Peaks and Valleys

Here I am, at the low point on the roller coaster of depression and anxiety. By that, I don’t mean a calm and soothing moment of relief, but a frazzled, doom obsessed, sleep-for-a-year valley. As usual, I seek out horror to provide me with that old faithful burst of sensation, the safest way to feel when all you want is to remain numb. Horror soothes, it helps to disconnect, and provides that needed escape that we are so often seeking.

All this is to say: my horror viewing has not ceased. What has slowed to a crawl is my analytic passion. Well, maybe not the passion, perhaps just my ability to focus. I’ve been over here intermittently typing away my perception of Julia Ducornau’s Titane, chipping away and somehow barely even making a dent in a gargantuan synopsis. I have FEELINGS about that film, for better or worse, but I simply cannot streamline my mind to produce a cohesive piece.

I feel like I have the wherewithal to pore over horror in a conversational way, but these old bones are just so tired. I find I’m feeling most gratified, lately, by horror docs. Bite-sized bits of horror and it’s impacts and inspirations are serving up the dosage I need. Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched (Kier-La Janisse ) was an absolute joy to experience. It’s a long haul, and I could have watched it for two more hours. What an absolutely comprehensive collection of one of my favorite genres!

I’ve allowed myself to mentally check out and absorb tiny morsels of 80s horror through the In Search of Darkness docs (David A. Weiner). It’s, essentially, a warm horror bath for the soul.

Some of the films I’ve endeavored to watch recently include The Last Thing Mary Saw (Edouardo Vitaletti), The Scary of Sixty-First (Dasha Nekrasova), Antlers (Scott Cooper), and Scream 4 (Wes Craven, of COURSE).

My thoughts? Slow, Gross, exclusionary and delightful, respectively. Mary, I found so subtle and quiet that it felt like being slowly pulled into a pit of quicksand and being fully lost to time. I’m here for a period piece, and queer horror? Come on! Perfection. But Mary nearly put me to sleep. Then again, I AM depressed, so perhaps I’m just looking for excuses to nap.

The Scary of Sixty First is a film I won’t soon forget but will never again experience. Sparsely produced, it emulates the style of exploitation films of the 70s, and, in truth, it does not shy away from exploitation. In fact, it builds it’s plot around it. Quite frankly, I’m more inclined to become squeamish about sexual exploitation than extreme gore, and this film about drowned me in it. Unsettling, grimy and downright gross at times, Scary was decidedly NOT for me.

Now, Antlers felt like a traditional big budget horror film with high production values and recognizable faces. While the bones of Antlers compelled me, and while I felt the film wanted to talk about intergenerational trauma as it pertains to drug use and poverty, it felt like a film that ran with indigenous folklore without indigenous voices. Yes, there is one notable indigenous character who acts as a magical fount of knowledge, only so far as he nudges the plot along by explaining the monster briefly. That being said, it felt like a film that really suffered from the loudest voices being non-indigenous. And for a film that’s exploring trauma passed on to children, what a glaring omission when we consider the traumatic legacy of residential schools.

Moving on to Scream 4. Somehow, I had gone this long without ever having seen this return to Sidney and the Woodsboro crew. In honor of the release of Scream 5/2022, it was a requirement (….I haven’t seen the newest one, mind you.) Well installment number 4 is just a gosh darn delight, allowing us to tag along with a new high school crowd full of really enjoyable characters. I know, I know, I’m the only one who missed out on Scream 4, but what a wonderful highlight of my recent watching.

One more honorable mention in my recent horror consumption: Scared Sacred: Idolatry, Religion and Worship in the Horror Film from House of Leaves publishing. I received a copy of this book for Christmas and joyously pored over essays on The Conjuring, Martyrs, Hellraiser, The Amityville Horror and a plethora of religious themed horror from writers such as Alex West, Andrea Subisatti, Rebecca Booth and Amanda Reyes. I am fascinated by the horror of religion, and this book scratched an itch for me. Lots of great essays!

Anywho, thanks for taking a second to read what I’ve been up to, and please, let me know what you’ve been watching, reading and listening to. I have high hopes of creating some more in depth analyses of the horror films that really stick with me, but I just do not have the capacity now. But in the interest of keeping that hope alive, must post!

Take care, creeps.

P.s. One line review of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022:

This film felt like riding a bus on a Universal Studios lot, driving past the Psycho House and having Norman Bates chase you away as the crowd giggles awkwardly at our own absurdity; boring, displaced and cardboard.

 

Scenes from a Pandemic

TW: discussion of COVID 19 Pandemic, 9/11

A frazzled, anxious mother pushes a grocery cart. It is empty, save for the car seat holding her sleeping infant. Silently, she wills the child to remain asleep as she navigates the aisles of the store under flickering fluorescent lights. She is desperate to collect her things and retreat from the store swiftly. Things have been strange lately, out here in the world. Her eyes connect with the coveted item she’s been seeking. Baby formula. Funds have been meager recently and food has been harder to secure, but this will make all the difference. With this formula, she can quell her tiny child’s cries, filling their stomach. Stopping the cart, she crouches down to the bottom shelf. She reaches her hand out and stops in midair.

She breathes in quickly, sharply, lowering herself to her knees and extending her fingers to touch the formula.

On the shelf, in place of the canister, a piece of paper is taped. On the paper is the printed image of the formula.

All of the surrounding shelves are similarly covered in mere printed pages of the products they were meant to hold. There is nothing here.

The baby begins to murmur in her seat, a hungry cry barely below the surface.

Societal turmoil and tragedy have always been reflected in film. The woes of tumultuous times seep deeply into the stories we tell and into horror in particular. Analysts have remarked on echos of WW1 in films like Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. There exists a heavy focus on good versus evil and an examination of madness, often seen as a response to the ravages of the Great War. Subsequent wars, for instance, the Vietnam War, loom heavy over films of the 70s and early 80s. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one such film, touching on the political environment in America and often dissected as an allegory of the war itself. Films of the 2000s hold shadows of 9/11. Cloverfield (2008) is infused with the frenzy and panic of the attack on the Twin Towers. War of the Worlds (2005) features much of the same mass alarm, even including a chilling nod to 9/11 with a wall of missing posters. A film does not have to explicitly feature the source of the fear to tap into it’s roots.

