Martyrs

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In the article, “Learning to Scream”, Linda William talks about Psycho as an example of a movie that instilled so much fear in her that she could not even watch the screen. She does not even remember much of the movie because she was too busy covering her eyes. All she cannot forget is that she and her friend screamed along with the audience inside the movie house. We compare her experience as we watched Martyrs.

Martyrs is a movie revolving the story of what happened to a little girl name Lucie. She was found on the streets, beaten up and traumatized from what happened to her. She was taken in by a shelter and taken care of where she met her best friend, Anna. An investigation was conducted in order to find out who abused Lucie. However, she refused to say who. All she mentioned were the horrible stories of how they chained her in a basement and would beat her up constantly. Everyone just thought she was making up all these scenarios in her head because she was going crazy.

Anna, her best friend, was the only person who believed her and who she trusted. Maybe these two were more than friends in the scene where Anna kissed Lucie. It is still unclear why she kissed her. If it was Anna professing her love for Anna or maybe she was just confused because of everything that just happened.

Once Lucie finds out that Anna did not really believe her story, Lucie starts to go on a rampage and threatens to hurt Anna and herself. Lucie keeps talking about to this girl. She kept blaming this girl for all the stabs and cuts on her body. It is up to audience to decide whether this girl really was hurting her or not. The entire movie is a test of deciding what is real or what is fake. I was on Anna’s side the whole time until Anna discovers the secret passage to the basement. In my opinion, I also would not be able to believe Lucie. It is much easier to accept that she is crazy rather than accepting that there are such horrible people that would do that to a little girl. I thought it would be one of those movies wherein they torture little girls for slavery, prostitution or human trafficking but it was nothing like that. The plot was unique. Although, I could barely keep my eyes glued to the movie the first hour. I was stopping myself from puking because of all the gore. It is hard to watch a person murder another person but it is even harder to see someone hurt herself. The topic of suicide comes to mind. It is an uncomfortable subject because it is looked down upon and it is frightening to know that someone is capable of inflicting so much pain on himself/herself just to end their life.

The reason for all the killing was for a higher purpose. A martyr is one who is killed because of their religious or other beliefs. This group of people were similar to some kind of cult. Their goal was to find out what the afterlife was like and they were going to do whatever it takes to get answers. They believed that by putting young women through excruciating pain that they would eventually see clarity or what we know as “the light.” Not everyone is worthy enough of seeing the light. Most of the girls would rather die in pain than endure to see the light. This is why the group continually conducted experiments on different girls until they find the one who turned out to be Anna.

Anna possess a quality that none of the other girls for the past 17 years. She was not afraid. She was the only who passed all four stages and survived enough to tell Mademoiselle of what she saw.

The ending of the movie can be interpreted as two things. First, is Mademoiselle killed herself because she was eager to see what the after life was about after what Anna told her or what Anna said was useless and she found no more reason to live.

Martyrs was hands down my favorite movie of the semester and the best way to end the class.

Gingersnaps 2

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It is unusual for the sequel of a movie to be better than a first. Lets take Cinderella, 28 Days Later, Taken and almost every movie with a sequel as an example with the exception of Toy Story of course. I mean, common, who didn’t cry in part 2 and 3? Gingersnaps 2 is also one of those rare movies that was able to prove that there are things better the second time around. In the first movie of Gingersnaps, it focused more on the story of the Fitzgerald sisters. It showed how they grew up from awkward girls into women. There’s nothing worse than going through your menstruation for the first time than actually have to watch another person going through it. At least in the sequel, there were no more gross parts like that and Ginger didn’t appear as much. She was a bit of the attention-whore in the first movie making everything about her. I was always on Brigette’s side.

Gingersnaps 2 is definitely part of the horror genre in my book. However, in “Genre and the Audience” by Mark Janovich, he discusses how horror isn’t simply depended on one person. The name of the genre functions the same way as the name of the author. In many movies and even books, we base it on the author. The author plays a crucial role because a certain author has his own style and way of creating his work. It is easy to tell one author from the other because they have their own style and identity. The same goes for the horror genre, Tudor explains that it is, “What we collectively believe it to be.” There were many times in class that we were confused of whether it was a horror movie. For example, Triangle being a horror or a psycho thriller and Let The Right One In being a horror or a romance movie. There are those who say that horror has to be gory. There are also those that do not consider vampire movies as horror movies. My personal definition of horror is a movie that was able to play with human fears. I guess it is safe to say that the horror genre is not something objective. It varies from person to person because each person has their own fears. Genres therefore cannot be dependent on the audience. The audience’s reaction can change over time. Old movies set in the 90’s were a lot scarier compared to movies now. Before, more people liked horror movies to be about ghosts and slasher films. Now, there is a market that prefers psycho thrillers because it feels more realistic. It can also depend on the culture. Filipinos have a lot of mythical creatures like manananggal, kapre, dewende and aswang that other countries will not understand nor find scary. There are also horror movies that overlap between two different genres which is why people get confused. It is not a question of black or white to determine whether what the movie genre is. It is simply up to the viewer’s own interpretation.

