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No. 4 It Follows (2014)

Now we come to my favourite horror film of this century. The type of movie I wish I had the imagination to write. It Follows is such an important film for feminist horror, for a whole variety of reasons which I will try to summarise without even hoping to give it the credit it deserves.

Horror films are full of heroines (and heroes) being surprised by bad guys. You know, the shot of the sweaty-yet-immaculate heroine breathing heavily as she peeks around the corner, the hand on the shoulder, the double take at the seemingly empty window. But how easy is it actually to creep up on someone who is already expecting the worst? (I have experimented with this on various unsuspecting friends and loved ones to varying degrees of success, or failure, depending on your perspective.)The fact is that fear causes a state of hyperarousal, where the senses are heightened to extraordinary levels, a survival mechanism that actually makes it pretty difficult to creep up on a terrified woman who's just seen her loved ones slaughtered by an axe-wielding maniac (or so I imagine... my experimentation did not proceed quite this far). The inability to turn off this mechanism, and the resulting state of unnecessary hypervigilance is the theory behind post traumatic stress disorder – fun fact. So to me, those cheap scares seem pretty far-fetched. It Follows does away with this lazy trope and gives us a whole new dimension of fear. Imagine the scenario: you know that something is coming for you, you don't know where, you don't now when, but you know it is coming, and its intentions are.. let's say not friendly. How would you react? And how far would you go to make it stop?

That is my attempt to sum up It Follows in a nutshell. Our hero Jay sleeps with her new boyfriend after which things get extremely weird (just for the record guys chloroform is not an acceptable post coitus addition). He tries to explain the concept above to her, and gives her the handy hint that she can make it stop by passing it on to someone else (ie having sex with them) but of course she doesn't really believe him and does the sensible thing – calls the police. But this information stays with her on some level and she becomes increasingly paranoid, until her fears are confirmed – It does indeed Follow. Jay's sister and friends have a hard time believing her until they witness irrefutable evidence (as any normal people would). Following this each tries to help Jay, but some friends' intentions may be more honourable than others.

If, like me, you hate windows this film probably isn't for you.

'Right no-one is getting in or out of this door without my say-so'

'What about that big section of transparent fragile stuff right next to it'?

'Nah that'll be fine, no-one would go through there'.

I mean if they want to get in, they will get in right?

Yeah not for me, I'll stick with my concrete cell thank you very much.

Men very much play second fiddle to the women in the film. These women are not there to enhance the male characters but are well rounded and considered characters of their own. In fact in It Follows it is easy to argue the reverse, the men of the story are only needed to heighten the female experience, and of course provide a means for getting rid of the curse. (Would sex between two women lift the curse? Then there would be no need for men at all – imagine that. Told you I should have written it). But the women are by no means perfect. They are not Hollywood's usual uberwomen leading ladies who can fight off scores of bad guys, deliver cutting one-liners and keep their hair and make-up looking fabulous. These are real women who tell stupid jokes, and cut their toenails and bore their friends with quotes from the book they're reading (Dostoyevsky's The Idiot – actually pretty poignant).

It Follows is one of those films that stays with you after you watch it, firstly because its goddam terrifying (I now feel uneasy every time I enter a place that doesn't have more than one exit – true story). But also because it raises uncomfortable moral questions that I for one still can't find the answer to. Those that we judge to be heroes and heroines have often sacrificed their lives to save others. Would we sacrifice ourselves to save our loved ones given a similar situation? Most would hope so. But what if that person we could save was only an acquaintance, or a stranger? In fact It Follows goes beyond this dilemma, turning it on its head to ask 'If by sentencing someone else to death you could save yourself, would you do it?' Its an unpleasant thought and one that plagues our heroine and her supporting cast. I found the most moving scene to be towards the end, when having relieved Jay of her burden, nice guy Paul cruises around the worst part of Detroit looking for an unsuspecting prostitute (before this gets too emotional I'd just like to point out that he spent the whole film up to this point angling for her to relieve him of his burden – can I get a high five?).

Well I can't see this relationship having any specific issues.

