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Top Ten (New To Me) In 2022

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Sitting here the morning of New Year’s Day, staring down the fresh new year ahead of me, I want to take one more day for the past. I’m not alone in observing that it’s been a really strong year for horror. I’m not good at keeping up to date with new releases (last year I hadn’t even watched enough 2021 horror films to do a top ten list), but this year I’ve seen about 20, and I think that’s more a testament to how good things have been rather than how diligent of a fan I’ve become.

Lately, I’ve seen countless posts where people list their best (or worst) of the year and I want to hop on that bandwagon. But as I don’t want to be too repetitive on the blog and write about the same stuff again and again, some of the best films I’ve seen are ruled out (as I’ve already discussed them).  So, as I did last year, here, in no particular order, comes a list of the top ten movies (new or old) that a) were first time watches for me and b) I haven’t written about yet. I notice, looking at my list, that it leans hard into entertainment. There have been many films this year that were rich in idea and feeling, which I really felt the need to write about at length and explore. Most (though not all) of the films on this list were just a really good time, and I want to highlight them as well, and not only headier fare. I’ll mostly avoid spoilers, but in some cases, that won’t be possible, so tread lightly.

Night of the Comet (1984)

As we’re still in the holiday season, this seems a good place to start. I don’t know how I hadn’t gotten around to watching this before – it seems like something I would have seen as a kid but somehow missed. Thom Eberhadt’s post-apocalyptic/zombie-hellscape/sci-fi-comedy/Christmas-timed romp is just a hoot and a half. Two teen sisters are some of the very few survivors on earth (or at least LA) after a close call with a comet vaporizes most of the population and transforms the rest into bloodthirsty zombies. As you are here reading a ‘horror’ blog, don’t go in expecting much from the ‘zombies’ – they get about 5 minutes of screen time, but this modestly budgeted film is greatly entertaining and not lacking in horror. A tonal smorgasbord, the film features playful scenes of the two teenagers enjoying the run of the city to do whatever they like, haunting imagery of Los Angeles as a ghost town that is at once beautiful and eerie, surprising moments of depth and weight (such as when, pre-comet, Kelli Maroney’s stepmother full out punches her across the room in a shocking moment of domestic violence – no one mourns her being reduced to a pile of dust), and some narrative twists and turns that really got me. The film goes to some disarmingly dark places, but never loses its sense of fun along the way. And it’s set at Christmas, so it’s still seasonally appropriate.

Barbarian (2022)

Zach Cregger’s breakout film is on many end-of-the-year lists right now for good reason. If you don’t take too much time to think about some details, moment to moment, it’s possibly the best time I’ve had watching a horror movie in a good while. I can’t remember the last time I was actually compelled to yell at the screen, “Don’t go down there you idiot – what are you doing?!?” And at the same time, rooted in very real dangers and concerns that have been highlighted in the post #MeToo era, it lands a punch of relevance and resonance. When Tess (Georgina Campbell) arrives at a double booked AirBnB and meets the other tenant, Keith (Bill Skarsgård), she is understandably extremely cautious, as are we. Even after the movie has taken some hard left turns and gone to totally unexpected places, it’s hard not to feel that Keith, such a seemingly nice guy, is actually a dangerous sleazebag. But as time goes on, that caution gets exhausted and then it’s shouting at the screen time. And that’s only the first act. When Justin Long appears at the top of the second, it is such a hard but refreshingly sunny and musical pivot, and what his character represents is an interesting inclusion to the film’s thematics in terms of the dangers of predatory men and their inability/refusal to take responsibility for their actions. But beyond those weighty concerns, this is just a blast – also, how weird is it that I watched it on Disney+? (Though I’m still waiting for the new Hellraiser, Disney…)

Puppet Master (1989)

Here’s another case of “how have I never seen this before?” Of course, Charles Band and David Schmoeller’s direct-to-video cult classic has always been on my radar, but I had never actually picked it up back in the video store days, so I was delighted when it came to Shudder this year. Though its modest budget is evident, the creative joy it takes in bringing to life its killer toys, such as Jester, Tunneler, and Leech Woman, is just infectious; its kill set pieces are creepy and weird; and its story is, if somewhat strained, still pretty effective, with a satisfying final act reversal. I really appreciated William Hickey’s turn as the puppet maker and “last true alchemist,” André Toulon, who discovered the secret of eternal life before being chased down by Nazis. The opening scene of him gently and with loving care, placing all his dolls in a chest, hiding it away, and committing suicide before the Reich can extract his secrets really lent an unexpected pathos to the story – you know, before dolls with drills for heads bore through anyone’s guts or sexy female puppets regurgitate leeches onto a prone victim. Endearingly lurid and lovingly nasty, this first entry in the nigh endless series (I think there are 15 so far), with its ever shifting mythology and chronology (sometimes the dolls are kind of good, and when they’re not, they’re Nazis), endures as a low budget gem.

