One of the aspects of Stalker that I latched onto immediately is the reverence for nature that’s baked into it, which is somewhat unexpected given American stereotypes about Soviet Russian culture and a film about an area that sounds more than a bit like the exclusion zone around Chernobyl. But Stalker very intentionally shows the everyday world as a dystopian muddy mess of wires, rubble, and smoke stacks drenched in monochromatic color. The dreariness of society extends to the characters as well: The Stalker’s home and relationship to his wife are oppressive, the Professor feels quietly resigned sitting in the bar, and the first words we hear from the Writer are ones of disillusionment. It’s a bleak, miserable place that the three of them are barely able to escape from.

However, once we enter the zone, the color palette of the film opens up entirely. Greens and blues, lush foliage, sunlight peaking through trees. The Stalker mentions that it’s too early to start so he wanders off… And promptly rolls around in the grass, in ecstasy over being reconnected with what he feels is home. I feel that moment in my bones. Likewise, when the Writer attempts to pull up a tree and the Stalker heaves a pipe at him and shouts that “the Zone requires respect, or it punishes you.” Oh, the times I’ve wanted to do that to people for how they treat the forest.

There’s a dream-like quality to the Zone that I find really engrossing, and so much of the mid-section of the film is comprised of long takes with little to no dialogue. The scene where the three stop to rest in a bog is trance-inducing with the sound of dripping water, rustling grass, and elements that may or may not be tangible like the black dog approaching the Stalker. There are a dozen other moments like this throughout the film and I can’t think of anything else like it; it’s maybe the closest representation in cinema to the “feel” of nature that I’ve seen.

On the other hand, I love the tension created by implying what the Zone can do without directly showing it. The Stalker throwing metal nuts with ribbon attached to them in order to find a safe path to the Room combined with his warnings about following exactly in his footsteps is really unnerving, as is the way that that people and objects seem to jump in time/space. The Professor somehow leapfrogs them after they leave him behind looking for his rucksack, and there’s a shot just outside the Room where a falcon seems to hit an invisible wall, vanish, and reappear. “Restrained” seems like an understatement, but those moments are wildly effective to me.

It’s tempting to reduce the Writer to someone who just wants material reward as he alludes to that a few times, but I think in reality he’s going to the Zone because he has nothing else. As the Stalker says, the people who go are ones who have lost all hope and the Writer embodies that. At one point, the Writer goes off on a diatribe about how critics, editors, et al want something more from him, and to satisfy them he should enter the zone to become a “genius.” But at the same time, he asks what would be the point of writing if he’s a genius? If there’s no room for improvement, no struggle, why bother continuing to do something? When he is finally confronted with the option of entering the Room, he stops and says, “I do not want to spill all the trash that has accumulated inside me, on anybody’s head. I’d rather drink myself to death quietly and peacefully in my stinky writer’s private residence.”

The tale of Porcupine wanting to bring back his dead brother but receiving only money made the Writer realize that what he intellectually wants and what he truly desires is not the same thing. The writer is filled with self-loathing and despite his cavalier attitude throughout their journey, he’s ultimately most afraid of himself. The Zone shows him this and, in a way, gives him that which he desires most: An unknown to struggle against, a thing to conquer. When we meet him at the beginning he’s reducing all of the world’s mysteries to laws and triangles, but when we leave him, he’s admitted to himself that “his essence” is the real mystery. It terrifies him, but it is nevertheless meaningful.

The Professor, as we learn at the threshold, wants to destroy the Room and the ability for “any scum” to come there and make a wish that could harm the world. But after hearing the Stalker’s pleas that the Room represents hope for the hopeless, the Professor rejects his own plan and says he “doesn’t understand anything at all”. I think in that moment he comes to realize that his fears of what *might* happen don’t outweigh his immediate cruelty to the Stalker and others that come to the place with hope. In a way, the Professor turning away is a shot at science itself: To remove all things from life that can’t be explained- to extinguish faith- would be anti-human and against his overall desire to make the world a better place.

Which leads me to one of the hardest parts of the film to dig into, which is the subtle(?) commentary on faith. I hadn’t really caught onto this until my most recent viewing, but both the Professor and the Writer point out that the Stalker is the one who told them both about Porcupine, the Room, the rules of the Zone, all of it. Obviously the Zone itself is very tangible given the defenses around it, but the Professor and the Writer are both taking leaps of faith in believing the Stalker about the Room. The Writer even seems to mock this at one point by fashioning a crown of thorns, telling the Stalker that he understands him but “I will not forgive you” as he puts it on and walks away.

At the end of the film, Stalker is distraught not so much by the fact that neither man entered the Room, but that “the organ with which they believe has atrophied”. He’s upset that the men didn’t need to enter, that his ability to give people what they need by leading them to the room wasn’t useful this time. I’d argue that this is ultimately kind of a reverse arc: The Writer and Professor leave the Zone with a better understanding of themselves, whereas the Stalker leaves broken by seeing two people have a total lack of faith in what the Room could offer them (that point of view maybe makes a bit more sense when you consider that, at the time Stalker was made, religion was being outlawed in Soviet Russia and Tarkovsky was a devout Christian).

The final shot on Monkey, the stalker’s daughter, is something that sticks with me for awhile after each viewing because I’m never sure how to take it. My gut reaction is always to believe that she has a telekinetic ability but, despite that ability, she’s already feeling the burden of life: Held down by poverty, crippled by the inability to walk, and living under the thumb of an all-controlling government. It reinforces the Stalker’s view that pain is necessary for hope, and for Monkey to have hope, she must have pain. It’s a bittersweet note to leave on.

That said, I’ve read at least a half dozen other interpretations of the ending, all of which are interesting and just as plausible. Some people interpret the train passing by as Monkey pushes the glass off the table as symbolic of how we make great leaps in the development of civilization before we really know how to utilize them for the betterment of humanity. The Zone gave Stalker a daughter with extraordinary power, but neither of them has any concept of what to do with those powers yet.

I think the first time I watched Stalker I felt it was more bleak than anything else. Over time though, and especially watching it now, I feel pretty strongly that it’s ultimately a positive film about the place of suffering in our lives and it resonates harder than ever given current events. We can’t rid our lives of struggle or suffering, but fighting against it is what allows us to appreciate peace and happiness, and we have to believe that we can find those things, or hope is lost.

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There are innumerable things to dissect about Cloud Atlas, both thematically and cinematically, and the Wachowskis have been outspoken about how it’s very open to interpretation so I don’t think there are any invalid takes to be had.

If I had to boil my interpretation down to a concise thought (which is hard here), it’s that the point of the revolving plots are to illustrate how human life is spent in a constant push/pull between self-interest and selflessness; no matter how far back or how far into the future we go, it’s the nature of who we are. And as we see again and again throughout the film, whichever impulse we act on will affect our own life as much as the lives of those after us.

There are a bunch of threads to mention, but the first one that comes to mind starts with Ewig. He begins writing a journal on his journey to San Francisco and in the process decides to help a stowaway slave, Autua. That kindness is repaid when Autua saves Ewig from Dr. Goose, who is poisoning him. Ewig survives the trip, becomes an abolitionist, and has his journal published- which is eventually read by Frobisher and cited in his letters to Sixsmith, strengthening Sixsmith’s love for him. And while Frobisher commits suicide, Sixsmith continues to hold him dear for the rest of his life thanks to those letters, and remembers his unique comet birthmark when he sees it on Rey in the elevator later in his life. That brief moment helps him trust her, resulting in him handing over details that help bring light to environmental problems related to a nuclear power company.

