A clue to one of the films...But this pic is Richmond Park, Photo by Tom Shakir on Unsplash
Welcome to Part 2 of
the weird horror/psychological dramas I watched last year.
**
Feeling sad today.
Watching and tracking the course of the Ukraine invasion, for days
now. So angry, so sad. And Twitter, in particular, can’t help but
give you a massive sense of how many Europeans hate all of England now, and
will never have us back. I miss Europe
so. Ukraine fights so hard to save itself, and to get into the EU; which is
righteous. And then there’s England –
now thought of everywhere as small minded, a joke, a dangerous unsettlement –
and I meet enough of us that are. It’s enough to make you lose hope. Ukraine is this shiny example of caring to
fight for your people and your freedom, and we just suckered ours away. Look at
the laws the Tories push through Parliament, just yesterday for example…
I hope the Ukranians win, somehow. They have more spirit than we do. here in this whiny country. Ashamed to be English, so much of the time.
**
To the unreal horrors. As usual, there may well be massive
spoilers.
The
Assistant (Julie Garner - 2019)
About Harvey Weinstein and men like him without saying so. ‘Him’.
A horror film about the normalisation and everydayness of
dehumanisation, in circumstances where we cease to see certain people as
people. The heroine loses her soul. Also, offices helped take it; as they do.
Hardly any soundtrack, just the drone of office equipment; enough to steal your
mind on a good day, let alone a morally ambiguous one.
Saint
Maud (2019)
Hmmmm. Seriously weird, and very watchable. Adore that God spoke in Welsh. As of course, God should. Soundtrack reminiscent of Hereditary, in that it was disturbing
and I loved it. Very very strange
film about religious nutteriness, and how you shouldn’t believe omens and
portentous sexually repressed feelings that start off as sightings of
hallucinatory big beetles. It’s only a horror film because of the last 7
minutes. Really it’s a psychological drama, a beetle on the wall about a
psychotic break.
Innocence
(2013)
Another
random rather excellent film watch. I
liked the picture on Prime. The minute it started, with a girl going to an
elite boarding school, and it having a sort of overly atmospheric air to it, I
was thinking – Suspiria, they’re all
witches – I wasn’t far wrong: lamias, stealing youth from virgins with their
blood. With a premise like that, you
just have to go a bit gothic, and very floaty and Story of O pastels all at the same time. And Tomandandy did the music – you can’t
really go wrong. This was both shallow
and extremely silly and totally and utterly beautifully filmed and a bit
wonderful. Based on a book. I wonder if the book is as good. [No, I didn’t find it so – later that year.]
Emma Wants to Live (documentary - real, 2016)
Interesting and so sad look at a Dutch girl dying of anorexia. There’s no happy ending, there’s just her
thin bone body and what ends up as the shape of her face: these huge eyes and skull
with flesh only really in any muchness around the side of her eyes. She had no muscle, no tissue. The disease
that made her not eat, ate her. Those taking care of her, survivors themselves
– and how strong and solid of them to be able to do it, they commented on the
power of the disease, controlling her till the last. And, tellingly, how merciful it was she left
home to die, so her family could live, as her disease ran them as well as her,
as diseases do. I knew anorexia was
powerful, but just this very unmedical look at it, and I feel I understand
more. I wonder if this film will save any lives? If it maybe has? Or if for everyone who watches it it’s
already too late? Like Thinner?
In the
Earth (Ben Wheatley - 2021)
(Bat
shit. I wonder if it will offend other
pagans or witches? It was good, but not as good as it could have been. Pacing problem after the very funny Reece
Shearsmith segment. Music not as
immersive as it could have been. Me
worrying if they actually played all that loud noise to the woods, and did it
piss off or upset the woods? Everyone was a great actor in this, and loved that
the main 2 characters weren’t white.
Nice change. Was Alma possessed by the woods at the end or was she
simply doing her job in a traumatised situation when they were still having
mushroom flashbacks, offering to lead him out of the forest? Weird and not
quite as wonderful as I had hoped considering how much I love A Field in England. Midsommer
was better.
