Do I have anything to add to the conversation
going on about this movie? The synth score, the beautiful cinematography,
naturalistic performances. The horror community is falling all over themselves
for this movie. Me fangushing all over the internet will only add to
the numbing collective shriek that surrounds this movie. Screw it.
Here it comes.
I was not expecting to like this. There has been so much
hype around it I was growing suspect. I heard the soundtrack was interesting, but some horror fans I
trust saw it and were underwhelmed. I stayed away in the theater. Hype machine
isn’t going to get me this time! I should have gone to see it in the theater.
Those wide shots would have been nice on the big screen.
The big influence that people throw at this is John
Carpenter. Sure, it has some of his play book going on, and I appreciate that.
Carpenter is my main guy and when I see people send love his way I’m happy, but
what I saw while watching was Brian DePalma by way of Dario Argento. The shots
were so well choreographed ala DePalma, with the long pans slowly building
tension and telling the story through the visuals. The vivid colors and
stylistic lighting choices reminded me of European horror. The dream logic of
this world reminded me of Argento on a good day.
What grounded this wild premise was the authenticity of
the protagonists. The young adults dealing with this problem are so normal, so
comfortable with each other, I never doubted they’d been friends since
childhood. They had a calm ease that
comes from being friends for a long time. They seemed to really care and love
one another, their personalities blending, and they liked hanging back and
playing dumb card games or watching dumb movies just because they liked being
in each other’s presence. So many movies have the most unlikely friends. The
jock, nerd, basket case, princess, and criminal usually don’t run in the same
circles. In most horror movies they have one stereotype of each group
represented, and I always wonder what they have in common and how they suffer
each other. In some movies, all friends do is argue and needle one other. I
watch some movies and think, “Are these people really friends? They seem to
hate each other!”
Is the synth soundtrack awesome? Yes. Did it take me out of
the movie? Sometimes. Why? Because it was so aggressively weird that you had to
stop and pay attention to it. During the movies big moments, it was perfect,
driving the scenes with a perfect accompaniment, but during the quiet scenes, I
was listening to the sound track more than watching the movie.
Just to desecrate this temple a little more. The invisible
man final confrontation was more funny than scary. If you are going to make
this monster have a physical presence, then why hasn’t anyone locked it up in a
box by now? I’m no fun. Never mind.
I am predisposed to like this movie as I’ve had this same
anxiety in my life. In my case it was a floating metallic sphere, like a
robotic eyeball, that was slowly tracking me and always coming closer.
Eventually it would catch up to me and do me in. I also believe that everyone
has “The Giant Dump Truck of Suck” that is always backing up to
eventually dump on them “The Big Sucky Thing” that they will have to deal with in
their lives. Some people get the truck as infants, some live charmed lives
until they’re old and feeble, but we all get our own personal "Sucky Thing" eventually doled out.
This brings me to what I think the movie is about and why I
think it has become so popular. This movie is about our silly lives and all the
futile stuff we do to stave off death or keep from thinking about it.
By having sex, you are embracing life but at the same time you are biologically
acknowledging your own mortality. At the base level, we want to survive death; we
want to live on in some way past our allotted years. Death will wipe us out,
but maybe having an offspring will keep some part of us on this earth a little
longer. Or maybe creating something, a scratch on the wall, will keep us around
after we’re gone. We also need to keep our minds off the slowly approaching oblivion.
Watching movies, playing cards, going to the beach, falling in love, living
busy lives filled with noise, all an attempt to drown out the endless, infinite silence that is on a steady and certain interception with us. I feel that the
movie hits some primal part of our lizard brains that knows all this fighting
to get another day of sun is ultimately pointless. In the end, like in the
movie, we bond with someone, we find a mate, we blur our identities (the two
main characters have on matching outfits in the end), we cling to one another
and throw parties and wait out the rest of our days together. Doesn’t change
anything. Death is always coming. It always wins. This movie is about the trivial little things we do while we wait for it to show up. It’s a downer, depending
how you look at it, but it is an honest meditation on the subject, and like The
Babadook before, it is a great metaphor for how real horror is never defeated,
but eventually accepted as a natural part of existence.
Note to the reader, I am turning forty in a few weeks so I may be enjoying a midlife morbidity phase. Sorry about that.
FIGHT EVIL
Sam Drog
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