Globally, the last two years of the COVID 19 pandemic have been incredibly difficult . Millions of lives were lost, families broken, health and home destroyed. There is horror in this time; prevalent, blatant horror. Contagion, infection, physical betrayal of the body, the death of a loved one. Less obvious, maybe, but still utterly chilling are the conspiracy theorists, the radicalization, the disloyalty, once stable relationships crumbling . These are heavy themes that are likely to appear in the film world more and more as creatives seek to process this bizarre tableau of life.

What I’m pondering though, just now, is what small nods to this nightmare will trigger a chill and a shudder in future horror. The little moments that instigate a recognition in us, a sense of…..oh, I was THERE. War of the Worlds (2005) is by no means high on my list of quality horror media, but, as someone who can recall the events of September 11, 2001, I can remember the way I felt in the theatre, seeing the wall of missing posters in WotW. My mind flashed back to news footage of desperate family members, clinging to hope that their loved ones may merely be displaced somewhere, under all the tragedy. The moment stuck with me, and pulled me back into the mindset of 2001.

There are tiny horror stories in the early days of the pandemic.

A frazzled couple carries on day to day as an apocalyptic event looms. They go to work, they buy groceries, they come home and tread these same paths over and over with no other choice. Each evening, when they return to the safe haven of home, their dinner is no longer cherished around a cozy kitchen table. No, not anymore. Now their trembling plates are perched upon jostling knees as they crowd around a laptop screen, watching the daily news pressers. Each day, a wealth of numbers evolves and grows, a running tally of anxiety that they stir into their sustenance like salt.

What moments peppered your days in the earliest unfolding of this pandemic? I recall driving the streets of my rural town, kids buckled in while all services were closed. Hearts were taped to windows, a meager recognition of fear and uncertainty that we could connect to.

Bare grocery shelves. Banana bread and idle time. Bigger fears, like streets lined with refrigeration trucks, ventilators, induced comas. Job loss. Life loss.

A dark night on a residential street. A teenage boy walks home, streetlights scarce. The windows of the rows and rows of identical houses are shuttered and curtained, as though the residents fear the outside getting in. He feels a chill along his back, pulling his sweater tighter. His footsteps echo on the pavement. No cars drive by. He is alone.

He doesn’t feel alone.

Picking up his pace, all he wants is to step inside his house where he knows what to expect; safety lies there. A home base, a shield against this empty unknown, somehow full of shadows and demons. He rounds the last corner and stops in his tracks. On the driveway of his home he sees a figure. NO, not just one, a group of figures. A circle of people stand on the pavement, a small fire burning directly in the middle of them. They are perfectly equally distant from one another, about 6 feet between each. Their heads are bowed towards one another. Why are they standing there like that, spread out in this strange loop? Is this… some kind of ritual? He cannot hear a word. He draws in a gasping breath. Every head lifts up, turning towards him. Gaunt and emotionless faces in the flickering of the firelight.

His mind offers only one response: Run.

I’m fascinated by the threads of this pandemic that connect us globally. There are small experiences that resonate worldwide: the sudden sense of collapse and fear, the unknown, the evolving definition and perception of the term “lockdown”.

Tiger King.

Sourdough starter.

Blue latex gloves.

Clanging of pots and pans, a chorus of support. But imagine it a warning, an omen at the changing of the guard.

Surgical masks tangled in trees, waving like spectres in a gusting wind.

Arrows on the floors of grocery stores. Be sure to follow the correct path. Do not dare to tread another. There be monsters.

The sensation of looming strangers, coming too close. Invading space. Stepping backward as they step forward, a silent standoff. The sound of rapid, panicked breathing inside a paper mask.

We’re deep in this societal trauma now. Perhaps it’s wishful thinking or even denial for me to project these ideas out into the world, into a world where we can look BACK on this time. Horror has always been there, to scoop out the meat of world events and cultural shifts. Horror has been a mirror and will be a mirror, even when this moment, this day, this month, this year are far behind us. Who knows what that world will look like, but, if history tells us anything about patterns in film, the horror genre will be waiting to reflect us right back to ourselves.

Tell me in the comments what fragments of the pandemic times will pull you back like a taut rope, into the past, into an abyss of simmering memory. The type of gentle, pandemic symbolism that, one day, in a far and distant and hopeful (and hopefully not fictional) future, will trigger the hairs on the back of your neck to stand. What will invoke a gentle ringing in your ear: I was THERE?

NOTE: I am a lucky soul to live here, in rural Canada, where I’ve been able to homeschool my children and work from home. I’ve lost no one dear to me and I do not, for a second, think that my anxieties about unmasked faces and people entering my six foot bubble could possibly compare to the devastating loss many have endured. Care for others, support the vulnerable and immune-compromised, press your lawmakers to support the houseless, the disabled, the racialized communities most at risk in this pandemic. Wear a mask and get vaccinated.

 

Ramblings

Well, I’ve been swept up in over-analyzing my thoughts and horror dissections, and it has left me with a great number of good ideas that I just can’t seem to flesh out. In lieu of a well researched theory on gender constructs or puritan values, I’m opting to keep my hand in posting by letting loose a bit of a stream of consciousness covering some of the films I encountered this fall.

Let’s start with Relic (2020, dir. Natalie Erika James, available on Netflix)

Relic follows a mother and daughter who arrive to aid the family matriarch, whose declining health has included dementia like symptoms, and whom has been mysteriously absent for a short time. Mom/Grandma returns home, but the family continues to unravel in the wake of strange occurrences.

Wow. Relic is stunning. It’s a beautiful and sad fable that takes Carol Clover’s concept of the ‘awful place’ and internalizes it in such a tactile way that my breath caught in my throat and stayed there until the very finale. A quiet, slowly building nightmare, Relic capitalizes on the the ‘hag-sploitation’ sub-genre with far more tenderness than, let’s say, Shymalan’s The Visit, which also touches on Alzheimer’s .

