October Film Freak Out Week 3
Trying to Cure My Flu with Madness
I have managed to catch a terrible flu, this is what horror movies were made for.
Lets fucking go team.
Movie 11: God’s Creatures
A community in a seaside town in Ireland is rocked when an assault allegation is raised against a community member’s son, who has returned from Australia after a period of estrangement from his family.
Our protagonist is the mother of this son, a woman who works hard, takes care of her family, and generally appreciates her life the way it is. When her son returns to her she is delighted to have him back in her life. Though, there is a stiffness in the family, it appears that something happened before he left them, and his return is a shock.
Her son is a charmer, a classic narcissist capable of charisma and friendliness. He dances with his mother, he dances with the other mums, he dotes on his grandfather who is mentally disabled, and his mother looks at him only with adoration and pride.
There’s a lot of symbolism if you pay attention.
At the beginning, Mother is shown doting on her grandson, and the resemblance to her own son is uncanny.
She’s holding him and bouncing him just before putting him down, and this is when her adult son enters the scene. We get a perfect juxtaposition of innocence in a fresh faced child, to the reality of the grown male adult, independent and living on his own terms.
The child is used to represent this innocence and reflection frequently, he’s often being cuddled or cooed at in times where the adult son is acting disrespectful and entitled.
Its as if we see what the Mother actually feels in this moment.
He’s my son. He’s my baby. He will always be my baby. That kind of tone.
This perception is challenged time and time again, first by his family, then by female community members, until eventually its hard for the mother to see what she so desperately wants to see in her son.
This film is a reflection of the personal lives of abusive men, and the families left wondering what they did to unleash a monster.
We often hear from the victims perspective, sometimes we see the abuser’s perspective, but rarely do we see the perspective of an outsider, a family member, a witness.
This is just another family, another mother, another son.
And no mother ever expects their child to turn into a monster.
This film is about justice, about consequence, about how a community that lets an abuser win, also loses part of what makes it a community.
It loses the person who cherished it before they were attacked, ridiculed.
It gains a monster, an inflated one, who believes he cannot be touched.
How is a mother to feel when they nurture and care for their son, only to have him grow into something unholy.
5/5 Stars, the acting from Emily Watson was brilliant, she perfectly embodies a mother who cannot see past the starlight of her own creation.
The ambiance of the film is like the ocean its set near, cold, unpredictable, quiet and loud all at once.
The colours were cold and appropriate for the atmosphere, the sound was impactful but not annoying, and the story felt raw and real. Like I was watching through a window, seeing something I shouldn’t be seeing. Eavesdropping.
The assault is not shown, for the most part we view moments from the perspective of the mother, only seeing glimpses into the sons life to show how different he is from the others in town.
Some of the scenes felt too real, too familiar.
There’s a comfort from the beginning of the film that slowly drains, I found myself longing for that comfort to return.
I guess that’s how it would feel to learn your son is barely human.
Movie 12: The Invisible Man
When the trailer came out for this I was furious because it spoiled the whole movie in the span of 2 minutes. I deliberately did my best to put the imagery out of my mind until I could barely remember it.
Turns out it took 4 years, but if that’s what it takes I have nothing but time.
So do not watch the trailer!
Cause this movie is actually awesome when you don’t know what’s coming.
This is a story about domestic violence, about a man who is so abusive and so controlling, even after he’s dead the victim still believes he’s after her.
I don’t want to say too much at all, sometimes you can say everything about a story and the impact lies in the way the story is told and not the content, but with this one, its best if I let it speak for itself.
I’m giving this a 5/5 stars, aside from the really well illustrated look at domestic abuse, the acting was brilliant. There are scenes where people fight something that is not visible, and its incredible that I had to actually consider there was not another person in that interaction with the actor. The actor has to move as if they are being attacked by an invisible figure, and its very convincing.
I felt very satisfied by the ending, I think this movie covered every beat it needed to and executed it well.
Movie 13: The Skin I Live In
I don’t even know where to start with this one.
From the get go it becomes clear that a very intelligent and charasmatic medical scientist is holding a young woman against her will at his house, as he attempts to find a solution to skin based trauma.