Pontypool

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Pontypool is a movie set in a small town that is infected by a deadly virus. When people hear the word virus, the first thing that comes to mind are shows like the Walking Dead or Warm Bodies. The plot of these movies are consistent in the sense that there is an unknown virus that rapidly spreads and causes the people to turn into zombie like characters. Pontypool is somehow similar expect the movie was done in a different way. The main characters, Grant, Laurel-Ann and Sydney are inside the radio station. They start receiving calls from different listeners about the horrifying things outside. Of course, since they are safe inside, they are unaware of the situation happening outside. The whole movie happens inside the station.

At first glance, you can already tell that this is a low budget movie. The fact that the whole movie is only set inside is a clever and unconventional way to shoot a movie and it is cheap. The production wasn’t any great and the sound system was poor. Pontypool falls under the category of “Euro-trash.” If there is such a thing called “high end” of the horror genre where movies like Exorcism fall under. There is also a low end. Joan Hawkins explains that these are art, horror, and science films that include government hygiene films, Japanese monster movies, porn, and any bad documentary. They are called “paracinematic” because they are films less rejected by the legitimate film culture.

I quote Sconce as he said, “Which is not to say these films don’t simultaneously operate at the high end of the horror spectrum. They do. The pacing, the blatant disregard for the cause–effect logic of classical Hollywood cinema, the strategic use of discontinuous editing, the painterly composition of certain scenes all serve to mark these films as art cinema. The fact that the films seem to operate at both ends of the horror spectrum is at least partly responsible for the fact that the best of them were so poorly received at the time of their release.”

This shows us that it is unfair to generalize these movies are trash when it can be subjective. Not all movies are meant for everyone. It may simply just not be their cup of tea but that does not mean to shut it down completely. This may just be for horror movies though. I do somehow agree with their point of calling pornography movies as low end to keep the movie from showing. However, I am just one person. It should be a consensus vote and with how times have changed now, maybe more movies will be accepted.

Pontypool may not be one of my favorite movies but I admit it was one that made me think and I can’t say that about a lot of movies. As soon as the movie ended, I searched online for possible meanings of the line, “Kiss is Kill.” I liked how the movie used the play of words. It was clever and to some, a little too complex but it changed the notion that horror movies aren’t intelligent. I used to find horror movies dumb because you see people make the most stupid decisions. A girl will enter in a creepy dark room by herself or you see a person coming at you with a weapon and you don’t run. If you’re looking for a movie that will keep you at the edge of your seat, then this is the wrong movie. But for those who want a movie with a good story then this is worth your time.

May

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The movie May is about a young girl who grew up differently compared to most children. Everyone found her strange which is why she had no friends. Her only friend was a doll. As a girl, it is normal to start experiencing many changes when they reach puberty. May was a late bloomer. It was her early adulthood, around 22-24 years old, that she started being curious. She was interested in boys, discovering herself and in touch with human sexuality.

May first tried to what it was to be like with Adam, a man who she was attracted to. Adam was her first so-called “boyfriend”. She became obsessed with him and their relationship. This is somehow a normal behavior for girls. When they get into their first relationship, the feelings are all new to them. They get overwhelmed and consumed by what they feel that they can’t control it. She would do silly things like wait for him outside his door without him knowing, stalk him and even hurt herself to get his attention. When things did not work out with them, she was desperate for another person’s affection.

May started relations with Polly, her girl co-worker. As we can see, May switches her gender preference from male to female. This could be May just trying to experiment and not necessarily make her a lesbian. However, many viewers could find this scandalous. Hary Benhoff explains in his article called, “The Monster and the Homosexual” that homosexuality is seen as a threat to the individual, as a threat to others, and as a threat to the community or other components of culture. The question being, what is more frightening? Mary possessing dangerous characteristics or May as a homosexual?