Lux Æterna (2019)

Gaspar Noé’s short film (thankfully under an hour – it’s hard to imagine enduring much more) is not made to be enjoyed. But it is fascinating, captivating, intriguing, intense, sometimes hilarious, cruel, and as ambivalent as the day is long. Filmed in real time with multiple long tracking shots in split screens tracking different characters, this work of sensory overload follows Charlotte Gainsbourg, among others, through a chaotic film set where she is to be burned as a witch. Conflict abounds – between the cinematographer, the producer, and the director – between actresses and costume designers – between pushy guests who have their own projects to pitch and anyone cornered by them. It is a non-stop sea of noise and action and roiling emotion. Finally, as the scene is being filmed, a technical mishap sends the lighting into a colorful strobe effect which would be unsafe for any epileptic and is almost unendurable for the viewer. And it goes on. And on. For at least ten minutes, but it feels much longer. And what had been a fictional martyrdom seems realized in life. And the camera keeps rolling – long after the director has stormed off the set and the other actresses playing witches have escaped – the cinematographer keeps the lens trained on Gainsbourg and captures something transcendent. But does he? Here lies the ambivalence at the heart of the piece. Through the ending, the screen is filled with quotes from directors, including Noé himself, presenting the “auteur” as the sole conduit to true artistic purity, to the divine, demanding any suffering necessary to achieve that sublimity. This can be taken as the point of the piece – how the filmmaker cuts through the tumult and noise and, even if it means violently assaulting the actor, making a martyr of her, reveals truth. But it also feels deeply, deeply ironic – as if it is all to send up this very notion – and at the end of the day, the valorization of the auteur simply excuses pointless, artless cruelty and exploitation – both to the actors, his co-workers, and us, the audience. Whatever it was, it has stayed with me, and I’m very glad to have sat through it, though I must say, it’s not for everyone.

Prey (2022)

Another, “what a blast!” movie, Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator prequel manages to be both excitingly fresh and so true to the original that it could be accused of being an empty retread if it weren’t such a deeply felt and rollicking good time. Amanda Midthunder just kills it as a young, early 18th century Comanche woman determined to hunt, though the tribe has other expectations for her. To prove herself, against orders, she goes out to track down the biggest predator she can and finds herself squaring away with an alien presence seemingly here on earth to do the same. Along the way, there are thrilling action sequences, comedy bits that land, and brutal, tense alien violence – which is of course, overshadowed by the looming specter of European colonialism which will do more damage to her people than this single alien invader ever could. I’d long felt that Arnold in the first movie was basically a male slasher “final girl,” and here that gender flip comes full circle, the degree to which she is discounted as a possible threat (cause she’s a girl) being instrumental to her success. Also, it’s refreshing to see native people presented as just that, people – not “noble savages” or somehow “magically connected to the land,” but just intelligent, tool using people (with a different degree of technology, sure), as capable of pettiness and valor as any others. It’s up there with the original in my book, and I have hopes for the recently announced follow up which will take place in feudal Japan.

Pearl (2022)

So I must admit that I preferred Ti West’s X, released in the spring, to this prequel, delivered mere months later (both filmed back-to back in New Zealand during Covid lockdown), but a) I already wrote about X, b) this is still an interesting, bold piece, and taken together, they make a fascinating character portrait (though we now have to wait for the follow up, Maxxxine), and c) I think it’s more than worthy of discussion and promotion without any connection to the other movie. Filmed in a dreamy, technicolor, old Hollywood style ala Wizard of Oz or a Douglas Sirk melodrama, we once again follow Mia Goth, now as the young Pearl (who will grow up to be the murderous, elderly, physical-affection starved antagonist of X), a young girl trapped in a life of simplicity and familial obligation, dreaming of getting out and, (as Maxine will later repeat) becoming the star she knows she is. She chases after her aspirations with sociopathic fervor, but having seen the earlier film, we know it is all for naught – she’s never leaving the farm. The result is a strange mix of bloody psychodrama, dreamy hopefulness, and simple tragedy. Chekhov’s 3 sisters will see Moscow before Pearl escapes her dreary life of boredom and service, no matter how many people or geese she kills. At the same time, while Pearl is a largely sympathetic character, West pulls no punches in also presenting the inherent self-centered greed and coldness that drives her ambition (and sheds rivers of blood). We are pressed into an uncomfortable identification with her need for the thrill of independence, fulfillment, and joy, while fully cognizant of the callous sacrifices being made. What can we accept – in a protagonist? For ourselves? Where is our line between the demands we can slough off to chase our own stars and the responsibilities that burden us, pinning us down to the earth?

The Father (2020)

Florian Zeller’s adaptation of his own play, starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Coleman, may strike most as ‘clearly-and-in-no-way-a-horror-movie-what-is-it-doing-on-this-list?,’ but I contend that this tale of an elderly man with dementia, losing his grip on reality, progressively less sure of his relationships with those around him as he loses his own certainty of self is absolutely a work of psychological horror – and it is tremendous. Clearly based on a play, characters largely come in and out of the same rooms – there are no special effects or psychedelic sequences, but it is a profoundly horrifying mind-trip. The woman he thinks is his daughter walks out and another woman enters who eventually explains that his daughter lives in Greece. But maybe this is his daughter. Does he actually have a daughter? Does he live with her, or in his own flat, or in a care facility? We watch through his eyes, losing any sense of solid ground as the film goes on. No one involved with the production sold it as a genre piece, let alone a horror film, but I think it’s one of the most effective works of horror I saw this year – beautiful, tender, and sad, and so deeply unsettling and scary. It isn’t the kind of mood I think most come to horror for, but I think it deserves a place among other psychological pieces like Jacob’s Ladder (1990) or Repulsion (1965).