Essentially, that moment on the ship where Ewig decides to help Autua causes a chain reaction of positive events for the next 120 years.

There’s also something to be said for the way that in some incarnations, the “soul” of an individual may be less than healthy, such as Tom Hanks’ Dermot chucking a critic off a balcony (which I can’t help but feel was some meta-catharsis for the Wachowskis). With the right circumstances and surroundings, though, a soul can overcome those self-interest instincts and act selflessly. Dermot is later incarnated as Zachry, who battles an inner-demon (Old Georgie) and isn’t keen on Prescients like Meronym (Halle Berry). But, after she shows his people kindness, he’s inclined to help her and overcomes Old Georgie to save both Meronym and his entire tribe.

Cloud Atlas is ultimately an optimistic film, and it could easily fall into some cringy cliché traps if its hopefulness is even a little overdone. But as playful and light as some of the moments in Cloud Atlas are (the Cavendish/One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest homage is so much fun), as melodramatic as some of the monologues are, there’s something honest and human about all of it. It doesn’t feel like an author trying to play to the audience’s expectations, it feels like it was created by people who earnestly believe that best in people will triumph while also acknowledging just how terrible we can be. I think that’s at the heart of why I enjoy the film, it feels very genuine because even though it focuses on love as a guiding force, it doesn’t gloss over cruelty or shy away from humanity’s inevitable self-destructive pattern (Seoul is sinking due to climate change, The Fall is clearly set after some global catastrophic event for humanity). To me, that sells the theme. And I know saying it feels genuine is somewhat ironic considering one of the main criticisms leveled at the film is that it’s pretentious, but I just don’t feel that at all (and I say that as someone who loves Terrance Malick, but totally understands why he often receives the same label).

Ultimately, I don’t think there’s a singular meaning to be found in Cloud Atlas. I think on the whole it’s a reflection on human nature, as nebulous and vague as that sounds. And maybe that’s what the title is getting at: A cloud atlas is a tool meteorologists used to define the formation of clouds, and in a sense that’s what the film does. It serves as a cloud atlas to humanity by presenting us as forms that can be defined only by stepping far enough back to see the full context of our existence, and how interconnected and layered we all are. “Our lives are not our own.”

A few other thoughts:

I think one or two less plot threads would have strengthened some of the thematic weight. That’s not to say it feels like a bloated film, even on this viewing I’m amazed at how fast it flies by, but I think the emotional impact suffers a little from how much is crammed into the film.

That said, I would rather films like this get made. Ones that are beautiful in production design/cinematography and creatively risky, with a few things that maybe don’t work, than films that are technically sufficient and creatively safe. I would watch a dozen films as ambitious and flawed as Cloud Atlas before enduring any more of a shared universe manufactured to make money for a glorified toy company.

I like the concept of the Post-Fall language being an evolved form of English, but it’s really challenging to execute modified language effectively. I think it works for the most part, but I do wonder if it would have been less distracting and more emotionally effective to do away with it or make it completely foreign and use subtitles. There are moments where Zachry says something weighty, but there’s an extra few seconds of processing that my brain has to do to get the meat of it.

“The meek are week and the strong do eat.”

This phrase gets repeated often by the negative forces in the film and it’s the same perversion of Darwinian thought that festers in how half this country looks at COVID-19. “Wear a mask if you choose, I don’t care” is essentially the same idea- I’m not going to be scared by a puny virus, I don’t care if I might spread it to you, all that matters is that I get what I want.”

“Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”

This serves as the counterpoint to the above phrase, and again, feels especially prescient right now. The only way we survive is to realize that we’re not on our own, we’re all in this together- the very act of wearing a mask is an acknowledgement of that idea, and as much as our country is a mess in this sense, I think it speaks to the Wachowski’s intuition about humanity that a great deal of the world appears to understand that right now.

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The era that There Will Be Blood is set during is such a romanticized period of time in this country. The turn of the century was when you could move out west, buy land, and really “make yourself.” I’m sure that there were people who pursued that nobly, but I bet for a large swath their attitude was less about independence and freedom, and more about profit. One of the first things we see Daniel do is fall, break his leg, and drag himself on his back to town to make his claim on the gold he found. A fortune at any cost is still a fortune for him, and that attitude runs deep in our culture: Consequences don’t outweigh the immediate gain.

Between swindling a farmer into selling his land, threatening to cut a man’s throat, sending his child away to some kind of boarding house, and flat out murdering people, Daniel does some horrible things. But, I think it would be too easy to label him as a full on villain. One of the things I was struck by this time was how I believe he truly cared for H.W., up until the accident it seemed like their relationship was solid, albeit a little business like (not that there were many kids in 1911 who didn’t have to grow up fast). He saves H.W. from the drilling accident, tells Mary in front of her father that there will be “no more hitting” after he picks up on H.W. liking her, and you can see that he absolutely hates himself as H.W. leaves on the train. Later on in Eli’s sermon, you can see that the having to say “I abandoned my boy” is painful, and when he finally bellows it out, I think that was the only real moment of the entire charade.

I think Daniel’s humanity is slowly left behind with each gain he makes towards having the pipeline. And that’s maybe the point: Like a virus, greed consumes and sours a person until they’re left alone in a mansion, blowing holes in their belongings with a shotgun. Eli has the same issue, though: He doesn’t want profits, but he does want a shitload of influence. Expanding the church, trying to force Daniel to recognize him during the opening ceremony for the drilling, and becoming a missionary, Eli wants power over peoples’ souls and is pretending he’s in it to show God’s light to people. Daniel, at least, is honest with himself in his drive for power (“I have a competitiveness in me”).

And that’s where it ends, his proclamation that “I’m finished!” is an announcement that he’s beat every possible competitor. He beat Standard Oil to the punch with the pipeline, he drained Bandy’s land from underneath him, he drove his son away from being a competitor, and now he’s killed the one other person who tried to take a bite out of his power- Eli. But you get the sense at the end that the only thing he truly enjoyed was crushing other people, and if that isn’t capitalism in a nutshell: There is only competition and profit, nothing more. Daniel could do anything with his wealth, he could set his son up for life, devote himself to another cause, do literally anything for anyone. But no, we end with him miserably basking in his own excess.

Henry is an interesting element too, because as skeptical as Daniel is at first, he does come to trust Henry enough to speak about his own emotions, which are obviously no rays of sunshine. Henry is even keen on listening, despite being an imposter he seems eager to do right. I think for Daniel, when he finds out, he’s more enraged that somebody gained his trust on a lie than anything else. Maybe that’s what seals the deal, because he stoops to a new low afterwards by participating in Eli’s sermon even though it means nothing to him beyond gaining approval for construction rights.

Watching this again for the first time in quite a few years, I was surprised at how fast it moved. I love a good character drama, slow as they may be, but in this case it felt like there’s just one thing after another in the plot, and maybe that’s why it left such an initial impression.

I feel obligated to mention that Daniel’s climactic rant, culminating with “I drink your milkshake!” is probably one of the best “fuck you” moments in film history. And obviously Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the greatest character actors of our time, but I think the rest of the cast deserves a lot of credit as well. Paul Dano nails that over-eager young pastor archetype, Kevin O’Connor is really likeable as Henry and I wish he was in more things in general, and the kid who played HW wasn’t even an actor- he was a kid from a local school and was picked because he didn’t have to fake knowing how to be in a rustic/rural environment.

