Personal - Flinching with Delight

An Exorcism Exception

Posted on February 25, 2022 by Glen — 1 Comment ↓

So, while I love a wide variety of horror content across all sub-genres and media, one kind of story tends to rub me the wrong way: the possession-exorcism (though just last week, I did write about an interesting take on the subject). Sure – they can be really creepy, there are a couple of classic examples that are really great, well made movies, and it is a very, very popular theme, but it almost always turns me off. They often leave an aftertaste of proselytization, seemingly advertisements for the Church, Catholic or otherwise (in recent years, the Warrens led Conjuring films have been notably unpleasant examples, though they primarily present as hauntings).

Now, there are other kinds of films dealing with demonic or diabolical elements or religious imagery that don’t do this. I think it is because, while they may contain religious elements, they are not about (or even particularly in support of) religion the way an exorcism film can be. Van Helsing holding up a cross to ward off a bride of Dracula I can accept as a simple trope of Vampire fiction without feeling like it’s supposed to teach me to let Christ into my heart. Films can directly feature the Devil as an antagonist, but somehow Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate, reveling in his bombast, or Black Philip in The VVitch asking if Tomasin wouldst like to live deliciously, don’t make me feel uncomfortable, as if I’d made the mistake of inviting in two polite, well-dressed chaps who want to give me the good news. I mean, sure, I generally want horror to make me uncomfortable – but not that way.

So what is it about this story? Why does it have this particular effect on me? On one level, a possession film is so often about someone in denial about the “truth” – that radical evil is real and that we are helpless against it without faith, specifically faith in “the Lord.” The story is all about this horrific realization on the part of a protagonist, whether the mother of the demoniac in question or a priest who has lost his faith and must regain it to prevail (both from the Exorcist), who only after accepting this knowledge has a chance of casting out the evil presence. Scientific methods may be used to try to diagnose the problem, but they will all fail until the only remaining solution is that of the holy man with a cross. And oddly enough, I feel the filmmakers often may not even intend such a message or experience – they are just trying to tell a scary story and are thus leaning on certain generic conventions, but in so doing, the resultant film can have the vibe of a church basement Halloween Hell House – where they are having great fun creating horrible things (because that is, of course, fun), but it is all in service of scaring the visiting kids away from sin.

Maybe I’m overstating it, but it’s the feeling I get personally.

So if I’m so put off by possession narratives, why am I even writing about them? Well, because I have an exception here – a book that takes the story in a really different direction and delivers a totally distinctive tone. And sometimes, when you find a really good book, you just want to go door to door and tell people about it.

My Best Friend’s Exorcism (2016) by Grady Hendrix

First, I have to say – it is very hard to impossible to really get into what I think is so great about this novel without explicitly discussing the ending, and I feel it features a turn that really can be spoiled. I’ll give a fresh warning before I get to that part and if you think you might like to read the book, do yourself a favor and go pick it up before finishing this text. It’s a really quick read – the first time I did so, I tore through it in one sitting on a flight from Warsaw to NYC, only pausing for meal and bathroom breaks.

Ok, so this is the story of Abby, whose best friend, Gretchen, gets possessed by a demon, which in turn, must be exorcised. By the end it is. Hooray. Simple, right? But where it is special is in the relationships between the girls.

We start when they first become friends on Abby’s tenth birthday party: an E.T. themed event at the local roller rink (spanning the years 1982-1988, 80s pop culture looms large in this story, very much the air that these friends breath, the idiom they speak – sometimes in shouting misheard Phil Collins lyrics, sometimes in playing Madonna dress up and getting in trouble with one religious mother who does not approve of the material girl, or in this case, just needing E.T. everything). Gretchen, the new girl in class, is the only one to show up, rather than going to a much fancier party being thrown by another kid she doesn’t know; somehow kismet strikes and they really click, thus starting a lifelong friendship. The book takes its time with this utterly non-scary but equally foundational episode, and then carries on taking its time with the next 5 years of the girls’ lives and friendship. I was surprised on re-reading it to find that this only makes up about 50 pages of the book – it had felt like so much more; really getting the connection between them, from running jokes to secrets shared, to embarrassing details of parents’ lives uncovered.