Glorious (2022)

Rebekah McKendry’s Lovecraftian bottle movie concerns a man, Wes (Ryan Kwanten), trapped in a highway rest area Men’s room with a post-break-up hangover, talking to an ancient eldritch horror (voiced by J.K. Simmons) through a hole carved in the wall of the stall (get it? “glory”…). This being, Ghatanothoa, explains that Wes must make a kind of self-sacrifice to help Ghatanothoa escape before his father (who is essentially god) can use him to destroy humanity. It is pretty high concept stuff, but where it lands by the end is so emotionally grounded, getting to the core of who and what Wes is and what he and Ghatanothoa have in common, that it really justifies the world-building flights of fancy that get us there. I enjoyed most of the movie – it is frequently funny, often very weird, briefly quite gory, and consistently admirable in how big of a film it can be in a single, small location with almost only one physical actor and one voice (a few others, some significantly, get a few minutes of screen time, but mostly Kwanten and Simmons carry the flick – it almost feels like this was filmed during a global pandemic). But while I was enjoying the movie, I wasn’t in love with it until the final 10 minutes when the penny finally dropped and it kind of floored me. It’s a gorgeous, unique, small-scale piece and more people should know about it.

Orphan: First Kill (2022)

I don’t think any useful discussion of this can be had without revealing very significant spoilers of the first film. I’m going to say that if you haven’t seen Orphan (2009), please go watch it now before you read any further. DO NOT watch the 2022 film first, even though it’s a “prequel.” So go now – first Orphan (2009) and then Orphan: First Kill (2022). Thank me later.

Ok, I’m going to assume that anyone remaining has watched both films or will never watch both films. Wow – I must say I had my doubts when I heard that Isabelle Fuhrman, who had starred in the first film in 2007/8 when she was 10, now 24, was going to do a prequel, reprising the role of Esther at an even younger age, and that it was going to be done without computer trickery, but just with body doubles and in-camera effects (ala the hobbits in Lord of the Rings). But it really works! I mean it works by not working – hopefully everyone who saw this had already seen the original film and already knew that earlier film’s twist – that Esther is actually a grown-up with a form of dwarfism, masquerading as a little girl to infiltrate families via adoption, hit on the adoptive father, take what she wants, and kill anyone in her way. Here, we all know from the first frame that this ‘little girl’ is actually, as one character later incredulously says, “a grown-ass woman,” and having an adult woman clearly playing her (though we suspend our disbelief to accept that no other characters can see through her dastardly ruse) helps us watch and enjoy the act all the more clearly – though when she breaks that character, driving a stolen car, listening to ‘Maniac,’ wearing sun glasses, and smoking a cigarette, it’s pretty frickin’ fantastic. The first film turned on such a big reveal and I wondered what they could do here without getting repetitive, but the eventual twist is a doozy. I can’t make any claim of thematic depth or significance, but this movie is just a thrilling, ridiculous, delightful ride.

Rope (1948)

This list has not been any kind of countdown, but I have saved the best for last. For years, I’d been meaning to check out this Hitchcock thriller, most famous for its technical trick of appearing to all be done in one take, but I had no idea just how great of a movie it is, how exciting, how funny, and how chilling. The one take gimmick (which is a bit obvious – every time there’s a “hidden” cut, the camera passes behind someone’s back for a moment) is impressive, and is instrumental in the success of the piece, but it is just one part of a significant whole. Mainly it helps establish the breathless urgency of events playing out in a kind of theatrical “real time” (significantly, this real time is not realistic – events take as long or as short as the drama requires, but the exigency is palpable). The film begins with a couple, Brandon and Phillip (striking how in the late 40s, a clearly gay couple could be shown so openly – if unremarked on – there were probably some viewers who assumed they were just “roommates” – but really, how?), murdering a friend, David, and hiding him in a chest in their living room before hosting a dinner party comprising David’s closest friends and family – all in order to experience pulling off ‘the perfect murder,’ achieving a kind of aesthetic perfection. They even invite an old professor (played by Jimmy Stewart) who used to lecture about a Nietzschean ascendancy which would entitle the ‘superior’ man to kill as he sees fit, free from the morals of the herd.

Brandon, the dominant of the two (their relationship dynamics are wild), gleefully plays with how close he can get to the fire without being burned, without the crime being revealed – serving dinner on the fateful chest or tying up some old books to give David’s father using the rope with which he had strangled his son a half hour earlier, while Phillip just gets drunker and more terrified as the evening progresses, and hence, more erratic and incautious. Hitchcock is absolutely impish in his game of tension, with what enters the frame and what doesn’t, with how close they get to being caught. Finally, there is the element that I think really qualifies this as horror. Watching Jimmy Stewart’s Rupert slowly piece together the clues staring at him in plain sight and the dawning realization of the role he has played in inspiring this crime is a horror beat. Additionally, the very concept of murder for aesthetic entertainment – of characters delighting in venturing into a post-moral space – is more than a little chilling – bringing us to a more horrific (though still essentially thrilling) territory than a crime of passion or greed. I can’t overstate how great this was and, even if only ‘horror-adjacent,’ I think it’s more than worth the time of any fan of the genre.

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And so, there we have it. Ten movies that were new to me that I hadn’t previously written about. That was 2022, and at least in terms of movies, it was pretty great. Let’s see what ’23 holds… Thanks for joining me here – I hope your new year treats you well and we can all keep the horror on the screen and page and otherwise, at bay.

Seductive Sounds of Terror – Ten Favorite Horror Scores

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So, some time back I put out a list of ten “songs of the summer,” all original songs written/recorded for 80s horror flicks that just said, “summer” to me. At the time, I excluded horror scores from the list as that really could be its own post. And now it is. This post here.

What is it about them that’s so addictive? I mean, film music can be perfectly enjoyable from any genre if the composition is strong, but there is something about music orchestrated to both pull you in and set you on edge that is really compelling for me. One of my jobs (proofreading translations) is very detail oriented and I very often put on music from some horror film while I’m doing it. I need energy and focus, but I can’t be distracted by words, and the drive, playfulness, and bite of a good horror score always hits the spot, keeping me moving, but also alert. Plus, they just put me in a good mood.

