This Weekend: Deadgirl, Salo (120 days...) & Megan is Missing

THIS WEEKEND in my living room....

This should be titled, this weekend on my laptop screen. I wouldn't want to subject my parents through my weirdo film-watching schedule. So most of the watching takes place on my macbook. 

As I write this I'm watching "The Poughkeepsie Tapes" on a separate window. I'm not even going to pretend that I'm giving this movie my full attention. From watching endless duds that are often utter pieces of shit, I've learned that a good movie will attract your full attention regardless. This is what I experienced with about one out of three of the movies I'll be reviewing today. On to number 1.

DEADGIRL (2008)

May I just say I bloody love this poster.

If you watch horror movies, (namely indie ones), you'll have stumbled upon this one more than a few times. Deadgirl reminds me a lot of a film I watched months back called "The Woman". "The Woman" is based on Jack Ketchum's novel (this should say plenty to those of you who know Ketchum). In short, it's about a suburban family that finds a ferral woman living in the woods behind their house and since the women are typical wishy-washy bystanders, they agree to kidnap her and try to "socialize" her. This basically means rape and torture her while her loathing of the family slowly escalates to the point where she breaks free and slaughters them. It's fucked up alright and had people walking out in a huff at its premiere at Sundance. 

Okay, so I haven't done my research about Deadgirl's premiere but I imagine similar controversies took place at some point. Now, thematically, there are many similarities. Deadgirl is essentially the story of two teenaged boys who find an immortal woman (not in a pretty, sparkly, vampire way) chained in the basement of a mental asylum. The boys, however spooked they are by this experience, decide to keep her a secret. Little does innocent, good-hearted Rickie know, his accomplice JT is planning to keep her as a sex slave. Disturbing. Though the casual nature in which this all comes about delays the appropriate reaction a fair bit. 

I like Shiloh Fernandez in this movie. This is probably because he's the only male character in this movie who doesn't comply with the capture of this girl. So of course, he's the one that uprises in the end and succeeds for the most part. I suppose what I liked about this film was the commentary on the misogyny. That's one way to look at it among many. I'm taking a philosophy of gender course in school so it's hard not to look at these things through a political lens. But then again, I'm pretty certain that those messages are what remain at the heart of the film. It's hard to talk about this one without ranting, so I'll try and leave it at that. I'm not going to go into aesthetics because it's somewhat irrelevant. 

VERDICT: In any case, it's worth a watch for sure. I'm not sure if I'd recommend it to everyone. It's definitely more of an intermediary film. There are much better and more important films that you should watch before this one if you're new to the game. 

SALO: 120 DAYS OF SODOM (1975)

I feel like kind of a doofus to be reviewing this between two horror movies as there are much more tasteful terms to describe Pasolini's film. But I'm not going to take a swing at those. I decided to watch this film because I needed to see it. In essentially every book, list or anthology of the greatest films in history that I've looked at, this has always had a place. 

So I threw on this film the other evening and tried to make sense of it. It's hard. I'll tell you that upfront. 

The things that take place in the film are so visceral and disturbing that I can barely conceive of what I'm seeing on the screen. Now don't get me wrong, I've seen worse. But what I can't wrap my head around is that this film was released in 1975. I think that anyone who watches this with the knowledge that The Human Centipede is considered "controversial" in this day and age will agree that a big ol' face-palm is in order. If you need a hint at what I mean by that, I'll save myself the trouble and just say that the second act of the film goes by the name "The Circle of Shit". 

INDEED.

Anyways, until I get a grip on the vision behind this (still actively seeking it), I will try and put it out of my head. I realize that this will probably offer no insight into what the actual film is about but I've said what I think is relevant. Proceed with caution.

VERDICT: This is definitely important for all cineastes. If you're into horror movies this may not be for you. If you're into seeing how much you can watch without tossing it everywhere,  I recommend it!

MEGAN IS MISSING (2011)

Let me just start off by saying: I have A LOT of problems with this movie. Enough that I will make a very tentative promise to do a separate piece on this. 

First off, let me say that Megan is Missing is more of a PSA gone awry than a film. And the fact that it is endorsed by a children's foundation certainly doesn't prove my suspicions wrong. OK it's a movie to warn parents and children about the horrors of abduction. Fair enough. That is certainly a message that is important. But the director's approach in this film was in my opinion, completely wrong. 

If we want to find a way to prevent teenaged girls from being kidnapped by internet predators, the way to do that isn't to make a film about how stupid teenaged girls can be. Girls aren't talking to men online because they're stupid. It's all a symptom of a much bigger problem. I feel like it's redundant to even say all this because anyone with a brain will be able to see that the men in this movie are the catalysts for every bad decision a girl foolishly makes. NO, Megan did not start chatting with a seemingly kind guy online because she hasn't been educated otherwise. It's because a seemingly kind guy is a whole hell of a lot better than the disgusting parade of misogynist pigs that she's been encountering for her whole life. 

