I've recently written a couple of pieces on 'Prometheus' for www.alternatetakes.co.uk - I thought I'd link to them here because in them I've concentrated on the film's use and renegotiation of Lovecraftian themes. The first piece is a short review of the movie and the second is an in-depth essay.
Short review: http://www.alternatetakes.co.uk/?2012,5,402
Essay on franchise filmmaking, H.P. Lovecraft, and narratives of cosmic disappointment: http://www.alternatetakes.co.uk/?2012,7,413
Showing posts with label horror films. Show all posts
Showing posts with label horror films. Show all posts
Monday, July 23, 2012
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
"Knives and Teeth": Stanley Cavell on Horror
I'm reading Stanley Cavell's The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film (New York: The Viking Press, 1971) at the moment, and I just came across a paragraph on horror films, which follows an appreciation of Hitchcock that takes in To Catch a Thief, Marnie, The Birds, and Notorious. This elegant paragraph, on page 67 and dealing with the power of the projected nightmare, is worthy of quotation:
"In horror movies, sexuality is not suggested but directly coded onto, or synchronised with, the knives and teeth as they penetrate. Here is an obvious reason not to be quick about equating films with dreams. Most dreams are boring narratives (like most tales of neurotic or physical symptoms), their skimpy surface all out of proportion with their riddle interest and their effect on the dreamer. To speak of film adventures or glamours or comedies as dreams is a dream of dreams: it doesn't capture the wish behind the dream, but merely the wish to have interesting dreams. But horror films specifically do infuse boring narratives with the skin-shrinking haunts of dreams."It's quite something, isn't it?
Friday, April 15, 2011
A Note on Horror Movies/'Scream'
We sit in the dark, and they happen to us. We have to let them, of course; passivity is requisite. That’s the deal. It only works if we’re strapped to the guillotine: completely helpless in the face of oblivion. That’s how horror films work, isn’t it? They prey on our weakness and cackle maniacally at our pretence that we once weaned ourselves into independence. Perhaps that’s how all of these silly little things we call movies work, yes, but with the shockers the mockery seems so much more damn insidious.
I just sat down and watched Scream with my little sister. There was a reason for this. She’s nearly fifteen, and was lamenting that nothing she had seen really scared her - so jaded for one so young. Isn’t that a shame? Many of her friends had seen The Human Centipede, and had described its narrative to her in vivid detail (a detail more imaginative, I imagine, than that belonging to the director). Its crass grotesqueness had appealed to her search for sensationalism, and she was eager to see it. I suggested we watched the Craven movie instead.
I was eager to see what it’d do. I remember it had had a strong effect on me when I was fifteen; I remember the uneasy laughter I shared with those characters so close to my own age who were so soon to become mincemeat. And that opening scene - don’t get me started on that opening scene. It was an assault, systematic and vindictive, on the sense of security that I relied upon in so many things: the divide between fiction and reality, my parents’ home, and - I readily admit here that I wasn’t at the age where Janet Leigh bowing out halfway through Psycho was as shocking as it should have been - the belief that a film’s biggest star would categorically make it through to the final reel.
I was eager to see what it’d do. I remember it had had a strong effect on me when I was fifteen; I remember the uneasy laughter I shared with those characters so close to my own age who were so soon to become mincemeat. And that opening scene - don’t get me started on that opening scene. It was an assault, systematic and vindictive, on the sense of security that I relied upon in so many things: the divide between fiction and reality, my parents’ home, and - I readily admit here that I wasn’t at the age where Janet Leigh bowing out halfway through Psycho was as shocking as it should have been - the belief that a film’s biggest star would categorically make it through to the final reel.
Watching it again, I enjoyed the mechanics of it, the way it plays with you. It revels in its postmodern game in a manner which is still infectious, even today. At certain points it reaches the heights of pantomime - he’s behind you! The character of Randy works brilliantly in this respect, an audience surrogate who’s as vulnerable as anybody else (what a shame – though what a masterstroke – that they killed him off in the sequel) to the slaughter. How wonderful, I thought, to be a lamb.
