Amanda M. Blake's Blog, page 25

Without You

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This is not one of my favorites. Sweet romance doesn’t seem to be my style, because my hopelessly pragmatic side tends to push through the mushiness. Maybe some people find pragmatic romance sweet, too. You just don’t hear it a lot.

However, I’m going to share it just for fun. It’s a simple little acoustic thing, meant to just be a quiet song to some guitar or piano chords.

WITHOUT YOU

I can breathe without you

Fears all flee without you

Still sleep deep without you

Dreams will keep without you.

I’m still me without you

Heart still beats without you

Life’s not hell without you

I’ve done damn well without you.

Chorus:

You could run the other way

Say you can’t stand another day

I wouldn’t stop my life for you

My future would look fine

If you weren’t by my side

But I’d rather not be without you.

Bridge:

I can imagine my life without you in it

Don’t need you for me to go on

But I chose you to have me a long time ago

To have and to hold, my whole life long

Chorus

I don’t need you, my love

I just want to be with you, my love.

DOUBLE REVIEW: Contracted & Starry Eyes

This is going to be a double feature. Don’t you feel special? [Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD]

Part of the reason I’m doing a simultaneous review of CONTRACTED and STARRY EYES is because both were put out on Netflix around the same time and both have somewhat similar progression of pretty girls deteriorating. So they kind of feel like the same kind of movie, although they each stand out in different ways.

[image error]I’ll start with CONTRACTED, because it’s the weaker movie of the two, although not for lack of talent by the main actress, Najarra Townsend. With her delicate brunette features and prominent cheekbones, she reminds me a lot of Rooney Mara, but she’s less introspective and more emotionally available to the audience (no dig against Mara, who I actually love in movies, just different acting style).

Townsend is easily the best part of an otherwise meh cast, and she makes the best of what seems like a somewhat amateur film. She and the gross-out effects make CONTRACTED worth a watch if you get the opportunity. Neflix pulled the film from its line-up, and I miss it already.

If AFFLICTED was a found-footage, up-close-and-personal look at developing vampirism, CONTRACTED is a standard film with an up-close-and-personal look at being infected by a zombie virus – in this case, a necrotic STD. The sequel made an attempt to explain the context of the virus, but the more horror is explained, sometimes the less you care. All that really matters is that a seriously unethical coroner appeared to have had sex with a dead person, then roofied Townsend’s already drunk character to have sex with her, and through that, she contracted the virus. Then everything already fraying in her life begins to completely fall apart in disgusting, spectacular fashion.

CONTRACTED went through a bit of controversy with the Netflix description of the night Samantha contracted the virus as a “one-night stand,” when the fact she was staggering drunk and then given a date-rape drug makes it pretty clear she’s raped. I mean, just look at the tagline on the poster image – implies the description was deliberate on the part of the studio, not a Neflix writer’s error. It doesn’t matter one bit that she gained a little consciousness in the middle of the act and seems to derive some pleasure from the sex, even as she’s telling him they should stop – although it seems like everyone seems to think that makes it okay, and her fault?

The sequel brings up the fact it was rape almost as an apology for the fact no one in the first movie seemed to realize that it was, including Sam, who never framed it as assault even when her lesbian lover accused her of having sex with a man. It’s tone-deaf, for sure, but a hell of a representation of why rape culture still needs to be discussed. (And CONTRACTED wasn’t the only one that seemed to miss the tonal mark with sexual assault.) It would have been one thing if it was clear either from the directorial perspective or someone’s perspective in the movie that what happened was rape, while everyone else didn’t get it, but I never got any impression that anyone was aware it was rape and not a one-night stand mistake.

Let’s move forward from that, though, to the post-contracted phase, which is when the movie and Townsend really start to shine, even though it’s kind of also where what little logic the movie has dissolves into so much goo.

The movie does amazing with the slow burn of the gross-out. It evolves little by little, although the movie takes place in less than three days. The early symptoms are relatively minor, but troubling enough to go to a clinic to test for an STD. She won’t get results back for a while, which is no help to her whatsoever. She’s given some cream for her genital rash and told the massive gout of blood out of her vagina is her period, even though it looks more like a miscarriage. At this point, I can see her wanting to hold her fragile life together and insist nothing’s wrong. I understand denial.