This film doesn't shy away from sex, and its certainly not the horror genre's favourite moral tale of  those (especially those women) who have sex deserve to be punished. Rather it explores the different ways we exploit each other in order to have sex, we misrepresent ourselves, we play on each others fears. Jay's control over her choice of sexual partners waxes and wanes throughout the course of the film and its not hard to see this as hyperbolic account of most people's sexual experience.

In some ways the film is highly stylised,  but this adds to its beauty portraying the suburban US at its most inviting, and terrifying. Its also cleverly used to enhance the story with the camera angles used to make you feel as if you are the surreptitious watcher, you are the one who follows. Close ups of Jay's hands are a recurring motif, and her red nail polish will cause you to double-take as your scour them for the metaphorical spots of blood. The film is ambiguous in its time setting, sometimes feeling like the 1980s, sometimes like the near future (although I did see a lampshade I believe you will find was part of the Ikea 2007  collection – case closed). And I like this aspect of the film even more. In fiction why not pick and choose the best bits of several eras to create a version of reality that suits your story? And the soundtrack, oh man the soundtrack! All I can say is buy the album and put it on at social gatherings when you want to make everyone feel so uncomfortable they leave.

In conclusion, It Follows pulls away from conventional horror tropes, but isn't any less scary for doing so. It portrays real women and makes them the true centre of the film, and guess what, it doesn't make it any less believable or engaging. It raises questions that you really would prefer not to answer and doesn't shy away from taboo. Its an excellent horror film, and an excellent film about women. My only regret is that I didn't make the damn film myself, but that said I honestly wouldn't change a thing.

Does it pass the Bechdel test? Obviously.

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Apologies for the slow pace, more unasked-for opinions coming soon!

Meanwhile, here’s something excellent...

Horror On Screen have produced an excellent horror movie map of Europe. Found plenty of inspiration for movie night (ie every night).

A horror film set in Iceland named ‘The Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre’? I’M IN!

You can also see the one they made for the US... Movies and maps, what more could you want?

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No. 3 Lake Mungo (2008)

This is the sort of film you might come across browsing second-hand DVDs in CEX or in the darker reaches of Netflix. It would be easy to pass over this low budget Australian mockumentary with an unknown cast and no general UK cinema release, but if you do take the plunge you will be (un/pleasantly?) surprised. I watched this film on the recommendation of a friend, with low expectations (the same friend had recently made me sit through The Human Centipede 2, describing it as a solid 8 out of 10), but was rewarded by a simple story well told, dripping with the sense of loss and longing.

A modern ghost story, the film describes the events following the accidental death of teenager Alice Palmer, and the effect on her family, friends and community. The mockumentary style is the perfect vehicle for a portrait of the devastation a sudden death brings and our need to mythologise and ascribe meaning to events beyond our comprehension. The ‘mockumentary’, whilst often heartfelt, can make for dull viewing, but in Lake Mungo interviews are beautifully interspersed with poignant imagery, which give the sense the moon, the bare trees, even solitary headlights on a dark road are in mourning, much the way a grieving person may see the world.

The Palmer family – what you see is what you get

Following Alice’s death the family is overwhelmed with grief which they channel in different, not entirely healthy, directions.  Alice’s brother begins to pursue an interest in photography, and spurred on by his Mother’s refusal to accept her daughter’s death, attempts to capture the presence they feel in their home, with surprising results. Through this the family discover that Alice kept secrets in the months leading up to her death, which hint at an underlying interesting, if a bit well-worn, comment on female sexuality and shame.

Overall the film is a study in foreshadowing and retrospection, a portrait of a family confronted with death. The film is rife with mirroring accounts from Alice and her family, giving the impression that the connections they long for are there, if only they were not so distracted. Eschewing cheap scares Lake Mungo builds a foundation of grief with a supernatural edge and lets your imagination do the rest, culminating in a haunting final sequence, after which you will never look at a photograph in the same way again, and which will have you skipping back in horror to see what your fickle eyes missed the first time.

Does it pass the Bechdel test? Sort of. The mockumentary style makes this a difficult one, as subjects are usually interviewed alone by a male documentary maker. However in a snippet of home video Alice can be heard discussing the weather with her female neighbour, so I’m counting it.