Then, when they’re 16, Gretchen gets possessed and everything goes wrong. The horror elements come quick and hard in this middle stretch: ominous, shadowy figures in the woods, owls bloodily slamming into windows, the feeling of a hand on the neck when no one’s there, creepy voices on the phone at night, beloved pets murdered, white fleshy worm things vomited out. Hendrix pulls no punches in delivering revulsion and shock. But he manages this while at the same time maintaining a somewhat blackly comic tone (I’ve read comparisons to Heathers). But the worst thing is in no way supernatural, but rather just the simple horror of your closest friend changing, betraying your secrets, becoming cruel, becoming someone you can’t trust, someone who hurts people, who is downright evil, and whom you somehow still love. Friendship and love necessarily entail vulnerability, and Abby has no walls to guard her from Gretchen’s malice. She doesn’t need much convincing to believe her friend is possessed by a demon.

So she finds herself an exorcist and now’s a good time to go pick up the book if you think you might like to read it. I’ll wait.

…

Ok, so here is where Hendrix’s book really distinguishes itself from the exorcism pack (and I’ll describe it even though you hopefully just finished reading it). Abby finds an exorcist, Brother Lemon – an earnestly absurd Christian weightlifter with whom she kidnaps, in order to save, her friend. In the process of the exorcism, the demonic presence reveals itself and we get all the typical supernatural spookiness and fluids. Now, Lemon knows all the steps but has never done this before and comes close to killing Gretchen before Abby stops him. He leaves in disgrace and Abby, alone with her friend and something else, has to finish the job.

She starts by following his playbook, reciting prayers and such. It’s kind of working, but she doesn’t believe these words. They are empty symbols for her, and finally, unable to abandon her friend, determined to go down with her if she has to, she finds the words that are true: the misremembered lyrics of a Go-Gos song that played at her 10^th birthday party, a litany of singers or actors or shows or jokes or games they have watched or told or played together. The power of Christ might not compel this demon to leave, but maybe the power of Phil Collins can. The power of all the little references and memories, things they have loved and laughed over, secrets they have entrusted one another with. These are authentic things. Absurd and silly and seemingly inconsequential, and real. It is an amazing, exciting, moving sequence.

And it manages to make this the rare exorcism that works for me by basing it on something I can actually believe in. Faith may be necessary for the procedure, but faith need not be religious. Abby acts out of faith, not only in her friend, but in the very concept of Friendship, actualizing not only the love between them, but Love, itself: making out of the frivolous detritus of childhood, icons of power. This was the second time I read it and while the middle section of horrible events lost some effect without the element of surprise, the climax landed just as hard as it had the first time, on a plane, trying to both stifle guffaws and ugly crying – cause that’s kind of embarrassing sitting next to a stranger.

Grady Hendrix has been a really enjoyable discovery for me in the last few years. This was the first book of his that I’d read, but since then I’ve worked through the rest of his available output (some are sadly out of print) – covering a range of horror topics, but all with a kind of light touch – not necessarily comedy, but something humanistic and, for lack of a better word, fun. Whether exploring a haunted Ikea in Horrorstör, a Faustian heavy metal parable in We Sold Our Souls, following middle aged housewives hunting the undead in The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, or most recently, delving into the life changing trauma of being a survivor in The Final Girl Support Group, he offers interesting and entertaining spins on well-worn ideas, that come alive in character without sacrificing the horror. My Best Friend’s Exorcism is no exception.

Delightfully Flinching in the New Header

Posted on February 5, 2022 by Glen — 1 Comment ↓

So, this has been in the works for quite some time, and now I’m happy to finally announce a brand-spanking new header for the site. If you’re on a mobile device, you may not see it, so here it is (with apologies to desktop users for the duplication):

Particular gratitude is due to the photographer, Klaudia Bałazy, and the models, Gabriela, Julia, Ola, Kasia (who also had the idea for the image), and Magda, all of whom I’m happy to collaborate with in La Folie – Retro Cabaret Show. Thanks all – I think it’s pretty groovy!

The image (at the top of the page – or if you are an e-mail subscriber – click through to check it out) grows out of a cabaret sketch we did for a Halloween performance. The idea of the sketch was to recreate the style of a silent horror film – all women in incongruously elegant gowns (ala The Old Dark House), exploring a creepy old manor by candle light, discovering a shrouded figure, and, fingers trembling, reaching out to reveal his monstrosity (ala Phantom of the Opera), before screaming in a building terror that edges on madness (ala Metropolis) – but funny.

It was a comedy bit after all, and the idea was to both pay homage to the visual sumptuousness of the silent era and to have some fun with the over-the-top-ness of the premise. One woman shrieking in fear might be scary. Four women, one seemingly straight laced husband, and the hideously deformed creature chasing them all sequentially startling each other like classic Scooby Do shtick and then silently shrieking in alarm was hopefully pretty funny.