But when she vomits blood, I think that’s about time to go to the hospital, don’t you? She tries, but then somehow her boss ropes her into taking a shift, and instead of saying “No, dude, I’m vomiting blood,” she agrees and shows up looking thoroughly sick, with something that looks at least like raging pink eye, with another eye that’s jaundiced. And somehow, upon looking at her, her boss thinks, “That’s the kind of person I want serving people food.” He really only has himself to blame with that one.

And I know that when my daughter starts looking like an extra in a contagion film, my first thought is “Guess she’s gone back to drugs.” Sam’s bleeding, pussing, and rotting all over the place, and her mother brings a psychiatrist home to talk to her. Townsend’s so ugly-beautiful at this point, but everyone’s still completely clueless, and there’s a point at which it becomes ridiculous.

It’s hard to describe how perfect the gross-out effects are in this movie, though, how carefully spaced out they are, because the rest of the shit going on isn’t doing much to help – kind of like her friends and her indifferent lover, who’s clearly been looking to get off the train for a while, yet latches on to Sam having sex with a man as the final straw. Her body falling apart and her life in ruins, Sam officially jumps onto the crazy-train.

The best montage happens at this point – a pre-zombie girl dolling herself up for comfort sex that sounds like an extremely bad idea and may or may not be a symptom. And much blood and yuck was had.

It’s a silly and disgustingly beautiful movie, worth it for the effects and Townsend alone if you can stomach a wince-worthy script and uneven acting from the rest.

[image error]Which brings us to STARRY EYES. At its core, a completely different story – lovely but insecure young woman struggles to make it as an actress in LA, longing for her big break…oh, I’m sure you’ve heard this one before.

The movie opens on her pinching and prodding at her stomach, checking her butt, agonizing over how thin her hair has become. She works at a breastaurant to make ends meet, but she considers it beneath her. She has a supportive friend in her roommate (Amanda Fuller, one of my favorites), but her roommate has other starving artist friends who Sarah clearly thinks are insufferable – especially Erin, who appears to enjoy a touch more success and suffer less neurosis than Sarah, but who’s passive-aggressive in her superiority and played by the wonderful Fabianne Therese. Already, even though STARRY EYES feels like just as much of an indie film, the cast surpasses that of CONTRACTED. There are some undeveloped characters, but no bad actors.

And because there are no bad actors, Alex Essoe doesn’t have to carry the movie on her own shoulders the whole time. But she could. She brings layers to Sarah that most middle-of-the-road horror movies don’t even think about, and it shows. Every time I watch this movie, I read something a little different from her.

It would have been too easy to just make us hate Sarah or just make us love her, but Essoe does a really good job of making us empathize, even when we think she’s being as much of a bitch as Erin under the facade of the nice girl. She has a drive, a yearning for success and fame, and on that level we understand her – but there’s an ugliness underneath it, a desperation, an emptiness, that seems to be kept from the surface by the thinnest of paper. Ambition can be an amazing impetus, but there’s a fine line between good ambition and ambition gone bad. When you don’t have a solid acceptance of who you are as a foundation, ambition that doesn’t reach constant fruition risks turning back on its host, punishing internally as well as externally.

Ultimately, just like Astraeus Pictures’ film SILVER SCREAM, for which Sarah auditions, is supposed to be about the dark side of the ambition for fame, STARRY EYES brings that ugly underbelly up for everyone to see, and it does so with a great deal of self-awareness. It’s not quite meta-horror, because it’s a horror movie about movies rather than a horror movie about horror movies, but it flirts with that subgenre here and there.

We get a glimpse behind Sarah’s facade at the opening of the movie, but the magic really happens at the first audition for SILVER SCREAM, where the bland, creepy casting directors make their move to find something special in one of the girls trying out for their movies in the hopes of that big break. Sarah does a decent but indistinguishable audition. When the casting directors don’t seem all that interested, she reacts in a disproportionately frustrated way, with all of her anger directed at herself, throwing what amounts to a self-hating tantrum in the girls’ bathroom.

It’s a cumulative frustration, I know, but it’s still just one audition, and she puts so much pressure on herself to achieve, then blames herself entirely for being inadequate. She’s a miserable person, with that ugliness under her surface that’s more self-hating than she knows. Everything she hates about her roommate’s friends are things she’s afraid of in herself, a hallmark of narcissism – mediocre, talentless, invisible, poor, and she doesn’t even see how they’re so much happier than her because it’s more about the art for them than the fame. She’s afraid she’s just another one, and she’s desperate for some kind of external validation that she’s got something to offer, that she’s the talented one, that she’s the star. Whenever she doesn’t get that validation, she feels she has to punish herself. (It’s so common in perfectionism to motivate by punishment, but it doesn’t actually work.)

