The Grotesque Reality

*Spoiler Alert*

In her essay on realistic horror, Freeland discusses that horror genre that concentrate on the terrifying and grotesque side of reality. What could be more terrifying then finding out that your next-door-neighbor is actually a serial killer. This week I watched the 2007 movie, Disturbia, which is a loose remake of Hitchcocks's Rear Window. This film follows a curious teenage boy during his summer under house arrest as he begins to learn about the world around him through binoculars. The young man, played by Shia LeBouf, and his friends become paranoid when they see their seemingly boring neighbor acting very suspiciously around the time of some murders in the area. In the original Rear Window, Jimmy Stewert and Grace Kelly are spying on a man who has potentially killed his wife, but in Disturbia, LeBouf's neighbor we discover has killed many girls all across the country. Confined to his house, LaBouf is unable to truly investigate the situation, but his two friends and his video camera begin to slowly unravel the true about this dangerous man.

I think that in horror, more than any other genre of film, the viewer is pulled into the situation and experiences of the main characters. Realist horror does this better than any other because the audience is experiencing something that they can picture themselves in their reality. Part of the realism and suspense about the film is that we only see the situation from LaBouf point of view and so are therefore don't know the whole truth of the situation. Throughout the film, LaBouf is constantly challenged on his theory's and plans. As the viewer, we slowly begin to question the situation ourselves. Are we just paranoid about the suspicious behavior or are we all in danger of diving in too deep into the life of a killer.

Everyone has those creepy neighbors and are curious about the secrets of the strangers they live around. When LaBouf first shows his friend everything that he has discovered about his neighbors, we are fascinated to see inside their very private affairs. We are attracted to knowing what we shouldn't and, like LaBouf, become almost obsessed with the hidden lives of those within his neighborhood. All goes awry when the main characters discover something that puts them in a dangerous situation, but even with the danger, something draws us in. The need and curiously for the truth takes over even with the evidence begins to work against our theories. In other horror movies the reveal focuses on the facts about the monster, but in realistic horror films, the reveal focuses on finding the monster within.

In this realistic film, there are no need special effects or suspension of disbelief in the situation because the monster is a type of person that we see over and over again in our own society. The uneasiness that the main characters and audience feel throughout the film is not about forcing ourselves into accepting the supernatural but the realization that these horrific type of events that we hear about on the news are now in our backyard. Freeland comments that “realist horror evokes real, albeit paradoxical, reactions: at the same time it is both emotionally flattening (familiar, formulaic, and predictable in showcasing violence), and disturbing (immediate, real, gruesome, random).” Within Disturbia, we are all viewing a time old story of a man killing women and the righting of wrongs, but at the same time the situations become real when the killer befriends LaBouf's mother and begins to confront the young boy about the way he's been spying on him. These intimate encounter between the main characters and the monster force the viewer into the situation of facing the grotesque realities within our society.

Horror movies cause the viewer to question their own reality and leave the theater curious about the secrets that could be hidden within their our neighborhood. One of the reasons that Horror and Thriller movies are so scary is because of the possible lasting affect on the viewer. Realistic films I think tend to stick with people the most because it is an actual possibility. Have you ever walked away from a film and had troubles falling asleep of seen a creepy man on the street and expect the worst? Even though the scary realist film focus on the righting of wrongs and for the most part justice is achieved in the end, in reality, not all of these horrific situations are brought to justice and therein lies the real fear.

Have I scene this before? (sorry, had to).

This week I watched the sci-fi horror thriller the 4^th Kind.  The movie presents itself like this newer genre of horror movie that mixes “real” recordings with scenes acted out by actors.  I found the plot of the film to be similar to that of newer exorcism movies like the Last Exorcism and the Devil Inside and even akin to the Paranormal Activity series and the Blair Witch Project.  The main character of the movie Abbey Taylor, who actually is in the real recordings throughout the movie, is a psychiatrist in Nome, Alaska (A.K.A generic small town where mysterious things happen like in the Last Exorcism).  Her husband dies mysteriously before the movie and she is left with her two young children.  As she struggles with his death, she works with other patients who begin having the similar problem of waking in the middle of the night (specifically at the creepy time of 3:33 – similar to the first Paranormal Activity) and feeling fear and anxiety.  She asks one patient to meet her again as soon as possible so she can perform hypnosis (exorcism) on him to see if they can get to the root of the problem.  He starts to explain what happens to him at night, and then he recounts what he said, and finally starts to envision something terrible and reacts violently (what happens in any exorcism in the movies).  It is clear that he is unstable, but she allows him to return home.  Taylor receives a phone call early in the morning and is summoned to her client’s house.  The cops are waiting because her client is holding up his family by gunpoint.  After she fails to calm him down, he kills his wife and children and ends this murderous rampage by committing suicide.