It was a treat to work on and I think the effect achieved with relatively simple means (LED candles and one technician with a close handheld light source) was stylish, atmospheric, and playful. It is a real pleasure – a delight, you might say – to bring to life even a small idea that really tickles your fancy. And out of it was born a visual concept for this blog that took a few months to finally execute, but with which I’m really happy: five women, in chic dresses, screaming like something out of a classic film.

So, let’s talk about that. Once I finally finished assembling the image, I couldn’t help but notice that gender had been (perhaps inadvertently, but nonetheless, prominently) foregrounded. I mean, it is such a long standing criticism of the genre that it focuses on and fetishizes images of female suffering. Whether or not that critique is totally accurate has been fairly challenged, but perhaps the very fact that I didn’t include any guys – it just wouldn’t have been the iconic look I was after – does imply the persistence of a trend and suggest that it should be discussed.

On one level, this is evident throughout the history of the genre – looking at classic horror cinema from the silent era, the 30s Universal horrors, Val Lewton in the 40s, monster movies of the 50s, up to the slasher boom of the late 70s-80s, and beyond, a woman screaming is just such a central image. For some critics, this is a sign of an inherent misogyny – the viewer is invited to sadistically and vicariously get off on looking from the POV of the masculine threat at his prey. Others perceive a different, but not necessarily less misogynistic, approach – the woman is the endangered protagonist because her gender implies a vulnerability which makes the threat that much scarier – now, vicariously identifying with the female body situates us, the viewers, more as “victims.” Still others defend the trend as pure style or aesthetics (thus opening themselves up to new criticisms of objectification) – Dario Argento once famously said, “I like women, especially beautiful ones…I would much rather watch them being murdered than an ugly girl or man.”

And others have read this totally differently. You could certainly take the degree to which the woman is in the middle of the horror narrative as positive; regardless of the reasons for it, compared to the majority of other genres, horror’s number of female protagonists (final girls, scream queens, imperiled ingénues, or what have you) is effectively quite progressive. Sure – women might be centered so that the protagonist can display “weak” traits that are unfairly coded as feminine (fear, hysteria, physical weakness). I’m pretty sure I remember Carol Clover describing how, in the figure of the “final girl,” the audience can have its cake and eat it too, identifying both with her feminized fear and with the moment when she stands up and fights back, taking on what are read as masculinized characteristics (and, of course, striking out with some penetrative sharp phallic object – Freud is all over this stuff).

But I think what this all really speaks to is how unrealistic the “strong” traits coded as masculine are. In a moment of real crisis, I expect most of us are more likely to freeze up, be incapable of acting, and hide in a corner weeping until ugly death comes for us. Exceptionally few would have the chutzpa to really rise as some hyper-masculine action star and lay waste to the threat, whatever it might be. I think these maligned traits, supposedly feminine, may actually be just the most realistic traits for any character to have. Facing true horror, honestly, who wouldn’t scream?

A striking example here is Barbara from Night of the Living Dead. The presentation of her character has oft been denounced as unfair to women. Of all of the figures in the seminal zombie classic, she is particularly useless, spending much of the film either hysterically freaking out or in a state of near catatonia. George Romero even took the criticism to heart and in the 1990 remake, which he wrote but didn’t direct, she was a total badass to make up for it. That’s fine – it’s actually a kind of good movie in its own right – but I think Barbara from the original rings so true. Here’s this young woman who sees her brother killed in front of her, gets chased by some weird madman to a house in the middle of nowhere, and comes to realize that the dead are rising and eating the flesh of the living! If there’s a more appropriate time to snap under the pressure, I can’t think of one and I think that put in her position, more people (men and women) would behave exactly as she does.

So, at the end of the day, sure – it’s impossible to deny that there are social inequities associated with the classic image of the screaming woman, but I think sometimes they are more linked with expectations that unjustly persist in society than with what the picture itself necessarily communicates. For my part, I really love the new image we’ve created here. I think it strikes a balance of terror and playfulness, with a classic cool vibe (and the gender focus is a part of that), celebrating the films themselves and reveling in the horror, while calling for some degree of reflexivity – some work of interpretation. Life is endlessly complicated and we are all probably ultimately unknowable to ourselves, so anything that suggests we take a moment for consideration is worthwhile.