This movie (knowingly or not) takes a problem of great importance and places blame on the girls and their families for not defending themselves against certain evils, while men, the culprits of these heinous acts are exempt from any kind of shaming. Why? Because boys will be boys.

ANYWAYS. Now that I've gone on about that for a while. I feel like I owe it to the post I plan to write later to stop here. 

VERDICT: Skip this if you're looking for quality. If you're looking for something that has sparked some controversy go for it I guess. 

Martyrs (dir. Pascale Laugier ) VS The Cabin in the Woods (dir. Joss Whedon & Drew Goddard)

FOREWORD: This was an assignment for a media course I took last school year. I can't particularly remember the assignment's specs other than the fact that we had to examine or compare two films of the genre of our choice. Big surprise: I chose horror. Bigger surprise: I chose Martyrs and TCITW. Expect that the first handful of posts I make will be assignments I've done in school. Most will be relevant!

Martyrs (dir. Pascale Laugier ) VS The Cabin in the Woods (dir. Joss Whedon & Drew Goddard)

               In all film genres alike, there are certain films which, rather than sticking to the conventions of their genre, stray far enough away from those conventions that they are able to explain them instead. A good example of this would be a film about filmmaking. The mystery behind plot, camerawork, casting, directing and editing disappears. When this happens in genres like Drama, Romance or Comedy the techniques used to achieve such a film becomes evident. But even still, though we know that there’s a man standing behind a camera on a back-lot somewhere in Hollywood, we can accept that they’re trying to tell us a story. In Drama, Romance or Comedy we are less likely to feel let down by learning that these scenarios are fabricated. Without trying, the situations they portray are more plausible than other genres.

              Horror, however, is a completely different ballgame. In a horror film, one of the characters itself is the “Unknown”. Horror as a genre has always dealt with themes that are much more abstract. For example, horror films involving torture and brutality rely on the idea that the antagonist is “crazy” or “disturbed”. In other film genres, characters are simply happy or sad or angry. When watching a horror film and seeing that someone has come back with a vengeance strong enough for them to kill, we really have to tap into the part of our minds that acknowledges that it’s something we simply can’t understand as rational human beings. The same goes for ghosts, monsters and spirits. In order to be affected by a horror film, we must put a certain distance between ourselves and what’s happening on screen. The minute we start to question it is the minute the movie becomes either, all-to-realistic, or completely un-scary. The simple question “why?” must always be present while watching these films.

For my comparison I will be looking at two horror films that take the “why?” out of the plot, and in some cases, out of the entire genre.

              
              The first is the 2008 film by French director Pascale Laugier, Martyrs. The film’s premise is anything but simple. In short, the story is about two girls who have grown up in an orphanage together and are entering the real world. Lucy is hell-bent on finding the people who tormented her as a child and taking out vengeance. Anna is along for the ride but hopes to mediate things if they get out of hand. When Lucy brings a shotgun to the house of her tormentors and takes out the entire family before killing herself, Anna has no choice but to try and cover up the scene knowing that she will be the first suspect when the police arrive. While trying to deal with the horrific afternoon she’s had, she comes across a strange kind of dungeon in the basement, almost identical to the one Lucy had always described from her childhood. Immediately after, Anna is seized by guards dressed in black who lock her up in the dungeon and explain that she has been recruited by an underground organization and will, quite literally, be tortured until she transcends and sees God. She will of course report back once this happens, thus is the purpose of her capture.

              Besides the obvious themes of brutal torture and sacrificing another human for the betterment of a handful others, what is the most horrifying about this movie is that it gives you a reason for the brutality that occurs. This film would be a whole lot easier to watch if you could believe that the people locking her up were just “crazy”. “Crazy” implies that there is a lack of objective and you could find a way to wiggle your way out of the situation. This movie however, shows that there is a very concrete reason for her capture and enough people backing it for her to find a way out. This is any example of a film where the presence of the “why?” results in a concept that is that much scarier. You’re left with a voice in your head saying “hey, this could happen to me”.