Issues such as burn victims requiring new skin and muscle definition in order to function normally again, malaria being combatted by skin that smells different and is also too thick to penetrate, among other things.
We learn that he is doing this illegally, and it appears as though trouble could follow him if he persists with his research. He goes home, confronts his “subject” and they have an interaction discussing what happens now that his research can go no further.
Trigger Warning: Up close and personal sexual assault, very graphic. A second sexual assault follows in another scene.
Circumstances lead a young man to come on to the property, he ends up breaking into the subjects room and rapes her, the medical scientist arrives as it happens and kills the man.
This leads into a scene where one of the house staff explains why everyone thinks they recognise the subject.
Apparently the medical scientists wife died in a fire, caused by the intruding rapist years and years ago. At the time, medical scientist man saved her life and attempted to repair her terribly damaged skin. Unfortunately she commits suicide after seeing her own reflection.
This traumatised the medical scientist’s daughter Nora, who is only a child when it happens.
It is at this point that the film states “6 years Earlier” or in my case with terribly screwed up subtitles “6 years later”. This tremendously confused me but I managed to put together that we were in fact in the past and not the present from this point on.
It is from here that I cannot review the film without proper spoiling things.
The second half of the film delves into why this woman ended up the medical doctors “subject” and what follows after the assault.
This story threw a real curve ball at me.
From the get go I felt this medical doctor was clearly evil, how can you be any kind of good if you have a patient held hostage with staff maintaining her prison. Its sus as hell.
When we learn how this all unfolds I only became more confused emotionally.
On the one hand, this medical doctor has snapped after too many horrors in his life.
After he has nothing left, he becomes obsessed with this plot.
At first, you kind of understand where he’s coming from, its eye for an eye kind of stuff.
But as it goes on, you realise that its just sick, messed up.
Its playing god.
Its evil.
And to be able to do this to someone is an evil that almost topples the initial evil he was motivated by.
It begs the question of what justice is, what justice is not, and how someone can lose their soul in the pursual of revenge.
This film has Shakespearian Tragedy written all over it.
Can you become evil in the pursuit of vanquishing evil?
If this movie tells us anything, yes, yes you can.
5/5 stars because I will never stop thinking about this one.
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Ah spoilers!
Trigger warning, description of sexual violence.
6 years in the past we see medical scientist at a wedding, a very joyous occasion, and despite all her difficulties and the trauma of seeing her mother jump from a window to her death, medical scientists daughter is present and is doing her best to overcome her fear of socializing. She’s smiling wide, she makes eyes with one of the men at the party and they walk hand in hand into the garden.
This is interesting.
As they walk, they discuss medications.
The man claims to be on a ton of stuff, he says he’s high.
The girl rattles off the names of a bunch of medications, using their full names mostly, I did not recognise any but the last one she says “oh and Lyrica of course”.
Lyrica is something I have used myself, so I know it to be a complicated drug used for many different reasons. The main point is, these aren’t party drugs, they’re prescription drugs she most likely has to take or has been directed to take.
The other guy seems to just be high on E or maybe crack? I’m not totally sure and its not explicitly said (or at least the subtitles don’t go there).
The daughter is clearly….unsocialized and somewhat unsure of social norms.
She talks about clothing suffocating her, and begins to hurl them away. She tosses her shoes first, then she unbuttons her cardigan and hurls that to the side too.
This excites the man, who very forcefully and enthusiastically grabs her and kinda pulls her to the ground.
He kinda just starts going for it, ripping at her clothes, kissing her all over, trying to get her underpants off, thrusting against her clothes. At first she seems sorta ok, maybe just overwhelmed, but it becomes clear through the shot that she becomes very uncomfortable. Then she becomes scared. Then, presumably when he starts to touch her, she starts to say no quietly, then loudly, then screaming. He covers her mouth, and she is forced to bite him to try and get free. Once it hurts him enough he smacks her across the face and she is knocked unconscious.
He has stopped by this time, but it is too late. She is unconscious, her clothes are coming off and he panics. He readjusts her clothes, covering her, then races off and abandons the party, leaving her lying there, possibly dying from a brain bleed (a real thing that happens).
Her father, medical scientist, finds her passed out. He tries to wake her, and when she gains consciousness she immediately starts screaming and thrashing, fearful of her father, of any man that comes near her.