In our sketch, it was finally one of the girls who enters into the house, finds the square jawed, masculine, husband type tied up in the basement, screaming for his life and saves him, before revealing that she’s actually a vampire and biting his throat. The point is that sometimes, you can be all things, having and eating your cake, enjoying the repeating image of the screaming woman and inverting that image to have one save the day, and inverting it once again to make her the monster. All of the aforementioned perspectives can be simultaneously correct – even when they contradict each other. Maybe especially when they do.

Polish Horror Series # 1 – Wilczyca

Posted on January 18, 2022 by Glen — No Comments ↓

So, back in 2008, I relocated to Poland. I’d been living in Chicago for the previous 7 years and felt the need to shake things up. My background being in the theatre, my only real association with Poland had been due to some theatre artists, largely already dead, who had made a deep impression on me and I just had the general sense that this might be someplace with interesting art and theatre and culture, so I signed up for a course in teaching English as a foreign language, bought a one way ticket, and took off. It wasn’t long before I met the woman who would later become my wife and found myself ensconced in my new life here.

Being a horror fan, I’d been very interested to sample the local fares in that domain. The only problem is that there aren’t many of them, and those that exist are a) hard to find and/or b) lacking English subtitles. (My Polish is passable in some contexts, but it should be better…) So, I was really happy to see that along with the excellent folk horror documentary, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, which recently came to Shudder, there are two therein referenced Polish films (also included in Severin film’s box set, All the Haunts be Ours): Wilczyca and Lokis, Rekopis profesora Wittembacha. Wilczyca had long been on my radar but I hadn’t been able to find it anywhere, so I was really happy to finally have a chance to check it out over the weekend.

And with that, I’d like to start a recurring series here on ye ol’ blog. Of the really-not-many Polish horror films in existence, there are a few that I’d long ago given up on tracking down. I think that, as I’m not planning on moving anytime soon, I should finally dig further into this aspect of local culture and work my way through the limited catalogue (really, there are probably about 30-40 feature films to choose from in total and that includes some pretty cheap, student film looking entries). So, starting with today’s post, I’m going to occasionally highlight a Polish horror (or, more frequently, horror adjacent) flick. Sometimes that will be a longer text and sometimes, it will be more of a blurb length short review, depending on how much I can say about the given film. So, without further adieu, let’s get into…

**Wilczyca (She-wolf) (1982)**

Wintry and atmospheric, this is less the “Polish werewolf movie” that I’d heard tell of, and more a historical drama with folkloric/horror elements. Marek Piestrak’s film is also an interestingly small, and yet effective little picture, showcasing striking cinematography, key concerns of Polish history, and a couple of standout performances; all in all, an odd, sometimes enigmatic, sometimes sexually charged, sometimes outdated-in-terms-of-gender-politics little package.

In short, Kacper Wosiński, a veteran of an early 19^th century uprising (from the late 1700s until the end of WWI, Poland was off the map, its territory divvied up between Austria, Prussia, and Russia – during that time there were a number of uprisings, attempting to expel the occupying forces), returns home after a long absence to find his estranged wife, Maryna, dying due to complications from a botched self-performed abortion. On her death bed, she curses him, clutching a wolf’s paw, refuses last rites, and promises to return to haunt him, before finally passing. We don’t have the full story, but from some of his later dialogue, we understand that he had been some charming combination of abusive and neglectful, and her venom feels justified.

His brother insists that a stake be driven through her heart before burial, doing so himself, as Kacper is unable. It is here that we first have a touch of horror. The folklore is not exactly precise – it seems that if not dealt with appropriately, there is the fear that she will rise – as something like a werewolf, or a witch, or a vampire, or something unnamed and undefined, but bad, and vengeful, and powerful. The scene is uncomfortable and effective. Kacper is not exactly sympathetic, but his reluctance to desecrate his wife’s corpse is emotional and the ugliness of the situation is solid. However, perhaps because Kacper couldn’t carry out this responsibility himself, the stake will prove ineffective.

After all this, Kacper leaves his home, never to return and reconnects with his friend Ludwig, a fellow veteran of the uprising who now has to flee the Viennese partition into Prussia, presumably due to revolutionary activities (apparently in the novel on which this is based, he was fleeing the Russian authorities, but as Poland was still under Communism at the time of filming, they had to change the bad guys to Austrians). After helping his friend to the border, and possibly seeing his dead wife/wolf/just-the-wind-and-fog at the crossroads, he returns to Ludwig’s estate to look after it for him and, in terms of Ludwig’s own young wife, Julia, to “protect his honor,” a task which he rather fails at as she immediately takes up with an old flame, Otto, a Viennese officer.