            She performs the same exorcism on another client… whoops, I mean hypnosis (Freudian slip?).  He reacts violently as well, offering us some disgusting throat gurgling noises and vomits on top of that.  In light of the shooting, Taylor makes sure that he and his wife are prepared for anything.  Like any typical horror movie, we have a break in the action.  We are returned to the recording Taylor made a couple of days before.  It surprises us with screams and deep, mysterious, and evil sounding voices that we did not hear before.  Instead of the voices coming from a demon, we learn that the language is ancient Sumerian, the language of the first human race (or not so human as the movie would like us to believe).  Taylor is then called down to the home of her most recent client to find him in a state of panic at home.  As she attempts another hypnosis to calm him down, his body floats into the air and contorts into inhuman shapes.  He then produces the same evil voice that we had heard before.

            The final twist of the movie comes when Taylor is under house arrest for her association with these brutal occurrences.  The cop stationed in front of her house wakes up around 3:33 (coincidence?) to see a bright light above Taylor’s house.  He steps outside his vehicle and see what appears to be a UFO fly above her house.  When all of the cops arrive we learn that Taylor’s daughter has disappeared, presumably taken by the aliens in their UFO.   Everyone, of course, thinks that she is insane and they take her son away from her.  In a last ditch attempt to find her daughter, she has her friend psychiatrist preform hypnosis on her.  She has the worst reaction in the film and tries to communicate with the aliens to find her daughter.  (I will attach the scene for your viewing pleasure.  I say pleasure because I found it hysterical, but some of you may find it terrifying.)  In the end, no one really believes Taylor and the movie leaves us with little hope, another original moment of horror films.

            I realize that this is a particularly long account of what happened in the movie, but I wanted to emphasize one of the major points in Freeland’s Realist Horror.  Freeland stresses that our attraction to horror flicks does not stem from the classical approach of an interesting plot and curiosity with an unbelievable monster, but rather, “realist horror showcases spectacle, downplays plot, and plays upon serious confusions between representations of fiction and reality” (269).  By describing the plot of this movie, I was attempting to show how unoriginal the plot line is.  It follows the general form of most of the exorcism movies and more recently the Paranormal Activity films.  Generally I find those movies absolutely terrifying, so terrifying that I lie awake in bed for a couple nights trying really hard not to think about demons or exorcisms.  I do not find them frightening because the movies drive my curiosity, but rather, like Freeland says, because of spectacle.  That being said, I did not find this movie to be scary in the least.   Instead I found myself laughing at the “scary” scenes and the movie in general.  What I think this movie fails to do is create “serious confusions between representations of fiction and reality.”  The one scene that seriously attempted to do so was the murder-suicide at the beginning of the movie.  In fact, this was probably the most frightening moment of the film.  Other than that one moment, the movie never really crossed fiction and reality boundaries for me.  What I cannot tell you, on the other hand, is why I find exorcism and paranormal movies more frightening than this rendition of an alien-abduction movie.

Fear in The Omen (1976)

Personally, I am not a big fan of horror films. I get anxiety at the mere thought of watching one. Thus, I chose to watch The Omen (1976) this week (during the daylight and with the lights on!) hoping the combination of dated effects and a relatively tame storyline would limit the amount of “pop out at you” scenes for which the genre is notorious. Thankfully, this was the case.

            For those of you who have not seen the film, it is about a couple, Robert and Katherine Thorn, that adopts a baby boy, Damien, whose mother has just died from childbirth when Katherine gives birth to a stillborn child. However, this all occurs unbeknownst to Katherine who believes the child she takes home from the hospital is in fact her own. After the couple moves to London, strange events start to occur leading Robert to discover that his son is the Antichrist.