We see her in hospital, she’s numb and dissociated until her father walks in, she cannot remember him or just about anything, all she remembers is a man attacking her, violating her. She associates all men as the enemy, even her own father. When he tries to comfort her she starts wailing like a child, and proceeds to back herself into a closet, closing the door behind her.
Soon, she takes her own life, exactly as her mother did, by jumping out a window.
Medical scientist knows who the young man was she was walking with, and tracks him down.
This man is the son of a dressmaker or seamstress, and he appears helping out with putting clothes on mannequins, and seems to understand simple dress making.
He talks about taking pills, and a woman he works with tells him he shouldn’t be taking drugs, its bad. He clearly has not learnt anything from his experience, but he does talk about possibly moving away, we can feel that he knows he has done something wrong.
He decides to get some air, and goes for a motorbike ride.
It is in this moment that medical doctor follows him in a van, runs him off the road, and kidnaps him.
Based on the timeline, the doctor already had him kidnapped before his daughter committed suicide, but during her admission to the psychiatric hospital.
He keeps him there in isolation for a while, letting him drink from a bucket of water like a dog, feeding him only rice, all up until his daughter dies. This is when he introduces himself to the young man, and shaves his face. Once he is shaved he is chemically knocked out.
Medical scientist calls his medical scientist buddies over, tells them this man knows what he wants and has signed the necessary papers, and they perform a vaginoplasty.
For those who do not know, this is the procedure of converting a penis into a vulva and vagina.
When he wakes up, he is told how to take care of his vagina, through the process of dilation therapy, something trans people will go through if they have the same operation.
This is crazy fucked up.
At first its like, ok, what does this doctor have to lose, and you can kinda get the rage that led him here? But it just gets weirder.
The time passes, we see that he now has breasts, and he has undergone a massive amount of full body plastic surgery, and now he is wearing a mask to help shape his face.
This is how a man becomes a woman, how a woman becomes known as looking like medical scientists ex wife (he used the same technology on her so it was made for her) and how this woman, ultimately becomes the subject at the start of the film.
After the incident where the man intruded on this house and raped this medical subject, the medical scientist has become infatuated with his subject. He now wants to be romantically involved with her, and they make a promise to each other to be together.
Obviously this is ridiculous, no person kidnapped and transformed like this would ever be truly ok with becoming someone’s….romantic partner??
But the same should be true for medical scientist man, why the fuck would you want to have romantic sexual relations with a person who raped your daughter and ultimately led her to kill herself??
You end up kinda feeling bad for this subject, the body horror of it all is truly nightmarish.
It was kind of beautiful seeing the pain and anguish they experienced going through this reflected in the art they make in their room, the things they write on the wall and the yoga they learn and practice daily.
At the same time, this is a person who did something monstrous.
But this isn’t justice…its just messed up.
They end up shooting everyone, and fleeing, after 6 years of medical torture and imprisonment, they return to their family, now a woman, with a terrible trauma.
If anything truly absolved you of your sins, I think this might be it.
I don’t think you could come out of an experience like this not knowing the horrors women experience at the hands of big and smart men.
It begs the question, can a rapist ever come back?
It also looks at themes of rape and sexual violence.
The rape experienced by the daughter is a combination of a man being a utter piece of shit and deserving to go to jail, drug intoxication making the situation difficult to perceive, and a lack of clear communication. There is no excuse for sexually assaulting someone, what he does in this scene is completely fucked up and cowardly and just wrong.
At the same time, at least this guy was truly off his gourd on drugs, he didn’t maliciously set out to rape someone, he got too excited and his drugged up persona made a terrible terrible decision. One he should go to jail for. One that should have justice applied in full force.
But its interesting, because the rape he experiences once he is a woman is calculated, violent, on purpose, soul shaking. The guy was a monster his whole life, and this is evidence of that without a doubt.
Watching it happen when you don’t know the background, I was kinda confused.
She acted without fear, its as though she didn’t know it was possible for the guy to do this to her. And when it is happening, she is stunned, she does not know what to do, fawn, fight back, submit. But its in a weird, almost unhuman way.