              The second example of this is a film that takes the “why?” factor out of all horror films ever. This movie is 2012’s The Cabin in the Woods directed by Drew

Goddard and Joss Whedon. The plot goes from almost naively simple to mind-bogglingly complex. The exposition of the film contains two separate storylines that gradually merge until they come crashing together at the film’s climax. On one side of the story you have your standard group of kids heading out to the woods for a weekend of R&R. On the other side, a type of workplace comedy is carrying out. Two men in lab coats are complaining about their love lives while endless other men and women in lab coats shuffle past them in some sort of giant office building. It takes a while before we realize that the men in the lab coats are observing the kids in the woods, who are going about their way practicing their less than exemplary behavior. It’s only when the men in the office start flicking switches that open cellar doors in the cabin that we begin to put things together: What is happening in the cabin is being directly manipulated by the control panel in the office. As the kids begin to be tormented and systematically massacred by a family of zombies, they are picked off in a surprisingly generic way; promiscuous blonde, suspecting stoner, disgruntled jock etc… But before the plot can run it’s course, the last to die (the pure one), and the back-from-the-dead stoner beat the system, by figuring out that there is a system.

              The Cabin in the Woods is a film that would be devastating to have ruined for the viewer, which is why I’m going to stop there. What struck me so much with this film was that not only was the “why?” dissected straight out of the genre of horror films, but that it was then transplanted into a completely different genre. In a film like Martyrs, the “why?” factor is explained on a small but horrifyingly simple scale. It gives systematic-torture films a reason for being truly scary. But in The Cabin in the Woods, it doesn’t just spell-out the objective of the storyline, it points out every cliché and convention under the sun that could exist in a horror movie. Never again will anyone be able to look at a film like Friday the 13^th and think “huh, I wonder why Jason is killing everybody”. They will instead think “Oh right, Jason is killing the cliché band of college kids because he was randomly selected to punish the ‘sinners’ and sacrifice them to the Gods to stop the impending threat of an apocalypse”.

By Matilda Davidson, 16 

Legal Theory: Se7en (David Fincher)

FOREWORD: This was an assignment for my Law class. We had to chose a film to write about from a legal theory perspective. The subheadings were a requirement!

Se7en (David  Fincher, 1995)

“Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to light” – John Milton: Paradise Lost.

A lawyer is found, having bled to death in his office, with the word “Greed” written on the carpet in blood. A model is forced to choose between permanent facial disfigurement and death by overdose with the word “Pride” written on her wall. A drug-abuser and child molester is bound to his bed and kept alive for exactly one year, with the word “Sloth” written above him.

Each murder brings a twisted killer closer and closer to fulfilling his extremist objective: a morally purified society. If this is his method of bringing society’s true crimes to light, long and hard certainly is the way to achieving it.

Homicide Detective William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) is one week away from his long awaited retirement from the police force. Rookie Detective David Mills (Brad Pitt) is in his first week after naively requesting a transfer to Somerset’s branch. Somerset is calm, level headed and considerate, whereas Mills is emotionally driven, reckless and eager. The two are partnered to investigate a case involving a brutally perverse killer with unknown motives. However a theme does become evident when the killings begin taking after each of the seven deadly sins. As the film follows the two lead detectives, we see them dissect the psyche of their culprit, placing him on the stand and reading into his every move. But as the film reaches its climax, the tables begin to turn and we watch as the detectives are jerked about and ultimately become the ones facing judgment.

Speech and Silence

Seven, when juxtaposed with the classical Western or Revenge genre film, has many similarities both thematically and in its structure. The standard Revenge film follows a specific format, outlined in Dean Hitesman’s article Setting the Stage for Justice in the Revenge Genre Film. Typically the law silences the truth holder (usually this person is considered the hero and ultimately the avenger), which then causes them to take matters into their own hands. Applying this to Seven, the person being silenced, perhaps even the truth-holder, is the character John Doe (Kevin Spacey), the sadistic serial killer. John Doe is being silenced from communicating his beliefs by the laws in place, which, in his mind, enable and sometimes encourage sinful behaviour. He then takes matters into his own hands through brutal acts of violence and torture, inflicting punishment on his victims for their respective sins in a way that the law neglects to enforce.

It’s certainly no surprise that as an audience we always expect the hero/avenger figure to be someone likable and easy to empathize with due to their quest for justice. So perhaps this is why Seven is considered a western turned on its head. John Doe is fighting for justice, a justice that many people hope for, just not in the traditional way. He shares his feelings on this with the detectives in one of the final scenes. When asked why he chose to take such extreme measures he replies evenly, “Wanting people to listen, you can’t just tap them on the shoulder anymore. You have to hit them with a sledgehammer, and then you’ll notice you’ve got their strict attention”

Insiders and Outlaws

At first glance, it is pretty clear who assumes the roles of the insiders and the outlaws. Detectives Somerset and Mills have a perspective on these crimes that the general public does not. They’ve researched the case in ways that aren’t always legal and put themselves in the killer’s direct line of fire. By the point in the film when they have started communicating with him, they become the insiders. However, as do most things in this movie, the lines quickly blur.