And here, we get to the heart of the movie, for Julia so closely reflects and even directly resembles Maryna (in fact, they are both played by Iwona Bielska, who is pretty stellar in the dual roles) that he comes to feel that she is possessed by the spirit of his wicked spouse, becoming a wolf at night, taunting him, haunting him, and possibly eating his beloved dogs (a warning: there is a scene with a wounded dog that looked concerningly realistic—I don’t know what filming practices were at the time, but I really hope it was ok).

For her part, Bielska is an absolute treat. While the film is not necessarily good to its two female characters (I’m not sure exactly how to read things, but I suspect we’re supposed to be on Kacper’s side, but are we, really?), she is gloriously villainous and deliciously cruel, with a spark of wicked intelligence twinkling in her eyes. Her performance really is quite magnetic – sensual, playful, and often kinkily evil (a nigh vampiric flashback of her lustily feasting on the blood of Otto’s wounded hand after a wolf bite comes to mind). There was even a surprising queer note as she is first introduced in an intimate moment with her maid (to be fair, it’s not exactly very positive representation, as it is perhaps meant to portray her selfish hedonism—but it was still a surprising inclusion).

Anyway, Kacper becomes convinced that she must be dealt with, being his responsibility twice over, and silver bullets in hand, he moves to do so, driving the film towards an unanticipatedly bloody climax.

As may already be clear, I’m not entirely sure what to make of this film, or how to read it. Is it a straightforward, folk-influenced historical drama about a man set upon by dark forces, rising to repel them? Is it a more complex story of that same man forced to reckon with the consequences of his own bad actions? Is Julia possessed by Kacper’s dead wife and definitely an evil supernatural entity (it seems clear that she is the “she-wolf,” but her taste for blood play that we see in the flashback with Otto certainly pre-dates Maryna’s death)? Are we supposed to read the two female characters as (however alluring and compelling) essentially wicked antagonists and cheer Kacper’s actions or are we to doubt his convictions and dread violence being done to Julia as Kacper is triggered by her infidelity reflecting that of his former wife?

Are the characters even really people or is it all perhaps allegorical? When Ludwig has to leave, Julia expresses frustration that his “patriotic” activities occupy him so much – do the women represent some natural, self-centered national impulse, focused on the body and sensual pleasure, which does not support and thus, undercuts attempts at revolution? Or is it possible that this is actually critical of those partisans who, in heady patriotic fervor, neglect the self, family, and actual people, as opposed to ideals? The film has a flavor of allegory, even if these readings are not intended, and the degree to which these questions abound, left it lingering in my mind.

All in all, this was an interesting watch, what these days would be called a ‘slow burn’ – rich in atmosphere and performances, sparse in terms of plot, drawing on a strong sense of place and history and character. It is only vaguely a “horror” movie, but it does have enough elements to be included: the staking scene, the appearance of Maryna (somewhat zombified) at the crossroads, the suggestion of the supernatural in terms of Julia, and her knowing, animalistic villainy. It’s never in a hurry to get anywhere, but I found it totally watchable throughout.

—

So, that’s the first of these. I won’t be doing one every week, but in the coming months, I’d like to return to this series periodically and both write about the other Polish horror films I’ve seen and search out some more that are new to me. Hey – if you happen to be Polish and have a suggestion of something I should look for, please drop a line!

The Masochism of Horror Viewership

Posted on January 10, 2022 by Glen — 1 Comment ↓

Horror has to be one of the most maligned genres. While not everyone may like Romantic Comedies or Musicals or War Movies, I think it would be rare to hear a fan of these genres asked, “Why do you watch that awful stuff?” or told, “I’m surprised you watch these movies – you’re such a nice person.” It’s obvious that, going back many decades at least, there is an assumption of Sadism – of pleasure taken in (watching) the suffering of others. While I can’t deny the presence of that tendency (of course, there are moments when many a horror fan thrills at an “awesome kill”), I think the act of viewing this material is much more complicated, often rooted, in fact, in the opposite—in a kind of Masochism.

Why watch a horror film, after all, if you don’t want to be scared, or disgusted, or disturbed, or somehow assaulted (all typically negative experiences)? I think we often watch in order to be on the receiving end of the harm (in a safe way that leaves no marks). We want the intensity of that experience, to undergo that trial.