It makes more sense when you think of it in the context, this guy has never been threatened with sexual violence in his life, as much as medical violence and the nature of what he went through is a sexual violation, this is sorta different.
I don’t give this a 5 out of 5, because the message is kinda lost on me.
It feels like they’re trying to say this person is innocent in the face of the abuse they cop, but that doesn’t sit right with me.
Maybe the films purpose is to make me uncomfortable, maybe its picking at the dark thoughts in the back of our minds when we hear about women being raped and imagine horrible fates for the abusers.
I know I have had dark moments thinking about men who assaulted me, who I wish would go through something similar to see how fucked up life is for women, and how under another man they are just as helpless.
Maybe the film is trying to show us that the kind of revenge we feel we want, wouldn’t make a different at all, but would make us into the monsters instead.
Movie 14: Ex Machina
I seem to be following a trend of sinister humans doing sinister things, why stop now?
I’ve been needing to see this film for what feels like forever, and now that I have seen it I understand why the hype was so big.
The story revolves around a man who has won an opportunity to work with his company’s boss on groundbreaking technology.
He travels by hellicopter to an isolated area and spends a week at his boss’s mansion or “testing facility” and assists him in running verbal communication tests with an advanced AI the boss created.
The films begs the question of what is AI? When does AI pass as human? Can AI pass as human? Will it ever be as human as us? What are the values of an AI? What is the purpose of an AI designed to be as human as possible?
In one sense, “perfecting” AI is considered a peak of scientific discovery and ability.
In another sense, once this AI is “perfected” what then is the purpose?
When it comes to AI, I am no kind of expert, it was only just recently that a friend suggested that the current AI we have is not actually the AI that science aims to achieve.
Currently, our AI looks like a computer designed to be familiar with requests and to understand how to perform said requests.
It looks like scanning the internet for the answer you want.
It looks like an algorithym that brings you more cat videos.
It looks like machines doing repetative uniform tasks to save human energy and resources.
But none of this AI has its own ability to think, it does not retain conciousness or an awareness of itself. At least we don’t think it does…
Musk is starting to unnerve me with his latest creations…
This film presents us with an AI considered to be self aware, the test it must now pass is something called the Turing Test, which is why our prize winning boy is here.
He is tasks with performing the Turing Test.
The Turing Test is an examination of the AI’s ability to be indistinguishable from a human.
A trope of this genre is the idea that humanity has become god by this point, if it can create AI, it has created its own type of life.
Its interesting how this god complex is everything wrong with the creation of AI in the first place.
Its like when people have children just so someone will take care of them in old age or make them money, going into it with a goal seems to poison the interaction.
In the case of this film, the creator seems to have an obsession with creating a female AI.
I always find it so curious when characters make this choice.
It speaks of a person who needed to feel superior to his creation, I can’t see this man making a male AI, because it does not gratify him, the male AI may threaten his ego, and moreso, a male AI would not be fuckable to this creator.
Yes, the creator gave his AI sexual anatomy and the ability to feel pleasure.
Is sexuality part of the human experience?
Yes.
Is it necessary to test AI in this way?
I don’t really think so? Not initially?
Like I said, I don’t know much about the lore and theories of AI and AI creation, but these decisions are questionable.
5/5 stars.
Great concept, great acting, great ending, great cinematography.
Movie 15: Longlegs
Longlegs has been very hyped up this year, and when I saw the trailer I was crazy excited.
The viewing itself was a bit mixed however.
First and foremost, the atmosphere of this film will stay with me forever, I kinda want to watch it again just to experience the vibes.
I loved the acting, Nicolas Cage surprises once again with his crazy acting, and the acting on the part of the protagonist is brilliant. She really conveys this cold, empty nervousness that I really related to for some reason. Maybe it’s the need to conquor your fears, while also being petrified by them that I found so familiar.
The first half of the film was almost romantic in how mysterious and strange everything was.
However, the second half kinda dropped off for me.
I’m not a huge fan of satanism as a plot point, don’t get me wrong it has its place and I’m not saying it doesn’t belong in stories, but when it came to this plot it felt a bit like a deus ex machina.
I was really there for the investigative vibes, pulling apart the mystery, but it was so obviously satanism from the beginning that I was left wondering “Oh how are these cops going to resolve this?”
