Round-up 30: Spooky Season, from Classic Horror to Transgressive Nightmares

Happy spooky season, everybody. As the weather finalizes itself into the darker times, I wanted to go out of my way to get some horror flicks into my system. Between school and work, I haven’t had the greatest time selections in the world, and my seasonal depression kicking in only begs me to stay up late watching football or basketball (now that it’s back). There is something deeply comforting to me about scheduled “events” on television. It’s something to look forward to throughout the day, and then the evening, so that they day doesn’t finally have to come to an end. I get this strange feeling of guilt when I’m scrolling on TikTok instead of watching the aforementioned event. But I digress, we are here for the movie talk, so let’s not waste any more time.

My most recent assignments for my film and literature class revolved around writer/director Alain Robbe-Grillet, a French figure who helped ignite and inspire the Nouveau Roman novel style. We were first assigned one of his short stories, entitled La Jalousie, which follows an unnamed and unidentified narrator as he watches his wife “flirt” with another gentleman on their banana plantation. What struck me about the structure of the story is how it repeats the same sequences over and over but through alternate perspectives based on mood and tone. This is something I had never seen done to this much of a committed level. A similar approach is taken in Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950), but never to the extremes that Robbe-Grillet takes them. For a follow-up to the short story, we were next assigned Last Year at Marienbad (1961), written by Robbe-Grillet and directed by Alain Resnais. The story is almost the same as La Jalousie, but this time taking place in a high-class mansion in Europe. The unnamed protagonist, a man, pursues an equally unnamed woman who he persistently claims had had an affair with the year prior, in that same mansion. The story isn’t just where the similarities lie, but also in the aggressively confusing, dream-like manner in which the plot unfolds. We see numerous sequences multiple times, but through altering lens and set pieces. All of this done to place the audience in the woman’s shoes as she tries to make sense of the man’s story in comparison to her own. What is true? Did they meet? Was it in passing? An affair? The film delicately dances around these questions so that even by the time you’ve finished it, reality is more uncertain than it was at the beginning. I made the argument to my class that the style being the same between the stories makes a comparison that much easier: Robbe-Grillet’s narrative style works far better on the screen than on the page. The page leaves the reader dry and frustrated, while pairing it with moving images grapes the viewer far more directly and gives them more to work with. Maybe it is accessibility to which I am referring, but regardless, I feel strongly that this style is amplified to a dramatic degree by (especially Resnais’) directing.

Now, allow me to guide you through my descent of horror over the past week or so. I truly didn’t expect myself to go as deep as I went, as fast as I went, but hey, here we are. I started off easy, with my yearly rewatch of the Wes Craven classic, Scream (1996). Every year I make an effort to sit down and watch this one, especially with it being one of my best pals’ most favorites of all time for the holiday. This viewing, however, I was especially entertained and appreciative of the screenwriting and the script overall. This is one of the cleverest parodies ever written, and I will die on that hill. The commitment to breaking down the structure and tropes of the typical “slasher” film while simultaneously making an effort to equally scare the audience is, from my perspective, impossible. Queue the opening scene. Those that have seen it already know. The opening sequence of Scream follows a teenage girl as she’s stalked by Ghostface while she’s home alone… About to watch a scary movie. I think what makes this so great too is that the guy writing such clever black comedy into the already absurd story is Wes Craven himself, the horror maestro behind the likes of Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977). He knows what the hell he’s doing so much so that the parody mixture with inventive horror elements meshes without fail or choppiness. If you haven’t seen this classic, I cannot begin to recommend it enough. If you’re feeling extra goofy this Friday, maybe pair it with a late-night viewing of Scary Movie (2000) as well.

The next scary watch was none other than the classic itself, John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978). Similarly to Scream, I try to watch this every year as the holiday approaches. That being said, I am pretty confident I missed watching it the last couple of years, because I do not remember this film banging as hard as it did. A tight ninety-minute runtime where not a single frame is wasted on needless bullshit. The film immediately opens with the mysterious and disturbing murder at the hands of Mike Meyers as a little boy; and then spends the remainder of the time quietly building up tension as we follow Jamie Lee Curits around her characters’ small suburban town. The score is what I couldn’t stop paying attention to. Consider a large portion of the first third of the film: it is quite literally just sequences of Jamie Lee and friends walking around, talking, with brief shots of Meyers following them in the background. How does it work? Ultimately it boils down to an intense attention given to the musical swells (and lack of) as the camera cuts around (or doesn’t). Without the music, or perhaps, a different, less “locked-in” score, the film would feel entirelydifferent in tone. Once night falls on the small town, everything is amped up, not just with the score, but the aggressive nature of the shots as well. Donald Pleasence gives one of the most haunting and charismatic “horror doctor” roles as Loomis, the psychiatrist in charge of Meyers. I found myself really enjoying his time on screen. Overall, everything you want and expect it to be, and maybe even a little more. Given how much I enjoyed this one, I should at least try to watch the original sequels too. They are probably all just as good. Right? Right?