And here’s where it really connects with me, even though I’m not sure whether it’s the same thing. The reason why Sarah’s hair is so thin is because when she’s upset with herself, she pulls it and whole chunks get pulled out and drape between her fingers. I have trichotillomania myself, but I’m not certain whether what Sarah’s doing is supposed to be trich, or whether it’s self-harm punishment. There’s a certain drama to seeing full chunks of hair in a woman’s hand, but most trichsters pull one or a few hairs at a time. The bald spots we get add up over time. Maybe it’s supposed to be a little bit of both? Like, maybe they read about pulling out hair as a symptom of anxiety and depression and thought it meant chunks rather than one by one? Maybe they just wanted hers to be so extreme in comparison with the fastidiousness of most trichsters. Sometimes I watch depictions of hair-pulling disorders in the media (CSI:NY, Criminal Minds, and The Blacklist had other notable depictions), I wonder if that’s really how the world sees people like me, if that’s what I look like to other people when I’m pulling. It’s weird.

Anyway, right after Sarah’s through throwing her tantrum, she leaves the bathroom stall and walks straight into one of the casting directors, the incredibly disturbing Maria Olsen, who tells Sarah she finally has their interest. Thus begins a short series of auditions that go from red flags to fire alarms, designed to weed out only the most desperate and hungry of the bunch. It’s not exactly talent they’re looking for, which is good, because talent is in abundant supply, and talent isn’t even what Sarah wants – she wants acclaim for her talent, which is what Astraeus Pictures wants to give her…if she gives a little of herself in return.

Like CONTRACTED, there’s a tonal problem in the way the movie addresses the most controversial part of the movie, which I saw in a completely new light after the Weinstein scandal. This isn’t the first time the sleazy, boys’-club mentality of the Hollywood movers and shakers has been depicted in a horror movie – Scream 3 brought it up first. It’s no surprise that men in power use that power to get what they want, and I don’t doubt it’s still happening today, even with Weinstein disgraced. Women talk about it years later, if ever, which means what’s happening now won’t even come up until long after the fact. There’s still a few hurdles women have to go through to get somewhere, and the men making the rules and calling the shots are more than willing to take advantage of women’s desperation, to pluck the fruits of women’s ambition in a way that women (mostly) can’t achieve in the same positions.

So while characters in the film are stunned and derisive when they discover Sarah blew a producer for a “break-out” role in a horror film from a struggling production studio, their condemnation is almost completely on Sarah, and the audience is clearly supposed to agree. Extorting sexual favors for roles simply isn’t done anymore, and any self-respecting woman won’t hold for that, right? Well, reality is a tad more complicated. Sure, Sarah could have just walked away, and yes, she has a massively inflated, narcissistic ego to make up for her crippling insecurities, but the entertainment business is often one in which women do have to walk away if they don’t play ball, and that’s not right, either. Because male ambition is expected and encouraged, but female ambition is unseemly and seedy and suspect, and women need to do more to be seen as equally competent. It’s a troubling, tangled issue, this implicit condemnation more for Sarah than for the shady relic producer.

Astraeus Pictures are more than just shady, bringing on a bit of the ROSEMARY’S BABY vibe, and with the sacrifice placed upon the woman yet again. Here it is, ladies and gentlemen, the price for fame. You just have to die slowly and horribly and destroy everything around you. Sarah’s desire for fame and fortune is placed in the context of many early film starlets of the black-and-white era, for good reason. Once you learn some of their stories, you find that’s not much of an exaggeration. And if the SILVER SCREAM is a condemnation of naked ambition, I’m not sure whether STARRY EYES ever quite reaches a critique of the exploitation of that naked ambition so much as adds its voice into condemning the ambition itself.

This is point where STARRY EYES most closely parallels CONTRACTED, making use of Essoe’s thin frame and willingness to put maggots in her mouth (can’t fault a girl for her commitment to the role). Sarah gradually sheds her masks to expose the ugliness within, all inhibitions released, and her true feelings towards her roommate (with a tinge of envy and sexual attraction, am I reading that right?) and her roommates’ friends coming out of the woodwork. The process is faster than in CONTRACTED because it takes up less of the film, but it still follows the ‘pretty girl gone dead’ arc that’s truly fascinating to watch, culminating in a much less logic-twisted, blood-soaked ending.