I also want to note the score, it’s always jumped out at me. I don’t think there’s a single melody in the entire film, it’s all atonal and/or percussion. It’s a really unique way of driving home a constant sense of malaise and compliments the harsh landscapes very well. Plus it was done by Radiohead’s lead guitarist, which is a fun fact.

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That success has created the template for American music festivals, one where social media and showing off the day-to-day experience of attendees is as integral to the event’s self-perpetuation as having big name headliners. Well-managed camping-like experiences with beautiful people in beautiful weather is now a main selling point of just about any festival, and who can argue with that? Certainly, nobody wants to be stumbling around in a muddy field with lawless throngs of concertgoers. But the appeal of festivals to the millennial generation, my generation, has less to do with a desire for comfort and more to do with the desire of those attending to show the world that they are relevant. Selfies and hot shots of friends at festivals flood social media every summer, a sea of phone screens illuminate main stage crowds as attendees record the band for Instagram and Snapchat stories to prove to their social circles that they aren’t missing out, they’re doing all the things and having the maximum amount of fun.

These are only moments in others’ lives, but when someone is subjected to hundreds of those moments every day simply by picking up their phone, reality becomes distorted and can leave them with the sense that they aren’t living their own life to its fullest potential. This is so common that we created a term for it, “fear of missing out” (FOMO), and that fear is a powerful thing to leverage.

Billy McFarland understood that.

In December 2016 Billy McFarland, a young tech entrepreneur in New York City, partnered with Ja Rule to launch a new app designed to make booking big ticket artists easy for anyone with the cash. To generate hype for the app, McFarland and Ja Rule planned a music festival in the Bahamas, one where attendees would pay anywhere between $500 and $12,000 to be present. They offered luxurious tents and villas, high-end catering provided by a renowned chef, the company of super models, social media stars, and high profile musicians for three full days of partying in an oceanic paradise. McFarland’s team shot a promotional video with said models and stars on an island in the Bahamas, blitzed social media with it, and watched their idea go viral beyond their wildest expectations. The festival sold out almost immediately, attracting massive amounts of media and investor attention in the process.

It sounds like some kind of rockstar fantasy, and it was indeed just that: A fantasy. The chosen date was only six months from when tickets went on sale, the location they promised attendees wasn’t actually available, the actual location they ended up with had no infrastructure on site (running water, toilets, internet, etc), production expenses piled up faster than money could be found, and McFarland refused to entertain the idea of delaying anything despite the obviously insurmountable and increasingly dangerous set of problems.

On April 27, 2017, hundreds of people arrive to find rain-soaked emergency tents instead of the luxury accommodations they were promised, no food prepared by a celebrity chef, no music, and a location that could best be described as an abandoned gravel pit. Attendees immediately posted about the disaster and the controversy spread even faster than the initial promo video, cementing Fyre Festival’s legacy as a complete and utter failure. It’s a small wonder that nobody was physically hurt, as the one thing that did show up as planned was millions of dollars of alcohol.

It’s maybe not a surprise, given the audience attracted to Fyre Festival, that there’s a wealth of footage and people willing to openly discuss what they experienced as attendees and organizers, resulting in two documentaries released almost simultaneously: “Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened” by Chris Smith (“American Movie”, “Jim & Andy”) and “Fyre Fraud” by Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason (“Welcome to Leith”, “Rest in Power”).

When two documentaries aim at the same subject, often times one feels like a response to the other, or there’s such a discrepancy in perspectives that deciding which presentation is most believable becomes an additional exercise. “Fyre” and “Fyre Fraud”, however, comfortably dovetail together to form a fascinating investigation into a generation’s fear of missing out and how it can be manipulated to dangerous ends.

Smith’s “Fyre” (available on Netflix) feels like the right place to start. With a fly-on-the-wall feel, “Fyre” walks us through the experience in linear fashion, offering insight into the unmitigated arrogance and chaos as it grows. The film spends most of its time with those around McFarland and Ja Rule, reflecting on how things happened the way they did more than why, with commentary from those involved, several of the attendees and, notably, representatives of the local Bahamian workers who suffered unrecoverable losses.

“Fyre’s” frontline perspective allows us to see firsthand how things derail. When the promotional material goes viral, the excitement of the organizers is palpable. For all their excited toasts and partying after they first tell the world about Fyre, you would think that something more concrete had happened than Kendall Jenner making an Instagram post. It’s a telling glimpse of a group that puts perception ahead of reality.

As someone points out late in the film, the real Fyre Festival was the promo video shoot. Sixty people partying with Ja Rule and super models in the Bahamas all on McFarland’s dime is absolutely as good as it got, and that speaks volumes to the attitude of all involved; despite there being a total absence of tangible groundwork mere months before the festival is scheduled, the blind belief that everything will work out if enough money is thrown at it overrides all. Watching this unfold step-by-step makes the crushing failure of the festival all the more cringe-inducing.

It’s easy to feel for many of the subjects in “Fyre”, too. Andy King, an experienced event producer that McFarland brings on late in the game, is particularly sympathetic as someone who threw decades of experience at the festival (including one horribly selfless solution that you have to hear him explain to believe) and still came up short. The initial logistics officer and one of the first to point out the potential problems, Keith van der Linde, is another face that you wish had been taken more seriously instead of fired for highlighting the very real challenges everyone needed to address immediately.

McFarland himself feels like something of an enigma in “Fyre”, which could be taken as short-sighted on the part of the filmmakers. It’s mentioned at one point that as the festival was self-immolating, he simply vanished; other times, he sped off in a four wheeler to vent his frustration. These moments can be read as symptomatic of a rich kid with his head up his ass, certainly deserving of our damnation, but possibly out of sheer arrogance rather than manipulation.

Most affecting, though, are the stories of the Bahamians who did so much of the leg work and were left high and dry as McFarland and his team literally fled the island. Caterer Mary Ann Rolle describes how she put $150,000 personal savings into organizing parts of the festival, money that she felt she had to spend or risk failing the organizers, only to see it vanish as unceremoniously as McFarland.

Furst and Nason’s “Fyre Fraud” (available on Hulu) takes a more editorial perspective than “Fyre”, offering the why to Fyre’s how, laying out extensive context and background on key aspects of the festival and everyone involved. It’s less linear and stylistically more flashy, which goes a little too far in places with a somewhat awkward use of text-to-speech voiceover. While “Fyre” does go into more detail on McFarland’s incredibly brazen post-Fyre scam (NYC VIP Access) that got him arrested even as he awaited sentencing for his original charges, “Fyre Fraud” digs into his past and offers insights that paint a more insidious portrait. Specifically, one that shows McFarland as an energetic con artist whose real motivation in every new venture is raising money to pay off the previous one.

In “Fyre Fraud”, we see the lines clearly drawn from McFarland’s previous venture Magnises to Fyre Festival in the form of his outstanding debts to various investors, and with that in mind, it’s hard to see McFarland as a naive rich kid who was in over his head with Fyre Festival. Not only did he scam thousands of people out of millions of dollars, he did it knowingly, and in the instances where he stepped over clear legal boundaries, he did it while actually saying that people like him “can’t go to jail.”