And I’m not alone in this view. Carol J. Clover is most famous as a horror academic for coining the term “final girl” in her discussion of the Slasher subgenre, but I feel her actual focus in Men, Women, and Chainsaws is rather a question of identification on the part of the horror audience, often in terms of gender; while horror viewers (generally thought to overwhelmingly be male) are often assumed to identify with the killer, stalking and murdering young women with sharp phallic objects in an obvious sexual metaphor, she observed and theorized about those same male viewers rather identifying with (or fluidly shifting identification between the killer and the) “final girl,” both masochistically sharing her suffering and vicariously sharing in her violent victory.

And so if there is a kind of masochism to viewership, to what does it extend? Only to being startled or disgusted, or might it also include being criticized—morally or ethically interrogated? Do we just want to have a fun roller coaster scare ride, or do we appreciate when a film maker really sets out to give us a hard time, implying that perhaps we should question our enjoyment of this content, even perhaps directly trying to give us a bad, frustrating, unsatisfactory experience to make a point? Is that something we can value in a film, or do we just get tired of feeling scolded? Of course mileage may vary, but with that question in mind, I’d like to look at three films that I feel, in some way criticize the genre, and to varying degrees the viewer: Funny Games (2007), Berberian Sound Studio (2012), and The Cabin in the Woods (2012). All will be discussed in detail, so if you want to avoid spoilers, I recommend watching them first.

Funny Games (2007)

Michael Haneke’s scene by scene English language remake of his own German language 1997 original is a direct provocation of the viewer. While it sets up a very effective, dread filled, brutal home invasion thriller, it subverts audience expectations at every turn, purposely frustrating the viewer, questioning point blank if this violence is what the viewer actually desires, and, by implication, also asking why?

A family comes to their summer house for a vacation. Once there, they are intimidated, put upon, and ultimately held hostage, tortured, and killed by a pair of polite young men, dressed for golf, one of whom periodically breaks the fourth wall, implicating the audience in their “funny games.” It is a kind of Brechtian spin on Straw Dogs, regularly breaking the flow of the narrative to address the viewer’s desires. Interestingly for a piece this uncomfortable and frequently brutal, the film refuses to show any actual violence. Everything happens when the camera is looking the other way. Most strikingly, during a scene in which a young boy is killed with a shotgun, the camera has followed the other killer into the kitchen to watch him fix himself a sandwich.

This is followed by the killers leaving the man and woman tied up and broken, with their dead son in the corner. The camera is now unflinchingly still (it doesn’t cut and barely moves for about 9 minutes) as we sit with them in their grief and pain. Furthermore, the pace of the whole film now slows down as we watch them attempt to get away and get help. The killers aren’t seen again for almost a whole hour and I feel that we are meant to want them back just so that something will happen. We should be frustrated and bored, and therefore criticized for sadistically wanting to instead see more pain.

When they do return, once again tormenting the couple, one of the young men, Paul, asks us “Do you think it’s enough? I mean, you want a real ending, right? With plausible plot development, don’t you?” For a short moment, we are given that as the wife gets ahold of the gun and shoots Peter, the other tormentor. This is the satisfying moment of vengeance we’ve been waiting for, we’ve been set up to expect, and it’s the only on screen violence in the whole film, but it is immediately stolen away as Paul picks up the TV remote and rewinds the film. The scene plays out again, but she does not get to rise and revenge. Her husband is killed and later, so is she. The young men go on to the next house.

One may wonder why I’ve chosen this version and not the original to discuss and it is because I feel this one is even more pointed at me, at an American Horror/Thriller/Violent Film viewer. As I understand it, the reason Haneke remade his own film in English was that he felt the original had been seen and appreciated by European film critics but that it had really missed its true target audience and that those people wouldn’t watch a movie with subtitles. His intention was to poke at me, or viewers like me – to criticize the fact that I/we want to see such violence, expect to see it, are unsatisfied if we don’t see it.

It is a fascinating, frustrating, savvy, and sometimes intellectually dishonest viewing experience (which is rather the point) – a provocation on American popular culture, violent visual entertainment, and even the very idea of narrative cinema itself, in its inherent manipulation. It is a film you choose to subject yourself to.

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

Though I just wrote about Peter Strickland’s somewhat-tribute to stylish Italian Horror a week ago, I’ve been wanting to dig more deeply into it for quite a while now. On one level, it is the total opposite of a movie like Funny Games, richly enveloping the viewer in a thoroughly non-cerebral, surreal, sensual, nigh-hypnotic experience. But it does share some elements with the former film.