It’s a more complete, complex, thoughtful film than CONTRACTED, but both are definitely worth the watch for fans of nitty-gritty, intimate body horror.

Tattoo

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Inspired in part by the death of Zombie Boy. It got me thinking in the direction of The Illustrated Man and some of my tattooed characters and what tattoos mean to them.

There’s no real style to the song. I don’t hear music to it yet.

TATTOO

Oh, what a tangled web he weaves

When first he practices to deceive

An open book, come enter in

Wears a skeleton on his skin

And his heart out on his sleeve

Inside out, outside in

Ink spills in the air he breathes

What he says, what he believes

Creates the world he’s living in

Wears his people on his skin

Gives away what he receives

Inside out, outside in

What you see, what you perceive

Everyone you love always leaves

When one ends, another begins

Skulls and roses on his skin

Why keep a heart when it can grieve?

Inside out, outside in

Doesn’t care what lies beneath

Colors’ pain is always brief

Hounds of hell, where have you been?

Illustrations on his skin

Showing claws, showing teeth

Inside out, outside in

Oh, what a tangled web he weaves

When first he practices to deceive

An open book, come enter in

Wears a skeleton on his skin

And his heart out on his sleeve

Inside out, outside in

REVIEW: The Awakening

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I think ghost stories are particularly difficult to make scary. They’re generally filed under the umbrella of horror monsters, but they’re more often tragic than frightening. That’s why there are so many ghost horror movies that depend on the jump scare—because that’s sometimes the only kinds of scares they offer. Let’s face it – the more you get to know them, the more lost spirits seem sad rather than scary (SIXTH SENSE kind of covers this phenomenon, and I’d consider SIXTH SENSE one of the better ghost horror movies). I think this is the reason a lot of movie hauntings have transitioned from the human spirits to the demonic. Ghost stories are extremely difficult to do well, especially when trying to find the right balance of tragedy and horror.

THE AWAKENING is one of my favorite ghost stories, but it is, without question, a better tragedy than it is a horror movie. I would say the closest comparison to the movie in tone, palette, and time period is THE OTHERS, which is also one of the better ghost horror movies. However, while THE AWAKENING has a few jump scares, it’s really shot as a drama rather than a horror movie most of the way through, which is good, because aside from some good tension here and there, it functions much better as a supernatural period drama.

I love the opening to THE AWAKENING. It begins with a quote from the main character’s book challenging the spiritualism movement prevalent at the beginning of the 20th by placing it in historical context. Between the Spanish flu and World War I, so many had lost people close to them under terrible circumstances. In the midst of survivor’s guilt, lack of closure, and an excess of grief. Florence Cathcart rightly points out, “This is a time for ghosts.”

The opening transitions into a classic seance, with the supernatural element rising higher and higher…only for Florence to interrupt the proceedings by exposing the spiritualist charlatans for what they are. Instead of being outraged at being taken advantage of, a woman who lost her young daughter – presumably to influenza – slaps Florence and asks whether she has any children. “No, of course you haven’t,” she replies with disdain, because a woman with children would know why a false dream was better than nothing. She questions whether Florence’s grief for the young soldier whose photograph she brought to the seance was even real. But as the mother leaves, we see Florence—played by the wonderful Rebecca Hall with arch strength and vulnerability—deflate. Her commanding, energetic presence dissipates. She appears weighed down, barely able to take another step.

In her own words, “This is a time for ghosts.” And it’s clear within the first fifteen minutes that, though Florence devotes herself to disproving hauntings and exposing frauds, she’s desperately seeking ghosts of her own. It gives her no pleasure at all to debunk the supernatural. Quite the contrary.

This entire movie offers some of the best depictions of depression and grief from a number of the characters that I think I’ve ever seen in a movie. The way it weighs you down and you sometimes don’t even want to move. The way it makes people lash out. The way you have to put on a mask, the way you lie to others and yourself, the way it takes over your life and cycles through your thoughts, the guilt, hopelessness, and self-destruction it can cause.

