Wheatfields in Ukraine
I wondered if today was a shite day to post about horror films. You know what, it really isn't. It's a mirror, its an appropriate day. The real world is full of obvious horrors today, and I can totally tell the difference between what I watch and the real life tragedies and suffering out there. At least what I watch isn't real.
I haven’t been watching so many old classics lately, from the 70s or 80s. I’ve been watching lots of newer things, and films/series that are sort of horror, psychologically speaking, but maybe not entirely. So it’s a strange list – I just went where the fancy took me. If horror films seem too trivial or upbeat (mad, eh?) for the real world as it is today, feel free to tut at me and click away. I'm doing my best to carry on as normal (ish), and this is what I had planned today. Come back later for unreal horror if the real world's horror has made you feel too ill. I get it. Or just don't read this. More book reviews and some articles about art coming soon (after Part 2). If its not about art and beauty and the peace and passion they give you, what the fuck is all this about anyway? Life? Fighting for independence, against invasion? Fighting for life, to just be here?
Sometimes horror films are the truest things I can find in a mad world. And some of them are downright beautiful art. Maybe none of these, but some.
**
Let’s go. As usual I’ll be RANDONLY SPOILERING LIKE CRAZY, and also in some cases barely describing the plot at all. I comment on what I thought, if I liked characters or what the films made me think of or about. I should probably mention the sexual assault in real life that one of the series’ made me think of, in case you’re not wanting to read about such a real thing. But here you are on a post about horror and psychological strife, posted on the day Europe did not much to contain the start of a continent wide war, so – well, some things are real in my life too.
I’ll list them in the order I watched them…
Deadline
(Brittany Murphy – the 2009 one; not the much weirder Italian influenced 1980
one)
I don’t think I’ve seen this before . Found it in a tatty old charity shop I’d
not seen before years ago, and it only just called me to watch it, finally. I
thought it was a horror film, but it’s a psychological ghost story with a
little bit of a confusing end. Did she become David? And why did they let her look so heroin chic
through the whole film, was she ill while making it, why didn’t they take better
care of her? I really wanted to feed her some toast and jam, on a regular
basis. Marc Blucas was good, but no one
has got him repeating the intensity he brought to the role of Riley in Buffy, since. I cheer him on though.
Haven,
Season 1 (2010)
Excellent, kooky and strange. I want to
live where it was filmed in Canada.
Haven,
Season 2 (2011)
Getting darker and sadder. Audrey
Parker’s Day Off was the saddest day repeating episode I’ve ever seen. The Wendigo episode was also sad, but
because everyone seemed cross with her for killing the Rev, who was a total
shithead we can all do without.
Haven
Season 3 (2012)
After Audrey finds out she is going to disappear in 2 months; manipulates Duke
to kill a troubled man, and refuses Nathan’s love…it goes all dark and
relationship-py. He meets Jordan of The
Guard who he can touch because he feels nothing so she can’t hurt him, Clare
the psychiatrist starts popping up in every episode but I don’t know whether to
trust her, and the Black police guy…who’s side is he on? He turns out to be the
Bolt Gun Killer – I did not see that coming at all. (I’m stalled in season 4 now, in 2022. I’ll come back to it. I was annoyed Audrey isn’t being Audrey at
the beginning. Much the same as they do
with the new Twin Peaks – when Agent
Cooper isn’t himself for far too long; and when you add that up with what they
did to his character at the end of the original…well, I walked off. Stanley finished the new one, but I wanted
Cooper as Cooper, I really missed him – so I left. They should be careful with
beloved characters.)
The
Serpent – 2021 series
The genius that is Tahir Rahim, and how much hair can change your head. Amazing performance. And helped me understand my exhub better.
Possibly exhub too was a narcissist.
Though it seems Charles Sobrahj was maybe a sociopath, and maybe a
narcissist too. A lot of ego and a LOT
of anger – I don’t think sociopaths have anger, as it’s an emotion, so…maybe …I
would like to know what made him tick – it seemed to me to be all about racial
anger and society owes me and my mum didn’t love me and I’m sneaky and sly and
a liar but she should love me anyway…
Jenna Coleman – also incredible. She
just fell in love with someone who made her insides glow with belonging and
dreams and the present moment. Mmm.
And Amesh Edireweera who played Ajay – should have had an episode of his own
about how he was found, and also why he was abandoned and not killed by
Sobrajh. He was an important and oddly
overlooked character in terms of development. What happened to him after?
And the Billy Howle playing the Dutch man….all those disparate European actors
speaking languages not their own beautifully, such dedication. Such a multinational performance in these
tiny days of little England bullshit. I
loved it. And the music was so good I’ve
bought it. 100/10.
Dietland (2018
series)
This
was really original, very varied in tone – funny, sad, moving over a whole mass
of issues that face women every day, some we are so used to that we barely
think about them – they’re just things we have to do before going out.
I know, that one of the reasons I overate to begin with, was
that I’m not comfortable with my body when it’s properly slim because of the
way men look at it. As if it’s theirs
and as if my body’s slimness means something, a message, to them, of
availability, of willingness, of a loss of my space. By looking a way that pleases them I invite
them in, they think; I feel. I remember
thinking these things very clearly. And
it’s not a big part of why I got fat, but hiding inside this fatter body is
definitely part of how I got this way.