So, for this list, again, I’m setting myself some rules (which I might also let myself break). I’ll only include full scores. There are so many really rocking themes that stand on their own, but for which I’m not really familiar with the whole score they’re from (or sometimes, a whole score wasn’t even written – but there is one great theme), so while I love, for example, the main themes to Gremlins, Rosemary’s Baby, The Psychic, Exorcist II: The Heretic, Chopping Mall, or just about every John Carpenter movie, I’m not going to put them on this list.

Also, I’m going to try to stick to a one per composer/director rule, but that will be hard, particularly in terms of the Italians and, again, John Carpenter, so we’ll see how well I do with this one.  Anyway, here, in no particular order, are my ten favorite horror scores. Enjoy!

Candyman (1992) – Philip Glass

CANDYMAN (1992) [FULL VINYL]

We may be starting with my favorite. Philip Glass is a modern, minimalist composer and his score is, at once, quite spare – a few instruments, mostly the organ, and a chorus, building repetitions of simple themes, while being at the same time grand, romantic, mournful, gothic, and full of dread. The pulsing repetitions become claustrophobic, though the themes being repeated can be quite pretty, and there is an edge of something unresolved stretched across the composition. There are no stingers to accompany jump scares, but it is unsettling, uncanny, and beautiful – the perfect accompaniment to the film’s central themes. I pretty much think this film is a masterpiece, but I don’t know how true that would be without this tremendous music to raise its effect. Also – I’ve been using the music box theme that kicks it off as my ringtone for at least the last fifteen years.

Daughters of Darkness (1971) – François De Roubaix

DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS (1971) [FULL VINYL]

Sensual and atmospheric, the music here fluctuates between an erotic early seventies groove, a languid, classy waltz that implies something much older and aristocratic, and this hypnotic spookiness that seduces, but still has a bit of an edge. There are themes that repeat, but often with different instrumentation, or carrying a slightly different vibe. It is all playful, varied, and also pretty steamy. And it just works so well in the film, helping to build the enveloping atmosphere of the whole piece.

Dracula (1992) – Wojciech Kilar

Dracula (1992) Soundtrack (Full vinyl Rip)

This was the first film score that I ever bought, so enamored was I with Coppola’s rich, romantic, colorfully extravagant interpretation of Stoker’s story. The music is grandiose and monumental to the point of being intimidating. Kilar’s score is a building storm of orchestral power, driving and intense. Subtle it is not, but neither is the film, and I think they make a perfect pairing. Also, I haven’t found confirmation of this anywhere, but I feel like it includes a really interesting musical reference to the 1922 score to Nosferatu, the granddaddy of vampire cinema. Listen to the first track, “Thema I” or the penultimate track, “Nosferatu saugt Ellen und stibt im Morgengrauen” and see if it doesn’t feel familiar.

Phantasm (1979) – Fred Myrow & Malcolm Seagrave

"Phantasm" Full Vinyl Soundtrack by Fred Myrow & Malcolm Seagrave

Phantasm has one of the most iconic main themes in the genre, living in my head in close proximity to Carpenter’s theme for Halloween, both eking maximum effect out of a really small handful of notes. But that is only the beginning. The rest of the work, featuring a wide and eclectic array of percussion instruments and gloriously atmospheric synthesized soundscapes, is just as creepily inviting and sublimely weird. It ranges from alien discordance to a disco funk, from gothic spookiness to avant-garde pandemonium, all matching the film’s home-spun idiosyncrasies beat for beat.

City of the Living Dead (1980) – Fabio Frizzi / The House by the Cemetery (1981) – Walter Rizzati

Ok, so I’m breaking a rule here as this Sophie’s choice between these scores to two entries in Lucio Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy is just too much for me. (The Beyond is good too, but these two just blow me away.) They are for two films from the same director, but at least the composers are different, so that’s something. But they are equally compelling, and well suited to their respective flicks.

Going chronologically, City of the Living Dead is sometimes mysterious, sometimes rocking, and always eerie. Frizzi is really one of the best in the game, so it was hard to choose just one piece of his, but in the end, I just can’t get over the gothic, incessant atmosphere of this one. It’s a great space to dwell in, with strange, distorted sounds that still retain musicality, with a kind of implacable lurching towards the grave, and with a guitar solo on one track that seems exactly like something David Gilmore of Pink Floyd would have produced.

The House by the Cemetery // Walter Rizzati -- Death Waltz Records [Full Vinyl Rip]

The score for The House by the Cemetery works in a similar mode, but stakes out its own ground. There is a creeping dread here mixed with a kind of enraptured nostalgia. The second track, “I Remember,” I could listen to all day. There is an emotional tension that pairs so well with this gory, gorgeous film of nightmare logic and the wicked Doctor Freudstein.

The Burning (1981) – Rick Wakeman

The Burning OST (1981) [Vinyl]

This one, very simply, just rocks! Rick Wakeman, a keyboardist for the band Yes (i.a., Owner of a lonely heart) really soars here. It swings between a lyrical beauty appropriate to the natural setting of this summer camp set slasher and a stomping synthesized rock sound, effectively intense in underscoring the film’s mayhem and murder. And it all just sounds so cool and weird. There are sounds here that only a synth could make, which are not trying to imitate anything that came before, which are odd, but really work in the film. And aside from the film, as a standalone album, it is all just so much fun.