From the wonderful opening, AWAKENING moves into the main plot, with Robert Mallory—played by Dominic West as an attractive but caustic ex-soldier—an instructor from a boy’s boarding school, visiting Cathcart and requesting her help to put to rest rumors of a ghost boy haunting the school, after the death of one of the students. Usually the man would be the skeptic and the woman the believer, but like Mulder and Scully, AWAKENING switches that expectation on its head. Mallory believes in ghosts, but he’s also a firm realist, and he only wants the truth and to keep the kids safe, and the prim but earnest school matron, Maud, is a devotee of Cathcart’s work and recommended her.

At first, Cathcart is reluctant to engage in another investigation, weary as she is with her depression and needing a break, but Mallory throws her own words from her book back into her face, about how she was a fearful child and cannot abide children being made to live in fear – another point that resonates through the movie.

The boys’ school to which Mallory brings Florence is appropriately gothic, a looming, gray structure in the middle of nowhere, gloomy and forbidding, with energetic but somewhat melancholy students and a severe administration. With her, Florence brings the various accoutrements of her trade—a delightful look into the early twentieth century versions of our modern ghost-hunting gizmos, with all the scientific rigor of pre-WWII CSI. The dark manor at night provides some decent spookiness, but it’s pretty clear with the first tripped bell wire and footprints on the floor that the ghost boy traversing through the halls at that late hour is not so dead, and the tension dissipates…until something’s there that shouldn’t be.

And thus begins the slow unraveling of Ms. Cathcart. The most held-together characters of the movie lose their masks, exposing not ghosts but shells, broken survivors of any number of tragedies who must learn how to live with the ghosts of the people who passed on without them, and beyond the fear of mortality so keenly felt at a time that wrought the need for ghosts.

To be honest, the supernatural elements are sometimes the worst parts of the movie – the swirly face ghost is actually the worst effect, which is a shame, because that’s one of the few things you’re supposed to be afraid of.

The human elements – shattering perceptions and confronting fears – are by far the most interesting parts. I feel like I see something new every time I watch it. It’s a beautiful film and a beautiful, tragic story, and I do encourage you to give it a try on that merit rather than the horror.

Red

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Here’s that fairy tale rock song that I wrote a couple weeks ago, even though I don’t think I’ll ever be able to use it. My voice has no natural roughness. Also, I can’t do sexy to save my life.

I recently introduced myself to Halestorm and Lzzy Hale’s amazing voice, and I guess I was inspired. So just imagine her singing it instead. If I were ever to use this song, I’d have to strip it down a lot.

RED

If you think I’m a pretty young thing

You don’t know what I’ve seen

You know what I mean

Look at my red leather, supple and lean,

Time for me to come clean

You know what I mean

Chorus:

I’m not a good girl

I’m a girl who’s gone bad

The baddest you’ve had

A little bit mad

And though I’m here walking

Alone in the woods

You’d escape if you could

From the pretty sharp teeth of

Red Riding Hood

I used to be innocent, proper and sweet

Not a girl on the street

You don’t want to meet

But a good girl knows just when she’s been beat

I need something to eat

And you’re my kind of meat.

Chorus

Look at me

Dressed in the skin

Of the wolf that I’m in

Can’t you see

You don’t know where I’ve been

But if you let me in…

[Spoken] What big eyes you have…

Don’t go away

Come in and play

If you come this way

I’ll put this knife away

And let you blow me away…

[Spoken] Why, sir, what stunning skin you have.

It would be a shame to waste it on a wolf like you.

Can you see now what little girls can do?

Chorus

Sleepwalker

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I wrote this on the same day as “Music Box” and was strongly influenced by Anthony Bourdain’s death for both.

“Sleepwalker” feels closer to the soft alt sound of Svrcina and Fleurie to me, but harsh it a little and you get Christina Perri, I think.

SLEEPWALKER

Give you all my time.

Give you heart and soul

My attention on the line

Every part and every whole

My last stitch of spirit

Until tapestry unwinds

Threads fringe and split

Wrap into the ties that bind

Chorus:

Running in place, sinking under high tide

Masks on my face, I’m living inside

Making up stories and worlds in my head

Because the world’s running wild and hard

And I’d rather be in my world instead

I’m never present, always away

Go where I’m sent, do whatever they say

They call me sleepwalker, the day’s living dead

Because the world’s running wild and hard

And I’d rather be in my world instead.

Go to bed, sleep awake

Mornings wake up weary

I offer the devil my soul to take

But pay the piper too dearly.

Waiting between work

Life’s a series of lines

Living dark to dark

Time’s slow but life flies.