Except they don’t really…
There were some plot holes that left me feeling bummed out at what could have been, it pulled some twists and turns that felt a little inauthentic, I was left with more questions than answers.
4/5 stars
This movie made me feel things, the aesthetic has inspired me creatively, and I just don’t think I’ll forget the vibe of this film. Which is what Oz Perkins is good at, he is a master of films that feel poetic and like a moving art piece rather than an entertainment filled film.
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Spoilers weeeeee
So Longlegs is some kind of messenger of the Devil, based on many of the clues of the case the audience can put together that he sees himself as one of the Beasts mentioned in the Book of Revelation.
Eventually the film shows us that Lee’s mother is the other Beast, or the accomplice of Longlegs.
The story goes that Lee and her mother lived alone, with seemingly no connections to anyone anywhere at anytime. One day Longlegs visits them and it seems like he’s trying to claim Lee. Her mother agrees to do satan stuff with him so he will spare Lee.
But like….why Lee? Why does he break pattern for Lee despite choosing 3 people households every time after that? Is Lee the first? If so why?
Why is Longlegs doing this? Cause I really don’t know.
It appears as though some cycle will be complete if he manages to do one last killing on Lee’s birthday. I still don’t understand the end sequence, where Lee walks in on her boss’s family about to go through the same cycle.
She knows what will happen, yet she allows her boss to kill his wife, and she doesn’t shoot the doll first or do anything different.
It just feels….unfinished?
Its almost like a grindhouse, I was totally following the first half, then there’s this shift that happens in the second half and I really don’t get it from that point on.
There’s so much symbolism, and while I paid attention to it and I can see it in various scenes, it did not help me understand the underlying plot.
When you make a story around investigations and mysteries, the final reveal is the big moment, but when they did show that her mum was the accomplice I just felt bored and kinda bummed out.
This whole thing kinda reminded me of season 1 True Detective, where the nature of the crimes are so perverse and this crazy voodoo cult stuff is all over the crime scene, the build up to that reveal towards the end, and the explanation of everything involved felt so raw and as a viewer I felt so vulnerable.
I was expecting a similar level of reveal in this film, alas, not so.
Movie 16: Trap
Oh M. Night, the journey we have been on together.
This director makes a habbit of giving me whiplash every couple of years.
I thought I loved him after Unbreakable and Split, despite the unforgivable crime that was Avatar: The Last Airbender. Then I saw Glass and I wanted to rip my hair out.
M. Night either shines or slips when it comes to films, and I’ve noticed he does better when it comes to simple horror concepts. For example, the Visit was actually very entertaining and I would definitely recommend it to friends.
When I saw the trailer for Trap I laughed out loud at the obscenity of it.
Never the less, I decided to give ol M. Night a chance and this is the only film so far I watched with another human being present.
And I fucking loved it.
I have a feeling this will be the point where readers think of me as a fool or unintelligent viewer, because the rating as IMDb are not kind to this film.
Honestly, I don’t know why people are so upset about it.
Because I thought it was hilarious, heartwarming and entertaining as all heck.
Trap is about a man who takes his daughter to a Lady Raven concert, she is her favourite artist and she is over the moon to be seeing her live.
If you saw the trailer, you already knew what was up, but if you go in blind, this is just a sweet Daddy Daughter outing, and all the while I was somewhat envious that I never had a dad to take me to things like this.
If one thing is made clear about this father, he loves his daughter and is very good at being a father.
Part way through the movie father starts to notice that there are a lot of policeofficers and all kinds of people surrounding the area. On asking a staff member whats going on, the staff member tells him secretly, that a whole team of law enforment is here to set a trap for a serial killer, who is for some reason attending this concert. He explains that they aim to not let him escape this venue until they have him in custody.
Father then goes to the bathroom, where we see him look at his phone at a live feed camera showing a young man locked inside a small room begging for help.
This father is the serial killer that the trap has been made for.
Over the course of the film we watch a classic game of cat and mouse, the man is very capable of being charming, has a good slight-of-hand and generally knows how to act in order to avoid being picked out of the crowd.
Its comical, the film shots are comedic while holding that tense energy.