Censor (2021)
(Really
mad. Used the same Chernobyl theme as A Field in
England; and had Michael Smiley [amazingly creepy cameo], which In the Earth also didn’t, but A Field in England did, so it was a good
pairing of films, they felt related. Niamh
Algar was amazing, her thinking acting was …strong! I enjoyed this a lot, very
atmospheric. A film about video nasties and a woman disintegrating from guilt
at the incident of her sister disappearing when they were children, and she
thought it was her fault.
Dark Eyes
AKA Satan’s Mistress AKA Demon Rage AKA Demon Seed (but not that one)
Saw this back in 1982 when it was released, though it was made
‘78 or ‘79. I remember loving it hugely, though watching it now I’m not totally
sure why. Much chestiness from Lana
Ward, and how could I forget Britt Ekland and John Carradine were also in this?
Kabir Bedi almost does the best acting just looking pent up and longing/cross.
I like the totally overdone music and the endless sea shots? Maybe it’s overdoneness was why I liked it? I
think I was mentally a very melodramatic teen.
Mentally mental.
Carmilla
(2020, Hannah Rae)
(Amazing! Really dreamy and strange, 70s-ish. Really
felt like it was one of those BBC2 Christmas horrors from the early 70s, except
it wasn’t and had many sensibilities of now. Why the lonely girl wasn’t just
allowed to get on kissing the other girl and being actually happy, and was
instead punished so permanently by the sex starved governess companion….grrrrr,
in WendyWorld that woman …well, I would have had a really long conversation
with her about why she’s so nasty and judgemental. It was all so needless. And beautifully
filmed – full of countryside and ideas of England from my childhood: lanes with
overhanging trees, dreams of the south, warm sunshine, leaves in the wind. It was its own little world, that went wrong
for all the characters. English people:
never satisfied!
The Thing
(1982)
AGAIN!
Icky perfection. I am Clarke, in it, I
realised. I would be consistently more
concerned about harm to the dogs. Stanley pointed out how large Mac’s hat is – I had
never noticed how huge it is, now I can’t unnotice. It’s going to pull my
attention every single time I subsequently watch this. Tsk.
The Nanny
(1965)
Quite
sad. The boy was wrong, but then right
about the nanny being a killer; it was more a psychological horror about consequences. Pamela Franklin is always good to see, and
was very perky and unflappable here. Had never seen Wendy Craig do serious;
felt sorry for her character – I identified with her givey-uppy floppiness.
The Omen
(1976)
AGAIN!
Still excellent. Though can’t help
thinking of the child abuse angle watching it now, and that maybe Damien wasn’t
the Antichrist, and maybe Billie Whitelaw was the sanest person in the whole film,
ferociously protecting her charge from the insane nutters that his parents and
other adults became…! Though have to note this interpretation doesn’t explain
her turning up unannounced; or the telepathic dogs…
Itsy
Bitsy (2019)
A film only incidentally about a really big spider. (But Fry still wouldn’t watch it with me; he
really hates the Large Spiders.) Mostly
it was actually about PTSD and grief and pill addiction. And it made me cry near the end, very sad.
Nocturne
(2018 – not the one about the school)
This
was really a good surprise – it was excellent!
Echoes of The Evil Dead, of Triangle and the Buffy Halloween episode where they got stuck in the horror house;
and the episode in the basement of the school where Spike could see Buffy but
the others couldn’t, so that he was having 2 conversations. Also, the possession wasn’t about effects but
manner, behaviour and creepy Bible quoting. Really impressed, everyone was
excellent. And it didn’t explain what
was going on at all, you just had to work it out. What was Hank to Jo? Boyfriend, step dad? How long does Jo get
stuck in the loop – does she remember it after she goes in the house the second
time? And Liam and Jo weren’t together
at any point, they were friends only, yes? Still wondering – may watch again.
*
And that’s it for the horror/psychological stuff I saw last
year – there was more, but I didn’t note enough to remember them by. Hope you
enjoyed and were made curious by what you read.
Despite my shameless spoilering, they are all worth watching – go see
for yourself…
Next up, some art I think - but not this one. This one is here simply for beauty, and topicality...
See you next time.
Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers', attrib: Bibi Saint-Pol,
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