Chorus

Bridge:

We fill ourselves empty, health ourselves sick

Tear out foundations, brick by dead brick

Swear on our tomes we’ve not even read

Unable to speak until we have bled.

We give up our freedom, small sacrifice

We give up our virtues for taste of a vice

Running around without any heads

We lie on the train tracks, making our beds.

Chorus

The Valley of the Shadow

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If you’ll permit me a moment of what is probably blasphemy, my mind went a weird way while thinking about the valley of the shadow of death (Psalms), conflating it with the valley of dry bones (Ezekiel) and Gehenna (valley of Hinnom, also the word used for hell in the New Testament). And then with a little Silence of the Lambs memory mixed in. Because why not?

As song styles go, it probably bears resemblance to Sarah McLachlan in her Possession period.

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

The shepherd leads me into the valley

Warm green pastures and clear cold streams

Sparrows of the air, lilies of the field

Land of plenty, land of peace and of dreams.

Yea

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow

I will fear no, I will fear no

And as I watch the emerald fields

Turn black as coal ash all around

The shepherd leads flock to a slaughtering barn

Until blood of the lambs seeps into the ground.

Yea

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow

I will fear no, I will fear no

The life-giving stream beds crackle and dry

Bones pile to the sides well over my head

The shepherd, he waits at the end of the valley

Leading me to where all the others were led.

They call it the valley

Of the shadow of death

The shadow of life

Cast by every last breath.

Yea

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow

I will fear no, I will fear…

No, I will fear.

Review: TEETH

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Based on my last post, you may wonder whether horror is the genre for me if sexual assault wears at my soul. But romance makes me sad, I find most comedy awful, and misogyny is everywhere. I like horror because sometimes women have or get the power.

In a film-making sense, I wouldn’t say that TEETH is great. It’s clearly low-budget, but more than that, something about it feels amateur, even naive, which is occasionally charming? I pose that as a question because the sometimes tentative/sometimes deliberate direction and the indie not-acting done by a lot of the actors in the movie didn’t bother me, but it was something I noticed, and I feel I shouldn’t notice things until the second viewing. But the naivete could also mirror our protagonist, Dawn, as she discovers herself. I’m a sucker for female self-discovery films like TEETH and RAW. RAW is better, but TEETH has its own qualities.

I can’t speak to how it is for guys, but women’s self-discovery is intrinsically difficult, because unlike cis guys, our junk is well between our legs and inside rather than convenient for viewing up front and center. Despite being raised in the far end of the Bible Belt, both my schools and my church made every effort to keep us informed. Ironically, our fifth grade puberty course at church was more comprehensive, but health classes going forward were more than adequate when it came to anatomy, for the nineties–which means there was and probably still is a dearth of information about variations in anatomy and queer genders and sexualities. Had to wait until college for that, not that I was really paying attention to variety until then.

But I know there are schools, churches, and homes where anatomy is undiscussed, as though if they don’t talk about it, nothing will happen (which has been true precisely never in the history of time). I was armed with all kinds of fascinating information–and I’m still fascinated–yet everything happening to me was so difficult to talk about, and it was all happening in places I couldn’t see and it all felt so much bigger and scarier than me. I used a mirror to look things over, but it’s not the same. Things you see in the mirror don’t feel connected to you–it’s a secondhand image.

So suffice it to say, I really identified with the wonderful, scary act of female self-discovery in TEETH, in a society that seems to prefer leaving woman mysterious (seriously, we didn’t know the clitoris went beyond the external glans and hood until 1999, people, and I will never let our scientists off the hook for that). Granted, I don’t have teeth in my vagina. At least, I don’t think I do.

Jess Weixler, who plays Dawn, is expected to carry the film, and with an otherwise uneven cast, her earnestness and raw skill elevates the rest of the movie. She’s endearing, engaging, and even when she’s the vice president of the purity doctrine, you still like her. She’s innocent, and you believe it, even though real innocence feels hard to come by.

But innocence arises from ignorance, and at her age, it’s really only a matter of time, even with the big censorship sticker on the cis female anatomy page in their school’s health book–and no, there’s no accompanying sticker for the penis. It’s just the vagina that’s icky and obscene (same principle that makes cock, dick, or prick less offensive for the average person than cunt, pussy, quim, or twat, not that there’s any real good name for genitals, for some reason). I’m not sure whether there are actual health classes that censor only one gender this way, but I hesitate to say it’s unbelievable.