Next up, Caveat (2020, dir. Damian McCarthy, available on Shudder)

Caveat is a strange, foggy nightmare of a film that feels like an abstract universe from the moment it begins. Following some unnamed brain injury resulting in amnesia, Isaac is offered a job as a caregiver for the sister of a friend (Ben, whom he cannot remember since his accident.). when Isaac arrives, he is throw into a strange scenario in which he is expected to supervise the aforementioned sister (Olga) while he roams the house in chains which are to prevent him from entering Olga’s room. Mystery, treachery and what feels like a spin on a gothic ghost story ensues.

Caveat is the type of film that requires it’s viewers to suspend disbelief in the name of story. What kind of person would allow themselves to be strapped into a dilapidated house with no lifeline? Don’t worry about it, but soak in that uneasy weirdness as the story tumbles on. A dense Dickensian fairy tale, Caveat has it all: dead relatives, betrayal, a spooky, desolate arm chair in a room that even Ebeneezer Scrooge would think is sparse. I found this film delicious! There are some themes and symbols that deserve more dissection and research (the imagery of hear no/see no/ speak no evil, the prevalence of circles, holes, portals.) I would love to re-watch this one with a fine toothed comb.

Another fun mention, and a film that I had somehow managed to escape until this year: The Fly (1986, dir. David Cronenberg)

Now, I know everyone in horror land has encountered The Fly. It’s a sci-fi, body horror classic! I, however, don’t count body horror amongst my most favorite of sub-genres. I cringe and squeal and cringe again, and feel a subtle nausea for a solid day after viewing. It felt like time to take the plunge, and what a ride! No one needs me to sell this film. It’s an absolute classic with a lot more heart than I might have expected from a film about a human being spliced with an insect.

A few other notable films I’ve checked out recently are Freak (2020; a blast), Lake Mungo (2008, truly a little lackluster, possibly due to the resonant hype I’m always encountering about it; I had high expectations), The Nightingale (2018; absolutely REMARKABLE), and A Quiet Place 2 (2020; fun, just a fun time, but never without a running inner monologue of ‘why would anyone do this??’).

I did get the chance to enjoy some horror theory reading, and I do have some concepts I’d like to explore in the future, but I just can’t commit to the full writing mode at this time. Just know that I’m still here and still poring over horror analysis and dissecting cultural analysis concepts with the goal in mind to blend it together in a cohesive way. I have an idea for some work about children’s artwork in horror, but I’m still in the early stages of what I want to do with it.

Thanks for checking in, all, and feel free to jump into the comments to chat with me about what you’ve been watching or reading lately.

 

Among Mad People

You’re not exactly sure how you got here. It seems so long ago that you arrived and it felt like falling. So much about the space you’re in now feels just like the life you’re used to, but some parts are just…..unstable.

Like you. You don’t know where you fit in here. Who do you trust? What is expected of you here? Should you be planning an escape, or is this all there is. You can’t predict what will become of you. In fact, you can no longer trust yourself. Your own presence, your own consciousness is unreliable. It lies.

Even your body is a traitor.

Everywhere you look slivers of menace are looming, disguised as innocuous madness. Nonsense. There’s an impending threat that you can’t quite name, but it lingers behind every step. You know that it’s waiting for you at the end of this path, but, there’s only one path. It reeks of mania and violence, rage and terror and while it’s not exactly coming for you, you have no choice but to head straight towards it. You know it’s the only way forward, even as a bellow ripples through the sky: “Off with your head!”

In 1865, Charles Lutwidge Dawson a.k.a Lewis Carroll introduced the world to a tale of nonsense that he had written on a whim; an act to amuse and placate a group of children on a summer’s day. The world soon swallowed up Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and it’s companion tale Alice’s Adventures Through the Looking Glass. Much like the older sibling/ babysitter/ latchkey friend who introduced each of us to The Exorcist/ It/ Child’s Play much too young, Carroll had no idea what he was unleashing.

Alice always spoke to me. I adored the whimsy and nonsense, yes, but the hook deep at my core was the fear. Here was the tale of a child unwittingly whisked away into an other-world where madness reigns, riddles go unanswered and decapitation is the ultimate threat. Add to this baffling realm that there are no safe adults; there are few helpful or caring characters, and each of them is too swept up in impossibility to be reliable. This combination creates a terrifying tale of abandonment.

There was something so delicious about the fear and dread that followed Alice through wonderland. I was hooked and have been seeking that looking glass shudder ever since.

Alice in Wonderland is saturated in themes that crop up in horror to this day. One of these that is essential to the undertone of dread in Alice is the presence of a barrier between two world. In horror films, characters are often met with a crossroads, a doorway, an unnerving entrance. For Alice, this is simply a curious moment and a rabbit hole (later, a footstep into the realm of the looking glass). It’s merely a childish instinct or sudden impulse that separates our heroine from a wilderness of fear and madness.

This concept is visible in horror often in a physical way, such as the entrance arch to the Harga community in Midsommar (2019, Ari Aster), the ominous gates of Jurassic Park (1993, Steven Spielberg), or the entrance to the forest in The Blair Witch Project (1999, Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez). Once you step beyond the threshold, nothing is the same and only a few steps separate stability from madness. In BWP the rabbit hole is represented not only by the forest, the realm of a folk-horror ‘Red Queen’, but by the research of the crew as they prepare for their journey; they’ve been spirited away before they’ve even begun.

In Jordan Peele’s Us (2019), we can delight in an abundance of Alice nods. Certainly, the presence of mirrors represents the thin veil between main character Adelaide and her dual existence; above and below. Adelaide is drawn towards her doppelganger within the fun house by her own white rabbit, the pull of an intangible tether that holds tight to her curiosity and draws her near. In this film, Peele gives us an Alice who has seen the other side of the glass and who finds wonderland breaking through the reflection to come for her. To dig a little deeper into Alice imagery, we might entertain the idea of the character of Kitty (Elizabeth Moss) and her alter, Dahlia as a representation of The Cheshire cat, complete with unearthly smile. We might also take a glance at Kitty’s twin girls, Becca and Lindsay (Cali and Noelle Sheldon) as menacing, tumbling Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.

