31 Days of Horror-- Day 4 BLACK SWAN (2010)

Ah, Black Swan.  This film had so much freakin' potential, especially if Darren Aronofsky had been feeling kind of like Pi (1998) or The Fountain (2006)--films that are truly stunning achievements.  But no, this low-rent Brian De Palma meets Zalman King mash-up resides strictly in Requiem for a Dream (2000) land, where one might start out appreciating the buzz of creative energy, but then end up being bludgeoned over the head by a lame-ass message and watch women experiencing the depths of despair (double dildo prostitution, electroconvulsive therapy) or death.  Yes, Rachel Weisz, you are far better off with Daniel Craig, even though you've crushed some of my better fantasies.  Anyway, back to the HORROR.

Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) is an infantalized, virginal, uptight ballet dancer who has sights on the role of the Swan Queen in Swan Lake--a role that epitomizes the virgin/whore dichotomy through the characters of the white (good, pure, innocent)  and black (evil, sexy) swans.  She is competing with a plethora of young, bitchy ballet lovelies for the role (including Lost Girl's Ksenia Solo as Veronica).  These "bunheads" are serious (although macing the entire cast during the performance would have really made me like the film SO much more).  Poor Nina is menaced by a series of players that contribute to her fragile and fracturing subjectivity.  Darren Aronofsky illustrates her troubled perspective by showing a bazillion mirror shots.  How original!

Channeling Carrie

Nina's infantalized repression is enabled by her crazy, "loving" Mom, Erica, played by Barbara Hershey in a thankless, bitter role.  The only differences between Erica and Margaret White (Carrie's Mom) is that she loves her daughter with cake rather than a bible, and worships Baryshnikov rather than Saint Sebastian.  They both channel their sordid regrets toward bearing and raising children into creative endeavors (sewing for Margaret, painting for Erica).  Both women are disgusted by their daughters' burgeoning sexuality, and try to keep them locked into their little girl roles.  They also worry that their daughters' rebellions (prom and sexy ballet respectively) will ultimately destroy these young women, and both evil, controlling mothers are completely CORRECT about that.  Still, they are to blame for all the disastrous events that occur because mothers are always to blame, don't you know?  And they are both kind of evil.  One legitimately horrifying moment occurs when Nina starts masturbating, and then turns to find her mother asleep in a chair next to Nina's bed.  Yikes.

Vincent Cassel plays the lecherous ballet's creative director, Tomas, who believes that the best way to get a woman to open up sexually is to physically assault her, shoving his tongue down Nina's throat, and then alternately calling her his "little princess"--a name he gives to all his playthings.  He ostensibly is helping Nina become the Black Swan by jumping all over her and ordering her to masturbate.  She bites his tongue, which seems to me to be an entirely appropriate response.  Even the token sexy girl, Lily (played by Mia Kunis) thinks he's a total creep, but what does she know?  She slips Nina a mickey at a club and then abandons her.  Still, Lily's on hand for Nina's bi-curious repressed desires, which leads us right into Zalman King territory, or maybe more like Jennifer's Body world (which will be another post for sure).

I'm really not sure which film's lesbian make out scene is more gratuitous!

Some of the body horror imagery in the film is rather cool, and reminded me a bit of Ginger Snaps w/o the acquisition of werewolf super-powers.  Nina sprouts feathers, tears off her fingernails, develops burning red eyeballs.  The best transformation, though, has to be the crazy bird legs!

Still, none of these elements compensate for Aronofsky's heavy-handed symbolism, the painfully obvious doubling on display, the fetishizing male gaze (sometimes aligned with Tomas), or Nina's campy hyperbolic craziness.  Unlike the aforementioned Carrie, I find it singularly impossible to identify with Black Swan's victimized protagonist, and I was more than happy to see Nina meet her inevitable fate.