            The film is a combination of the ideas presented in Cynthia Freeland’s Realist Horror and Sigmund Freud’s The Uncanny. Last week, we discussed Noel Carroll’s The Philosophy of Horror. While this piece presents interesting, and definitely valid, concepts regarding the horror genre, its focus is more on the fictional components of horror, like monsters. As a result, we can’t use these concepts to evaluate all films within the genre because not all have monsters. Freeland uses the term “realist horror” in reference to this subset of the genre that doesn’t include monsters. Unlike Carroll’s “classical” approach, realist horror doesn’t provide us with the reassurance that what we are viewing is impossible. Instead, realist horror is “a Chicago man [that] steals corpses and skins them to make himself a suit. A drifter from Texas [who] confesses to 600 murders. A Milwaukee man [who] cannibalizes and has sex with the corpses of numerous boys he has killed” (Freedland). What makes realist horror so terrifying is that despite its seemingly fictional basis, it creates a scenario in which anyone is a potential victim. Also, while monsters do exist in realist horror, they are not the same as those defined by Carroll. Instead, monsters in realist horror are serial killers, rapists, cannibals, etc.

            In Freud’s The Uncanny, he introduces the idea of the uncanny being the opposite of what is familiar and how this in turn leads to fear. He says, “The uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar.” The example he provides to help explain this concept is a wax figure. Based on our prior knowledge of wax figures we know they are replicas of people that, like store mannequins, just stay in place and don’t move. Suppose, however, that while you are admiring one the figure winks at you, or smiles. This fear you experience is derived from the uncanny.

            The Omen, while displaying some characteristics of realist horror, deals mostly with concepts in Freud’s The Uncanny. Damien is the definition of the uncanny. We perceive and associated children with innocence and purity. However, Damien’s role in the film as the antichrist goes against everything we hold to be true and familiar when we think about children. Thus the fear we experience when watching the film is a result of the unsettling feeling we get from Damien straying from what we believe his role should be. We perceive Damien to be the monster. However, Damien’s role as the monster doesn’t exactly fit into Freeland or Carroll’s definition of a monster. Damien is not a realist horror monster because the fear he creates for the viewer is not a result of being a potential victim. Nor can Damien be considered a classical horror monster because he is not fictional being, but rather a human child. Thus Damien’s role as a monster remains somewhere in between the two concepts. However, if we view Robert Thorn’s role in the film as also that of a monster, we can say he is a realist horror monster. While Robert’s role as a monster is debatable, it can be argued that by wanting to kill his own son, regardless of who is son is, Robert is a monster.

            Overall, I thought The Omen was a great horror film. Aside from the corny music and dated effects, the film had an interesting plot and created a sense of fear without all the unnecessary (at least from my point of view!) “jump out at you and make your hair stand up” scenes that most horror films have these days. 

Poltergeist and Freud's "The Uncanny"

I enjoyed watching Poltergeist; it is well acted and it has its truly frightening parts, including a scene where a man is pictured ripping his own face off in the mirror. Only recently have I started to enjoy the horror movie genre, and in the past few years I have noticed that the movies that do the best job of scaring the living hell out of me are the ones with the least-bad (in my own eyes) quality acting and cinematography. Supernatural horror movies still have to sell me their ideas, even though I am going into them with a mostly firm disbelief in the supernatural. My curiosity, as Noel Carroll talks about extensively in his work on the horror genre, must be stimulated, and if I cannot engage in the situations that a movie poses, I will not be scared and the movie will have failed.

There is a bit of a special effects gap between Poltergeist and what is being shown in theaters today, however, although the effects look "fake" now, surely they were perceived with just as much terror as a movie like Insidious or The Fourth Kind is today. I was not as frightened during parts of Poltergeist as I would have been if the movie had been made with today's technology. For the purpose of this blog post, let us assume that I watched the movie with no historical context for special effects, and that I was extremely frightened by the on-screen action. Beyond the rush of adrenaline and beyond the movie's ability to string along my curiosity, what makes it a quality film/piece of art? I believe that the answer (for Poltergeist as well as any other well-made horror flick) lies in its ability to reveal truth.

Freud talks about the necessary quality that "uncanny" works must have in their capturing the viewer's perspective and making it one with the main character's. This caught my attention along with the part of his essay that explains the concept of "unconcealment" as it relates to horror. In "The Uncanny," Freud claims that part of what makes something uncanny, aside from it being unknown and horrifying, is its ability to reveal the concealed. It is in this way that I believe the value of horror movies reflects the value of art in general. To clarify, the relationship where substance is revealed to the viewer of the "uncanny" is similar to the relationship that a subject has with any "higher" piece of art; something must be shown to the viewer that was either formerly suppressed or unknown to him or her. That unconcealed substance, and the relationship itself, are truths. This is a Heideggarian concept which I will not go into for sake the sake of space on this blog post, but it is a concept that I firmly believe in.

