David Antrobus's Blog: The Migrant Type, page 26
February 21, 2014
8. to 5. Hysteria and the F-Word
5. The Girl Next Door
Okay, I have a strong stomach; I've watched some brutal, even indefensible stuff at the extreme ragged ends of the horror genre, and while it bothers me I also recognise it as fiction, in the final analysis. Grand Guignol has its place. Splatter can be downright fun. Depictions of torture a Warner Bros cartoon writ large, stupid and goofy as hell. Horror can often be a carnival ride, and we know that after all the screaming in the darkness, we'll eventually trundle out o...
February 14, 2014
12. to 9. Other to Mother
9. Psycho
I've mostly tried to avoid the canonical favourites and given more recent entries a chance, but this is so classic, so iconic, so redolent of the genesis of slasher terror I couldn't ignore it. Dark, anxious, voyeuristic, and at times frightening in a way that's rarely if ever been equalled, here's creepy Norman Bates in all his Oedipal glory. Plus, uh, Janet Leigh, and "we're all in our own private traps." The first of many horror films to draw on notorious real-life serial killer,...
February 7, 2014
16. to 13. Staring Into the Abyss
13. Audition
Takashi Miike's masterpiece, in my opinion, and one of the greatest examples of "abuse horror," a term I literally just made up. But yeah, it's beautiful and creepy in equal measure, and when the torture occurs, it's unrelenting and unflinching, which I admire while at the same time wishing it wasn't. The best horror should never depict femininity as weakness, and this certainly doesn't even try. Not so much a feminist revenge flick as a subconscious reordering, a reckoning. Hones...
February 1, 2014
Of Wharves, Loneliness, and Monsters
Yes, I know I've been discussing horror movies on a writing blog, and my justification is that I'm writing about them, aren't I? Okay, that's fairly lame, but it's my trainset and I'll crash the engines into the bridge supports if I damn well want to, okay? But I also don't want to forget those little orphaned pieces of writing, or indeed writing news, that can so easily end up scattered amid a flurry of desktop files or even somewhere out there in cyberspace, where no one can hear them screa...
January 31, 2014
20. to 17. Ice and Quiet to Disquieting Skies
17. Take Shelter
Okay, another movie many would not classify as horror, but for me, what is more horrifying than having to choose between accepting your mental health is slowly disintegrating and acknowledging the possibility the world might be approaching apocalypse? Add to that an incredible performance by Michael Shannon, more than ably supported by the lovely Jessica Chastain, an eerie and haunting score, and atmosphere to spare—loveliness, loneliness, and dread braiding like the skeins o...
January 24, 2014
24. to 21. Faux Real to Surreal
21. Eraserhead
More Lynch and perhaps more obviously horror than the last entry. But also surreal, not to mention darkly and disturbingly sexually repressed. Actually, there is no other film quite like Eraserhead, which is perhaps a mercy. Bleak, industrial, helpless, it depicts our forced (or chosen?) passivity in a world that wants to grind us into nothing. Well, okay, that's just one interpretation. Others centre on the fears new parents try desperately to suppress of their diseased, defor...
January 17, 2014
28. to 25. Flapping Jaws to Buzzing Saws
25. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Ha, I can feel the hardcore horror fans starting to lighten up a little now (while mainstream fans balk). Just you wait. ;) But yeah, Tobe Hooper's low budget slasher film was a benchmark of massive proportions. As with Psycho, it was inspired by the repulsive exploits of real-life killer Ed Gein, although it took that inspiration in a whole different direction, but another predecessor deserving of a nod would be Deliverance, made just two years earlier. And si...
January 10, 2014
32. to 29. Carnies to Barbies
29. Wolf Creek
The Aussies are coming. And then some. This film takes its sweet yet never boring time building backstory and character so we truly care about these young British and Australian backpackers, before unleashing a "based on a true story" demented Crocodile Dundee character with the innocuous name of Mick Taylor. And yeah, we're plunged into a nocturnal outback world of pure awfulness we hope is over sooner rather than later, for the sake of the innocent and undeserving young folks...
January 3, 2014
36. to 33. Infected to Invaded
33. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
For me, this (directed byPhilip Kaufman)is the most horrific version of the classic story. Most would argue it's science fiction, but I'd still advocate for its inclusion within the definition of horror I'm running with here. Not only for its squish factor (those pods!) but ultimately for that scene, what I think of as the "Sutherland howl." I won't bother with the in-depth allegorical stuff here, but read up on how this story has been interpreted over...
December 31, 2013
No One Ever
After the party, we all go down by the shivering river.
Winter, cold, but nowhere ice. Kirsten laughs at the richly carved salmon sculptures curled all perfect for the tourists, while live herring gulls circle overhead, warm someplace within their torpedo torsos, and occasionally screaming. Ornery as fuck.
Rafe, one acquisitive eye on the tawdry sub-stripmall liquidation warehouse bargain world outlet stores, at last says this: "Let's go. Find something good. Could we?"
And Lucinda knows she go...