Ah, yes, our favorite spooky author, Mr. Stephen King. Regardless of how you might feel about him for other reasons (I would bet money he’s in the Epstein files, reference: read IT), he is the undisputed king of the scares. I have read most of his big titles, but I had not heard of The Long Walk before. After seeing the trailers for the adaptation of it that just came out a few months ago, I won’t lie I was pretty excited to give this one a go. Especially given that it stars Cooper Hoffman as one of the leads (never missing a chance to shout out his old man, we miss you, Phillip), and is directed by Francis Lawrence of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) fame. The story follows a group of young men and boys in an America ruled by economic plague as they sign up willingly for a competition called, well, The Long Walk. They are tasked with simply walking until they are the last one left, with a prize of unlimited riches and motivation for the nation waiting at the end. Those who fail to continue the walk are shot and killed on the spot. Having now seen the film, I wouldn’t necessarily call it horror in the traditional sense, more psychological than anything. By the end I was feeling the most emotionally drained I had in a while, it takes a toll on those that can finish it out. Very graphic depictions of young men being shot and killed, quickly and sometimes slowly; boys with broken ankles forcing themselves on, walking while shitting and showing every frame on screen, those are just a few examples of the hurtles awaiting those who want to see it. But is it effective? I would argue it is. My biggest gripe however has to do with the final moments of the film, that feel sort of lazy and uninspired. The film feels like it’s all supposed to lead to some sort of dramatic conclusion that never really materializes. Which is a bit frustrating given what you’re put through for the majority of the whole thing. Worth a watch, still, especially for Cooper (and surprise Mark Hamill).

We now arrive at the star of the show. I am going to preface this, as I have done in the past with similar films: the following film I am going to discuss is officially “unrated”, however, would be simply labeled as NC-17 should it have been released into American markets in the traditional sense. It was banned in a number of countries for the content it contains; please, continue at your own discretion. I did not follow the rules that come with the box on this one, guys. Should I have heeded the many warnings from reviewers, professional and amateur alike, I would have just walked away. But, as noted with many of my entries in this series prior, I have a cat-like curiosity when it comes to these sorts of things in cinema, I literally cannot help myself.

So, with all that being said, let it be revealed that I got wrapped up into the rabbit hole that is A Serbian Film (2010). It has been widely accepted by most groups as the single most disturbing film ever made, and for good reason. First, I’ll give a gentle breakdown of the story, and then I’ll attempt to make sense of it and what the Godforsaken purpose could have possibly been behind making it. A Serbian Film follows Milos, a retired porn actor who lives with his wife and young boy. He is approached by an old friend and roped into a new kind of pornographic film production, one that seems to test the limits of their participants in a hyper sexualized and physical manner. He is hesitant, especially when red flags start popping up all around him, but given his financial situation, and keeping his family in mind, he chooses to stick it out for the sake of their futures. What follows is everything worse than he could’ve possibly imagined, or for us, the viewer, for that fucking matter. Without going into details; the porn film within the movie turns out to be a snuff film, involving pedophilia, necrophilia, rape, violence against minors, etc., literally the worst possible corners of humanity. The film’s graphic nature escalates very quickly in the final third of its runtime, with brutal, unflinching depictions of the aforementioned topics. Why? What the hell is the point of even making a film like this? My mind quickly goes to Paul Thomas Anderson’s magnum opus, Boogie Nights (1997), another infamous film about the pornography business. The differences are stark and obvious on the surface, but what I wanted to grasp at first was the heart that PTA has in his approach. Spasojević, the director of A Serbian Film has long claimed the film to be a meditation on the Serbian government’s “monolithic” power dynamic with its people. “You have to feel the violence to know what it’s about”, he concludes in the same statement (recorded by Eric Kohn in March, 2010). There is definitely a fair enough argument to be made about provocative imagery in film, especially when it pertains to achieving a moral theme or overarching message about violence, sexuality, or other. This is not the way to do it. I feel very strongly that anyone who could not only think up these sorts of images, but then actually film them, fictionalized, I do not care; this is pure cut disturbing and wrong. Allusion is often more powerful than the actual image itself. This is a lesson our director here should take note of. You cannot have commentary where there is none to digest. I gave this film a half-star out of five on Letterboxd. I will never watch it again, and will argue with anyone who attempts to attribute it societal meaning.

Ironically, I found myself finishing the week out, as I write this actually, thinking deeply about my first time watching Todd Solondz’s Happiness (1998). It was one of my first NC-17 films that really opened the Pandora’s Box, if you will, of transgressive films attempting to break the mold. Now that I have run the gauntlet of some of the most brutal films ever made, I feel I should reflect on their purpose a bit more. To come full circle in a way, that is one of the key questions at the center of the film and literature class I’m taking. What is “weird” about these kinds of films? How do we define “weird”, or even transgressive for that matter? It is certainly difficult to tangibly define, but I’d like to think worth our time and attention as human beings, in an attempt to better understand each other and our differences. I’ll leave it there. Until next time. Make sure to watch something good for the soul.