Homosexuality is seen as a monstrous condition. People do not generally accept it. In movies, when homosexuals are referred to, they are given bad images. For example, in Frankenstein’s monster, homosexuals ran across the countryside, claiming “innocent” victims. Horror films include both monsters and homosexuals because they cause fear and panic in viewers.

This fear is evident in our culture, it is what they call as “homophobic.” There is a group of people that consider their fear for homosexuals as a real condition. Comparing homosexuals to monsters is quite harsh. I do not see anything wrong with gay people. People consider them as a threat because they are associated with rape, HIV diseases and as a plague to our society. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but these homosexuals have done nothing compared to those homosexual haters who shame these homosexuals by abusing them. There has been many cases of people beating up homosexuals and some of them were even killed just because they are different. Aren’t those people the real monsters? Those are the people we should really fear.

May, too, in some way was isolated by society because she was not what considered normal. In my opinion, I think that it is because people kept treating her like an outsider that made her act crazy and do those foolish things as kill innocent people. May just wanted to fit in.

Let the Right One In

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From the movie title alone, “Let The Right One In”, it already sounded more like a romance movie than a horror movie to me. Although it is still a question of whether it is a horror movies with romantic elements or a romance movie with horror elements. To me, it was the first, just because the love story of Eli and Oskar is more memorable than any of the scary scenes in the movie. Among all films we’ve watched in class, this was the only movie that did not leave me feeling uneasy. For example, Gingersnaps, Triangle, and Pontypool, were not scary to me but they made more of an impact because of the gore and the mystery. Some people are used to horror movies existing simply to scare you. However, Rhona Berenstein explains in “Horror for Sale”, that horror movies movies used romance as a tool to get more viewers to watch it. Typically, horror movies are not watched alone. When you watch a horror movie, you usually go with a group of friends or when you’re on a date. The idea is if a couple watches together, when the girl gets scared, she will seek comfort in the boy with her. Horror movies are also a neutral genre. Girls prefer “chick flicks” while men prefer war movies. Horror movies are neither which make it the perfect movie to watch for both genders.

Gender is also something to take note of when looking at the main characters. Eli, the girl, possessed very manly characteristics. She was the one who said, “Fight back, Oskar.” when she found out he was being bulled. She was also his savior in the end of the movie. Oskar showed that he was weak. He was following everything that Eli was saying. However, it is still a mystery whether Eli really is a girl. She kept saying, “Would you still like me if you found out I’m not a girl?” to Oskar. The viewers chose to see her a girl because vampires are sexual creatures. Girls are the ones who are able to manipulate people around them which was exactly what Eli did. She tricked Oskar and it is possible that she did the same to her caretaker. Her caretaker could be her dad or a lover. Eli has been 12 years old for quite sometime now. There’s a chance that her caretaker was her lover before. Either way, the caretaker risked everything for her. He dispose of the bodies that she killed and find a way to get her food by draining their bodies. He even ends up hurting himself just to protect her and in the end, she does not even help him.

Bottom line is love is a scary thing. It makes you do crazy things like kill for them. It was actually quite clever for the movie to use love in a different context. When you think of love, you think flowers, chocolates and cheesy gestures. You expect how Disney movies portrays love to be. This movie, on the other hand, shows the more realistic side of love. That it is something greater than us. We can never really explain it. When we’re in love, we do silly things that we never expect us to do. We just have to carefully choose the person we’re willing to do all these things for.

Final Girl in Evil Dead

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The movie Evil Dead is slasher film centered on the life of Mia. She and her friends decide to go to their vacation house in the middle of nowhere to start anew. She lost her mother due to a terrible illness. Her brother moved away from home. She was alone and turned to drugs. As if her life was not hard enough, she did know that a series of unfortunate events were just about to happen.

Mia is what Carol Clover calls as a “Final Girl”. As you can tell from the title, the final girl is the last surviving character in the movie. She is usually introduced at the very beginning and is the only one who is developed in psychological detail. She is the slasher film’s hero.

In Evil Dead, this is Mia. At the beginning of the movie, it is clearly seen that Mia has been working through many issues due to her mother’s death. In order to cope with her passing, she has been abusing drugs. Although at the start most might think she is the weak character because of all these problems but surprisingly at the end she is the one who ends up outliving all the other characters including the guys. This shows how a woman, although weak at the start has the capability to jump back. Most of the viewers, including myself, felt bad for Mia because she seemed to be the one suffering at the most. At the final scene, Mia gets the chainshaw and cuts the demon in half. This was the most symbolic part of the movie because the demon that possessed her that once controlled her, she was able to defeat. In some way the demon can be parallel to her drug addiction. She was once controlled by her drug addiction and she too was able to overcome it. This was Mia’s moment to conquer both demons.