Horror movies are interesting in this regard (that is, with respect to unconcealment) because they often revolve around things that are not real. Because they cannot show us the truth behind ghosts or monsters, they have to show us the truth behind our reactions to those things; therefore, the truth that a scary movie has is a self-reflective one - a scary movie shows us, among other things, how fear works in the human psyche and how the relationship between a film and it's viewer operates.

So, what is the truth that Poltergeist reveals? Well, if I had been truly scared by the movie, it could have possibly shown me something about what makes me, as an individual, afraid. What the film did do, however, was successfully create an accessible perspective (that of the parents of Carol Anne) that I could absorb while watching the movie. Looking back on the few hours that I spent viewing the film, I recall nothing out of the ordinary in my movie watching experience. That experience however, is out of the ordinary when compared to the goings-on of my everyday life. There is not one moment of my day where I sit down and participate in an activity that is remotely like watching a movie. Both my body and mind become vegetables and like slaves to the director's intentions (depending on the quality of the execution). You could tell me about the plot of Poltergeist and I would not be scared, but present it to me in a way in which I start to cognitively participate in the plot, and I become terrified. Surely there is some truth present in that relationship. This post must come to a close, but any ideas from you all would be most appreciated.

Open Water, Again (This Time With a Realist Horror Model)

Last week as a commenter, my primary critique (as well as many of yours) was that Carroll’s definition of a monster and classical model for understanding horror did not account for horror film featuring main characters like those in Psycho or Funny Games, or speak to the entire premise of films like Open Water. In her essay “Realist Horror,” Cynthia Freeland shares our concerns about the less than applicable classical theory when it comes to assessing realist horror. 

Freeland critique’s Carroll for the same reasons that we did through either posts or comments last week-- his definition of a monster is too narrow to account for realist horror films, the emphasis does not seem to be on the plot at all, and there does indeed seem to be a human interest in the spectacle of horror. 

Freeland explains that Carroll’s premise reflects Aristotle’s theory for understanding the value of tragedy. This theory breaks down to essentially three qualifications (page 264):

1. We as viewers must acknowledge the film as imitation.
2. We describe the construction of the film with an emphasis on plot and narrative. 
3. We describe the emotional response to the film that the film aimed to produce. 

This creates a problem when discussing realist horror films because:

1. Too often these films are based on, albeit sometimes loosely, real-life serial killers. Freeland cites examples of The Silence of the Lambs and Henry, both of which featured characters based on real life monsters. Clearly, these characters are not ‘impossible’ to use language from Carroll’s definition, as their real-life counterparts are just that-- real-life. She explains that these stories get just as much attention in the news as they do when they are converted for feature films, thus that there is some innate interest in monstrous displays of violence and those who commit those acts. 
2. Freeland argues that the construction of the realist horror film is fundamentally different than that employed in tragedy and classical horror, with an emphasis not on plot but on spectacle and the aftermath of spectacle instead. 
3. These previous two elements do not allow for the classical understanding of an aesthetic response; Freeland proposes that this is not a shortcoming of realist horror films, but that this allows for more nuanced readings into the purposes of films. She argues that deeper meanings can be read into the presentation of these violent films, citing the depiction of male violence towards women and gender identities as one example. 

Now that we have this more applicable model for understanding the subgenre of realist horror, I thought it prudent to see if the films we insisted did not fit into Carroll’s model would be better understood using Freeland’s model. Open Water, as our classmate Anna Lockhart quite succinctly put it last week, is a tale in which “the direction of the narrative is clear: couple goes diving, couple gets left behind, couple is attacked by various species within the ocean, and couple ultimately perishes.” 

In this quick summary, Anna already had pointed out two elements of the realist horror model-- first, that the ‘monsters’ of the films were various ocean predators and second, that the plot of the film is predictable (and thereby, fairly irrelevant to the success of the film). Everyone knows that the animals that attack the young couple, jellyfish and sharks, really exist; most of us have probably seen such creatures in aquarium visits. Furthermore, not only is this plot familiar and predictable, it is incredible simple. The entirety of the main action of the film falls neatly into Freeland’s proposed construction of gruesome acts ( in this case, probably the boat crew leaving them behind), the spectacle (the sharks attacking Daniel and Susan, perhaps also Susan drowning herself at the end of the film) and the aftermath (obviously, that Daniel and Susan are dead). 