Suspiria (1977) – Goblin

Dario Argento's ‘Suspiria’ – Full Vinyl Soundtrack by Goblin

This is another impossible choice. I could have just as easily listed the score for Profundo Rosso or Tenebrae, but I am only allowing myself one Goblin scored Argento flick. And the film showcases the music so well. The opening sequence is a prime example: Suzy arriving at the airport, with the music swelling each time the doors open, letting in both the sound and the storm, the main theme implying the violent threat of this black forest fairy tale setting she is so vulnerably walking into. She goes through the automatic doors into a raging storm, at once entering a world of magic and threat and cool, weird melodies accompanied by creepy voices singing “la, la, la, la”. Goblin’s music is sometimes delicate, sometimes darkly enveloping in its creepy awesomness, and sometimes discordantly disquieting (while ironically being pretty loud), really setting nerves on edge. But the overall effect is glorious, absolutely integral to the film, and a perfect complement to Argento’s technicolor visual assault, all resulting in an effective, delirious, addictive sensory overload of a movie.

The Fog (1980) – John Carpenter

The Fog Soundtrack (Blake's Gold Edition) [Full Vinyl Rip] Part 1

“11:55, almost midnight. Enough time for one more story. One more story before 12:00, just to keep us warm.” This is another nail biter of a choice. I doubt anyone else has crafted so many recognizable, iconic themes, particularly while working with a pretty contained palette, but I think this is my favorite. Endlessly atmospheric and catchy, he laid down the perfect foggy sound for his old fashioned fireside ghost story of deadly revenge rolling in from the sea. There is a fragile sense of loss to the compositions, a palpable dread, and the hook of fascination that pulls you in even as you tremble – a delicious, doom-laden auditory treat.

The Wicker Man (1973) – Paul Giovanni and Magnet

the wicker man ost-corn rigs

Again, I feel like I’m breaking my own rules as I hadn’t intended to include anything featuring songs with lyrics, but I just can’t leave this out, and with its folksy, historical charm, it is also a nice counterpoint to some of the other music on this list. The scoring, all based in traditional Scottish, English, and Irish music, really sets the stage for our visit to Summerisle, and perfectly gives voice to its inhabitants as they undergo their fiery celebration. And the songs that are sung, such as “Gently Johnny,” “The Maypole Song,” or “Willow’s Song” are such a significant aspect of how we see the life of the village – boisterous and lusty and joyfully pagan. As long as you’re not an overly religious and sexually repressed police sergeant investigating a missing child, it is unbelievably inviting. The first time I saw The Wicker Man, I hadn’t known what to expect and I was puzzled to discover that it’s kind of a musical, but now the sung portions are something I look forward to every time.

A note: I couldn’t find a clip with the whole soundtrack on Youtube, so the video above is just the first song. However, you can follow this link to a playlist that includes the full soundtrack.

Day of the Dead (1985) – John Harrison

Day of the Dead OST // Waxwork Records [FULL VINYL RIP]

This was another tossup – Harrison’s work for Creepshow is great, but the rising dread set to a sometimes calypso beat that he worked up for Romero’s third zombie outing just stands the test of time. We have the sustained tension fitting for this claustrophobic bunker setting, we have militaristic marches following the aggression of the army guys, and we have an essential weirdness well suited to the unknowable nature of the living dead. And somehow, even through the musical trepidation, there are odd notes of lightness and play. Some compositions really maintain an interesting tension and/or a balance between a bass-y low-end relentlessness and airy notes dancing about on top of it all. And it is just so effective in the film itself, which is of course the point.

Well that’s that. I hope this music serves you (whoever you may be) as well as it does me. May your hours in front of the computer be groovier – and more ominous.

Relentless Subjectivity: The Witch and The Lighthouse

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So, finally last week, I had a chance to go to the movies for the first time in months and catch Robert Eggers’s The Northman before it left cinemas. While it’s not my favorite thing that he’s done, I was happy to have the chance to see it on the big screen and hear it at full volume (it’s a loud movie). On one level, I really wanted to catch it because – hey, an epic-mythic Viking tale of revenge, working with the same source on which Hamlet was based, just sounds pretty cool and also, having so appreciated Eggers’s first two features, I feel a sense of loyalty and will check out pretty much anything he makes for a while.

But this isn’t a Viking blog – it’s a horror blog, so today, I’m not going to delve much into The Northman, but rather those first two movies which so enraptured me: The VVitch and The Lighthouse. I’ve long wanted to re-visit them and consider them together as they share many elements and artistic/thematic preoccupations. Plus, they both just delighted me on first viewing. And as it’s also a blog about ‘delight,’ here we go…

The VVitch: A New-England Folk Tale (2015)

The film centers on Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), eldest daughter of a family of puritans kicked out of a New-England colony for somehow being too puritanical. The family patriarch, William (Ralph Ineson) thus drags them all into the wilderness to work the land and make a life for themselves, free to be as pious as he wants. Unfortunately, the only thing he’s actually good at is chopping wood (and this he does plenty of – in an obsessive, fevered, nigh masturbatory manner – his only outlet for the storm of emotions broiling within). Their vegetable plots are sad and barren, their corn beset by blight. They are barely scraping by, such that William has secretly sold his wife’s silver cup, her only remnant of her life and family in England, to buy a trap so they might catch animals to eat and somehow survive the coming winter.

Then one day, while Thomasin is playing peek-a-boo with her baby brother, he suddenly goes missing from one moment to the next, never to be found, and it doesn’t take long for their minds to first start teeming with intimations of the supernatural (the children had already spoken of a ‘witch of the wood’ before the abduction), before directly turning on Thomasin and accusing her of being the witch (having already been blamed for the cup’s disappearance), her adolescent female body a natural site for this confluence of desperate pride, religiosity, puritanical fear, and a terror of nature itself.

