Not Conan

Leave a comment

What are Weapons without a Barbarian?  I learned about the latter movie after reading about the former.  After watching Weapons I knew I had to see Barbarian.  It is outlandish but decidedly scary.  I haven’t been that tense during a movie for some time.  Nor have I watched one where there were so many moments when the average person in real life would’ve just left before things got so bad.  There may be some spoiler-level information here, but I won’t give away the ending.  Tess is booked into an AirBNB in Detroit, but arrives to find another renter already checked in.  It’s a rainy night and there’s a convention in town so all the hotels are booked.  Tess decides she can trust Keith and stay the night.  They end up getting along very well, and she’s planning on staying the next night as well, even with the double-booked situation.  Then Tess discovers a disturbing room in the basement.

We then learn that Keith, whom we’re all suspecting (Bill Skarsgård has become well known for playing horror villains), isn’t the real threat.  In one of the moments when I would’ve left, she goes to find him after he falls silent in the basement.  She discovers a sub-basement where a strange, inhuman woman dwells.  This woman kills Keith.  Cut to California where AJ, a guy who’s not exactly evil but certainly not good, is being accused of rape and is losing money.  He’s the owner of the AirBNB and he flies to Detroit to get the house ready for selling.  He sees that it’s occupied, but the agency says no one is staying there.  He discovers the secret sub-basement and we learn a sexual predator has for years been abducting women, having children with them, and then having children with their children, thus producing the scary woman.

As I say, outlandish, but the story is quite effectively filmed.  The real monster is not the woman, but modern people such as AJ.  The police refuse to help because they assume everyone in that neighborhood is a crackhead.  The urban blight reminded me very much of It Follows, another horror film set in Detroit.  This is kind of a new form of folk horror where the landscape becomes a monster.  Instead of using traditional folklore, however, films like It Follows and Barbarian suggest that the landscapes we build and then neglect become scenes of supernatural horror.  This is quite effective.  Having grown up in a much smaller town, but one which is equally neglected, this kind of horror really works.  Zach Cregger has become another horror director to keep an eye on.

Following It

Leave a comment

Perhaps while I was sleeping (or busy keeping to myself), several horror movies of the “intelligent” variety appeared.  Those scare quotes aren’t to imply the films aren’t actually intelligent, but rather that many people assume horror can’t be smart.  Yes, there have been some cheap scare phases in the genre when viewers didn’t need too much intellectual capacity to figure out someone else was about to get snuffed, but since the late 1960s many cerebral movies have appeared.  It has only recently become acceptable for academics to address horror, and now that they have begun to do so several more provocative films have become part of the discussion.  I’m now trying to catch up (as I can afford to) with those more intellectual movies.  One of them was It Follows.

Of course, seven years ago, when it was released, it didn’t get much press.  It did, however, impress the critics.  A movie about sexual awaking, it wouldn’t make Puritans very happy, but it is pretty scary.  The premise itself is frightening: “it” (never defined) follows young people after a sexual encounter with someone already “infected”—it is visible only to intended victims and although it follows slowly, it is persistent and unrelenting.  It will eventually catch up.  It can take the shape of anyone—stranger, friend, family.  The only way you can tell “it” is that it’s walking slowly straight toward you and nobody else can see it.  To get it off of your trail, you have to pass it along to someone else.  It starts killing and working back to the previous victims, so once it starts you’re never safe.

Part of the visual appeal of the movie is the urban decay around Detroit, where the film was shot.  Another is the lack of adults.  A few are shown here and there, but this is a young persons’ dilemma and the young people have to sort it out.  Bleak and contemplative, the movie has a literary streak to it.  This isn’t just horror for screams—there’s an existential element as well.  The only place that adults really play a role is when it finally catches up to its victims, it appears as their parent.  Various critics have suggested it is a movie about STDs, but to me it felt more like a movie about struggling to cope with the complications sexuality brings.  Unlike most horror I discuss here there really isn’t an element of religion to It Follows.  It may be some kind of demon, but never defining it makes the viewer stop and think.  And that makes it intelligent.