                  As the culprit of heinous crimes, John Doe is very certainly an outlaw throughout the film. However, on a broader scale, the strict moral code that he lives by, and his determination to make those who disrupt it pay for their wrongdoings, John Doe in a certain light, represents a highly moralistic version of the law itself. In the film’s climax, Detective Mills becomes blind with fury at the murder of his wife. Counting on this all along, John Doe waits for Mills to shoot him dead, an act of wrath, which will complete his masterpiece as the seventh and final sin. This foresight shared by Somerset who tries desperately to intervene, puts John Doe in the place of the Insider, while Detective Mills has been reduced to an act of violence that ultimately unifies him and the killer.

Change

As has already been mentioned, role reversal is a common occurrence in this film. Characters begin as one thing and morph into something else completely as circumstances change. These changes are the most prevalent in the two detectives. Somerset is a veteran of the harsh city crime scene and spends his entire career respecting the rules, though constantly straying from the complacency that is common practice in the law force. The catalyst for his change is the arrival of Detective Mills who exhibits every character trait that Somerset does not have. Once they start working together, Somerset who is nearly finished with the job once and for all, seems powerless to Mills’ disregard for protocol. The deeper into the case they get, the more Somerset surrenders to the convenience of illegal activity. This begins when the two of them enter John Doe’s home without a search warrant and, later, they pay off a man to give them the library records under John Doe’s name.

As the detectives stray farther and farther from what is ethically correct, they separate themselves from the law and become both outlaws and insiders with the perspective this gives them.

Legal Relevance

                  Despite how hazy the true intentions of each character are, the three leads in the film each fall quite neatly into different legal archetypes. Detective Somerset has seen every trick in the book. He handles every case with the same responsibility and sage consideration that he always has. These qualities show that Somerset is the Wise Old Man archetype in this film. He does, however, have a compassionate side that is often discouraged. Somerset questions the complacency that he is encouraged to practice, constantly striving for the betterment of society. He, more than anyone, acknowledges that not every circumstance can be made to fit into the legal system. Somerset’s beliefs are comparable to that of a legal Naturalist.

Detective Mills is a different story. He is driven by his emotions and has no regard for the processes in place, as they seem too forgiving for a criminal like John Doe. Throughout the film he resembles the Realist, as his empathy is in direct correlation to the crime committed. The worse the crime, the less patience he has for formalities. He isn’t innocent in his feelings, but he is somewhat naïve, lacking the perspective to understand what he’s fighting for. Detective Mills is the archetypal Child. And finally, there’s John Doe. His intentions are clear, his methods are destructive but his motivation is strong. He is selfless in his efforts right up until the point that he must die for his cause. Nowhere does it say that he has to be godly to be a Martyr. He strikes a balance somewhere between Somerset and Mills in pursuits of justice. He is a true Positivist in his beliefs. The law is the law and it makes no difference what circumstances brought you there. This is the way that John Doe selects his victims, unmercifully. The only difference is that he’s operating by his own code of justice, which is considerably less forgiving.

Judgement

            Judgement comes in many forms throughout this film.  From a typical legal standpoint, it is John Doe who is being judged for his actions by the law. Once he’s captured he is at the mercy of the law and understanding that his scheme isn’t yet complete, there is plenty of pressure for a swift resolution. After a particular conversation in which Mills asks him if he realizes that he’s insane, he replies “It’s much more comfortable for you to label me as insane”. This is an example of one kind of judgment in the film, though there is another.

John Doe’s crimes never come from a place of simplicity. His beliefs are no longer supported by the general public, and the law has barricaded him from preaching his sermon to the people who need to hear it most. It is when we realize this that we realise that John Doe is the personification of judgement in this film. He is assessing the crime and distributing the punishment. Perhaps it’s the similarities between his intentions and those of the law that make this film so scary. The law may not take such extreme measures to maintain justice but at the root of its purpose it is striving for a certain order, which reminds us again how unsettlingly similar John Doe is to the law itself.

Does the film get the Job Done?

                  Seven is a deeply unsettling portrait of a man in pursuit of a better world. Detective Somerset imagines a place that he could be proud of but has long since lost hope in achieving such a high ideal. Rather than reaching out to humanity, he retires from his job to seek out a happier life, a plausible solution considering the field he’s worked so many years in.

John Doe, though a murderous psychopath, really isn’t that different. He’s just a man striving for the same high ideals as Somerset. The difference between them is that one is taking personal responsibility for his dissatisfaction and the other is making society pay.

Because Detective Somerset is someone that we, as an audience can relate to, it makes it all the more horrifying when these similarities are brought to light. Somerset, narrates at the very end of the film, saying: “Ernest Hemmingway once wrote ‘The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for’. I agree with the second part”. 



By Matilda Davidson, 17