The fact that this derivative mess won Natalie Portman an Oscar for best actress just proves that the only awards show worth watching is the Independent Spirit Awards.  But then I remembered that she won at that ceremony too, and Aronofsky won for best director.  Fine. FINE!  Just another reminder that I'm on Planet Bunheads rather than Planet Black Swan, and the only real reason to watch the Spirit Awards is because these two women perform every year.

Word.

31 Days of Horror--Day 3 BREACH (2008)

Surveillance equipment is both a blessing and a curse these days.  People want to be vigilant about protecting their homes, but after all the Paranormal Activity films, one can be a little wary about what you "catch" on camera.  I personally love the gimmick of these films, because they make the most banal hallways seem threatening.  The first film focused the audience's attention almost entirely on a doorway between the bedroom and the hall.  One of my students said, quite rightly, "Nothing happens.  A door moves!"  Yes, but the door moves seemingly on it's own, which means that there's a menace in your house, watching you, which you can't see!  Heh.

Part of the pleasure of haunted houses and malevolent furniture are the noises that these places emit.  A series of diegetic sounds occur without any source.  Did that noise come from under the bed?  Or from the closet?  Or is something scratching at the window?  When I was small, and our heat in our house would make noise, I would lay under the covers, terrified and unmoving, thinking that if I just didn't breath or make a sound, I'd escape whatever or whomever was causing those noises.  One can never truly explain the terror of baseboard heat!  Sound without a source is so scary, because your imagination can fill in the terrifying blanks. (I'm a country girl, and I swore that Bigfoot lived in our woods, too.)

Fewdio Entertainment's Breach (Kirk B.R.Woller, 2008) is one of those wonky surveillance equipment films, where this poor bloke keeps hearing that he has a "breach," and keeps investigating that "breach," and really, you just want him to call someone and have them check it out with him.  The camerawork in this short, with that freaky green tint, warps every inch of this guy's pretty average home.  I love so many of the films on the Fewdio site, but Breach by far is my favorite.  I also recommend The Closet.

31 Days of Horror--Day 2 HIGH TENSION (2003)

I first saw Alexandre Aja's High Tension (also known as Switchblade Romance) in 2003 when it was released in the United States.  As someone certainly unfamiliar with the narrative's "twist," I found myself quite admiring strong, smart, Final Girl, Marie (Cecile De France).  In the face of full-on French redneck rage and slaughter, Marie played her cards carefully--unlike her friend Alex (Maiwenn) and Alex's "clueless" family, whose country home Marie visits in a remote part of the French countryside.

Marie notices the family dog going ballistic after everyone has turned in, and shortly after the family patriarch investigates and answers the door, Marie soon hears sounds of mayhem and slaughter from below her attic guest room.  What does Marie do?  She quickly covers up all signs of her existence in the room, and she hides.

I thought this move was pretty wise.  She seems to hold her breath more than adequately and not draw the psycho killer's attention.  Phew.  Unfortunately, Marie doesn't choose to stay under the bed, and tries to rescue Alex (she's too late to save Mom, Dad, and little brother, Tom).  She sneaks onto the creepy killer's monster van where he has stashed poor Alex for some horrifying future use.  Marie is determined to save her friend, and contacts the authorities at a gas station (while psycho fills the tank), and manages to stay alive long enough to vanquish the killer in some bizarre plastic tented lair.

I think it's also important to talk about the killer, played by Philipe Nahon, who portrays an equally repulsive character in Gasper Noe's I Stand Alone.

He's a stocky guy, dressed in a filthy jumpsuit, dirt under his fingernails, and a handy switchblade in his hand.  He's like some evil French "Man with a Van" (or something akin to an animal trailer), who likes to use women's heads as a masturbatory tool--and they don't have to still be attached to the women from whom they came.  Really, really nasty!!

His motivations for all this bloody slaughter and misogyny are pretty unclear.  Is he pissed because those French yuppies are cluttering up the countryside by refurbishing remote farmhouses?  Is he killing because he's a man and its a Saturday?  That reasoning seems most likely.  Still, he's met his match in Marie, and when they face-off in the woods, she bashes his head in with a barb-wire club, smothers him in plastic, and then impales him.  Yeah!!  Final Girl wins!  Or so one thinks....If you don't want to know the "twist," stop reading now.  **Spoilers Ahead.