Feeling that my body wasn’t mine, that its boundaries became less as I
became slimmer. The trouble is, you take
it too far the other way and again, you’re property of anyone: they see your
fatness as a message too. A call to attention in a different way.
It was coincidental but interesting, that I was watching this while the Sarah
Everard case was all over the UK news, and women were wanting to do vigils and
being denied by the police because of Covid regulations – but it sparked a
whole ‘Reclaim The Night’ thing. Women
speaking up about how unsafe it is, just to walk about after dark. And it is, just is. And Sarah Everard was
dressed anything but provocatively.
Totally warm, ordinary clothing.
Street harassment has become an issue – as it is in Plum’s life. It’s odd,
while this was on the news, I was agreeing this was true – I remembered the boy
who just came up to me and groped my boobs in the street when I was with a
friend as a teen, outside Edgware Road Station, on a sunny day in May; the way
I carried a little old man’s shopping home for him when I was 14 as he seemed
in difficulty getting off a bus, then he got a lot taller – unwound somehow –
when we got inside his house, and then groped my breasts and more of me, and I
almost felt like I should let him, as what did it cost me, and he was so alone
and thought them ‘so soft’. I felt dead and sideways to myself while he did it,
like my body was not mine at all. Not my property. I was lucky to get out of
there. After I recorded my creepy arse message on his tape recorder that he
directed me to do. ‘My name is Wendy,
and I’m Gilbert’s friend’. Things you say to get out of places and situations. No
good deed…I never went back, of course.
But many issues raised in Dietland. A terrorism group called Jennifer. What a great name, would never have thought of it.
Friday
the 13th (2009 remake)
Actually
very good – there was a whole mini plot in the teaser at the beginning. Jared Padalecki acted better than usual – I’m
pretty sure he can act really well, he just keeps getting parts that constrain
him massively…brilliant to see Amanda Ringhetti, loved her in The Mentalist. The whole underground
area – what was that supposed to be – why would it be there under Camp Crystal
Lake?
Honourable mention to the 2 awful guys – the ‘your tits are stupendous – perfect nipple placement’ guy, and the miming behind you sex guy…it just makes Jason’s work so much easier and more fun for the rest of us!
The Void
(2016)
Rather
insane Canadian horror film with Kathleen Munroe and – yay – Art Hindle, that
was a bit The Thing, a bit Hellraiser, a bit bodyhorror/The Brood, a bit a double episode from Supernatural and several other things
with nods at Lovecraft all over the place.
Very absorbing and imaginative. I
did feel the end was too talky; despite having a deep gravelly voice, you
really have to be something special to pull off the word ‘apotheosis’
seriously. Totally happy to have spent
time making faces of WTF at this J
Devil’s
Diary (2007)
Excellent piece of trashy horror – brilliant music, excellent acting and Brian
Krause [Charmed] was in it as a
priest. It was oddly well made for
schlock. Totally enjoyed. Wish this combination of people had made more
films. Ah, quiet little Canadian horror films: they so totally rock.
The
Seasoning House (2012)
Feels familiar – maybe I saw it before?
Hard hitting. Like 28 Days Later but
with militia trained rapists and one deaf mute girl in the walls of a
house. Excellent acting, excellent
atmosphere, heartwrenching, and horribly plausible set up situation. It’s a year later and it’s still in my head,
this film - and its horribly relevant re Eastern Europe, today.
Wrong
Turn 2: Dead End (2007)
Well,
the first one was classy and good; the second was insane and enjoyed
itself. Erica Leerhsen seems to turn up
in my favourite sequels to things – even better in this than Blair Witch 2. This film led even more to my recent, sudden
and should have had much earlier in
life realisation that Backwoods Horrors/Inbred Cannibal genres are deeply
political – all about haves and have nots and left behind communities in rural
areas. This one had chemical waste from
a closed paper mill in a now dead town, causing birth defects as explanation
for the whole family of odd looking, nimbly dislocating enemies. It’s actually a fascinating genre if done
well. I think I missed its obvious
messageyness before as I was just so creeped out by the faces of people. Flashbacks to original watching of the Hills Have Eyes and its brutality. And
that insane X Files episode where they kept the mother under the bed on a
trolley…
Girlhouse
(2014)
Disturbingly well made – and stuck in my mind because it was slick enough to
feel plausible. You understood why the
killer did it; you weren’t on his side, but you weren’t hating him either. I felt odd for several days after watching
this and The Seasoning House – and I
think they both gave rise to the first fully formed character pair and plot
that has shot into my head for years.
I honoured it by writing it down; but I don’t actually want that story to be what I write. Horror is one thing, sleazeporn another. I blur the lines a lot and often with horror, specially 70s horror, Eurohorror…but those characters and plot that appeared in my head made me wonder what chemicals I percolate without realising it. Which demons do you feed? I might let these characters turn up in another story, but I don’t want them to have their own one. I don’t want to feed them too much.
And that’s it for Part 1. Part 2 in a day or so...what other horrors will have hit the real world by then?
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