We see supernatural elements, but it’s unclear what is real and what is fantasy, and it all builds to a fevered, bloody family self-destruction. By the end, only Thomasin remains and when the devil appears before her in the form of the family’s goat, “Black Philip,” and offers her the opportunity to “live deliciously,” I can’t imagine rebuking her acquiescence. Her world is one of ‘sin,’ and she has already been labeled and attacked as ‘wicked,’ not to mention starved of the simple comforts of society. Under such conditions, if a goat seductively asks, “Wouldst thou like the taste of butter?” the answer is clearly “yes.” As she rises naked into the night, joining the fire-lit coven, it is emancipatory, rising towards an existence that simply must be better than what she’s known. Good for her. And at the same time, this sense of empowerment comes with the bite of tragedy and that juxtaposition makes the moment more than both.

This was, I believe, my fifth viewing since The VVitch was released seven years ago – and the experience of watching it has changed over time. I remember being so pulled in at first by the mystery of what was actually happening. Was there really a witch or was it just a case of this family projecting their supernatural fears onto the dire circumstances they had chosen to inhabit? If there was a witch, was it really Thomasin, or was this scary old crone actually out there, using baby’s blood as body lotion and/or wood stain for her broom? And was she the same as the lady in red or was there a group of women living in the forest and stealing children? The nightmare of it all was heightened by my inability to find firm ground on which to stand, and when it finally culminated in its explosion of goat/family violence and its denouement of triumphant, exultant, and willfully chosen witchery, it was deeply satisfying, while still inhabiting a space just beyond my full logical comprehension. Now, having watched it multiple times, I enjoy dwelling in that space of uncertainty. The film could be read in multiple ways – more or less supernaturally or realistically, sociologically, psychologically, religiously – but I find it most satisfying to leave Schrödinger’s Box closed, all states remaining simultaneously true and false.

I recently listened to an interview with Eggers on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, and something he said there feels like a key to much of his work – in all of his features, he tries to approach his historical characters from their own perspective, without judgement. Thus, subjectivity reigns. There is no objective viewpoint of what is “real” – if the characters view the world itself, and the nature that surrounds and suffuses them as inherently sinful, it is. If they fear the devil, he is to be feared. If their worldview is one in which witches haunt the woods, they do. And in this, the film doesn’t make a claim of what was real in the past, but rather, it just gives us a glimpse through their eyes for the span of the story.

His obsessive attention to historical detail really supports this approach and helps to bring it all to life – the VVitch was filmed with natural light, among settings built using only period appropriate tools and techniques. The language is as accurate to how people would have been speaking then as he was able – it all comes together to situate the viewer in a time and a place and a mindset – and in this case, it is a troubling, eerie, emotionally fraught, and terrifying one. Somehow, this exactingly accurate past re-creation allows for a story that need not be rooted in realism, but is free to follow the often dark flights of fancy of its characters. I find it interesting that he was praised by both Satanists and Born-Again Christians for understanding their perspective and showing it in a good light. That subjectivity of character invites a similar subjectivity for the viewer.

The Lighthouse (2019)

Here, Eggers runs with that subjectivity and manages to take it to an extreme point of delirium and fractured identity. This can make the film delectable for some and exhausting for others as it is, in a narrative sense, pretty difficult to track what is or isn’t actually happening at any given moment. But when I saw it in the cinema, I was absolutely up for its wild ride, and came away from it enraptured. This is the first time I’ve revisited it since then and, while I think it did suffer from being viewed at home, surrounded by distractions, its madly ambitious hysteria still captivates, not to mention the absolute cinematic pleasure of its visually striking imagery and the simple joy of its performances. (Also, as an aside, I did – sort of – discuss its source material here.)

In short, a man, Thomas (Robert Pattinson), comes to a remote island lighthouse in the late 19th century to be an assistant lighthouse keeper, running away from a dark secret. He is thrust into tight quarters with his partner-boss, the main lighthouse keeper, or “wickie,” Thomas (Willem Dafoe). After one month, a storm prevents them from being relieved by the next wickies. He goes mad. He has sex with a mermaid. Poseidon makes an appearance. Mysterious tentacles writhe at the top of the lighthouse. The two men circle each other in a dance of aggression, attraction, mirrored identity, and ever shifting power dynamics. The older man’s eyes become lighthouse beams, pinning the younger man down with the searing light of truth. All the while, the storm rages outside, battering their fragile shelter, the water getting into everything and spoiling the food. They run out of booze and start drinking the kerosene. In the end, having ‘spilled the beans’ on his past crimes, the younger Thomas kills the older, finally gets to see the coveted light in the tower, and has his liver eaten by birds on the rocks as waves crash around him.

Or maybe none of that happens. Maybe he’s only there a couple of days before he goes mad. Maybe he’s freezing to death in Canada, imagining this all. Maybe he chases Thomas with an axe or maybe Thomas chases him. Maybe Thomas the elder is gaslighting him, lying about how many days have passed to make him think he’s losing time and responding to things that have never been said, toying with him cruelly by means of Sanford Meisner acting exercises because there’s nothing better to do on this rock than torment his assistant. Maybe they are really the same person, two parts of a divided self. Maybe he’s Prometheus, trying to steal the light of the gods. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

The gestalt effect is one of being trapped within an ever-shifting sense of psychosis, pushed and pulled by emotional impulses, by overwhelming forces both without and within, compulsions, repressed aspects of one’s self, the needs of the body. And if you are up for it, it is a great deal of fun. I mean, Willem Dafoe’s “Curse of Triton” speech, pure Shakespearean bombast, amidst the comedy and tension of a domestic squabble over how Thomas the elder cooks his lobster, is just about the most ecstatic couple minutes of film I can think of. But I can also easily see how this wouldn’t be for everyone.