To the third aspect, though, there is much to be considered. Anna also jokingly mentioned the blatant lesson of the film: don’t scuba dive, or more specifically don’t stray away from the group when scuba diving. However, we can easily sift out some of those more profound philosophical lessons that Freeland suggests from this film. I think it is possible that this film, released in 2003, speaks to humankind’s susceptibility to the natural world; in an age when we control more and more of the world around us, natural disaster and death at the hands of creatures have become increasingly terrifying as we understand just how little control we have over such things. Furthermore, I think the motives of the couple to take their vacation (to get away from their hectic lives) and the nonchalance of the fishermen who find Daniel and Susan’s camera in the stomach of the shark near the end of the film speaks to a social trend as well. 

Needless to say, having read Freeland’s article, I have a renewed appreciation for philosophy in horror films that Carroll’s article last week did not provide. 

Realist Horror in "The Following"

After reading Freeland, I decided to post about a different movie. The movie I originally chose to watch was The Possession – and there wasn’t too much to discuss in terms of realist horror that I could find. (If you identified some, please add them in your comments). Instead, I think there would be much more material to work with from the recent television series The Following. Yes, this is a TV show and although it is considered a drama thriller, I think there is much at work here in terms of horror elements that Freeland alludes to. 

Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon) is an FBI agent who is asked to help investigate and solve a series of murders by an ex-college professor turned serial killer, who has a crazed obsession with Edgar Allan Poe. From prison, Joe Carroll (James Purefoy) continues his “intellectual” work of murdering for the sake of art. At the scenes of each of the murders, there can be found literary evidence of Poe’s works, left by Carroll’s network of other killers. Although the show is only into its third or fourth episode, we can deduce that Hardy must play along and get one step ahead of Carroll in his literary game, filled with puzzles, blood, knives, and cut out eye-balls.

There is much to be said about this show in regards to Freeland’s arguments against the classical approach to horror. Freeland uses Henry to describe how a horror movie may create “terror and unease” without following the classical rules of having an “identification figure” or a plot that depicts any “righting of wrongs” (261). In The Following Carroll is locked up behind bars, monitored by guards 24/7. Yet the audience’s unease is constant due to the fact that Carroll’s depraved mind is conjuring scenarios that are both “promising and withholding” of the “spectacle of violence.” We know there are going to be more murders – that’s why things keep happening even though Carroll is locked up (also it’s a television show…). The point is, like in most good horror films, that half the terror is the event leading up to the spectacle of violence – its that sense of anticipation that makes for such intense sequences.

The show itself is a great representation of realist horror. A depraved college professor who knows the works of Poe so well that he aims to continue Poe’s artistic expression through his own acts of monstrous violence.

The classical approach, as Freeland says, relies on the assumption that “we can draw a distinction between artistic imitations and reality” (264). I see The Following, like realist horror for Freeland, to be “a particularly postmodern phenomenon.” The motives of Carroll blend artistic imitations with actual acts of murder to create horror. It is deduced by the FBI agents in the beginning that Carroll believes Poe’s art can only be perfected in death. Therefore, the poems represent “artistic imitation[s]” and Carroll’s murders represent a gruesome “reality.” The connection between theses two elements is what makes the show a wonderful representation of realist horror.

One could also argue that the show (and indeed realist horror) plays upon elements of the uncanny – something very real and artistic (like a poem), together with elements of bloody murder – to create horror. (Or maybe it is the other way around: the familiar element is the serial killing and the unfamiliar is the fact that poetry is the motivation for murder?) As Freeland says, “realist horror evokes real, albeit paradoxical, reactions: at the same time it is both emotionally flattening (familiar, formulaic, and predictable in showcasing violence), and disturbing (immediate, real, gruesome, random).” I think her analysis here very much applies to The Following. We have here a very predictable element of horror: a serial killer is plotting his next murder. The random and perhaps unfamiliar element is the when, where, how of the act of violence.

But perhaps my analysis of the show is a stretch. Carroll is a pretty depraved dude (his victims are all female and he cuts out their eyes), but does the show properly combine artistic imitations and reality to successfully create realist horror? What about the uncanny? Is there anything else at work here? 

            

28 days later is not your typical zombie movie.  The first scene shows how stupid people let test subject monkeys go free from a laboratory  What the idiots didn't realize was that these monkeys had been injected with pure rage virus. Quickly, the virus spreads and a large chunk of the world's population is infected, effectively becoming zombies. You enter the present world with Jim, who has just woken up from a coma. After coming to his senses, he quickly realizes something is not right. There are no nurses, no doctors, no one throughout the entire hospital. He goes outside...nothing. Is he dreaming? He finds a bulletin board with hundreds of missing persons and death notices. He realizes that the world has significantly changed since he was last conscious. Eventually, the viewers and Jim are confronted with scary zombies that are slightly faster and hungrier than your typical zombie.