My sister’s reaction was somewhat less effusive. She reassured me she’d enjoyed it, but also bemoaned that it hadn’t frightened her as much as she would have liked. I panicked, instantaneously taking her on a kneejerk youtube odyssey, showing her trailers for great horror films which have scared me so much in the past – The Evil Dead, The Exorcist, The Thing, The Descent, and so on. All the great Thes. She admitted they looked sort of creepy, yes, but she told me that nothing she had seen her really disturbed her.
This saddens me. I hope it’s not just simply I’m prematurely ageing into a nostalgic curmudgeon, and I can’t authoritatively promise this isn’t the case. But I hope it isn’t. I really do. I think a film can still work wonders and make us search frantically for the nightlight, if it’s made intelligently enough, with enough wit and verve and mania. It doesn’t need to have a scene where three cardboard cutouts masquerading as characters are sewn together anus-to-mouth, surely? We need a danse macabre - not an arse palaver.
Crass, yes - but valid, I think. I’m perpetually excited by the possibilities of horror, and I honestly believe in it as a force for good. Everyone has nightmares, and horror is one of the only ways we have at our disposal to confront and - if not to conquer - then at least to accept them. It’s an important life experience, and it’s something that art is uniquely suited to do. I enjoyed watching Scream tonight, because it dares to have a go at playing peek-a-boo with people who are otherwise too old to play such games, and it does so marvellously.
Despite this entry’s sense of eulogy, I am reassured that not all hope is lost. You should have seen her face during the opening scene.
Cue manic cackling...
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
15cert.
The other children were allowed to watch horror films, and Timmy envied them for it. They didn’t understand how lucky they were; how lucky, how blessed, to experience such dangers and risks and come out the other end completely safe. They got to stare hideous, gory death in the face and laugh at it. Their victories were frequent; nightly they conquered fears they were then able to put aside. These were the brave young ones. These were the ones who were able to lead healthy lives, filled with promise and society. These were the ones who vanquished the monsters in the dark and kicked the thing that hid under the bed. Their pillow was warm and comforting, and their only worry was that they hadn’t yet been able to copy their homework for tomorrow’s first lesson. Timmy, alas, was not one of these people.
He’d wonder what these imaginings, these dark and perverse directors’ dreams, could possibly be like. A boy of eleven, he could not begin to comprehend the violence he would not even be capable of watching until his fifteenth birthday, a violence that would forever discombobulate his undeveloped brain circuits and irrevocably alter his nascent outlook on the world were he to gaze upon it prior to that sacred day. He feared that bright red encircling of the numerals “15” on the DVD cases at Blockbuster. It promised revulsion, dementia and morbidity. It was his Medusa, and so he feared it with the reverence it deserved. Timmy did not want to turn to stone. He was a good boy, so he wanted to remain soft for as long as possible.
He had watched the first twenty minutes of one once, though. The gorgon had tempted him with its deceitful siren song, and he, powerless to resist the temptations of forbidden fruit and an aura of premature maturity, had asked his older brother to rent a copy of it for him. His brother had not minded; the film he wanted happened to be funny and exciting, and he had a large crush on the leading actress, so he’d get it as long as Timmy would pay for it and he could watch it afterwards. A film called 'Gremlins', it told of a cuddly little animal, not dissimilar to a puppy, which, if fed after midnight, would turn into something hideous and wrong. Timmy, however, did not last past the twenty-minute-mark. The dread of the viscous arteries, the burst eyeballs, and disembodied colons he would no doubt see in the ensuing eighty minutes was too much for him. He put it back in its case and walked up to his brother’s room, holding his victor in his left hand, shaking and self-loathing. He had forfeited the dare. Later, in bed, when he heard his brother laughing from the next room, he envied his adamantine constitution; a braver man than he, kicking the unholy spectres of the shadows’ fringes into humiliated submission.