Another insidious theme that lies at the root of what makes Alice in Wonderland a horror tale is the betrayal of the body/self. This concept is represented by the unpredictable bodily changes that our heroine endures. She is unable to trust her physical form. She grows and shrinks in extremes and is, thus, completely at the mercy of her environment. Not only does Alice’s body betray her, but her role in this new world is compromised as well. She has left the topside world, where girls are meant to recite lessons, read quietly and where her demure sister is the ideal role model. Once underground, Alice doesn’t have faith in herself. Her recitations fail her; language is a constantly shifting idea and she begins to question her very identity. “I’m afraid I can’t explain myself, sir. Because I am not myself, you see?” Alice offers the inimitable Caterpillar. Adding insult to injury, of course, our pretentious metamorphic philosopher does not, in fact, see.

These unsettling circumstances are reflected in a wealth of horror films. Body horror films are built upon the fear of the body and it’s instability (The Fly, 1986; Teeth, 2007; Black Swan, 2010), but a good number of films rely upon the ominous tensions that arise when we cannot trust how we fit into the world.

For instance, Stephen King uses fairy-tale references throughout his written works. In the novel, The Shining, references are made to ‘the rabbit hole’, and Jack Torrance wields a croquet mallet while menacing his young son. The Shining (1980), even through Stanley Kubrick’s lens, is similarly tied to Alice.

In this film, Danny is our Alice. He crosses a barrier, traveling down the long highway to the Overlook, a place, much like wonderland, in which he is held hostage by madness. Here, the adults cannot be blindly trusted. One could argue that Jack has always been an unsafe adult, but at the Overlook, his evil queen emerges fully and threatens decapitation at every turn.

Danny cannot trust his own role within the family unit.. His very presence seems to trigger his father’s madness, and his mother, while always attempting to maintain stability, is clearly wound tightly and ready to burst. Danny, through his ‘shine’, is tied to Tony (‘the little boy who lives in my mouth’). Tony shows Danny terrifying scenes of death and decay. Danny tries to convince himself that these visions are not real, but he no longer has trust in his own beliefs. Each eerie vision seems an echo of Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat, March Hare and Mad Hatter; frighteningly real, but unequivocally mad.

Danny reveals what we, as viewers, might experience if thrust into this unnerving looking glass world. He inevitably shuts down, becoming catatonic. He cannot continue on the journey, as Alice does. He holds no autonomy, now, and his body betrays him even further, as he resorts back into an infantile phase. Danny is lucky to have Wendy, his timid but brave White Queen to carry him back to the edge of this nightmare world. Without her, he would certainly become another installment in the never-ending tea party. After all, the great and enticing fear of the Alice tales is that we might be trapped in the madness forever.

The reality is that unreality is horror. It feels like a dream from which you can’t escape. The world doesn’t compute, and the barrier between safety and fear is merely the rushing weight of sleep. So little separates us from safety and danger, after all, and nothing seems more frightening than meeting some grinning specter that feels at home in the madness. I have always been following Alice, following the white rabbit, down into the depths of wonderland. I was never there for the tea and cookies, instead reveling in the grim and strange moments; unanswerable riddles, tidal waves of tears, weeping babies that turn into pigs. I’m still following each new Alice onto a perilous path, and trying to find that old familiar fear. Let’s be curiouser and curiouser, and embrace the lunacy. After all, isn’t it always just a dream?

 

Corndogs and Leather Pants

https://www.facebook.com/groups/117357748929031/permalink/801107767220689/

Medusa; Freud’s embodiment of the vagina-dentata.

The Slumber Party Massacre franchise has amused and baffled horror fans for decades. Much has been written about it’s role as a piece of feminist cinema, thanks to it’s female driven writing and direction (Rita Mae Brown and Amy Holden Jones, respective writer and director of SPM 1; Deborah Brock writer and director of SPM 2 and 3). Canon tells of Roger Corman’s insistence on the boobs and the babes, but we certainly feel the impact of the female gaze and the smirk of irony behind the camera. Slumber Party Massacre is rife with schlock and splatter and absolute delightful nonsense. But, I’m not here to talk to you about Slumber Party Massacre.

I’m here to talk to you about the driller-killer musical packed with smoke, leather, pastels and corndogs, Slumber Party Massacre 2 (1987). Directed by Deborah Brock , SPM2 follows Courtney (Crystal Bernard), sister of Valerie, a survivor of the murderous events of the original film. In the first film, we see the character of Courtney portrayed as a salty and sexualized adolescent, perusing her sister’s Playgirl magazines and ‘beating off boys since the 5th grade.’ While the sequel does reference elements of the first film (mentions of Valerie, the return of drill as murder weapon, the dismembered hand of the original killer), it largely survives independently.

Courtney and the members of her girl band , Sheila (Juliette Cummins), Sally (Heidi Kizak Haddad), and Amy (Kimberly MacArthur) head away on a weekend to Sheila’s parents condo, where pastels and plush carpet abound, and a trash compactor is just as amazing as an in-ground swimming pool. The condo resides in an unfinished neighborhood where the eerie skeletons of empty abodes loom on the horizon. A crew of boys arrives (the nice one, the sleazy one and the dream boat. Their names don’t matter. Trust me.)

Corn dogs, champagne and inexplicable topless pillow fighting ensues, but the real focus of the film is Courtney’s overwhelming anxiety about penetrative sex which manifests as visions of leather clad disco demon Driller-Killer, who’s absurdly phallic weapon is a massive drill mounted on the end of an abrasive red electric guitar.

Courtney dreams of her sister Valerie, who is locked away in a mental health facility, presumably incapacitated by the trauma she faced in the original plot. Valerie warns Courtney not to ‘go all the way’. When Courtney is faced with moments of sexual arousal or intrigue, a lascivious music man appears, dressed in leather and fringe, and wreaks havoc upon her psyche. Courtney begins to experience events that feel more and more real to her, but that the other slumber party members can’t or don’t see.