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No.2 The Thing (1982)

How to describe The Thing? Well the film starts with two friends enjoying the simple Norwegian passtime of Husky hunting, but transforms into a frozen nightmare when the intrepid hunters are murdered by a group of American polar researchers....

Ok so that's not quite it. But the setting is a US polar research facility in Antarctica, a place so cold that anyone living there has to grow ridiculous facial hair to stop their face from freezing.

Things are going pretty nicely until said Norwegian turns up, chasing a Husky, and accidentally blowing up his own helicopter and killing his pilot in the process. When the Americans try to protect the lovable pup the Norwegian gets pretty narky, and reasonable force is required to murder him. Right in the face. Taking in the dog turns out to be a big mistake, as it is not, in fact, man's best friend, but a vicious, man-eating, DNA-assimilating, shape-shifting alien who has a serious problem with Antarctic researchers.

The problem with The Thing, as our heroes creatively name it, is that it doesn't just kill its victims, it absorbs them, giving it the ability to imitate the likeness of any being it has killed. It wisely, therefore, tends to pick off its targets when alone and then assume their form as if nothing had happened. When the researchers discover this they start to turn on each other, realising the only person each can truly trust not to try and assimilate them is themselves (kind of like those student pub crawls where everyone draws on each other whilst pouring drinks containing more sugar than alcohol straight down the throat of the weakest participant). This creeping sense of paranoia is leaches out towards the audience, as we are never quite sure which of the characters are human and which are already The Thing. This is compounded by the excellent choice of Antarctica for the setting, a place when you can run but you can't hide.

The series of gory transformations made innovative use of special effects of the time, and remain shocking even in the post-Saw age where audiences are familiar with the body as a piece of flesh, to be ripped and torn at the directors' mercy.

Now from a woman's point of view. The Thing doesn't feature any women. Yep thats right, no women at all. Unless you count the female voiced computer programme that Kurt Russell loses to at chess, and then calls a 'cheating bitch'. But despite this unfortunate moment, the lack of women in this film is exactly the reason it is so important. Carpenter has created a film which doesn't require a fragile, hysterical woman to exentuate the monster, as his monster is so horrifying, and the isolated setting so well designed that it more than speaks for itself.  In fact, characterisation is very much a low priority in The Thing, with no character backstories or development (unless you include development into a alien-polar-explorer-hybrid with guts for its outside). In the outdoor scenes it is even difficult to tell the characters apart, with their faces covered to the elements and voices muffled by fierce antarctic winds. Carpenter doesn't need an expressively-faced young actress to do 'fear' as the audience are already doing that themselves. I think its difficult to argue The Thing to be a feminist classic (although for an interesting alternative opinion please click here http://dayofwoman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/unexpectedly-feminist-horror-films-john.html) but at the height of the Slasher age, Carpenter turned his back on the subgenre he epitomised in Halloween and provided us with a truly horrifying alternative. The legacy of this film is so great that it is apparently shown annually to crew at similar research stations at both the south and north poles in am apparent attempt to frighten the bejesus out of them before abandomining them for the winter.

Does it pass the Bechdel test? No (The Thing doesn't feature any female characters. At all.)

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No. 1 The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

Seeing as my blog takes its name from a quote in this film it was pretty obvious it would pop up sooner or later. The beauty of the retrospective review is that it allows me to not feel bad about including lots of SPOILERS. So if you haven't seen this film, firstly why not? And secondly, don't waste your time reading my ramblings, just go and watch it!

I saw this film at the cinema, knowing absolutely nothing about it, not even having seen the trailer (which was pretty impressive given the amount of time I was spending in the cinema in those days). And that, my friends, is the perfect way to see the film, as if you don’t know what’s to come it will almost certainly blow your mind.

The set-up seems pretty familiar, five all-american college students embark on a weekend in a remote cabin, blah blah blah, portent of doom, blah blah blah basement full of creepy objects, blah blah blah drunken debauchery. However this is punctuated by scenes of the mysterious HQ where employees are monitoring the group, and as becomes more and more clear, manipulating their actions and even their personalities, to produce the ritual slaughter of the various stereotyped youths, familiar to all horror film fans.