Later that night, everybody else had fallen asleep and he had stopped crying over his cowardice; that was when the night-things came. Staring at the shadows thrown across his bedroom ceiling, he did not notice them at first. To begin with, there was only a heightened awareness of the subtler night-sounds; there was the drip of taps and the creak of wood beams, but, aside from the common paranoia of the neurotic, nothing with an uncanny face. He rationally chalked it down to nerves; a dripping tap cannot harm an eleven-year-old boy. But it is from these sounds, from these drips and creaks and buzzes, that the night-things come. Their gelatinous multi-torsos writhe and squirm out from inter-dimensional spaces; spaces that our minds manifest between the innocuous happenings of the witching hour and the dark thoughts that we attribute to them. By the time Timmy had gathered that something was amiss, they were upon him. Timmy tried to cover himself with his blanket. They ripped it off of him. With their talons and their tentacled snouts they smothered and sliced, filling up his aesophogus with their lumpy bile, to clog his screams. His eyes, wide and bloodshot and afraid, the only things left to scream for him, were soon forced shut by slippery hands, and he never saw his bedroom ceiling again.
He’d wonder what these imaginings, these dark and perverse directors’ dreams, could possibly be like. A boy of eleven, he could not begin to comprehend the violence he would not even be capable of watching until his fifteenth birthday, a violence that would forever discombobulate his undeveloped brain circuits and irrevocably alter his nascent outlook on the world were he to gaze upon it prior to that sacred day. He feared that bright red encircling of the numerals “15” on the DVD cases at Blockbuster. It promised revulsion, dementia and morbidity. It was his Medusa, and so he feared it with the reverence it deserved. Timmy did not want to turn to stone. He was a good boy, so he wanted to remain soft for as long as possible.
He had watched the first twenty minutes of one once, though. The gorgon had tempted him with its deceitful siren song, and he, powerless to resist the temptations of forbidden fruit and an aura of premature maturity, had asked his older brother to rent a copy of it for him. His brother had not minded; the film he wanted happened to be funny and exciting, and he had a large crush on the leading actress, so he’d get it as long as Timmy would pay for it and he could watch it afterwards. A film called 'Gremlins', it told of a cuddly little animal, not dissimilar to a puppy, which, if fed after midnight, would turn into something hideous and wrong. Timmy, however, did not last past the twenty-minute-mark. The dread of the viscous arteries, the burst eyeballs, and disembodied colons he would no doubt see in the ensuing eighty minutes was too much for him. He put it back in its case and walked up to his brother’s room, holding his victor in his left hand, shaking and self-loathing. He had forfeited the dare. Later, in bed, when he heard his brother laughing from the next room, he envied his adamantine constitution; a braver man than he, kicking the unholy spectres of the shadows’ fringes into humiliated submission.
Later that night, everybody else had fallen asleep and he had stopped crying over his cowardice; that was when the night-things came. Staring at the shadows thrown across his bedroom ceiling, he did not notice them at first. To begin with, there was only a heightened awareness of the subtler night-sounds; there was the drip of taps and the creak of wood beams, but, aside from the common paranoia of the neurotic, nothing with an uncanny face. He rationally chalked it down to nerves; a dripping tap cannot harm an eleven-year-old boy. But it is from these sounds, from these drips and creaks and buzzes, that the night-things come. Their gelatinous multi-torsos writhe and squirm out from inter-dimensional spaces; spaces that our minds manifest between the innocuous happenings of the witching hour and the dark thoughts that we attribute to them. By the time Timmy had gathered that something was amiss, they were upon him. Timmy tried to cover himself with his blanket. They ripped it off of him. With their talons and their tentacled snouts they smothered and sliced, filling up his aesophogus with their lumpy bile, to clog his screams. His eyes, wide and bloodshot and afraid, the only things left to scream for him, were soon forced shut by slippery hands, and he never saw his bedroom ceiling again.
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