It may seem unfair especially in a feminist point of view that it is always the girl who is the victim. Clover explains that, “The killer is with few exceptions recognizably human and distinctly male; his fury is unmistakably sexual in both roots and expression; his victims are mostly women, often sexually free and always young and beautiful ones.” People would much prefer to watch a movie wherein a beautiful woman is dying rather than an ugly woman or man. An example is how Mia was possessed by the demon in the “tree rape” scene”. This happening to a girl was more bearable or at least “easier” to watch as opposed to it happening to a guy, where maybe it might just get a little awkward. Another example is when Natalie and Olivia die, the scenes are sort of prolonged or more in detail compared to scenes where Eric and David are attacked or hurt. Like how Natalie was shown after she was shot and bleeding out vs. when David thought Eric was dead and just submerged him in the water. A beautiful girl suffering to the viewers just looks like a damsel in distress. It is a tactic to make more people want to watch the movie. If the movie is not that good, you can easily use the beautiful girl in the posters and it will sell.

Rec

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The movie Rec starts with an uninteresting plot. It tells the story of Angela, a reporter and Manu, the cameraman, who are doing a documentary about the life of a fireman. 30 minutes into the movie I was already bored and ready to change the channel. But of course I did not have the option to because it was for class, I knew I had to pay attention.

Angela clearly shows how desperate she is to catch her big break. She is aware that the things she reports about are not worthwhile and she would never get the fame she wants. She starts to get excited when the fire station gets a call about a woman stuck in her apartment. Angela ceases the opportunity and jumps in the fire truck not knowing that she just walked into her death.

When Angela, Manu, and the firemen entered the building, all the characters were confused on what was happening. There was a mother and her sick daughter, the Chinese family, the old couple, the police and the doctor. They all had their own suspicions on what was going on but no one expected for what was going to happen next. The minute the old woman ate the policeman’s face was a clear indication that they were all in trouble.

Among all forms of horror movies, movies about epidemics or even just “The Walking Dead,” will always be the most terrifying for me. It is the most plausible thing that can happen. Ghosts, vampires, and werewolves are all based on theories and there can be no proof of their existence. It is also a question of faith because those devout Catholics do not acknowledge their existence. However, diseases that turn human beings into zombies or monster-like is scientific. There are many studies that discuss how viruses can cause unimaginable changes in humans. The only thing in the movie that I found hard to believe is that the cameraman did not die sooner. He was holding the camera the entire time while all the characters had more freedom but still died.

The ending of the movie is unclear on whether or not Angela dies but it is safe to assume that she did since she was pulled into darkness. My other theory is that Angela becomes the new monster living in that attic. She wished for excitement in her life and now she got it.

The Innkeeper’s

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The InnKeeper’s tells a ghost story within a ghost story. At the start of the movie Luke shows Claire his website of the Yankee Pedlar Inn which tells the legend of the inn. This already foretells that the movie will revolve around Madeline, the one who lived at the inn before.

The story line of Madeline haunting the inn because she was left at the altar by her husband was a bit too cliché. Many Filipino movies have used the same plot. It was nothing new to the audience. It could be easily predicted that there are ghosts in an old hotel. Nevertheless, the movie was successful because it made good use of scare tactics. The objective of a horror movie is to scare after all. In the scene where Claire goes inside the basement or the scene where the old man disappears while Claire gets the sheets, the audience was on the edge of their seats waiting for something to happen. No matter how prepared everyone was for something to happen, the audience still got surprised and let out a scream.

The development of the characters also helped in scaring the audience. Luke was supposed to be the brave one. He was not going to let some ghost drive him crazy. Leanne was a visitor at the hotel who was a psychic. She represents all those who study these ghosts or those with a “3^rd eye.” The lead, Claire, who most of the audience was rooting for because she was sweet and innocent, She was just working at the inn to make a living. The characters were all relatable.

I, too, was rooting for Claire. I did not expect Claire to die. It is still a question of whether Madeline killed her or she died of an asthma attack. My hunch is that she died of an asthma attack because Madeline had no reason to kill Claire. Madeline only had motive to kill her ex husband. But if this is true, the movie loses its authenticity. So lets just say Madeline really did kill her.