It’s not entirely McFarland’s show, though. “Fyre Fraud” offers additional insight with other important players, one of the most revealing being Oren Aks of Jerry Media, an online media company hired by Fyre to handle promotional duties for the festival. Aks’s testimony reveals that McFarland was not alone in deceiving the public, as Aks personally removed any critical or inquisitive comments online about the festival as it drew near. As McFarland says at one point: “So many things had to go right to make this a big failure.” Indeed, Jerry Media’s shaping of public perception played a huge role in keeping the train rolling even as it came off the rails.

Note: Jerry Media was involved in producing “Fyre”, so you won’t see any criticism of their actions in that film. I think this is ultimately irrelevant to the documentary’s intentionally limited perspective, but it’s worth keeping in mind.

“Fyre Fraud” offers little sympathy for attendees and organizers alike, which won’t offend most people as the prevailing attitude is “they all had it coming”. However, it does feel like a misstep to not drive home the impact that Fyre had on the locals who tried to help. There’s a somewhat extensive interview with McFarland’s right-hand man on the ground, but nothing with the caterers or laborers who lost tens of thousands of dollars doing back-breaking work for nothing. If anything demonstrates the true negative consequences of the entire Fyre fiasco and the circumstances that led to it, it’s showing how rich Americans blatantly got away with stealing money from a developing nation.

It would be short-sighted to write off Fyre Festival entirely as a scam at all levels. Many times, in both documentaries, we hear organizers offering the same sentiment: What could go wrong? Oren Aks thought exactly that when offered the job to handle promotion of the event, despite his initial hesitation that any of it would work. “We’re all professionals,” he recalls thinking, much like attendees looked at the promo video and thought “this is real.”

Some of us might feel a certain smugness about watching young people get burned as they throw away the kind of money many of us hope we make in a few months just to cover basic living expenses. “Fyre Fraud” makes it especially tempting to revel in their loss, with shots of twenty-somethings laughing at how ridiculous the festival turned out to be when they first see it, rather than outwardly fuming over being conned out of a small fortune. It’s easy to look at the attendees, social media tastemakers, out-of-touch investors and think, “I would never be so ignorant. They deserve this.”

The immediacy of social media has made the idea of caution into an obstacle, a chore that you can choose to ignore. But if we’re going to be the generation that tells our peers what’s real online and what’s fabrication or distortion, we need to demonstrate that we deserve that position. Our obsession with not missing out on a perceived reality must be replaced with skepticism, otherwise we are doomed to make the same mistakes as those that came before us.

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“Detroit” is not a beautiful film. It’s rough, it’s violent, and it’s uncomfortable. It’s also absolutely necessary.

In July of 1967, the city of Detroit spent five days enduring the 12th Street Riot, sparked by the raid of an unlicensed bar in a black neighborhood by a mostly white police force with a lengthy history of brutality and discrimination. Barely three days after that raid, countless buildings had been burned to the ground, dozens had died, and a state of emergency had been declared, in hopes that thousands of Army and National Guard troops would be enough to stifle the unrest. Amid the chaos, several young residents sought refuge in the Algiers Motel and a house that had been annexed to the building. When nearby police heard gunfire (later discovered to be from a starter pistol) from the building they indiscriminately fired at it, stormed in, lined the patrons against a wall, then prejudicially interrogated and assaulted them for hours. By morning, three teenagers at the motel were dead.

The night in the Algiers is where Kathryn Bigalow’s (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) film spends the bulk of its nearly two and a half hour runtime. It’s a challenging story to tell, between the complicated historical context in which the event is set and how eyewitness accounts conflicted with official reports from the police involved. Partnering again with screenwriter Mark Boal, Bigalow’s film is at once large in scale and intimate, offering us an overview of the city’s racial tensions that led to that fateful night before it pushes into the lives of those involved as the story coalesces.

However, “Detroit” is not a character study, nor does it need to be. We don’t need to delve wholly into any single character to feel their pain, as the gut-wrenching way the events unfold inside the motel are more than enough to engage anyone with a sense of humanity. As with Zero Dark Thirty (and unlike The Hurt Locker), the film puts us alongside the individuals involved, rather than in their heads, allowing the film to give us some much needed context. If we were limited to the headspace of a single character, the film would not be able to pull back far enough to show us the relevancy of the riot, the multitude of individuals involved, and the abominably biased investigation and trial that ensued afterwards. It’s crucial that the film be able to do this: The systemic issues that fed into the Algiers Motel incident are lessons we need to remember, as is the terrifying power of unchecked discrimination. Bigalow’s film shows us both, unflinchingly.

It’s that lack of flinching that has created the most controversy.

“Detroit” does not shy away from violence, and with Barry Ackroyd’s fly-on-the-wall cinematography, you may as well be in the room yourself. It’s a relentlessly uncomfortable space, made all the more so by the monstrous police officer commanding the proceedings (played to chilling effect by Will Poulter). Leads Algee Smith, Jacob Latimore, Hannah Murray, and Anthony Mackie all give engrossing performances, with Smith and Latimore particularly top-notch as teens-turned-aspiring-Motown-singers, and it’s heartbreakingly real to watch their characters’ innocence smashed so effortlessly by the powers that be.

However, “Detroit” does falter after the Algiers incident. In reality, the court proceedings were a mess of lies, conflicting accounts, and judiciary bias that lasted months; it would easily take an additional film to fully cover the community’s outrage at seeing police brutality and prejudice excused in such public fashion. “Detroit” haphazardly tries to shove all of that into the last half hour of its runtime, rendering the final act dramatically underwhelming, especially given the intensity of what came before in the motel.

Many of us have never had to experience anything even remotely like the 12th Street Riot or the discrimination that led to it, and some of us will never know what it truly feels like to spend a lifetime being oppressed while the world watches on, indifferent. “Detroit” won’t change that, but it’s a blunt reminder of how quickly things descend into physical terrorism when ignorance is given power and when ideas of racial superiority are allowed to fester. The events at the Algiers took place fifty years ago, but they could not be more relevant today.

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Before The Revenant was launched to the forefront of Hollywood this winter as a critical and box office success, the story of Hugh Glass already had a reputation in Hollywood: It was impossible to shoot.

The exact details of Glass’s experience as a fur-trapper in 1823 are subject to much debate, but the legend goes that while on an expedition with General William Ashley in South Dakota, Glass was brutally mauled by a grizzly bear. Fearing the worst and unable to haul a corpse from deep in the wilderness, Glass’s companions left him for dead and continued on their expedition. Despite his severe injuries, Glass came to, crawling and stumbling his way to safety alone on a 200 mile trek to Fort Kiowa.

A tale of isolation and wilderness survival might work well in a novel (Michael Punke penned the book upon which The Revenant is based) but it’s difficult at best to translate into cinematic form, and The Revenant sat in production limbo for nearly a decade before the script found its way to screenwriter Mark Smith. Even after Alejandro Iñárritu signed on to direct in 2011, it took another three years for filming to begin. Was it worth the wait? Unquestionably.

The world of The Revenant is as stark, hostile and bleak as it should be. Even as Glass puts distance between himself and his grave, getting ever closer to the men who left him behind, there’s rarely a moment of reprieve. That unrelenting atmosphere keeps you perfectly uncomfortable for the duration of the film, drawing you ever-closer to Glass as he fights his own mental and physical destruction. Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance as Glass is unnervingly convincing; not just as the victim of a bear attack (kudos to the production team for creating cinema’s first believable mauling), but as a man who has lost all but the most primal human instincts of survival and revenge.