A hand appears in her burger; an uncooked chicken lunges from the fridge to attack her; her bathtub runneth over with torrents of blood; a friend’s zit consumes her face and explodes. Courtney is terrified and confused. She is alone in her fear, none of the other guests are able to see or hear the goings on. One needn’t view more than the film’s poster art to be convinced that the true terror of the Slumber Party Massacre 2 isn’t the maniacal rock-n-roll goblin with a drill guitar (what?!) so much as it is sex. That’s been understood from moment one. As Jude Ellison Doyle writes in Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers (Melville House Publishing, 2019), “Slashers are the place where sex becomes death becomes sex, where a knife is never just a knife.” A rock-n-roll drill is never JUST a rock-n-roll drill.

But what on earth does a hand-burger have to do with intercourse?? Let’s dissect Courtney’s delusions leading up to the manifestation of the Driller Killer and his musical massacre.

Each of these events has a psychological tie to fears of hetero-normative penetrative sex. These hallucinations are reflective of long held anxieties about women, sex and the patriarchal structure.

Courtney enters the kitchen and opens the fridge. From behind the door, a raw roasting chicken accosts her. The pallid, squirming chicken resembles a mewling infant. It launches itself from the refrigerator and clings to her abdomen, calling to mind a growing womb. It spews forth a dark fluid, triggering Courtney to claw at the child-chicken and force the abjection fetus away from herself. Sex brings with it the threat of pregnancy and the threat of unwanted maternity. On motherhood and the changing of the pregnant body, Doyle writes, “The body of a pregnant woman- slimy, swollen, bleeding, leaking, teeming with other life- is the core repulsive image in patriarchal mythology.” Not only is pregnancy an abject concept in terms of the physical effects, but the act of motherhood, or mothering as a role is frightening in it’s removal of the self. Doyle states, “Women are taught not just that mothers are not really people, but that when they become mothers, they will not want to be people anymore. A good mother, a true mother, is someone who gives up all claim on her previous roles or interests, who lives entirely for and through her children, and who does so with a smile on her face.” For Courtney, this means no more road trips, no more topless pillow fights and most devestatingly, no more promising music career.

Courtney’s bloody bath seemed to suggest a horrific menstrual flow, as it spills out of tub and seems to chase Courtney, pouring out between her ankles at the bottom of the bathroom door. That being said, there is a connection to sexual bleeding. As Doyle writes in Dead Blondes in regards to Reagan Macneil in The Exorcist, the blood flow ‘could be menstrual but it could be another equally portentous blood flow: a broken hymen.” In Slumber Party Massacre 2, the thought of penetrative sex is tied to a literal destructive phallic weapon for Courtney, but the idea of pain at the “loss of virginity ” is a commonly spoken of concept. Courtney fears that “going all the way” will wound her, unleashing a tidal wave of pain and gore.

Not only does this fear of sex tie into a physical anxiety, but the concept of loss of virginity as a moral failing is rampant throughout history. On virginity in the slasher, Doyle writes, “losing your virginity is equivalent to losing your life…because penetration is seen as a means of conquering and humiliating the penetrated, to open your body to another person is to bleed, suffer, and die.” Courtney fears the vulnerability of opening herself to another, for the act leaves her open to literal slaughter.

Immediately following this bath incident, Courtney calls her friend Sally to investigate. Sally brushes it off, but as she talks with Courtney about her acne, we see a pimple on her face begin to inflate and grow more and more grotesque, inflaming her face, neck and shoulder until her head eventually explodes. Sally’s pimple explosion calls to mind disease and decay, suggesting a fear of sexually transmitted infections, another abject concept that Courtney cannot face, even as it bubbles to the surface. She fears the ravages of disease that come with horror stories of sex and the promotion of abstinence. Following this, Courtney begins to fear that Sally, who has seemed to disappear from the house, is being crushed in the trash compacter. This highlights a fear that a sexual partner will become abandoned, trashed, even destroyed by the other partner, or by the act itself. ‘Going all the way,’ becomes an event that eradicates the worth of the female self in a patriarchal society, which, make no mistake, is the world of Slumber Party Massacre 2.

The hand-burger may be a consumption fear, and I think there’s a vagina-dentata angle. Courtney may not consciously view her own genitals as violent and dangerous, but its undeniable that the mouth-vagina connection exists in psychoanalysis as it pertains to castration and dismemberment. Barbara Creed, in her book The Monstrous Feminine (Routeledge, 1993) states, ” Castration can refer to symbolic castration (loss of the mother’s body, breast, loss of identity) which is experienced by both female and male, or it can refer to genital castration.” Freud speaks of the castrated mother and the vagina-dentata. It’s reasonable to connect this sexual mouth with the idea of cannibalism, a monstrous impulse to consume another. Perhaps Courtney’s cannibalism in consuming the hand-burger symbolizes her fear of emotional or identity castration. She, as the source of the dangerous ‘trap’ threatens dismemberment of the male appendage, but it’s her own autonomy and identity at risk of castration through the act of sex.

A link exists between cannibalism and motherhood as well. Creed refers to the archetype of the ‘oral sadistic mother’ stating, “This is the mother feared by both female and male infants who imagine that, just as they derive pleasure from feeding/eating at the breast, the mother might in turn desire to feed on them.” In this scenario, Courtney again becomes the mother. She is the monstrous matriarch, ingesting the product of her sexual act.

Before long, Driller Killer tears through the hymen (ahem, excuse me, FABRIC) of Courtney’s dreams and manifests in reality. He’s on the loose and wielding his musical phallus as he takes the crew out in efficient fashion, leaving none alive but Courtney. The pre-realization of the Driller Killer is a lot more gripping than the odd music video of slashing that follows. One might find oneself feeling that it goes on forever (insert ((ha!)) sex joke here.).

We are then privy to a handful of ‘it was just a dream’ scenarios, ultimately ending with Courtney awakening in the same institution where her sister Valerie is seen. As Courtney screams wildly in her inexplicably triangular room, a massive drill pierces through the floor, effectively eviscerating yet another symbol of female genitalia, this mysterious, narrow wedge of a room, and with it, the fragile fragment of self that Courtney still retained.

*I’d just like to acknowledge that this writing reflects on hetero-normative and cis-gender ideas of virginity, sex, pregnancy and maternity. Not all women have a womb, and not all people with wombs are women.