The first part of the movie revolves around Jim and a couple of other survivors attempting to make their way to a supposed army sponsored safe zone. As they make their way cross country, they are confronted by blood thirsty zombies and must beat them senseless in order to get a way. This plot is definitely your classic "art-horror," as Carroll would describe. The characters in 28 days later are disgusted by the zombies, but I think that there is a deeper emotional response to zombies. Every zombie on the face of the planet was at one point a human being with a life and a family. Now, they have been transformed into this revolting creature who only has the sole desire to feast on the body of a human being. Jim has an issue at first with killing zombies (unlike Selena who is head to toe in armor and weapons) because he realizes that zombies were at first humans. However, he quickly learns that there is a difference, so he loses that emotional connection.

The second half of the movie is what I find to be most interesting and definitely highlights Cynthia Freeland's concept of realist horror. When the survivors make it to the safe place, they are introduced to a group of rowdy soldiers. There are two girls in the group of survivors who quickly realize that they have taken the role of "hot piece of meat." Soon, we realize the intentions of the soldiers as they give the girls long gowns and oogle them. Jim realizes that these people are not good people and soon attempts to leave with Selena and Hannah. The soldiers, however, have a different plan. A chase ensues and the soldiers try their hardest to protect their warm bodies. Eventually Jim, Selena, and Hannah escape the grasps of the soldiers.

The fact that the entirety of the second half revolves around human beings as being corrupt and evil sends an interesting message. Of course, the entire zombie outbreak was really started by human beings as well. According to this movie, there is certainly a good amount of evil within the human race. The horror truly revolves around human stupidity, corruption, greed, etc. Danny Boyle, the film's director, makes a point by saying that people can be even more monstrous than terrible zombies. While the movie is about zombies, the real terror is seen in what human beings can do to one another. Thus, 28 days later is a hybrid between classic and realistic horror.

"Cloverfield"

For my film this week, I wanted to choose a horror movie with a twist.  And, no, not an M. Night Shyamalan-esque ‘throw the plot out the window and tell the viewer “gotcha”’ twist.  I wanted to view, analyze, and write about a movie that stands out in a multi-faceted way.  I therefore watched the 2008 thriller “Cloverfield”, directed by Matt Reeves, produced by J. J. Abrams, and written by Drew Goddard.  The movie was hyped up for its mystery, primarily stemming from the fact that Abrams and company revealed as little as possible regarding the film’s plot throughout production and pre-release.  All the audience knew was to sit down, strap in, and prepare to be taken through a ‘modern’ horror film via first-person-point-of-view. 

The film opens with a few clips recorded on a hand-held camera before introducing some characters who are awaiting the protagonist, Rob, at his surprise going away party in a New York City apartment.  Rob’s best friend, Hud, was tasked with filming the party, but when there is an ‘earthquake’, all the party-goers step outside to investigate.  While standing outside, there is an explosion downtown, and the head of the Statue of Liberty screeches through the street.  Utter chaos begins ensuing in the streets, and the group of friends run for their lives from the source of the explosion.  At this point, no one has any idea what is going on.   **I think this is the most important aspect of Cloverfield.  The audience had no idea what the ‘monster’ was going into the film, but more importantly, it was only around 45 minutes into the movie that we got to see a very blurry and fleeting image of it. 

After initially trying to flee the city, ending in the destruction of the Brooklyn Bridge and death of several characters, Rob, Marlena, Hud, and Lily regroup and strategize how to escape.  However, upon receiving a distress call, Rob decides to attempt a rescue of his love interest, Beth.  They slowly lose numbers, and, through some surprisingly graphic scenes (including one horrifically scarring and purely terrifying scene in a pitch black subway tunnel), are ultimately brought down to the main two, Rob and Beth.  They constantly are gasping about how scared they are.  They are also constantly expressing their fear of the unknown and keep on asking “what the hell is that thing??”

In his essay, “The Uncanny”, Sigmund Freud explains that, “…the uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar” and goes on to write that it is tempting “to conclude that what is ‘uncanny’ is frightening people precisely because it is not known and familiar.” 