For all the well-deserved attention given to DiCaprio, Tom Hardy’s performance as John Fitzgerald is also noteworthy for its nuance (despite the somewhat heavy-handed frontiersman voice) in that you can’t help but feel the deep-seated fear that he attempts to hide but which ultimately leads to his abandonment of Glass. Will Poulter’s impressive take on a young Jim Bridger is also worth mentioning, as is Domhnall Gleeson’s portrayal of Andrew Henry, the conflicted leader of the expedition.

The performances would all be for naught though, if it weren’t for Emmanuel Lubezki’s absolutely breathtaking cinematography. Few films in recent memory have captured such isolated beauty in any meaningful sense, but with Iñárritu’s direction, Lubezki goes above and beyond. Gorgeously cold footage of the mountains and forest aside, the film is littered with shots that run upwards of five minutes before cutting, allowing you to be fully enveloped in scenes that were already utterly intense. Only natural lighting and entirely real (mostly very remote) locations were used, including the Kootenai Falls just across the Montana border. It was a daunting task that put it over-budget and over-schedule, but those hardships made The Revenant the film that it is: An unflinching look at what it means to die, and then survive.

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I’m in Bismarck, North Dakota, and the screen shows a wiry older man with frizzy white hair toting a rifle and spouting racial slurs as he strolls through a rural town elsewhere in the state. After finally seeing the full film, I can certainly feel for that other theatergoer.

The story of Leith is one that strikes a uncomfortably familiar chord for many in Idaho and Montana. I grew up in Montana in the 1990’s, a time when the Patriot movement was grasping at the backwoods of the state in towns like Jordan. There, the Montana Freemen tried to form their own anti-government township in 1996, but were ultimately arrested after a tense standoff with the FBI. Just down the road from my hometown was the north Idaho area, where the white supremacists in the Aryan Nations were headquartered until 2001. Militia movements and white power groups intertwined for much of the ’90s in this part of the world, a cancerous presence that disturbed those who had the misfortune to live near it. The footage of a man in the street, armed and full of hate, is an eerie reminder of one of the most regrettable phases of history in the Northwest.

That man is Craig Cobb, the central figure of “Welcome To Leith.” In 2012, Cobb moved to the secluded town of Leith, North Dakota, which boasts a mere 24 citizens and sits 15 minutes away from the county seat of Carson (pop. 293). Leith is roughly ninety minutes away from the state capital of Bismarck, the nearest “real” city, and is a dot of civilization with only a handful of properties. When Cobb moved in, his intention was to purchase as many plots of land as he could in order to build a haven for white nationalists. It was a plan that came dangerously close to working as more of Cobb’s ilk moved in, and the filmmakers behind “Welcome to Leith” stuck themselves right in the middle of it.

In fact, the “middle of it” is where the films starts and stays. Cobb’s presence in the town grows as he buys up land, but even as the few families that live there become frightened and angry, the films spends as much time with Cobb and his right-hand man Kynan Dutton- a scrawny Gulf War veteran with a poor Hitler mustache- as it does with those who want him out. Directors Michael Nichols and Christopher Walker describe filming with Cobb for the first half of the day, then literally walking across the street to film the neighbors for the second part of the day. The result is a film portraying the reality of life not just as a citizen next door, but as Cobb himself.

Soft-spoken and articulate with an easy smile, Craig Cobb is not what most imagine a devout racist to be. There’s an undeniable intelligence to the man who, at the surface, seems like your slightly-off uncle. But as the film delves deeper into his life it’s clear that a monster lies underneath, one that gleefully talks about the superiority of the white race, who screams anti-Semitic slurs at the opposition, and who spends the vast majority of his days online, stirring up support for his views in white supremacist forums.

Cobb’s true nature eventually led to safety concerns for local news crews covering developments in Leith, and was the reason a city police officer was present inside the screening room for every showing of the film in Bismarck over the course of three days. It’s one thing to be a hateful person, but as the film shows, it’s another to be one with ties to murky individuals who have no qualms about committing violent crimes. The film drips with that malevolent presence, and when combined with all the foreboding shots of a winter-clad Leith, it plays like a horror film.

Atmosphere aside, “Welcome to Leith” is at its most interesting when normal, law-abiding citizens are pushed to their moral limits by Cobb’s presence: Protesters from all over the state are shown rallying in Leith in one scene, a hopeful sight to be sure, but another scene has Dutton’s wife finding their vehicles vandalized and a citizen parked in their driveway refusing to leave, despite her repeated requests. You’re honestly not sure whose side to take: Can you blame anyone for wanting to retaliate against such a hateful group of people? Doubtful. But if hate begets harassment and violence, where does that leave our society? It’s in these moments, and there are plenty, where “Welcome to Leith” truly shines.

The film does suffer from its shoe-string, kickstarter-funded budget in places, with a few abrupt jumps over months of time, and it’s somewhat difficult to understand the geographic relationship of all the affected towns. These are minor issues though, and on the whole the documentary is not simply coherent, but thought-provoking. It’s a hugely successful endeavor.

“Welcome to Leith” is terrifying and provocative, a fly-on-the-wall documentary drenched in the atmosphere of a horror film. What does it all mean? As I walked out of the showing in Bismarck I could see, just down the street, the Motel 6 where Cobb spent the final few minutes of the film happily reading from a novel on white superiority. It was a reminder that this is not about some crazy thing that happened in a far-away place. It’s about that moment, as Ryan Lenz puts it in the film, “When the outside world that’s kept apart from much of rural America… Sort of came up through the soil.”

Hopefully, “Welcome to Leith” helps us understand how we can stop weeds like Cobb from growing in our communities.

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Over thirty years ago, George Miller used money he saved while working as an emergency doctor to fund his directorial debut, a violent Australian action film titled “Mad Max.” Shot for next to nothing, the film went on to set box office records, launching two legendary sequels that catapulted Mel Gibson to international stardom and influenced decades of post-apocalyptic media. How did Miller follow up such a gritty, highly-regarded trilogy? By producing and co-writing the acclaimed family films Babe and Happy Feet, as well as their sequels.

With Fury Road, Miller finally returns to the hellish world of Mad Max and despite all the talking animals between the Thunderdome and now, within minutes it’s clear that he’s still got plenty of brutal weirdness up his sleeve. After being caught by a group of marauders, Max (Tom Hardy) finds himself imprisoned by a desert-dwelling cult known as the “War Boys” just as one of their warrior drivers (Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron) goes rogue, freeing a group of enslaved women as she does. Max eventually finds himself fighting alongside Furiosa and the film takes off as they search for her home: The Green Place, a refuge of life in an otherwise barren, hostile world.

Plot descriptions do little justice to Fury Road: You have not seen a film like this before. Stylistically, it sits somewhere between steam-punk and western; a surreal combination of Speed and the Burning Man festival that’s both beautiful and absolutely out of its mind. It’s a two-hour chase at full-speed through the desert that constantly escalates, and just when you’re positive you won’t see anything more outlandish than a flame-throwing guitarist strapped to a wall of amplifiers on top of a semi going 80 miles an hour, Miller ups the ante even further. The fact that almost all of this is done without CGI makes the spectacle all the more jaw-dropping.