 

For the Birds

post includes spoilers for Psycho (1960), Hereditary (2018) and The Witch (2015)

“We ate the birds. We ate them. We wanted their songs to flow up through our throats and burst out of our mouths, and so we ate them. We wanted their feathers to bud from our flesh. We wanted their wings, we wanted to fly as they did, soar freely among the treetops and the clouds, and so we ate them” -Margaret Atwood

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Feathered creatures, swooping about unpredictably, singing bright songs, low and mournful songs, croaking raw and vicious laughter songs. Birds have held a deep fascination for many throughout history, in both their natural habits and behaviors and in the process of divining meaning, observing symbols and inspiring lore. Birds sail to the heavens, ethereal beings that dare to kiss the highest regions. Contrary to this angelic and divine representation, birds can also be predatory, vicious and dangerous. They can signify darkness and evil; scavenger birds feast upon death, circling above to herald the very expiration of their next meal.

Many different species of birds appear in literature, dating back centuries. Some notable avifauna are Poe’s titular Raven, an ominous presence above the bleak chamber door. The legend of the harpies, monstrous women with feathered bodies. Swans appear in a wealth of fairy tales, evoking grace and beauty. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s heroine in The Yellow Wallpaper is infantalized and referred to as ‘little goose’, a silly, childish being, unworthy of consideration. The witch Baba Yaga lives in a wicked home upon chicken legs.

In her inimitable text, The Monstrous Feminine (Routledge, 1993), Barbara Creed discusses the connection between birds and the archetype of the castrating mother. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) Mother Bates is cast as a birdlike figure, insofar as she is literally stuffed and sewn, like Norman’s taxidermied birds. Creed writes, “The birds in his parlour are birds of prey; they hover menacingly overhead as if about to pounce on their victims. Norman has frozen them in time at the very moment when they are poised, motionless, just prior to the kill. This form of passivity is not associated with lack of will as one might expect, but with the opposite, with the power and aggressivity of a killer ready to strike. “

Horror fans are keenly aware of Hitchcock’s other classic film, The Birds (1963), which cast the skies in a cloud of menace, agitating ornithophobia worldwide. Of this film, Creed writes, “the birds may also be understood as fetish-objects, not of the castrated/phallic, but of the castrating mother.” Many films have chosen birds as devious villains or mindless pecking swarms of violence. But what of the less pervasive bird imagery that pervades the genre even still? This post will explore some of the bird symbology that appears within horror, and in particular, how it connects to women.

Let’s talk about bird imagery in Ari Aster’s 2018 Hereditary. The film centers around a family in the wake of a maternal grandmother’s death, as they are plagued not only by grief, but by the looming presence of a nefarious pagan cult. Adolescent daughter, Charlie (Milly Shapiro) is an outcast, an odd duck , if you will (groan.) In the film, we see her in class with her peers as a pigeon strikes the window with force. The students are surprised and exclaim. Charlie doesn’t react. We next watch her decapitate the bird with a pair of scissors; her face stoic and without emotion. She later creates a sort of doll-totem out of the bird’s head, a macabre companion or idol. This avian decapitation can be seen to foreshadow Charlie’s own impending decapitation, as well as that of her mother and grandmother. In the dichotomy of the cult, the male child is the prized child, a suitable host for the demon Paimon. Thus, the female family members, while a necessary factor, are ultimately dispensable. Likewise, pigeons themselves, while common and widely known , are often seen as unclean, diseased, synonymous with refuse. The pigeon represents an unpleasant thing, one which we may have to coexist with but prefer to distance from.

Pigeons are also known for their homing and navigational abilities. This behavior is mirrored in the scene in which a decapitated Annie (Toni Collette) literally flies towards the nest/roost/perch of the family’s tree house. Her mother’s form also manages to navigate it’s way ‘back home’ from the cemetery, homing in on the nexus of the cult.

Charlie herself participates in a tick-like gesture of emitting a clicking sound from her mouth. Her pops and clicks are used to great eerie effect throughout the film, triggering an unsettling feeling. At one point, we hear her trademark click after her death, implying that her being is somehow passively watching the family. Common Ravens are known to make clicking or knocking calls, which may be used to assist in location. Charlie, perhaps, calls the cult members to towards the crumbling family with her unearthly clicks.

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The next horror bird imagery I’ll explore is within Robert Egger’s 2015 film The Witch. Much has been analyzed and written about this horror drama. The film tells the mournful tale of an ultra orthodox Puritan family besieged by the threat of witchcraft. Near the film’s opening, lead character Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) cares for the family’s infant child as her parents work the field. Under her watch, the child somehow vanishes, triggering a series of events that lead to the family’s suspicions that Thomasin is a witch.

The family’s matriarch, Katherine (Kate Dickie) is understandably devastated after the loss of her child. We witness her rage, her fear and her sorrow. Katherine experiences a dream/hallucination in which her infant is returned to her. She nurses the precious baby at her breast, when suddenly it is revealed that Katherine is, in effect, nursing a crow or raven. The bird pecks and tears viscerally at her chest as she laughs, unhinged and broken.

Ravens and crows, while different species, both fall in the corvidae family. They share similar lore, much of it tied to death. German mythology indicates that ravens are damned souls, while Swedish legend suggests them to be spirits of the dead (The Hidden Meaning of Birds, Arin Murphy-Hiscock, Simon & Schuster, 2019). They’ve been associated with mimicry, trickery and an uncanny intelligence. It is said that the crow is tied to the underworld, a harbinger of death, possibly due to it’s habit of surviving on carrion, and it’s place in the natural cycle of decomposition.

Perhaps, the presence of the child-crow in The Witch indicates that Katherine is no longer any more than carrion. She is the living dead, emotionally broken and beyond rescue. The bird feasts upon her, like the carcass of an animal, even as she laughs and breathes, because she is fully fractured.