MASTURBATION IS BAD!

Everything starts turning pear-shaped well before the big reveal, and it's only in retrospect that High Tension becomes truly interesting--because otherwise, finding out that Marie's just a crazy lesbian and the actual killer all along tends to just PISS A VIEWER OFF!  Or this one at least.

Early in the film, as the family beds down, Marie steps outside for a quick smoke, looking through the farmhouse windows from her perch on a swing outside.  She happens to gaze upon Alex showering, and Alex spends a great deal of time making sure her breasts are very clean.  From an earlier conversation, one might notice that Alex is fairly free in her sexual liaisons, whereas Marie has yet to express any interest in any of the guys the two encounter.  After Marie climbs the stairs to her attic perch, she puts on her mp3 player and decides to pleasure herself.  And just as she orgasms, the killer shows up at the door.  Coincidence??

Now there are quite a few plot holes in this film that have plagued many viewers, but really, when were horror films all about making logical sense?  They're nightmares, and this particular film forces you to identify with the fractured subjectivity of Marie, whose repressed desires are manifested in some giant fetid male misogynist.  Is this film suggesting that Marie has internalized French homophobia and heterosexism so powerfully that her only way to cope with her desire for Alex is to punish herself and everyone around her?  I'm not so sure.

Only in the gas station's surveillance footage, and in a flashback montage at the film's end, do viewers actually see Marie enacting violence against anyone but the film's killer.  Every single act of torture and bloodshed is embodied in this disgusting, hulking man, even when he/Marie comes after the film's real Final Girl, Alex, with a giant saw.  This visual "trick" allows the viewer to identify and sympathize with Marie through almost all of the film, displacing the film's horrors onto a killer that fulfills our slasher film expectations.

Unfortunately, we cannot "unlearn" Marie's involvement in the brutal crimes against Alex and her family, and our sympathies can only stretch so far.  The film ends as it begins, with a hospitalized Marie, scarred and rambling, telling herself (and the audience) that no one can ever come between her and Alex again.  She's broken.  The question remains, has a homophobic culture caused this break, or are we only left, at film's end, with another crazy, killer lesbian?

31 Days of Horror--Day 1 V/H/S (2012)

Remember when Dark Iris used to blog?  Heh.  Those days seem so long ago, before I was buried by a rampaging semester full of academic labor.  I feel like I've fallen off the writing wagon, and I have to do everything in my power to get back on!  So, here's day one of my quest to write a blog post EVERY DAY about a different horror film (with some creative stretching of the genre's boundaries at times).  I cannot say that my posts will be that scintillating, or explore these films with the depth and attention they deserve, but whatever.  This blog makes me happy, so I'm invested in keeping it going.  As this month, October, is the ideal month for all things horror, and my birthday month, I'm going to copy some of my favorite horror sites and celebrate the month with style and flare, and create a list!  Too bad I'm starting things off with such a crappy and disappointing film. **Some spoilers ahead, but I'll try to keep some of the film's secrets.

V/H/S is one of those oh-so-fashionable anthology films, like the rather cool Trick 'r Treat (2007) or the scary looking The Theater Bizarre (2011).  I'm super-excited about The ABC's of Death (2012) consisting of 26 short films, many of them directed by women.  Yes!  But back to V/H/S (2012).  None of its films are directed by women, and boy, can you tell.  Multiple heavy sighs.