The most obvious of these is that once again, we do not see a single shot of violence throughout the entire run time. And really, no violence actually takes place. This is the story of a very English sound engineer, Gilderoy, who comes to Italy to work on a horror film. Nothing violent happens outside of that film – which we never see. But we do hear it, and even if we see how these sounds are being produced (largely in the mutilation of fruit and vegetables and the obsessive twiddling of dials and knobs), those sounds are quite disturbing.

Secondly, I feel that while it, to some extent, celebrates the style and creativity of Italian Horror of the 70s, I also feel that the film shares some of its protagonist’s unease with the subject matter. The story is all about his discomfort – in Italy, working with this horrific material, necessarily getting caught up imaginatively in the audio performance of mutilations and violations, feeling pulled into something he does not like, his life and his art and himself all blurring together in a nightmarish manner. In one scene, as he rips radish roots to create the sound of a witch’s hair being torn out you can see a flash of sadistic pleasure on his face as he destroys the vegetables, immediately followed by revulsion, by guilt.

And my feeling was that the film was there with him, sharing in this complex of reactions. His journey is our journey. We never see these horrors, but we do imagine them, enjoy them (the film truly deals in sensory pleasure), and find them distasteful, by virtue of experiencing them through his eyes, his ears, his hands (as they stab a cabbage or crush a melon).

And while we are given mouthpieces to defend the film under creation, they come off (I suspect intentionally) poorly. In one scene, Santini, the film’s director, who refuses the title “horror” for his work, responds to Gilderoy’s objections: “I hate what was done to these beautiful women, but it is my duty to show. The world must know the truth and see the truth. I hate it.” In the moment, he sounds so disingenuous and pretentious, just bald-faced placation of a worker to achieve the needed labor.

By the end, the film goes to some truly odd places, but among them, we are given a scene in which Gilderoy effectively tortures a voice actor, subjecting her to deafening awful sounds in order to eke out her requisite screams. Ultimately, she gives him what he wants before she storms off and he is left to reckon with his own cruelty and monstrosity. We are left to sit with his horror of himself, with our horror of our own pleasures.

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

Of these three films, this is the only one I’ve watched multiple times, but it is no less trenchant a criticism of horror fandom. Described by co-screenwriter, Joss Whedon, as “a loving hate letter to the horror genre,” it is both a joyous jubilee of horror elements, monsters, and icons, and a direct judgement of what our enjoyment of these films consists in.

Simply described, we follow a group of young people who go to the eponymous cabin in the woods for a weekend of partying as they are manipulated into embodying certain stereotypical horror characters – the slut, the jock, the stoner, the virgin, etc., so they can be killed by monsters of their inadvertent choosing, all as a part of a ritual, orchestrated by a well-organized and well-heeled team in a subterranean control room in order to placate ancient evil gods, thus stopping them from awakening and destroying humanity.

Time and time again, we see how these young people are not the stereotypes they are set up to be, but how they are being made into them. One otherwise perfectly intelligent young woman who has recently dyed her hair is drugged by that hair dye, such that she becomes the ditzy blonde who takes her top off and dies first. The sensible young man, studying sociology on a full academic scholarship is similarly drugged to become more aggressive, to be an ‘alpha-male asshole.’

Time after time, we see how they would make sensible decisions but that they are manipulated to instead carry out the tropes of a (certain kind of) horror film. After stabbing an undead threat, an electrical charge is emitted from a knife, causing a girl to drop it (why else would she?); just when everyone should stay together and explore the house, gas is released so that they instead split up. At every turn, things are made to play out in the most rote, expected, sometimes stupid ways.

This is perhaps most explicit in the sex scene that precedes the first murder of the film. A boy and a girl have gone outside to fool around, but she’s cold and it’s too dark. We cut to the control room, where a group of men are all watching eagerly, waiting for her to undress. They increase the temperature, turn up the moonlight, and release pheromones into the air around the young couple. Moments later, she straddles her partner, takes off her shirt and is soon after stabbed through the hand before being caught by a bear trap and finally beheaded.

It is here that we have a key moment of dialogue. A security officer, new to the job and uncomfortable with the sleazy eagerness of the men around him, questions if it is really important that they all see her naked. The two men running the show respond, “We’re not the only ones watching, Truman.” “Gotta keep the customer satisfied. You know what’s at stake here?” This was the moment, when I saw this in the cinema, when I really fell for this film. Later we learn that it’s all about Lovecraftian Great Old Ones, but in that moment, it felt like WE, the viewers, were the real monster—we are who must be satisfied. And we will only be satisfied by gratuitous sex and violence.

