In recent years, we hear more and more references to a certain new era of horror. Screamers and cheap tricks are no longer surprising. They were replaced by an alarming atmosphere, stylistically verified image, psychological study of characters and their traumas, nervous violin music, rustles and creaks. Horror films like Vagabond Season 2 are now not only frightening, they are a convenient frame for a wide variety of genre experiments.
The usual slashers with a killer in a mask faded into the background, giving way to eclectic films, which are difficult to identify in common. Together with them, the therapeutic effect inherent in the classic horror film has gone.
Previously, heroes triumphed over irrational evil, and this allowed the viewer to believe that everyday, everyday evil can also be destroyed. Now things are not so predictable.
The new horror stories are connected by the filming of their cinephile intellectuals. And after almost every such film, its author is declared a visionary: this was the case with Jordan Peele when he released Get Out , with Robert Eggers after The Witch, with David Robert Mitchell after It, and with Ari Astaire after Reincarnation.
The new horror stories are connected by the filming of their cinephile intellectuals. And after almost every such film, its author is declared a visionary: this was the case with Jordan Peele when he released Get Out , with Robert Eggers after The Witch, with David Robert Mitchell after It, and with Ari Astaire after Reincarnation.
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“The Savior”, dir. Rose Glass, 2019
Nurse Maud (Morfidd Clarke) cares for wealthy dancer Amanda (Jennifer Elle) who is dying of cancer. The woman is not even 50, but she has no chance of recovering. Maud regretfully observes the carnal pleasures of his ward (parties, packs of cigarettes and fun nights with a young girlfriend) and tries to set her on the right path. The desire to save Amanda becomes the meaning of her life. And in this striving, the girl clearly forgets about any boundaries.
British debutante Rose Glass does not hide her disdain for religion. From the very first shots, the shy, unsociable and naive Maud looks like a doomed fanatic. It is not very important for the director what exactly pushed the heroine to God, it is more interesting how her everyday life looks now. Endless prayers, self-torture and deliberately futile attempts to convert others to faith. Sometimes they laugh at the girl right in the face, but she does not even notice it. Mod has long been in its reality.
The “Savior” develops slowly, but inevitably. With every minute of screen time, Mod, in his search for the Almighty, is getting closer to the devil and obsession. But who would dare to perform an exorcism on her?
“Lighthouse”, dir. Robert Eggers, 2019
The Lighthouse is the second work of Robert Eggers. With his debut – the film “The Witch” and “Happy Season 3” in 2015, an amazing thing happened: absolutely everyone liked him. It went well at the box office. Took the prize for Best Director at the Sundance Festival. Frightened even Stephen King.
Eggers took on the second film in tandem with the same operator, Jarin Blaschke. The action here again takes place in New England, but a century later (in “The Witch” it was the 17th century) and takes place on a lonely lighthouse, which was built specifically for the film somewhere in the Canadian rocks. In the frame, not counting the mermaids, there are only two characters: the seasoned lame Tom and the new Efraim, a whipping boy who will scrub the floors, throw coal into the stove, but will not receive the right to climb the lighthouse. For the time being.
Working on the film, Eggers became interested not so much in recreating the era, as was the case with The Witch, as in his own love of cinema. His tape was filmed in the old-fashioned, almost square format of the late 1920s. Eggers has long talked about his love of German Expressionism and the desire to remove a remake of “Nosferatu” by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau. In “Mayak” he uses just this, so close to him style, although he transfers it to another continent. He endlessly quotes his favorite authors from the same Murnau to Kubrick and tries to create not a cast of reality, but rather a work of art of that time. The dialogues of the heroes about walrus horseradish that admired everyone and everyone, on the one hand, straight from that era, on the other, more from the world of literature than reality.
Little Joe, dir. Jessica Hausner, 2019
Let’s digress from young American talents and retro style to futurism and Great Britain for a while.
Art horror “Little Joe” last May for many suddenly got into the competition of the Cannes Film Festival. The film tells about intelligent plants, which were bred in the laboratory by a pleasant female biologist. But don’t wait for a “Day of the Triffids” story: the flowers won’t start moving around and attacking people. They will simply use the pollen to subdue their own masters.
A sterile picture, pink glow from ultraviolet lamps, blank faces of Ben Whishaw and Emily Beecham. The film tries to answer urgent (especially at the moment) questions: where is the line between common sense and panic? Maybe preventive measures are so called because they help prevent unpleasant consequences?
Little Joe is a bit too similar to an extended episode of Black Mirror in places, but this is also its charm. Cold futurism, living people acting like robots, subordinate to something that they themselves invented from the best (and a little selfish) motives. What is perceived in short format on the small screen as The Asterisk War Season 3, a purely entertaining story, takes on an eerie – and slightly didactic – dimension in the form of a big movie.
“Deer Skin”, dir. Quentin Dupier, 2019
Speaking in this text about “Deer Skin” by the French director and musician Quentin Dupier, we are a little cunning. Dupier, known to electronic music lovers as Mr. Oizo, has not invented anything new in the recent picture. In his films, he has long been exploring the nature of things, their relationships with owners, and swapping the subject and object.
Buck’s Skin is a film about a man who is dominated by a jacket (killer style). She not only set the tone for the owner’s appearance, but also began to dictate her own terms of play to him. To get rid of the other jackets, he will have to destroy their owners at the same time.
This is a film from the world of the absurd, which perfectly fits into the conversation about the actual. He criticizes the consumer society, reflects on the nature of auteur cinema and the usual hierarchies. Not only did the jacket want to change the way things went, but so did its owner. In order to invade the trust of others, he will pretend to be someone else – namely, a filmmaker. After all, these guys, as you know, are allowed a lot. It’s funny that literally in the same month as “Overlord Anime Season 4“, the horror movie “Little Red Dress” was released – a film about a dress that subdued everyone who wears it.
Coco-di Coco-da, dir. Johannes Nyholm, 2019
A typical Swedish family – mom, dad and daughter, who is about to turn 8 – are vacationing in Denmark. After the next dinner, mom is covered with a red rash, her face is swollen. Suspicion falls on the freshly eaten mussels. The young woman is taken by helicopter to the nearest hospital and rescued, but the next morning, on her birthday, her daughter is found dead. 3 years pass. The same young couple (their names are Tobias and Elin), who lost their child, goes to the forest to spend the night in a tent and enjoy their vacation in nature. In the middle of the night they are visited by fabulously creepy circus performers. Again and again, a man and a woman wake up from the intrusion of intruders. And although the heroes are already waiting for strangers, they cannot break out of the time loop.