But beyond the dusty nightmarish spectacle lies what makes Fury Road truly special: Character. The film eschews Western outlaw cliches and allows issues of gender equality to take center stage, something rarely attempted in a big-budget action film, and accomplished here without being heavy-handed or under-played. There’s meat underneath the explosions, and it’s a testament to Theron and Hardy’s acting prowess (as well as the rest of the outstanding cast) that such heavy subtext can be present in a film that relies on insinuation and the faces of its characters more than their words.

Fury Road may take place in a universe established by Miller a lifetime ago, but it has plenty to say about the reality of today. A world of fire and blood has never been so hypnotic.

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But graphic violence and brutality are not at all the only means that horror filmmakers use to manipulate the spectator’s senses. On the contrary, an equally popular trend takes the complete opposite road: A cinema of the unknown. In this mode, the film leaves much up to the viewer’s imagination; rather than show you the monster or killer slicing up their victims, the content is only implied, and the spectator’s own mind fills in the gaps.

One of the most notable entries making use of this effect is The Blair Witch Project, released in 1999. The film is presented as “lost footage” shot by three filmmakers who disappeared into the woods of Virginia while searching for the legendary Blair Witch, and from start to finish, nothing breaks that illusion (unlike Cannibal Holocaust, there is no inherently fictional storyline being cut to between the footage). The basic plot within the footage has the team getting lost after a few days, hearing and seeing increasingly strange events, and eventually deciding that someone or something is following and harassing them, ultimately leading to their deaths. (20)

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

The methods used to create horror in Blair Witch take a very minimalist approach, relying more on sound design than visual elements. Early on, when the trio attempt to sleep in their tent, they hear crashing and cracking from deep within the woods. When they investigate, they do not venture away from their camp, and the only visual element the audience is presented with is that of the camera’s headlamp pointing into the dark forest (with the sound still occurring). There are several more instances of this throughout the film, with the only true “visual” scares coming in the form of mysterious rock piles and occult-like symbols dangling from trees.

More recently, Paranormal Activity (2009) used the same methods of minimalism in order to create atmosphere, in fact using an even simpler method: A couple thinks they may be experiencing ghostly encounters at night while they are asleep, so they set up a video camera in their room at night to monitor activity. This activity escalates from singular noises in the dark to full-on possession by the end, and the view never leaves the single camera (which does become handheld at certain points). (21) Whereas Blair Witch implied a two-camera setup and the use of a DAT, thereby breaking the illusion somewhat and offering a more “cinematic” feel, Paranormal Activity never does. In fact, the film goes so far as to eschew end credits (again, unlike Blair Witch), so there is even less relief that it was “just a movie” at the end.

Paranormal Activity (2009)

In doing this, the filmmakers are able to achieve two things, suspension and atmosphere. The suspension comes from an expectation that something should be seen, when in fact it is not. Part of this is likely entirely psychological, but it could also be looked at in the context of spectatorship in general: Audiences, especially those attending horror films, are conditioned to see “money shots”- the monster jumping out, the killer with the knife, etc.- after tension. Here, the filmmakers prey on that conditioning by using up tension and giving it no release, instilling a sense of unease that, as a result, never lets up. This then effectively creates the atmosphere for the audience.

In order to not clutter the point with strictly cinéma vérité films, it is worth noting some more traditional narratives that follow this same vein, but allow for more release, making what would otherwise be small visual moments become ones that are quite definitive.

M. Night Shyamalan’s “Signs” (2002) follows a family at a remote farmhouse during the course of an alien invasion. (22) By most standards, it is fairly traditional in terms of narrative and cinematography. What makes it psychological horror, though, and not just a thriller, is Shyamalan counts on your fear of the unknown. The fact that there are alien beings running around is introduced narratively, not visually, shortly before most of the encounters with them occur, which has a definitive effect on the viewer’s perspective.

For example, there is a moment where the main character is running through his crops at night, when he drops his flashlight. He picks it back up, turns it on, and points it just in time to glimpse a leg moving back into the stalks. (22) In a traditional sense, this “money shot” would be very poor- we see next to nothing. But the viewer is so conditioned up to that point with the atmosphere- newscaster talking about aliens, crop circles, shots that linger on seemingly empty spaces just a little too long- that they are effectively, already scared. By introducing just a small element of the unknown (what was that leg from?), Shyamalan is able to further frighten viewers.

Two other films play more literally with that fear, via an actual obscured view: The Fog (1980) and The Mist (2007). The Fog is a basic ghost story- every one hundred years a fog rolls over the town of Antonio Bay, and in the year that the plot takes place, it brings with it the ghosts of a shipwrecked crew. Over the course of two hours, the most that is ever shown of the ghosts are outlines, glowing eyes, and part of a hand, leaving their actual physical presence almost completely ambiguous. The Mist takes place in a small town after a mysterious thunderstorm knocks out power, and follows a man and his young son as they go to the supermarket to get supplies. As they do so, a mist rolls in and engulfs the entire town, with strange, alien creatures lurking inside of it. In the real world, water particles are not often considered in themselves, scary. But in film, it heightens the sense of not knowing what is coming, by shrouding it in a veil.

The Mist (2007)

As shown in the preceding examples, the cinema of the unknown asks the spectator to actively engage in the viewing experience, thereby actively participating in their own fear. Without their own experiences and their own fears, none of these films would be even remotely frightening. This also tends to generate more controversy in terms of “what is scary?” than gore-centered horror films do: with Paranormal Activity, many simply found it dull. Lori Hoffman of Atlantic City Weekly wrote “…One has to sit through nearly 80 minutes of mind-numbing tedium before the payoff, a payoff that isn’t really worth the wait.” (25) The relationship between horror and the viewer within this mode is much more subjective- it may scare you, or it may not.

These are the two largest modes of horror, and many of its subgenres operate within them. There are some, though, that play on slightly different fears. “Slashers” such as Friday the 13th, Halloween, and A Nightmare on Elm Street fall somewhat into both categories, but rely on societal fears of serial killers to achieve their goals. Occult-based films like the aforementioned The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Omen all deal with demonism, a fear firmly rooted in religion, especially Christianity. There is also a more recent trend in American cinema of remaking or imitating Japanese horror, with films like The Grudge, The Ring, and The Eye. Stylistically, these films prey upon an aversion to the supernatural without any specific religious connotations, which likely offers a much broader appeal.

Conclusions

We live vicariously through movies, and it is certainly one of the greatest strengths of the art form. But with horror, that vicarious experience is different. For instance, if one watches a film about an expedition to the top of Mt. Everest, they might think “it’s so beautiful, I would love to see that view” or “what an accomplishment, I wish I could do something like that”. On the other hand, nobody wants to be eaten by cannibals. Nobody wants to find themselves lost in the woods, starving to death while something harasses them every night. Nobody wants to experience extreme psychological stress on the level that most main characters in horror films do. But, films are not real life.

“People go to horror films because they want to be frightened or they wouldn’t do it twice,” says Jeffrey Goldstein, a professor of social and organizational psychology at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. (26) A recent article by the National Science Foundation also suggests that our attraction to horror may be due to “enjoying the adrenaline rush, being distracted from mundane life, vicariously thumbing our noses at social norms, and enjoying a voyeuristic glimpse of the horrific from a safe distance.”(26)

This does not seem far from the truth- after all, anyone that has ever been scared in real life has experienced that rush of adrenaline, and the only difference between that and the scare had in a theater is that in real life, most people are too worried about whatever the catalyst of that rush is to enjoy it. But within horror- especially the cinema of the unknown- the spectator enters the theater knowing they do not have to worry about the consequences of what is occurring on screen, and as a result can take pleasure from that rush.