Crows and ravens are also tied to the occult and witchcraft, often portrayed as a witch’s familiar. As creatures with high intelligence, the birds would serve as useful partners for witches. In her work The Witch in History: Early, Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations (Routledge, 1996) Diane Purkiss writes of the witch as ” a perverse kind of mother”, describing the figure as possessing a witch’s teat or witchmark from which a familiar may nurse. She notes “Early modern medical writers believed that breastmilk was the blood which has been nourishing the foetus in the womb, drawn up to the breasts via a large vein and purified into milk. ”

The fear of the female body is pervasive throughout history, and we see it recognized in The Witch in the context of Thomasin’s body. As a maturing teenage female, her form becomes taboo. When we look at Katherine, we can also see the abject female form. Purkiss writes, ” The breast was a redeemed part of the open, dirty body of the childbearing woman, a part where her polluted blood was purified by maternal love,”.

There exists a fear and disgust associated with the female body and the womb. Katherine and the crow call to mind the prevalence of such fears in Puritan times that a witch may have a companion, or familiar, that she nurses. The witch, being impure, does not give milk (or milk-blood) but produces only unclean, evil blood. Purkiss states, “Her body is all poison. Her refusal or inability to purify blood into milk is also connected with her lack of milk.” She goes on to explain that the witch has commonly been deemed guilty of drying up cow’s or goat’s milk, even turning it to blood. This is acknowledged in The Witch when we see the goat produce blood in place of milk.

Does Katharine’s crow tell us that the family matriarch who holds such hatred and contempt and possesses an abject body is, herself, a witch or witch-like? Perhaps the symbol of the bird is that all women are witches, and if not, they are deeply at risk of irreversible corruption, or that woman is dangerous, capable of tearing away at a solid foundation with a series of violent pecks.

The woman-bird connection exists in a wealth of horror media (Freaks (1932), Black Swan (2010), Bird Box (2018) ….possible future explorations!) . Like the bird, woman has value in her beauty, in her aesthetic, she is a prize to be displayed. If her song can be harnessed her worth can be protected, perhaps her form will be uncorrupted. She will be placed delicately within a cage where she becomes a décor piece, a gentle song her only offering.

Conversely, perhaps woman is a calculating predator. She is unpredictable and looming, perched upon high like Poe’s raven, reminding us that we are all only soon-to-be-carrion. Her proverbial talons are fast and fierce, and as quick as she mocks and clicks, she may call the witch to the kill. The bird-woman is free to gleefully feast upon the remains.

 

The Sequel

Is the sequel ever better than the original?

https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/675204144/samara-print-the-ring-ringu?ga_search_query=the%2Bring&ref=shop_items_search_2&frs=1

It has been SIX years since I’ve used this blog. My oldest child is 7, so that may be an indication of where my time has gone. Some of my old ‘reviews’ sting to read now; I’ve changed a lot since yee old blog days and some of my insights and hot takes and hilarious snark are painfully outdated and decidedly unfunny. But, what is unquestionable about humans is that they’re much more interesting when they learn and grow, and I am thankful to count myself in the group that has evolved a good deal since 2015. What remains the same? My eternal tether to horror films. I still find joy, relief, release and comfort in the dark and stormy nights and the dusty corners of gothic mansions.

I’ve spent the last years establishing my illustration and design business (@velvethanddesigns everywhere). I create artwork that entangles fear and beauty, and I have found myself a part of a fun little horror nook of the web. You can see some of my work on the cover of Horror Homeroom’s Misery issue here. I discovered podcasts (the joy!) which have helped scratch my horror analysis itch (some of my favorites are The Faculty of Horror, Good Mourning Nancy, Horror Homeroom and Evolution of Horror). I spent my children’s entire college fund on horror analysis reading (The Monstrous Feminine (Barbara Creed), Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers (Jude Ellison Doyle), The Dread of Difference, The 90’s Teen Horror Cycle (Alex West), Men, Women and Chainsaws (Carol Clover), and on and on it goes.) Needless to say, I’ve spent these last six years keeping busy, but still steeping in horror.

Is it possible to revive this Dark and Stormy franchise? Can I create a sequel, writing on and analyzing some of my favorite horror films with even a smattering of value? More importantly, can I commit to the process of showing up to create content? Who knows. Let’s take a chance on the sequel, shall we?

 

Hot Pursuit

DISCLAIMER: EVERYTHING FROM HERE ON BELOW IS AT MINIMUM 6 YEARS OLD AND OUT OF DATE! BUT….POSTERITY?

Horror is created with minimal effects, and suspense trumps all in David Robert Mitchell’s (writer/director) stylish film It Follows.(2014)

Oh sweet, sweet nostalgia

Oh sweet, sweet nostalgia

Right from the film’s opening sequence (a bewildered young girl flees from something invisible), It Follows has a retro vibe. It’s closed in suburb streets evoke Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street and a host of others. The eerie synth pop and heart pounding booms of music lend well to this vintage feel. In fact, the entire film is set in some alternate, unknown era with minimal technology and heavy floral patterns. This inexplicably dated timelessness works. It has the viewer feeling like something is familiar. ….but just a little off.

It Follows is the story of a curse, transmitted by sex, that leaves it’s victims with far worse than a course of antibiotics and an embarrassing itch. This curse unleashes ‘It’. It can take the form of any human. And it’s scary power? Walking purposefully towards you.

Doesn’t sound scary, I know, but within minutes after our heroine Jay (Maika Monroe) is infected, she is being pursued by It. It looks perfectly human, except for that dead eyed stare that penetrates your very soul. Can anyone relate to that feeling of wanting to lean away from the TV when the ghost/killer/demon approaches it?? Yeah, that’s this whole movie.

Jay learns from her (now ex) boyfriend that she must stay away, she must evade this thing, and she must pass it on. And that next victim must live and pay it forward, because it keeps coming back. If the next person dies, it comes for her again. Not so subtle subtext about thinking before you get busy, yes? The consequences could be dire, could be lurking, searching for you, waiting to end it all. Life changing repercussions, indeed.

Jay, with the help of a crew of fairly typical teens, manages to evade It over and over, all the while convincing the others that it is real. Did I mention that you can only see it if you are infected?? Enter the ‘everyone thinks I’m crazy’ subplot.

This film manages to create a very viable sense of doom and dread and, admittedly some pulse pounding scares. What makes it innovative is that it does this on the strength of tone and suspense alone. It doesn’t rely on cgi nor on gore and shock value. Though there is a scene in which It makes invisible (laughable) cgi contact with a victim, the moment serves more to convince Jays friends of its seriousness than the viewer. Somehow, right from its first shadowy stroll towards Jay, staring purposefully into her eyes, we are convinced. We know this isn’t something you want catching up with you, and we don’t need to figure out exactly why to turn and run.