Grace

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A mother and her child share a unique bond. From the moment a baby is conceived inside a woman, they share a deep connection that no one else has not even a father and the child. For 9 months, a mother and her unborn child act as one. It is no surprise that a mother will do anything to protect her child.

Madeline and her husband Michael have been having difficulty trying to have a baby. They were put through many trials. Madeline experience a miscarriage with her first child that left the couple devastated. But they still continued to try until God blessed them with a child. However, this was not the end of their struggles. Madeline ends up losing her husband and her baby in a terrible car accident.

In order to cope with the death of her family, Madeline refused to accept what happened. She remained hopeful and continued with her pregnancy with a dead fetus inside her. Her doctor said this was not advisable but she could not be reasoned out with. She was dealing with so much pain that she was not making sense anymore. She was not rationalizing what was happening. All she wanted was for her baby to be alive and this happened. It’s a question whether this was a blessing or a curse. It could be seen as a blessing because Madeline got a chance to be a mother and spend time with her baby. But this baby was anything but a blessing because she was the root of Madeline’s pain.

The symbol of a baby is usually innocent and pure but in this movie Grace was a representation of evil. Grace would only feed on blood. She was draining the life out of her mother. I still do not understand how this happened. The concept of reincarnation is not a topic openly discussed because the Philippines is dominantly Catholic and it is only accepted to believe that Jesus rose from the dead. However, many religions such as Buddhism go against this theory.

There’s a relation to Sigmund Freud’s theory, which tells us that we channel the things that we are supposed to repress through different mediums. Reincarnation and childbirth are two subjects that we do not hear on an everyday conversation. Reincarnation goes against the Catholic religion. Those who are Catholic look down and isolate those who believe in crazy theories such as reincarnation of humans. Childbirth is not also openly discussed because it comes from sexual intercourse. Society does not talk about anything related to sex. Society remains conservative. They do not accept people who talk about these delicate matters because they feel uncomfortable even if it is a natural healthy activity of human beings.

Dead Girl

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The movie Dead Girl is closely related to Gingersnaps. In both movies, the setting was in a typical co-educational high school. The main characters were dealing with issues that come with facing puberty such as peer pressure, sexual experimentation and self-discovery. In Dead Girl, the main characters, JC, Ricky and Wheeler were being bullied by the jocks because they were different. They were considered losers because they did not engage in sports, they would always cut class and dress sloppy. They were isolated which is why girls would be afraid to approach them. They were still virgins while their batch mates were all having sex. They felt extreme pressure that they were not doing the “it” thing.
When they saw the “dead girl” in the abandoned basement, they saw it as an opportunity. They could never get a girl on their own so JT thought of the idea to use the girl for sex. He has been longing to have sex with a girl for so long. When he saw the opportunity, he did not think about whether if it was wrong or inhumane, he was thinking about his wants first. He thought that by showing off that they were having sex, people would think they were cool.
This is an important imagery because this shows that when a person disregards his conscience and what they know as moral, they turn into some kind of monster. JT kept calling the dead girl the monster because she had sharp teeth, green eyes and could not be killed. But he was the one who was taking advantage of her by raping her. It is clear that he was the one who was acting like the real monster in the movie. It is uncommon that what the initially supposed to scare us (dead girl) was not what we were afraid of but what was more traumatizing was the fact that people could do such a horrible thing such as rape. The dead girl showed human qualities such as pain, which is why the audience ended up rooting for her in the end.
The question on mind the entire time was “How could 15-year old boys do such a thing?” When I was 15, I would stay at home and play Sims all day. While these kids are already sexually active and getting into all sorts of trouble. Their parents were absent in their lives. In one scene in the movie, JT talks about how no one cares about what will happen to him. His family would rather see him dead. This also shows another issue. When children enter into adulthood with no one to properly guide them on what to do and to help them figure who they are, they can go on the wrong path. In JT’s case, he was lost and confused. He did not feel any remorse in anything he was doing compared to Rickie and Wheeler. Rickie was the one who was the most aware of his conscience. When Rickie talked to Wheeler, it talked some sense into him. However, JT was able to convince him not to listen to Rickie. Sigmund Freud’s model of psyche can be used here. Rickie was the ego because he was able to mediate between ID and superego. While JT represents the ID or the desires of the group. Wheeler had an erroneous conscience because he was unsure of whether what was right and wrong.