would be existential, but that one’s harder to pigeonhole), and it earns a place among the best of them.
While not as dangerous in uprooting those deep-seated core beliefs in the existential, this film presents a very kinetic allegory for the disintegration of reality orientation and the futile attempts to crawl out of the hole of a trauma cycle.
This film has many details in its design that should be fun and escapist, but I found myself completely uncomfortable and lost throughout, hardly
enjoying myself during the experience as much as a burst of pleasure following the experience once my senses were resorted to equilibrium, which was probably fitting for a film that’s as much a nightmare in structure as it is in content.
Swing You Sinners!
An example of abstract disorienting filmmaking that is reminiscent of a nightmare. The Fleischer brothers use the infinite possibilities of animation to create horrific visions and tinker with the laws of reality testing in ways that would otherwise be impossible in classic photography or processes of capturing action with limitations on manipulation of the image. Surrealistic yes, but that is only the surface level catalyst that prompts the unnerving danger alert set off by this film bomb. If it lasted for more than eight minutes, it would be a personalized race to whether this would trigger a psychological breakdown or an existential crisis first. Absolutely mesmerizing, and acutely deranged for 1930.