THE GOOD

After seeing so many found footage horror films post Paranormal Activity, one doesn't have a whole lot of patience for that genre, but The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger has some legitimate scares and quite the twist ending.  Emily is maintaining a long distance relationship with her beau, James, via Skype, and she just happens to be haunted at the same time.  Of course.  This film hints at some "sick thing" that happened to Emily in her past, but never fully reveals what's happened (or is happening) until the short's final moments.  The webcam gimmick actually works, and the viewer is only privy to what James seems to be seeing onscreen (which unfortunately truly aligns the spectator with a voyeuristic and sadistic male gaze).  Emily not only believes that she's being haunted, but in rubbing and complaining about a lump in her arm, she's soon gouging a hole into it with an Exacto blade, creating some real YUK moments.  Big surprise, Emily seems pretty crazy.  Meanwhile, James, who happens to be studying to be a doctor, proves he's a really crummy boyfriend by not dropping everything and promptly showing up at her doorstep.  He proves to be far worse than a mere crummy boyfriend, and the revelation about his character, and Emily's past includes surgery, babies, and aliens, oh my!  I thought this short was at least surprising and clever, even though it featured the horrifying victimization of women and the exploitation of their terror at the mercy of some patriarchal a**hole.  Notice that I've placed this analysis under the GOOD category.  Mumblecore director Joe Swanberg does a decent job here, but that's not saying much.

10/31/98 focuses on a foursome of genuinely nice guys (a rarity for this film) on their way to a Halloween party.  They are dressed in costume, good-humoredly tease each other, and do not assault, disparage, or insult women in this short.  One of them has a nanny cam in their costume (as a giant, furry teddy bear) so we get to see the four of them wander through the house via crappy technology.  To their surprise and dismay, no one seems to be at the party, but "weird things" start to occur that they attribute to an elaborate "haunted house" set-up created by their missing hosts.  The men try to laugh off the scary things they see, all agreeing that the "stunts" sure are effective!  When they stumble upon what appears to be a religiously based female sacrifice in the attic, the guys assume that it's all an act--until the fire-and-brimstone rednecks stab the poor woman in the gut.  At first, they all flee, but then "fuzzy bear" decides to be a hero, and the rest follow suit, rescuing her while the evil rednecks are attacked by some unseen malevolent force.  They hightail it out of there carrying the injured woman, and run to their car, all the while chased by the mysterious scary thing.  Things do not end well, and I felt genuinely disappointed.  They were good guys!  Not like the rest of them.  Ugh.

THE BAD

Women are evil creatures who will seduce you, deceive you, and then literally castrate you, don't you know?  They'll either devour you because they like you (Amateur Night), murder you for kicks because they are secret lesbians (Second Honeymoon), or use you as bait in order to prove that they really aren't crazy and there is a psycho killer at camp blah, blah (Tuesday, the 17th).  Also, I hope you like breasts, because they are exposed or obsessively gazed upon in every short in this anthology.  Seriously. 

And Ti West, what the heck were you thinking??  All the positive feelings I held toward the creator of the great House of the Devil (2009) and the not-as-great-but-not-bad The Innkeepers (2011) have since curdled after watching his Second Honeymoon short.  Killer lesbians indeed.

AND THE UGLY

The technological aspects of the film are really quite contrived, with everyone always documenting their every move and moment.  Yes, those characters who use the technology for lascivious or nefarious purposes often pay a steep price, but one has to sit through their rampant misogyny in order to witness their just desserts.  Creepy Wendy tells her "friends" that they are all going to die on their camping trip, and each are attacked by some weird "video artifact" creature.  She has brought them to the woods as bait to prove the killer is still out there.  They all die, Wendy captures it on camera, and then she's gruesomely disemboweled.  Nice.

The guys in Amateur Night equip their nerd friend with an eye-glasses camera, and then set up scenarios for him to voyeuristically observe.  At one point, after bringing a drunk girl back to their hotel room, the disgusting Shane disappointingly realizes that having sex with an unconscious woman is not okay.  So then he hits on Monster girl, who appropriately shreds him and his buddies.  The misogyny of these scenes far outweighs the satisfaction one might get from seeing them all slaughtered, and female sexuality is once again vividly and graphically demonized.