It is not a film of plot. Perhaps it doesn’t even have one – there are events, but is there really a story, or is it all just a tour through madness, exploring the dictates of psychological and natural impulses and mythic passion? In any case, it is filmed within an inch of its life. The stark black and white cinematography is never short of beautiful; the tight, narrow aspect ratio is claustrophobic and reinforces the verticality of the central image – this giant phallus that the two men (if there even are two men) are trapped inside, driving each other crazy; and the whole film is so physically visceral. For a film set within a mental state, it is obsessed with physiology – with these men’s bodies. It is a film of flesh and sweat and stink, of semen and urine and vomit and over-full chamber pots that the wind blows back in your face when you try to empty them. I think centering the body in this way has a similar effect as what I discussed for The VVitch above. Just as intense historical accuracy opens the door to something beyond realism, so too does this foregrounding of biology result in highlighting something psychic or spiritual.

I think at the heart of it all is a desperate drive towards some ineffable transcendence (perhaps a theme here in the last couple of weeks, given last post’s film) – this is the light in the tower. Thomas the younger craves it and the elder guards it jealously, locking the younger man out and stripping down to worship the glory of this alien, geometrically radiant beacon. The Nature that surrounds them is that of 19th century Romanticism – terrifying in its power, beyond human comprehension or endurance – more than what people’s weak minds can hold. Thomas is mired in flesh, in the constraints of his mind, and is pulled both towards some sense of stability (dreaming of earning enough money to settle someplace where he can have his own land and no one will ever again give him orders) and also towards the power of something beyond, something inexpressible, something unmoored.  It is a riotous, gleeful, terrible space to inhabit for two hours.

Considering Both Films

There are certainly threads that run through both. Firstly, as mentioned, this totally subjective viewpoint really characterizes them, but there’s more. These films situate their characters in a specific relationship with Nature (whether that of the wind howling through the trees in the dark, wild wood OR the waves crashing against the rocks as the skies open and the heavens pour down OR the uncontrollable dictates of the fleshy human form) – one that is fraught with both fascination, temptation, horror, and worship. And both seem focused on themes of the individual carving out a place within that threatening yet so desirable Nature – in that, they both carry a myth of America – entering the fearful wilderness and claiming what is yours to take. They also both yearn for something beyond – for something sublime, whether it is to be found in Christian faith, a pact with the devil, the wind whistling in the dark forest, a light in a tower, or sex with a fish lady. They both firmly plant their characters in very historically accurate and oh so physical settings where everything is solid, corporeal, and material, but from which those characters can encounter the danger and allure of something else. On the strength of these two, I’m surely going to check out anything else that Eggers puts out.

So What About The Northman?

Well, I’m glad I got to see it in the cinema. It deserved that rather than the diminished attention, smaller screen, and quieter sound of a home viewing. And Eggers continues to foreground historical accuracy, nature, and the drive towards sublimity. There is a lot here to love – especially in the recreation of Nordic culture, religion, ritual, music, and mentality. But I didn’t really love the film the way that I had his first two.

I think the main issue for me is that in trying, as he has described, to meet his characters on their own ground, from their own perspective, he dooms the film to be unsatisfying for a contemporary audience. The main character lives in a world of fate and his ultimate satisfaction is to see that destiny fulfilled – even when there is no other dramatic/character reason to do something. I really enjoyed so much that led up to it (particularly Nicole Kidman’s performance – revealing secrets that prompt Amleth’s final push towards vengeance), but by the time that two naked Vikings are battling to the death on the lip of a live volcano, I was simply not that engaged – the fight hadn’t needed to happen, not really – its outcome doesn’t really matter – but what has been foretold has come to pass. And the film doesn’t question any of this – there is no dramatic tension of whether he is doing the right thing or not – he is just doing the thing he is doing. Now, I think it would probably mean a betrayal of the characters and their worldview had the film really posed these questions (a choice that would have felt quite modern, the expected dramatic turn), but in avoiding judgment, Eggers sacrifices catharsis, something that didn’t happen in The VVitch or The Lighthouse.

But I’m glad he got to make his Viking epic and I’m glad I got to see it. Even if the end effect underwhelmed, it was still a big, bold, bloody, ambitiously weird outing, and though the whole was less than the sum of its parts, some of those parts are really great, and I’m glad they got to exist.

What is Horror? Can it be defined? Should it?

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There are some questions that continually resurface as you discuss a genre, and when it comes to Horror, defining the basic term is one such question. It can be surprising, interesting, and even infuriating to what degree this fundamental notion can prompt such endless disagreement among its devotees, creators, and proponents. I doubt baseball fans ever argue online about what baseball is.

And, yet, here we are…

Blood spatter image created by jannoon028 – www.freepik.com

Some Definitions or Descriptions

According to literary historian J. A. Cuddon, the horror story is “a piece of fiction in prose of variable length… which shocks, or even frightens the reader, or perhaps induces a feeling of repulsion or loathing.”

Stephen King wrote “I’ll try to terrify you first, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll horrify you, and if I can’t make it there, I’ll try to gross you out.  I’m not proud.”

H.P. Lovecraft famously wrote, “the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”

Ok, so what is it? What are we even talking about here? My basic definition is this: 

‘Beyond fear or disgust, horror is an encounter with something so wrong, so alien to one’s sense of what is right and good in the world that it poses an overwhelming and immediate threat to one’s sense of self/reality/morality.’ 