Uncanny fear results from the inability or limited ability to fully wrap ones mind around what is happening—to comprehend it and make sense of it.  The English definition of uncanny is perhaps the most relevant, ‘uncomfortable, uneasy, gloomy, dismal, ghastly; (of a house) haunted; (of a man) a repulsive fellow’.  The Arabic definition is relevant to Cloverfield: demonic, gruesome.  However, all seem to agree that is represents an eerie, weird, arousing fear.  Cloverfield is so mysterious not simply in the aspect of the ‘unknown’, but also through its over-stimulation of the audience.  This practice ensures that the viewer is so disoriented that his fear is escalated to the next level—uncanny.  The dual nature of uncanniness is that it arouses both recognition and fear/uncertainty, but the fear is because something is skewed, distorted, or abominated in what normally would be familiar.  Not necessarily overtly distorted (at first), but an evolving distortion or abomination that transforms the subject, the viewer, and the experience as a whole. 

I really enjoyed watching Cloverfield (albeit sometimes between my fingers crossed) particularly looking for Freud’s uncanny element.  Throughout the movie, I believe that there was a different sense of fear than seen before.  What I find most intriguing is that the audience got to share this fear with the main characters as we both get to experience it first-hand.  In horror, we begin to doubt our ability to distinguish between the real and the unreal—the predictable and the unpredictable.  It is precisely this ‘off-balance’ condition that arouses pure fear.  As much as I hate horror movies, I feel like after this unit of class and being forced to watch several different ones now, I actually understand the genre and see its value more clearly.  Fear draws us in—not because we are attracted to what frightens us but because we can only (try to) conquer fear by opening ourselves to it, seeking to understand it, seeing to master it.  In this way we are complicitly giving fear power over us—but hopefully only as a means of entertainment. 

"Cause you were home"

SPOILER ALERT

Home invasion is, in my opinion, one of the most terrifying experiences a person can undergo. It's a true violation of all notions of security - a sensation which The Strangers captures impressively. In addition to achieving this, The Strangers also fulfills the two requirements Cynthia A. Freeland sets forth for realist horror films in her essay, "Realist Horror", making it a film that scares me times and time again.

Freeland argues one of the two essential aspects of a realist horror film is an intriguing and realistic monster. In her description of the monstrous Henry from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Freeland explains that it's not merely Henry's repulsive crimes that make him a monster, but his emotional "flatness," in their wake. The same goes for the three masked hooligans who harass the disgruntled couple, James and Kristen, in The Strangers.

The first time we're introduced to one of the three is both eerie and as Freud would say, "uncanny." One of the masked females knocks on their door (which is in the middle of nowhere) at 4 AM only to say, "hey" in a monotone, undisturbed voice. This moment sends shivers down my spine no matter how many times I watch it. After she asks for Tamara and when James replies that she has the wrong house, she appears just as unaffected as before. This emotional flatness, as mentioned by Freeland, is one of the most disturbing elements of these killers. It drives us viewers to question how an individual can be so unattached to emotions, and makes the murderers capable of any heinous crime.

Secondly, Freeland states that realist horror films depend primarily on spectacle, rather than a traditional plot line, to keep our heart rates up. She remarks, "plots in realist horror, like stories on the nightly news, are dominated by the three r's: random, reductive, repetitious" (265). The Strangers fits this formula exceedingly well. First, the harassment James and Kristen face is completely random, as we find out at the close of the film. When Kristen, tied to a chair and facing her imminent death, asks a female of the trio why they were doing this, she replies, "Cause you were home." This statement captures both the emotional flatness of the perpetrators and the shocking randomness of the crime.

The situation James and Kristen are faced with is also reduced very quickly to simply life or death. There is no complexity to the plot in this regard, as it becomes a story of them reacting to the various harassments. They don't make a fancy escape plan - in fact, they hardly even speak at all. Their situation is simply reduced to terror and the primal urge to survive the attack.

Repetition is the name of the game in The Strangers. The plot is essentially that the troop does something to scare James and Kristen, they scream and lock themselves in their bedroom, the group executes another scare, and they react again. While there is variation among their actions and reactions, they follow the same pattern throughout the film. The repetition serves a purpose, however, as it communicates the inescapability of the situation: they're captive on the carousel of terror (as Joni Mitchell would say).