The most egregious male behavior occurs in the film's bracketing narrative Tape 56, where a bunch of sexist jerks decide to put aside their money-making business of assaulting women and filming their terrified response as their clothes are ripped off in order to steal a valuable tape for some real money.  The reasoning behind this caper is utterly preposterous, and the guys are picked off by some old guy one-by-one as they watch each tape--this collection of lovely snuff films that the viewer simultaneously watches with them.  Almost every short in this anthology is insulting, repulsive, and reeks of hatred and fear toward women.  I'm getting pissed off just thinking about this film.

So, one might ask, why am I blogging about this horrible and hateful film?  Because I want to tell anyone thinking about renting or purchasing this film NOT TO DO SO!!!  I still wish I could bring those 2 hours of my life back, but at least I have an object on which I can unload my feminist rage.  Negative stars!

The Maker--Christopher Kezelos

The Maker--Christopher Kezelos (courtesy of themakerfilm.com

I am a huge fan of creepy stop motion animation, from the benign Tim Burton to the not so benign Quay Brothers.  I'm especially fond of films that make art out of the detritus of the world--the broken junk and grimy leftovers unloved by a materialistic culture addicted to novelty.  Since I teach young filmmakers and film scholars, I try to emphasize that the director's intentions for a film are only a layer of information toward interpreting a film's meaning.  Even if the director suggests that the film is about "A strange creature [who] races against time to make the most important and beautiful creation of his life," one can read Kezelos's film in an entirely different way.  A much darker way.

The film has a Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935) air about it.  With all the brightly colored vials and secret grimoire, the mad scientist seems fast at work (and under serious time constraints) constructing his dream girl.  I'm not super-thrilled with the heteronormative nature of the creation, as our Bunny Pygmalion creates a "pink" bejeweled companion/doppelganger.  Still, if you watch Kezelos's earlier stop-motion work Zero (2010), you'll see some of these earlier ideological issues already in place.

The threadbare nature of our "hero" with the musical clefs on his head contributes not only to the film's worn aesthetic, but to a tactile experience much like The Quay Brother's Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies (1987).  I've posted what I could find from YouTube below:

Could the film be a meta-commentary on the process and experience of being an animator and making animated films?  Certainly the film could be about "beauty"--misshapen teeth and all--and the beholder's gaze.  Small scale filmmakers (like many large-scale ones) frequently create personal films that star a version of themselves.  And the process of artistic creation can be simultaneously fruitful and fruitless.  Artists of all stripes are often driven to create, as if by necessity.  One puts their heart and soul into a work, but the process is never-ending and endlessly repeats itself.  Stop-motion animation is so elaborately detailed, so painstaking, that it is the ultimate DIY project for an artisanal filmmaker.  Perhaps that frantic race against time can seem defeating, like a treadmill one can never get off.  I bet Kezelos is hard at work on his next project, even as he just won the audience prize at The Wrap's Short Film Festival mere days ago.

The music that our Maker plays to imbue his creation with life force seems to come directly from the soul, and the piece played is truly magical.  Yet I found the film remarkably downbeat and a little bleak--just the way I like it!  To experience the film as it should be experienced, I recommend that you download the film in high-definition from themakerfilm.com.  It's available for the price of a couple songs on Itunes, and well worth every penny.  You can watch a less gorgeous version here:

"Play Dead"--Andres and Diego Meza-Valdes

This short film from the Meza-Valdes brothers is getting play all over the internet right now, but so what?  The film gives us a very different perspective on your standard zombie apocalypse, and raises some dreaded concerns about what might happen to our beloved "best friends."  Pets or Meat indeed.  **Vegetarians, steer clear of this one.  I even felt like becoming one after screening this short.  Still not a fan of the cats vs. dogs dichotomy that seems to permeate our culture though.

The film is very genre sensitive, with homages to 28 Days Later and Dawn of the Dead, among other well-known zombie epics.  There's a nod to The Graduate too, as well as some romantic comedy hijinks between Princess and Nemo.  This film is one of the shorts from Miami's Borscht festival, and you can see it and others online.  Or here!