You’ve probably heard of the premise of TEETH before. Teenager espouses purity culture (for those unfamiliar, it’s a primarily American Christian phenomenon that emphasizes saving sex until marriage, usually foregoing all forms of sexual activity, sometimes even going as far as forbidding kissing or any kind of touching at all). Purity teenager meets cute guy. They try to maintain the purity boundaries, though it’s clear she’s tempted and feels guilty because of it. However, cute boy pushes past those boundaries and forces himself on her–with the (intentionally) hysterically awful line “I haven’t jerked off since Easter!”

Well, turns out that power plant we saw from Dawn’s childhood did more than give her mom cancer. In that sense, TEETH could be considered a comic book origin story–villain or hero, take your pick. Dawn has vagina dentata, the myth (sadly) that women have teeth in their vagina and that a woman must be pleased in order to survive PIV sex with her. As a myth, nothing shows the fear of the mysteriousness of women’s parts quite like wondering whether her vagina’s going to bite your dick off. Why men aren’t more afraid we’re going to do that with our actual mouths, I don’t know, and given the prevalence of sexual assault even in places with variations of the myth, it couldn’t have been that believed.

But Dawn’s got it. Good for Dawn. And so begins the also hilarious castration motif. Seriously, though, penises are always funny-looking. Seeing them bitten off just emphasizes their ridiculousness.

Of course, it’s not funny to Dawn, who is traumatized twice in one afternoon. She’s blaming herself for the assault. She’s disenchanted with a purity script that now sees her as impure forever (previously chewed gum and dirty sticky tape analogies burn). She’s disenchanted with her fantasies of a pure wedding that culminates in sanctioned marital sex with a perfect gentleman from the same community. All her life, she’s defined herself against her stepbrother, who got bit as a juvenile offender fingering her in a kiddie pool and grew up into a ‘hardcore’ delinquent who now only does anal with his girlfriend while obsessing over Dawn, though unsure about his motives for either–but frankly, he’s not much of a thinker.

Dawn was the good girl. Dawn was never the problem child. Dawn was Little Miss Sunshine, Princess of Purity, and now she can’t see herself like that anymore. She tears down the childish purity propaganda she taped all over her bedroom walls–as a counterpoint to the porn plastered over her stepbrother’s room.

Thus begins her period of self-discovery, even though she’s afraid of herself, of being judged by her purity community, of being caught for what she did. She patiently soaks the sticker off the health text to try to understand herself and finally meets a vulva for the first time. She goes to a shady AF gynecologist, who finally gives her the name that’s been the stuff of jokes and legends: vagina dentata.

Traumatized once more–sex and puberty is honestly terrifying–she reaches out to someone who she thinks is a friend, and the cycle of men taking advantage and getting poetic justice continues, but she’s also gradually adjusting to her sexuality and–more important–the power she has because of it.

Seriously, though, there’s not a single castration you’ll regret. And in the midst of the horror, TEETH is at its heart a black comedy about female sexuality, so it’s okay to be horrified, and it’s okay to laugh. Even the poster is fantastic, evoking the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET bath scene and JAWS in equal measure, because it’s a supernatural horror movie and a creature feature at the same. One thing’s for sure–you will be entertained by this indie gem, which has already reached cult status among horror fans.

The Female Revenge Fantasy

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On a weekend this April, I watched three movies, two horror, one mystery thriller. The two horrors I watched Friday night, KILLING GROUND and DEMON INSIDE (ESPECTRO), both featured sexual assault, raw but off-screen for the first and on-screen for the second. The rape element in KILLING GROUND especially, though off-screen, was particularly brutal–psychologically painful to endure because the movie was human horror rather than supernatural. But that’s not to minimize the rape in DEMON INSIDE, where the entire premise is Paz Vega’s trauma due to the assault and the paranoia that arises from her rapist being released because they don’t believe her.

On Saturday, I decided to take a break from the violence of horror, which is so often sexual or sexualized, to watch suspense thriller WIND RIVER, because it had Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olson. I probably should have known better, because there’s a direct line between human horror and suspense thriller on the genre wheel. But there I was, subjected to yet another brutal rape and murder.

And people, I’m tired. I need to face my fears now and then, deal with it through supernatural lenses, confront some painful realities. Sexual violence plays a part of some of my fiction because of that. So yeah, I’m even a part of this, because like it or not, these fucked-up power dynamics are a part of our world. But God, I’m so tired of it.