That feeling of being followed, pursued, by something relentless (not to mention shape-shifting into some fairly disconcerting individuals ) is what drives this film. It cuts to the core of fear, it feels like a recurring nightmare and it is shockingly effective.

Monroe, as our lead actress, is adept, and the best of the bunch. Her counterparts tend to feel a little wooden and weak. Character development, for that matter is virtually non existent, and is something that could’ve been improved, but doesn’t detract significantly.

The set design is clever, and lends to that unsettling tone, as each room and home feels somehow frozen in an unidentifiable time. The film seems to be set in Detroit (though it’s not directly expressed) and the city’s abandoned streets and homes feel lonesome and menacing, hopeless and insidious. The setting feels almost like a character in itself, this bleak and unsafe land that surrounds the group. The kids discuss being taught the safe zones of the suburbs, the volatile sense of the city. It looms over them, offering no solace.

It Follows is a film that feels like the sort they just don’t make anymore. It scares, for real, with an unexplored monster, a slow and plodding thing that has you in its sights. And it follows.

The horror hating husband watched this one with me, and later expressed that we have too many windows in our house, thank you very much.

Life lessons (I’ve been slipping, I know)
1. I can’t say this enough, keep it in your pants!! This is the ultimate ‘never have sex’ horror-rule movie.
2. I don’t care how much you disrespect your mother, you wake that bitch up and you get her involved.
3. Never take running shoes for granted.
4. Know your exits.
5. Watch your back. Always watch your back.

No matter what, it follows.

 

Mommie Dearest

There are real monsters,  and then,  there are REAL monsters.

Jennifer Kent’s haunting and poignant The Babadook (2014) dresses up in  a cookie cutter costume. It sets up to be a boogeyman tale, spooks in the closet, a young boy terrified of monsters we cannot see. But in his world, living a broken life with his widowed mother (Essie Davis) clearly at the end of her rope, Samuel (Noah Wiseman ) has the ultimate villain to face.

Mom Amelia’s husband died in a car accident on the very day Sam was born.  Amelia struggles to make ends meet and keep life together amidst her obvious grief and depression. Sam is a troubled boy, prone to tantrums and outbursts,  serving to further alienate this family from others. The pair lose increasingly more sleep as Sam’s anxiety mounts, and he invades mom’s space and privacy endlessly.

Then a storybook appears as if from nowhere. A nightmare tome called The Babadook. Eerie monochromatic pictures illustrate a violent tale in which a looming figure seeps into your home, into your life, and into yourself. ‘You can’t get rid of the babadook’.

Sam freaks out, and his terror takes over the duos lives, isolating them even further.

But strange noises,  peculiar dreams, hallucinations of a haunting creature, clothed in black mount, and before long, the babadook is something that even Amelia can’t ignore.

The Babadook, though rife with metaphor, gives viewers a ‘real’ monster to fear, one looming in the shadows in menacing wait. The classic and valuable horror elements; gloomy tone,  suspense,  dark corners and heart pounding music. There IS a typical storyline here, but what makes it so unusual is the way in which fantasy and reality are entwined,  making you wonder was it ever a fantasy at all?

The real monsters? Grief and fear, anxiety and desperation.  A broken woman trying to raise a child while drowning in her own pain and inevitably dragging her son down with her.  A mother out of options, struggling to maintain some semblance of a life. But anger and resentment begin to build, to grow,  to evolve. These emotions overtake her, they become something more, something much more sinister.

Horror fans have grown comfortable with seeing a parent turn on a child, but commonly, we see fathers inhabited by demons, Jack Torrance parading after his family with an axe.

But mother is so often our sanctuary. She is the safe zone, t he voice of reason,  the ultimate good.

Perhaps this is what makes The Babadook a film that will get under your skin on more levels than one.

Rife with symbolism, beautiful set design and excellent acting, The Babadook is a horror like nothing we’ve seen in recent years. It has heart and horror,  and an evil we can all relate to.

After all, we all have demons, but for the most part  they’re ‘quiet today’.

 

The Darling Buds of May

Director Lucky McKee pieces together a macabre, but somehow sweet story of isolation and friendship with his 2002 film May.

Angela Bettis stars as title character, May,  a young woman living with the struggle of a troubled (though largely implied ) past. May lives alone,  her best friend, a creepy porcelain doll locked in a box, Susie, silently overseeing her every move. May is a mousey, immature, withdrawn creature, with no apparent friends or family,  except perhaps her sexually aggressive Co worker  (Ana Faris). But May met a boy. ….

May pursues Adam (Jeremy Sisto) in the only ways she knows how, by following him, peeking at him from around corners, getting in his personal space while he’s asleep. Lucky for May, Adam takes the bait. But, don’t you think I’m weird? She ponders.

I like weird, he assures her.

Spoiler alert: May isn’t exactly adorkable weird. She isn’t ‘thick glasses and knee socks’ weird. She’s not cute, mainstream, rom-com weird.

May is disconcerting.

And she just cannot seem to find a friend.

This film, despite its darkness and eventual gore, is poignant and lovely, a times. May is somehow relatable,  even amidst this atmosphere of doom. She is desperate and lonely,  and her need for companionship isn’t such a far stretch for the average viewer.  She’s in turns horrifying and endearing, and we cannot help but silently root for her. 

There is a fairy tale quality about this film, a whimsical account of one girls attempt to fit into a world she was never prepared for. As she seeks to find a friend in her life,  May begins to learn a number of things, one of the most apparent lessons being that there’s something good in all of us, but it may not, exactly make up a whole.

Tender and gruesome,  May is artsy and cool, and maybe just a tiny bit pretentious. It has heart and horror, and it is worth your time.

Life Lessons:
1. Sewing can be a useful skill
2. Weird isn’t always cute. We can’t all be Zoey Deschanel
3. If you can be your own worst enemy, why not your own best friend?
4. Girl on girl workplace harassment is a thing
5. It is easy to f*@k up your children