It's also worth commenting on the statement Freeland makes about gender in realist horror films. She argues that, "In realist horror, male sexuality is a ticking time bomb, a natural force that must be released...Since women...are scapegoated as sources of this repression, they are shown somehow to deserve the violence they evoke" (266). Liv Tyler's character, Kristen, has just rejected James's marriage proposal. He had adorned the whole house with rose petals and champagne flutes, clearly expecting her to enthusiastically accept his proposal. While both Kristen and James are equally targeted by the three masked individuals, Kristen is placed in more situations where she faces the terror alone. They begin harassing the house while James is gone, she's left in the house alone while James checks the barn, and she is killed second, having to watch her boyfriend die the excruciatingly slow and painful death that will soon be hers as well.

In addition to these inequities, Kristen is portrayed as somewhat naggy. When James accidentally shoots his best friend who had come to pick him up, Kristen repeatedly asks him what happened. Shocked and irritated in the moment, James violently tackles her to the floor to silence her. Though it's understood that he was facing a serious emotional trauma, the situation is presented so the viewers infer that Kristen should not have been nagging at him to tell her what happened, and that James' abusive behavior is justified.

This film works to violate any notion of safety us viewers might have. The opening scene of the film informs us that the plot is based on a true story. James and Kristen are brutally murdered in the daylight of the morning (one of the scariest elements of the movie for me). The murderers have no better reason to perpetrate this crime other than the couple being home. Everything that happens in the film is entirely possible. Ultimately this film fits every criteria laid out by Cynthia A. Freeland, making it an incredibly terrifying testament to the heinous actions humans are capable of.

Here's the trailer for The Strangers if you fancy a watch:

Warm Bodies (2013)

 Yesterday, when I was attempting to figure out what to do on my Friday night, I decided to peruse the Internet for local movie showings. To my luck, one of the theaters was showing a movie at 5 o’clock and the movie ticket price was only $4!! Yes that is right $4… It is almost impossible to find such a cheap movie ticket these days. The movie they were showing was Warm Bodies (2013), which is a movie directed by Jonathan Levine and written by Isaac Marion and Jonathan Levine. I’m not going to lie… I had seen some trailers for this movie and being a Walking Dead addict, I was intrigued.

            The plot of Warm Bodies takes place in a post apocalyptic world after a zombie outbreak. There are two kinds of undead, the corpses and the “bonies”. The main character is a corpse that later gets named R (Nicholas Hoult). R is not a typical zombie because he is young, introspective, and eventually resents his nature. One day when a group of the corpse zombies decide to go find humans to feed on, R meets a girl named Julie (Teresa Palmer) and instantly feels the desire to protect her and to know her. After protecting her and saving her life numerous times, R starts to change. As their relationship develops, R starts to become more and more human-like and this spreads to a number of other corpses who begin to feel again. Eventually a mutual threat for the corpses and the humans becomes evident and they start to work together to defend themselves. I won’t give away the ending though because everyone hates a spoiler…

            Overall, I really enjoyed this movie. I thought the plot was clever with the new twist on zombie movies. However, there was one thing that kept happening throughout the movie that I had an issue with. Whenever the movie became ominous with chase scenes, the bonies, and other typical zombie movie objects, I would start to settle in to the mindset of watching a horror movie. I would get jumpy, my adrenaline would shoot up, and I would be cheering for the main characters. The problem is, whenever I would get used to the zombie movie mindset, they would pull the rug out from underneath me and it would become a chick-flick or a rom-com. There were a number of funny moments in the film, many of which, gave the vibe that the film was a romantic comedy. As much as I enjoyed the film it was almost unsettling how the movie would shift back and forth between horror and romantic comedy. I could never really expect a certain thing from the movie because it really couldn’t fit in to one genre. Although it was a bit unsettling, it made the film different and interesting in a way.

            If you don’t believe me that the film was good, ask rotten tomatoes, which gave a 78% tomatometer. If you know rotten tomatoes, they can be pretty stingy with their ratings so I am impressed (as I would be with any film that had decent reviews from them) that Warm Bodies received such good rating. This film is kind of the perfect medium for 1- people who don’t like scary movies but want a little thrill and 2- people who don’t like gushy girly romantic comedies. Whenever it would start to get too mushy romantic, there would be some crazy zombie movie moment that would break the romance and get you back on the edge of your seat (ex. Awww they are holding hands and walking through the corpses who are letting them pass because they are starting to feel again, but WAIT oh no! They are being chased by crazy looking skeleton bonie zombies!). On the other hand, whenever it would start to get creepy, there would be a scene that would bring you back to the romantic comedy side of the film.

            If you like romantic comedies and can handle some zombies I would suggest seeing the film. The trailer is below and it is really WORTH WATCHING:::