Within this sentence are many key concepts.  Though I claim horror to be beyond fear or disgust, I think it safe to say that within an experience of horror, one often encounters both.  A horror is usually not only threatening to one’s safety, but is also revolting or offensive on a physical or moral level.  Your ‘skin might crawl’, or you might ‘have the creeps.’  In fact the Latin root of horror, “horrere,” literally means “to shudder.”

I think both elements are of significance.  If something is merely scary, it may be a thriller, if it is merely disgusting, it may gross us out but not horrify.  Horror consists of an encounter with a wrongness that threatens.  This combination can be profound.  Terror resulting from the knowledge of threat is a very animal experience.  Revulsion is very much an experience of the body.  Horror combines these reactions of the mind and the gut in an overwhelming fashion.

Wrongness

This wrongness may take a variety of forms.  In “The Philosophy of Horror,” Noel Carroll makes the argument that a monster in horror fiction is always interstitial; combining, blurring, or confounding categories, and in so doing, disrupting understood cultural schema.  This means that the monster is always a play of categories thought impossible.  A werewolf combines human and animal. A zombie blurs life and death.  Frankenstein’s monster is built from many different bodies.  Lovecraft’s amalgamations of octopodi, crustaceans, and humanoid forms certainly fit the bill, and Clive Barker’s wet and sticky imaginings confound the basic boundary of the skin, blurring inside and outside, self and other. 

For Carroll, the impossibility of the creature is of great significance in defining the genre.  ‘Beast’ in Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ may be physically similar to a werewolf (though in the original story, he was more of an elephant-fish hybrid), but he exists in a fairy tale world of which he is a key element.  He may be feared, but his very existence does not horrify.   Carroll sets his definitions more tightly than I find entirely useful, binding the genre to this specific type of monster to the exclusion of a horrific event or a human monster such as Norman Bates.  Still these ideas, if overly restrictive, still provide useful insight into strong undercurrents of horrific works.

And those works are so varied. For all that horror is a known and accepted genre, it is tremendously difficult to pin down.  Clive Barker has noted astutely that horror ‘describes a response rather than a subject.’ Is the genre that which shows us the experience of horror, or that which horrifies us, and could either of these serve exclusively?  If something horrifies (such as footage from concentration camps) does that fit it within the ‘horror genre?’  If a work contains people reacting with horror to an interstitial creature (as in ‘the elephant man’) does that place it in the genre?  I think any definition is open to successful counterexample so this I will not attempt.

Crossing Boundaries

It is relatively safe to say that the elements of the definition listed above resurface as common themes within the genre.  Most significant for me thematically is the consistent act of pushing and breaking boundaries.   When a knife cuts flesh, the boundary of skin is broken.  A ghost represents a breaching of the line between life and death.  When Regan in “The Exorcist” masturbates with a crucifix (or more accurately, stabs herself in the crotch with a crucifix – there is no sense of pleasure, sexual or otherwise, in the scene), any number of boundaries pertaining to children, sex, the body and religion are broken.  When Jack Torrence falls under the influence of the Overlook in King’s ‘The Shining’ such that he attempts to kill his wife and son, boundaries of the self are breached—both in the influence that the hotel holds over his mind and in the violations of essential ideas of family (at least in the book version—the film has a different focus). 

This boundary play contains both the elements of fear and disgust.  Fear involves the boundary of perceived safety being threatened while disgust obviously involves the presence of something beyond the bounds of the acceptable.  Rot and gore are obvious examples, but I believe this tent also covers issues of morality, psychology, and taste.  This container of breached boundaries also holds many other prominent themes within the genre such as sex, violence, power, moral absolutism, and identity: a list which is by no means comprehensive.

The Film Genre of Horror

So what does this mean for the genre? When an argument arises about defining Horror, it is generally because a non-horror fan has said something like “Well, of course I like ‘Silence of the Lambs,’ but it’s not really a horror movie, is it?” or a horror fan has said something like, “I don’t get why everyone loves ‘The VVitch so much. It’s not scary – I don’t think it’s even a horror movie.”

Well, now we can just apply a simple formula to check if something is or isn’t.

Just kidding. That would be stupid.

While I believe there is value in pondering the delimitations of an experience, and yes, a genre like Horror, I don’t know that there is much point is getting so worked up over whether or not a given work qualifies.  Some things are just too subjective, especially when the definitions themselves depend on subjective experience, such as what personally makes us shudder.  And I think those definitions must remain subjective as otherwise counterexamples render definition itself impossible. For example, if Horror must have a supernatural monster, then sure, ‘Silence of the Lambs’ doesn’t qualify. Neither does ‘Psycho’ or ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.’ A lot of babies in that bathwater…

Ultimately, and circularly, Horror is that which is perceived as Horror to the viewer, or to the maker, in question. I personally love ‘Silence of the Lambs,’ but don’t perceive it as a horror movie.  I get how others could.  It has horrific elements and if you compare it’s production design or score to that of Michael Mann’s ‘Manhunter’ (the first film to feature a detective coming to Hannibal Lecter for help with a case), Mann’s film feels much more like a cool, stylish thriller, and the stone walls of Demme’s film suggest more of the gothic. But at the end of the day, for me, it just doesn’t feel like horror. I get that horror fans want to lay claim to this award winning film, but I can’t make the leap.  Others can. That’s fine.

So what is the point of all this? If we can’t claim an objective definition that works in all cases, why devote time and energy to making the attempt? I suppose, for me, there is value in the meditation.  There is value in the mental work of trying, even if it is all in vain.  The effort of the consideration justifies itself, though in doing so, we doom ourselves to the soul rending realization of the futility of our endeavors.

Oh, the Horror…