But is there a point where it is no longer entertainment? Films in the cinema of revulsion category are notorious for being banned and earning intense critical scrutiny, often because many seem to be designed to shock, and not to tell a story. Nev Pierce, of the BBC, says of Hostel, “beyond its ‘How far can I go?’ attitude to violence, Hostel has no reason to exist.” (27) Concerning Cannibal Holocaust, Eric Henderson of Slant Magazine wrote, “Cannibal Holocaust … [is] foul enough to christen you a pervert for even bothering.” (28)

It would appear, then, that the viewer does not have to engage in watching cinema with the intent of “seeing a good story”, typically the main draw of films based within a narrative. If the set-pieces these films are intended to be the moments of gore, as they seem to be, then the viewer understands exactly what they are getting themselves into. When the viewer enters the theater with the intent of watching culturally unacceptable acts, the result is that the entertainment becomes less about the story and more about memorable moments of brutality, thus the very definition of what makes a “good film” changes.

Horror provides a unique challenge to the spectator by asking us to so fully suspend our disbelief as to instill otherwise unpleasant emotions: That of fright and/or disgust. While the disgusting elements of gore may be less visceral on the screen than in real life, they are demonstrably unpleasant for many, and exquisite entertainment for some. Fright, such as that found in more minimalist films like The Blair Witch Project and Signs, provides some with a safe way to experience intensely scary events, much like a thrill ride, while completely boring others. What all of this demonstrates is that horror relies intensely on what the spectator is able to draw from their own life while in the cinema (what scares them?), making it a genre of film that, ironically, embraces the very audience it is trying to horrify.

[Sources omitted for brevity, but in the exceedingly unlikely event you would like them, contact me]

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With Halloween coming up, I thought it might be worthwhile to post what I wrote. I’ve trimmed a few parts and added some illustration, but this is largely how I turned it in. It’s pretty dry and admittedly overly wordy in places, but in general I’m kind of proud of how it turned out. So without further ado:

Horror and the Spectator

In reality, nobody wants to be scared. The very definition of being scared is to be “filled with terror; frightened or alarmed”- the sort of thing more often associated with dangerous circumstance or environment. As with any species on this planet with the will to survive embedded in their very genes, humans are not apt to seek out such places or instances.

But in 1973, audiences came in droves to see a film by the name of “The Exorcist.” The film tells the tale of a twelve year old girl possessed by a demon, and the priests who must “exorcise” the demon from within her. During their sessions, the child exhibits all manner of paranormal activity, from abnormal voice changes, levitation, contortions, to other impossible physical movement. It was designed, from start to finish, with the purpose of frightening audiences, and it became one of the highest grossing films of all time. (1)

While The Exorcist may be one of the early commercial success stories of horror, it certainly was not the first film having the effect of scaring people- a tradition going back as far as 1896 to French filmmaker George Méliès. Among his many other technical innovations (Méliès was an early pioneer of stop-motion, multiple exposures, and time-lapse, to name a few), he produced a short, two minute film entitled “Le Manoir du Diable” (“The Manor of the Devil”) which is widely assumed to be the first horror film. (2) (3)

The Manor of the Devil (1896)

Before delving into more detail, however, we must ask ourselves: Why? Why do people crave a form of entertainment that heavily relies on an emotion we instinctively avoid in real life? Of course any spectator who enters a theater or sits down in front of a screen inherently knows they have to suspend their disbelief for whatever they are about to watch- otherwise the medium would fall apart immediately- but despite that suspension, can a film actually subject you to the same feelings as real fear (or real disgust) can? It is an oft-cited legend that many audience members have walked out of horror films due solely to fear, which begs the question of viewer boundaries: Is there a point, a universal point, where visual art- due to either discomfort of revulsion- surpasses its use as entertainment and becomes “unwatchable”? These are questions that must be kept in mind when considering the horror film.

History

As mentioned earlier, the notion of horror in cinema has been around almost since the very beginning of the motion picture. To re-touch briefly on Méliès, though, it should be noted that despite its lofty title as the first of its kind, the only relation it contains to what is commonly referred to as horror today, is in the subject matter. It is primarily concerned with the paranormal, as it demonstrates phantoms, witchcraft, and eventually the power of Christ (which is, technically, paranormal). (3)

The true beginnings of horror, beyond the technical ones, lie primarily with two German filmmakers, Paul Wegener and Robert Wiene, who are better known as being part of the Expressionist movement in that country during the 1920s. Wegener’s “The Golem: How He Came into the World” is based on the Jewish folktale of a golem summoned to protect Jews facing persecution in sixteenth century Prague. (4) In Wegener’s film, The Golem appears as stolid creature (though, to us now, obviously just a costumed man) bent on destruction. It is for all intents and purposes, one of the first monster-horror films.

Robert Wiene’s “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”, on the other hand, is an example of early stylistically-based horror, and has been called one of the first psychological horror films. (5) Though the plot of Dr. Caligari is essentially a murder mystery, it is the style that becomes relevant to horror. Set designs and cinematography are heavily influenced by German expressionism, and instill a sense of discomfort and unease within the viewer. Walls curve inwards, windows contort in unusual ways, buildings loom as though being viewed through a distorted glass; all of these aspects add to a general sense of claustrophobia and malaise for audiences. In addition, the cinematography incorporates specific techniques with perspective- such as buildings distorting off into the distance and Dutch angles- to further add to the psychological effect of the film.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919)

From these simple beginnings, horror sprouted into a full-fledged genre with the help of Hollywood over the next decade. The 1930s saw the release of Universal classics such as Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Invisible Man (1933), and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1933). (6) (7) (8) (9) All releases were commercially successful, proving that American audiences were capable of enjoying being frightened.

Modern Horror

With this history in mind, it is now worth surveying the current state of horror films. Like many film genres, horror can be further sub-divided into unique subgenres, each aiming to manipulate a different element of fright. In the following pages, we will look at a few of the more prominent subgenres and critique how they intend to manipulate the viewers’ senses.

One of the more common stereotypes of modern horror- as a whole, at least- is a focus on graphic violence. For almost half a century, Hollywood followed a specific list of “do’s and don’ts”, better known as The Motion Picture Production Code. (10) This code effectively kept a lid on brutality, murder, graphic detail, and indeed all “unpleasant subjects”. As a result, one of the largest film-markets in the world was also one of the cleanest. However, this all changed in 1968 when the code was effectively dropped (in favor of our current letter-based rating system). While not entirely without potential rebuke, filmmakers had much more creative freedom in terms of violence and gore. Thus, a cinema of revulsion was born.