Getting Rid of Lost Girl Baggage

Syfy's Dynamic Duo

Syfy's Lost Girl has its ups and downs, and the focus on romance always seems to detract from the more important relationships--between friends.  "Truth and Consequences" and "Lachlan's Gambit" finally got rid of all the romantic baggage that seemed to be bogging things up.  Only two more episodes left it seems.  For those of you not up to speed on this show, **Spoilers Ahead.

1. Nate and Kenzi are kaput.

For Warehouse 13 fans, the clinging presence of Nate (Aaron Ashmore) became increasingly annoying as the season evolved.  For one, Kenzi (Ksenia Solo) actually went on tour with him instead of fighting alongside Bo (Anna Silk), which made her absent from at least two shows.  On a show full of ridiculously gorgeous actors, Ashmore was just too "Jimmy Olsen."  I like him better as a gay man on Warehouse, rather than getting in the way of Kenzi and Bo's friendship.

2. Nadia and Lauren are over.

While I'm sad that this lesbian couple's storyline had to end so tragically, Lauren mooning over Nadia in a coma was quickly replaced by Nadia dragging Lauren down post-resurrection. Their relationship seemed more about obligation than excitation as the season went on.  The psycho shower scene moment was tres cliche, but I'm never immune to Zoie Palmer soaking wet.  Nadia's death was all over the place as well (seems she was possessed by the Guruda and just wanted to kill everybody while simultaneously spying on them).  Silly, silly, silly plotline.  Lauren's better off (like Kenzi) not having to continually lie to her human partner, and take her rightful place in this fae/human Scooby Gang.

3. Dyson and Ciara are history.

I don't know how they cast this show, but everyone seems to need brief periods of "vacation," so Dyson left for a bit to get in touch with his inner wolf or whatever.  Love seeing Kris Holden-Reid with his shirt off, but when he opens his mouth this season,  Dyson's so whiny--not sexy and brooding.  So I wasn't sad to see him go.  And then he came back.  Ciara (Lina Roessler) on the other hand--can we keep her?  She was always too cool as fairies go, but her and Dyson....kind of milquetoast until "Lachlan's Gambit."  Her knife play during "we-might-die-tomorrow" sex was extremely hot.  That and her "knife-in-the-eye" fight move made me cheer for her return.  Then she had to die.  What??  Stupidly too.  Now Dyson has even more to whine about.  Sigh.

4.  Lachlan is dead.

Lachlan's loss is a bummer.  Not only was Vincent Walsh pretty smoking, but he was morally ambiguous enough to be intriguing.  I'm glad that they never made him hook up with Bo, or have some distracting love/sex relationship.  He sacrifices his head (literally) for the good of the fae, joining four fellow fallen nagas.  Will Hale (K.C. Collins) now be the new Ash next season?  That would move him out of the Dyson sidekick role for good.

5.  Friendship trumps romance.

The sweetest moments this season have been when the characters set aside their romantic yearnings and had each other's backs.  Kenzi pretended to be Hale's date in "The Girl Who Fae'd with Fire" despite Nate's rampaging (and misplaced) jealousy.  Other than Bo, Hale is closest to Kenzi, and he knows that when he leaves her behind during Dyson's fight, she's not only "too cute," but too savvy, to die.  Putting aside any feelings Bo might have for Lauren, when Lauren asks to sleep with her, she tells Bo it's to displace her grief over Nadia, and just wants to be held; Bo sensitively obliges, telling her that "they're in this together."  The show may have a great deal of sizzle, but its foundations are built on trust and respect between friends.

I scoured the web looking for the image that sums up the series for me--no such luck.  At the end of "Truth and Consequences," Bo arrives home, calling Kenzi's name, and finds her quietly cuddled on her bed.  Even after Trick informs Kenzi that she's a dangerous distraction for Bo, and Bo tells Kenzi to run somewhere safe, Kenzi insists that where she belongs is by Bo's side, sisters forever.  Bo is smart enough to see how much she needs her friend, and tells her so.  Their embrace at the end of "Truth and Consequences" made me teary-eyed and delighted at the same time.  Here's to my favorite BFF's on television.