This is often described as a horror-comedy, satirizing the tropes of modern horror films, but I really think it goes farther in criticizing us for wanting these tropes, for wanting to see these things. It directly calls out the sadism of the viewing experience. Late in the film, Dana, the assigned final girl realizes that “They don’t just want to see us killed. They want to see us punished” for being young, for being sexual, for having fun. In this, we have a direct criticism of the much discussed Reagan-era slasher formula of Sex = Death. And we are criticized for wanting to see it, for wanting to see it play out in a certain specific way and in a certain specific order. It is a key plot point that the “virgin” has to be the last one standing – that everyone else must die before her and while she may live, first she must suffer. And it is our fault, because it is what we want to see.

There have been plenty of other satirically knowing horror films that have a laugh at the expense of the common tropes: Behind the Mask, Scream, Jason X, the list could go on and on. But I think this one really calls us, the viewers, to task, all while also delivering a flick that is really (unlike Haneke’s) terrifically fun, and celebratory of the many elements of horror that we, the viewers, so love (what fan hasn’t paused to see all of the monsters listed on the big board when they are betting, or also paused during the gleeful ‘system purge’ scene to identify the inspiration for all the monsters on parade?). We are generally given what we want, but we’re also scolded for it.

How We See this Criticism

So here is the tricky part: if these movies all attack us the viewer as I’ve described, how do we feel about it? How do we take this in? How do we respond? Without some large questionnaire, it is impossible for me to really speak for the whole of horror fandom, but I have done a cursory survey of viewer reviews online (google and rotten tomatoes) of these three and it is noteworthy for me that I rarely see this criticism concretely addressed.

When Funny Games is liked, it is often for being a successful, scary, brutal thriller, and sometimes for its media criticism. When it is disliked, it is often because the pace slows down in the second half and it’s boring, or the characters are unlikeable, or that it doesn’t have a happier ending.

When Berberian Sound Studio is liked, it is often because it is beautiful, atmospheric, imaginative, disturbing, and/or unsettling. When it is disliked, it is because it is boring, weird, too artsy, or pretentious.

When The Cabin in the Woods is liked, it is because it is successful as a comedy-satire, because someone appreciates the inclusion of ‘Great Old Ones,’ or because someone enjoys the fan favorite elements of spot-the-horror-reference. When it is disliked, it is because it isn’t scary, it isn’t as clever as it thinks it is, or seemingly because someone didn’t really get the point at all and they are complaining about the “clichés.”

Ok, a quantitative literature review, this is not. But these are the general trends I’ve seen and I find it interesting that I never really see backlash (or appreciation, for that matter) to the sense of being judged as a viewer (maybe occasionally with Haneke, but I feel I’ve seen that mostly from critics rather than viewers). All three have their admirers and detractors, but I haven’t really seen signs of viewers taking it personally. Perhaps this indicates that the critique is generally accepted (negative results still constitute useful data) but I have no reason to believe that to be true. Still, I am left to wonder if I am receiving them differently than others. Am I just projecting my own sometime ambivalence? Should I investigate my own response further?

Speaking Only for Myself

I suppose at the end of the day, I do take the critique; sometimes it’s earned, and I feel generally ok about that. I think that human beings are vastly complex beasts and we all have dark little imps to feed. Sometimes, we do enjoy the suffering of others (and there is nothing wrong about indulging this in a way that doesn’t actually harm anyone – horror fiction is one method, but I also know a guy who likes to read about mountain climbers because their ordeals make him feel better about his life), and sometimes we want to get a bit (or more) battered ourselves. If at the end of a film, I feel exhausted, wrung out, like I’ve got nothing left, I’m probably pretty satisfied, even if the experience was unpleasant.

As a fan of horror, I take in a lot of this content and I know I occasionally get inured to it. For my part, I don’t feel it de-sensitizes me to real life suffering, but when you partake in a lot of a certain kind of fiction, it’s easy to do so from a remove, like a worker in a control room, just monitoring knobs, waiting for something out of the ordinary to happen, but otherwise, even a bit bored. And I don’t feel it’s beyond the pale for someone, the artist making the work that I’m watching, to call me out and inquire if that is actually as it should be—if I feel good about that, and sometimes I do not.

I want to see beautiful things and perceive that beauty. Similarly, when I view the horrific, I want to be horrified. Sometimes it’s good to be reminded of that, to try to approach work with fresh eyes, to be open to the experience – to be open to critique and take what’s coming to you.