Guys, this is why women who enjoy horror sometimes need female revenge fantasies. This is why we need movies like AMERICAN MARY and THE WOMAN. This is why we need TEETH.

I’m not playing the suffering Olympics here. In reality, there’s all sorts of iterations of sexual assault, some which are woefully underrepresented in media. But as far as  numbers and in terms of representation in the horror and thriller genres, the sheer amount of sexual and sexualized violence is stunning, and while women have their own way of sharing that part of the horror world–through sexual fantasy, through female-led and/or female-directed horror–and though both the horror and thriller genres have tried to make up for it with the Last Girl and Female Law Enforcement Officer in a Man’s World tropes, the fact is that most horror/thrillers are made by and/or for men.

The industry is catching on that half the viewership is female, and not just because guys bring their girlfriends, and there have been some wonderful movies in the new millennium that represent women as more than bimbos for the slaughter, breasts to slash. But the only LAW & ORDER still running is SVU, and rape is still used as a trial by fire for damaged women and a trigger to action for male heroes, often without consideration for how real and personal this trauma is, and how real the fear is. It’s helplessness. It’s being born with parts that other people think should belong to them (see DEADGIRL, which is NOT a black comedy, no matter what the back of the DVD case says). It’s an understanding that there are those who don’t see you as a person, only as the empty spaces you offer.

I’ve been fortunate all my life not to have suffered this particular violence, but I’m still a product of my culture, because I still have to arrange my life around the fear, consider how my actions would be perceived by a jury of my rapist’s peers.

So for fuck’s sake, sometimes I need movies like TEETH, and if it makes men cross their legs and wince, all the fucking better. Men could stand to be more afraid of women, and not just because they think menstruation is gross. But what about male revenge fantasy, one might say? First of all, there’s plenty of that in the action genre. For another, there’s literally nothing that women do to men in such overwhelming numbers that deserves gendered horror-genre revenge. “Lovesick teen” as a justification for terrorism, my ass. The worst thing a woman did was reject him. The worst thing he did was kill her. Women are getting kidnapped for marriage, trafficked and criminalized for it, burned with acid and raped and shot just because they say no, because someone thinks women don’t own their own bodies.

Men could stand to be a little afraid of women in such a way it doesn’t lead to burning or hanging witches. Maybe one day they will be.

In the meantime, I’ll watch AMERICAN MARY, and I’ll watch TEETH.

(TEETH review to come.)

Rest of Your Life

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“Rest of Your Life” is more freestyle than some of my other structured nuggets. No joke, I came up with it in the shower and kept having to leave the bathroom in the middle of drying myself off to write another few lines. Because I sure as hell ain’t going to remember it if I don’t get it down. This is why I keep notebooks everywhere.

I’m not even sure what the style would be or who it would sound like. Maybe it’s in the mode of Sara Bareilles? Maybe it’s just a poem instead of a lyric. And yes, the first verse is a nod to Hamilton.

Anyway, I’m just going to leave this here.

REST OF YOUR LIFE

I’ll admit that I thought I had time

They said I had time

Now I’ve run out of time

And it’s only harder from here.

All my life they told me you’re gonna be fine

Just follow the line

And watch for the signs

You’ll be just fine

And there’s nothing to fear.

But I look back on years of pouring the resin

And that doesn’t lessen

The pain of this lesson

To see my mistakes in all of their glory

And now mine’s a story

Heading near to the end before it begins.

This is the rest of your life

The fly caught in amber

The mammoth in ice

None of it ever really matters

The days pass, minutes by hours

And nothing ever changes

No risks and no dangers

Until no one remembers

You were here when you die

The hourglass is streaming down with the sand

I’m just the glass, the length of the strand

The more the clock ticks, the more I understand

Time falls and time flies, no matter what’s planned.

The mirror’s no clearer

And sand only gets dearer

As grain after grain slips through my hands.

And I’m the one turning the pages.

Sleepwalking through all of the stages

Playing someone else’s part in someone else’s band.

I don’t take my stand.

I remain where I land

Don’t know if I can still set myself free

If the chains are all coming from me.

This is the rest of your life

The fly caught in amber

The mammoth in ice

None of it ever really matters

The days pass, minutes by hours

And nothing ever changes

No risks and no dangers

Until no one remembers

You were here when you die