I would be doing an injustice if I failed to mention the incredible sound track, all songs written by Lady Raven, who in real life is M. Night’s daughter and an up and coming artist.
People complained about plot holes, about law enforcement missing crucial things, but I really don’t think that’s fair.
I think the idea of trying to trap a serial killing inside a music venue is a bit over the top, that you could look at it as unrealistic because of the potential harm it could do to innocents or the siuation it may turn into once the man realises he is trapped.
But that’s about it in terms of plot holes, from my perspective at least.
Other people complained of the nepotism vibes? I don’t even know what to say to that, if they mean the nature of what the father does to evade imprisonment working out wildly for his daughters dreams, then I think they are missing the point.
This guy is such a smoothe talker that he convinces people to do what ever he wants, and its not unrealistic that this kind of person would exist. I’ve known people who can talk like this, have effects on people like this. Confidence goes a long way, and this guy uses his confidence to abduct people without them knowing it yet. So I don’t think its far off to be able to use it to get your daughter an extra shirt or a benefit, even if it is outlandish.
I think its amazing how while watching this my mind kept coming up with excuses for the father.
“I wonder if he’s doing this for a reason?”
“I wonder if he really is the serial killer or if the film is tricking me?”
“I wonder if the guys being killed deserved it in some way?”
All of these questions would be blown out of the water very quickly.
To which point my center of gravity seemed to shift and I realised that hating this guy was the correct way to feel.
But that’s so difficult when he acts like a good father.
I love it when films make me feel convoluted emotions.
I loved the end, despite people arguing there wasn’t a twist I saw the twist for what it was and accepted it. The pacing was great, I was always on the edge of my seat, I never knew what was going to go down at any moment.
Even at the end, it isn’t really the end, and I love that.
5/5 stars, come at me internet I don’t give a fuck.
I live for Jaimie having a freak out at the end.
Movie 17: I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House
I tried to watch this movie 9 years ago, and I was bored to tears halfway through.
I remember thinking it was very slow, and felt more like poetry in film form.
Once I watched Longlegs I realised that I never finished the Pretty Thing, and found myself needing to return to it to see if it was as boring as I thought.
On rewatching it, I don’t think its boring.
But its….different.
There’s a lot of narration, or repetition.
Its very meaningful and romantic in its approach to illustrating the nature of house ghosts.
The story carries a heaviness of tragedy, loneliness and lost dreams.
We follow a late twenties woman, who is hired by the manager of an elderly author to be an in house nurse. From the get go the narrator, coincidently the house nurse, tells us that she, the pretty thing we are looking at currently, will die in this house.
Going into this story, we know our protagonist is in danger, and will die.
Month by month the house nurse takes care of the elderly author, whose books revolve mostly around horror and the supernatural. During her occupancy, she tries to learn more about the woman the author cries out for, a woman named Polly.
Hoping to help the elderly woman, she attempts to read one of her novels about a woman by that name. She barely gets a few sentences in before she’s too freaked out to continue.
Bit by bit more is revealed to her, and therefore, more is revealed to us.
Its a story, within a story, within that author’s story, from the perspective of the house nurse, whose story it becomes.
I really enjoyed the tone and the aesthetic of this film, the sorrowful yet soft and comforting nature of the story resonated with me.
I wasn’t especially entertained by the story, it felt somewhat predictable, but like something big was coming. Ultimately though I felt like the ending was a bit lukewarm and somewhat confusing to the established nature of what ghosts do.
So I give it a 4/5, its a good one for people who are a bit skittish and need plenty of warning, fresh faces to the supernatural horror genre.
This was an exhausting week, I am so friggin sick yo.
All I am capable of right now is watching these movies and pressing a heat pad against my messed up face.
Through it all, my top favourites were The Invisible Man and Trap.
They were both so entertaining and had gripping engagement, I felt very satisfied at the end of both films.
That being said I still think Ex Machina was a really well done story, and its also right up there.
I don’t think any of the films I watched this week deserve to be trashed.
God’s Creature’s was a bit emotionally impactful and I felt very heavy afterwards, very much like I felt with The Skin I Live In.
I would recommend watching them all, even Longlegs which I felt the least satisfied with.
If I’m alive next week, there will be another review.
Byyyyye.