Grindhouse and low-budget independent films notwithstanding, one of the first major motion pictures to utilize extreme violence comes in the form of Tobe Hooper’s “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974). In short, the film follows a group of friends traveling through Texas in search of a homestead, when one by one they encounter a seemingly abandoned household, belonging to the family of a murderous, chainsaw-wielding brute who wears a severed face as a mask (better known as “Leatherface”). The story culminates with one of the characters, Sally, escaping from the family with Leatherface in pursuit with a chainsaw.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

From the onset, this film sets up a sense of unease: One of the earliest scenes depicts a crazed hitchhiker cutting his hand manically with a blade from his own knife, for no apparent reason other than his own insanity. The shots show it in a casual, almost documentary-fashion with no particular dramatic emphasis, and though there are a fair amount of cut-aways demonstrating the other passengers’ reactions, the slicing of the palm is shown in full with very little left to the imagination. In doing so, Hooper is able to communicate to the audience that graphic violence will not be shied away from.

Later on, Leatherface murders one of the characters unsuspectingly with a sledgehammer. The resulting death is instantaneous, and the victim is shown violently twitching as a result. Given the film’s inherent relation to slaughterhouses (Leatherface’s family operates one), the death can be symbolically linked to that of slaughtering livestock: Impersonal and violent. Which in the context of film and graphic violence, is shocking to the audience. There are many other violent deaths and moments within The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, including death by chainsaw, a woman being hanged on a meat-hook, and a house filled with what are obviously human bones. As shocking and gruesome as these elements may be, they have since been far surpassed.

In 1980, Italian director Ruggero Deodato’s film “Cannibal Holocaust” premiered in Milan. Ten days later he was arrested under suspicion of murder, the Italian courts believing that the deaths in the film were in fact, real. (11) The reason for these allegations stems directly from the content of the film: Cannibal Holocaust tells the story of an anthropologist searching for four documentarians who disappeared two months earlier in the remote jungles of South America while investigating a cannibalistic tribe. The anthropologist eventually finds their lost footage, which is then presented within the narrative. The team’s footage, shot within the “cinéma vérité” tradition and thereby imitating a true documentary, follows them as they go deeper and deeper into the jungle, their encounters with the locals increasingly insensitive and violent.

Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

While the first portion of the film is presented as a fictional narrative- that is, shot with the fourth-wall very much intact- it still has its own moments of brutality: One of the first instances occurs during the anthropologist’s search for the footage, when he and his guide secretly come across a native dragging a naked young woman onto a river shore. The native, in what is described by the anthropologist as a “ritualistic punishment for adultery” proceeds to rape the young woman with a rock for several minutes, then bludgeons her to death. This process is shown in its entirety, with extremely little left to the imagination. (12) Though rape within a narrative film is enough to warrant another discussion entirely, for the purposes of this topic the context should be strictly limited to its sensational appeal and shock value as a cultural taboo.

Another instance of such shock occurs early within the “found footage” itself, after a team member is bitten by a snake. In order to stop the spread of the poison, the team amputates most of his leg (via machete) and attempts to cauterize the wound with a heated blade. All of this is within the frame, portrayed as actual documentary footage. Later, in one of the more infamous shots from the film, the team comes across a native impaled upon a large stake, once again shown in full, and without hesitation (the subject is nude as well, though the shock value of nudity is culturally subjective).

In the end, the “filmmakers” are graphically murdered by the natives for their transgressions, including the cameraman being castrated, beheaded, and his body ultimately torn-apart and disemboweled, followed by the sole female member’s gang-rape and beheading. Once again, as it bears repeating, all of this is on camera and within the faux-documentary style. (12) Pages could be spent detailing each of the graphic moments in Cannibal Holocaust, but also contained within the film are: The team maniacally burning down a village full of natives, a living body in the early stages of decay, a forced abortion (by the natives, including the murder of the exposed fetus), and another rape scene (this time with the team themselves being responsible). The aforementioned instances of brutal, graphic violence are only enhanced in terms of shock value by what are, unfortunately, actual moments of animal cruelty during the film. A tortoise is cut open on camera while still alive, a tied-up pig is kicked and shot in the head, and a monkey is killed for its brains (Deodato originally defended these actions, citing that the animals were all subsequently eaten by the natives, but has since condemned them as “stupid”). (11)

The murder charges against Deodato were eventually dropped, after demonstrating that the actors were indeed still alive (though originally contractually obligated to stay out of media for one year after the film’s release, in order to promote the idea that it was real). However, he still received a four-month suspended sentence on charges of obscenity and animal cruelty, and fought for an additional three years to get the film unbanned. (11)

Cannibal Holocaust serves to ask the question: If there is a line between what can and cannot be committed to film, where is it? Many reviewers were outright disgusted with the film, for obvious reasons, but despite this it has since obtained a cult-status large enough to grant it a sleek, two-disc DVD release. (13) The violence appeared real enough to warrant an actual arrest for murder, showing that at least for some, it is possible for a film to fully step into a realm of “truth”, making it all the more horrifying. It also demonstrates that audiences- perhaps few, but undeniably some- are ready and willing to view some of the largest social taboos in Western culture (namely cannibalism and rape), as part of an entertainment experience.

Perhaps with the early help of Cannibal Holocaust and other films from the Italian horror movement of the 1980s, the horror genre has seen a number of more recent films depicting brutal violence, sometimes dubbed “torture porn” by critics. (14) One of the first films to be bestowed with this title was Eli Roth’s 2005 film “Hostel”, about two young American men who travel to Slovakia in order to pursue its allegedly “free-spirited” women. The two soon find themselves engulfed in an underground practice where seemingly respectable business men pay to torture and murder captives at a secret facility. (15)

Hostel (2005)

Whereas Cannibal Holocaust and the violence contain therein is largely an underground phenomenon, Hostel is in most respects the opposite, with modern production values, recognizable actors, and a major distributor behind it. Despite its Hollywood gloss, though, Hostel incorporates a significant amount of equally grotesque violence: At one point a man’s Achilles tendons are sliced (he then attempts to walk), fingers are cut off, and at another a leg is severed via chainsaw. In terms of cinematography, these instances venture into the overly-dramatized, to the point where it is debatably unrealistic (particularly compared to the cinéma vérité style). But the intention is clear: To shock and illicit emotional response from the audience.

Hostel is far from being the only modern horror film to venture into this territory: The “Saw” series, started in 2003 and now in its sixth iteration, follows a serial killer who traps victims and forces them to escape by testing their endurance of psychological and physical tortures, most of which are extremely violent (in the first installment, a man saws off his own foot in order to escape his shackles). Other entries into the “torture porn” genre include Wolf Creek and Hostel: Part II, both of which were profitable at the box office. (17) (18)

While only a portion of what is considered “horror”, the aforementioned films display something critical about the relationship between filmic content and the spectator: Even as many find the level of brutality and violence to be appalling and unwatchable, there is still a demonstrable audience for it. The Saw series alone, which in many respects epitomizes a cinema of revulsion, is the most profitable horror film series of all time (19), and more films in the same vein are in the works at this very moment. It is a reflection of a shift in culture: The Production Code of the 1930s was representative of a time where taboos in Western society were much larger- violence, death, sex, and so on, were all certainly unacceptable to view and almost equally frowned upon to speak of. In more recent times, perhaps even as a result of the constant exposure to violence in news media (particularly in the post-Vietnam era for America), it has become socially acceptable to see murder, death, and anatomical destruction on screen. Ironically, a line is no longer drawn between violence and non-violence, but between the levels of violence itself.

Within this particular mode of horror, that line has grown less distinct, as audiences have shown that they can and will, happily endure watching what in reality would be some of the vilest and most painful acts we are capable of committing on one another.

(continued in part 2)

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