One by one the good looking tweens are reduced to bloody pulps until seemingly only one remains, the (relatively) virginal Dana, who is left to be ripped apart by zombified pain-worshipping backwards idiot number one, whilst headquarters erupts in office celebration of a successful mission, complete with awkward co-worker chat. As one employee explains to the quintessential plot-device newbie "The virgin's death is optional, as long as it's last. Main thing is that she, you know, suffers."

However the exercise has not been as successful as it appears and it from this point the The Cabin in The Woods really earns its hype. Having made their way in to the mysterious headquarters, our heroes find the ubiquitous 'system purge' button, and unleash this 'army of nightmares' upon its keepers, resulting in a veritable nerdgasm as homage is paid to just about every horror movie monster you can name. There's obvious references to Hellraiser, Poltergeist, The Mist, It, The Strangers, Evil Dead and each time I watch it there’s more to be seen. There's also this which, if summoned, you imagine would do the job a whole lot more efficiently than those damn Buckners.

The violence, especially the first instance is shocking and bloody, and directed at (surprise, surprise) a woman enjoying loving consensual sex with her boyfriend. I was ready to walk out, feeling I had been tricked into watching standard torture-porn, deluding itself with a 'twist' stupidly revealed before the film even starts. However I persevered to the final act, and aren't I glad I did as it is in its shocking revelations that it places itself squarely head and shoulders above the rest of the genre.

Where the Cabin In The Woods, really is exceptional is in its treatment of women. Horror films featuring scantily clad young women being graphically slaughtered keep being made because we, the audience, keep going to see them. The Cabin In The Woods gives this archetype to the audience with both hands before turning around and pointing out just how sick we are for demanding it. I could have left the cinema feeling ashamed of my own hypocrisy, in which I denounce horror's portrayal of women as generic screaming monster-fodder whilst shelling out my cash and implied approval to film companies . In actual fact I didn't beat myself up because I was way too preoccupied with monstergeddon (there was a Goddam robot scorpion!). We also have a woman as the director of the whole sordid operation, played to perfection by the ever brilliant Sigourney Weaver.

The Cabin In The Woods is a clever and cutting wake-up call to an otherwise stale genre, and its one-dimensional female characters. It’s funny, scary, and very very bloody. It’s a movie to which scores of film studies students will pay drunken homage to for years to come, and it doesn't deserve anything less.

Does it pass the Bechdel test?

Yes (early on Dana and Jules discuss Jules' new hair dye, Pantene Pro-Brainwash).

[thevirginsdeathisoptional]

The Bechdel Test

The Bechdel test is a tool used in fiction (most commonly film) for indicating gender bias. It is named after cartoonist Alison Bechdelwho in 1985 first presented the idea in her comic strip Dykes to watch out for, in which a character states they will only watch a film which satisfies three basic requirements:

1. There are at least 2 female characters

2. who talk to each other

3. about something other than a man.

Seems simple right? But a surprising number of films fail the test. (To see exactly how many please check out the wonderful http://bechdeltest.com/)

Obviously this tool is not without its limitations, and it goes without saying that not all films that fail the Bechdel test are inherently sexist, or can't be enjoyed by women, and vice versa. However in a genre dominated by males, where male interests are key I find it a useful thought experiment in determining whether female characters are fleshed out, or simple devices to support their male counterparts.

That said, most of the films in my top ten will fail, and then I will explain why I like them anyway....

Here's the excerpt from Dykes to watch out for, which articulates it much better than I can. I now realise this is very small, you can see it in more readable dimensions courtesy of Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dykes_to_Watch_Out_For_(Bechdel_test_origin).jpg

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Starting with a top ten list

To kick off my blog I'd like to share with you my top ten horrors of all time (of all time!). Over the next little bit of time for each film I'll bore you with the reasons I like it, consider its portrayal of women, and finally ask 'Does it pass the Bechdel test?'

 p.s. It was difficult enough to whittle this list down to ten, putting them in order would require far too much effort, and most probably, a spreadsheet. Therefore this list is presented in no particular order. Enjoy!