Our Deepest, Darkest Fears
(These 3 kids think their mother has lost it. Hint: she has and big time)I’ve had a strange obsession of late. It’s an obsession with a little O, maybe better classified as an unusual interest. Unusual because it seemed to come out of nowhere, compelling me to dive into a genre I have never – and I mean NEVER – had even the slightest compulsion to examine.
That is the uber-gory horror film.
If you’re anything like me – and I suspect you are because you’re here in the Cold – gory horror films are a phenomenon that has mostly passed you by. Disturbing, ghoulish, icky, nauseating, and nightmare-inducing are words that immediately come to mind, and I don’t like any of them.
I have enough problems with a lifelong fear of the dark and piling on to existing phobias wasn’t on my dance card this year, thank-you-very-much.
Then I came across this extremely unpleasant movie poster.
(Who’s scarier, this mother or the Exorcist child?)I’ve stumbled over countless horror movie posters in my online browsing career, but for some reason this one made me seek out the trailer. And let me just cut to the chase – it was absolutely godawful terrifying, with a fear factor of ten – no, eleven! I haven’t been this disturbed by a scary movie since I was a kid and introduced to The Exorcist, a film that has been known to keep me up at night to this day.
Now, if you’re sitting here reading this and saying to yourself, “Oh, Victoria – puh-lease. These movies are junk, and you should be paying them absolutely no mind,” allow me to retort.
The Evil Dead franchise is beloved by the horror community, and I have nothing but respect for top-of-the-line genre projects, even when I’m not partial to the genre in question. It’s touted as smart, original, and careful about its legacy. Sam Raimi of Marvel Universe fame (he directed The Spider-Man Trilogy) launched his career by directing the inaugural Evil Dead in 1981. According to movie fandom lore, he begged, borrowed and stole in order to get the low-budget horror film made, and it paid off big time. Evil Dead became a cult hit that spawned a handful of highly rated sequels, plus a TV show, all of which have been universally praised by fans and reviewers alike. There’s simply not a bad Evil Dead film in the bunch, say numerous horror film influencers, reviewers and afficionados.
Apparently, this newest installment and reboot of the series is the creme de la creme, with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 96% – and it hasn’t even officially released yet.
(An homage to Raimi’s Spiderman Trilogy perhaps?)While all the third-party validation is nice, the very real, very human reason why Evil Dead Rise has captured my attention is essentially the same reason why The Exorcist did. It’s a story that cuts to our core, tearing asunder in the most brutal and merciless way, the most primal relationship we know: that of mother and child.
From what I’ve managed to cobble together (having not yet seen the film – it doesn’t release wide until April 21st – I’ve watched every clip and trailer I could find), this is the basic premise of the story:
A pair of estranged sisters are reunited when the younger of the duo decides to drop in on her older sibling in hopes of making up. The older sister is the newly single mother of three children (see the first image in this missive) and is struggling financially and emotionally, just managing to keep it together for her kids’ sake. The younger sister, it is revealed, is herself pregnant, single and conflicted, hence why she decided to visit her big sis and reconnect.
Lo and behold, the oldest child, a boy, discovers a mysterious book in the bowels of their Los Angeles apartment building. As the family peruses the book and its bizarre contents, they accidentally unleash some horrid, flesh-possessing demons, which murder the older sister and take over her body. Needless to say, mayhem ensues, and the younger, pregnant sister is tasked with trying to save her nieces and nephew from the wretched and tortuous fate their “mother” has in store for them.
Despite my general disinclination to watch people being bled, disemboweled, burned, slashed, and impaled, I’ve always given kudos to the way the horror genre uses our worst fears to help us examine what we’re made of, forcing us to confront how we really feel in a way that leaves little room for wiggle.
While it’s highly unlikely that we or our mothers will ever be possessed by a demon this gross and malevolent…
the fear of hurting our children, doing wrong by them in some irreparable way, clings like a monkey to the latent thoughts of any caring parent. I distinctly remember finding a drawing my son made of me when he was probably eight or nine years old. Minus the blood and glowing possession eyes, it didn’t look a whole lot different than the creepy picture above. The perspective was the same and he nailed the smile that was barely containing my anger. He even gave me a word bubble that read something like “Go clean your room, blah, blah, blah. Go do your homework.”
“Sorry, mom,” he told me, after discovering that I’d come upon his artwork. “You don’t really look like that; I was just mad.”
Only I did look like that, and I knew it.
Let’s face it: I’ve looked like this, too.Haunted, perhaps, by our own memories of parental failings or abuse, or just tormented by the common stresses that plague even the best families, most mothers I know have a tendency to disseminate the arguments they have with their children; perform autopsies on every conflict and impulsive act; burn with regret over every ugly thought. God forbid if one or more of those thoughts is ever vocalized.
We agonize over past missteps, all while fearing for our every future mistake. A mother’s anxiety doesn’t magically disappear once her children are grown and her relationships with her progeny enter a different phase, either.
Those of us who have had experience with a parent who is exhibiting symptoms of dementia, mental illness or an age or illness induced acceleration of personality flaws, tremble for the person we could become once life begins taking away more than it’s giving us.
The pain of watching our mothers turn into people we hardly even know is only eclipsed by the powerlessness we may feel to do anything about it. The sorrow, the guilt, the frustration, the anger, can be overwhelming at times. It’s not uncommon for a daughter to find herself praying, “Please, God, don’t let that ever be me. Don’t let me put my children through that.”
(The bloody set of Evil Dead Rise)Who of us doesn’t want to forever be the fun mom, the loving granny, the sharp-witted crone who’s able to take care of herself, and still be there to offer advice and a shoulder to lean on? The thought of our children not wanting to spend time with us when they’re grown and have their own families is like a shocking twist to what we thought would be a heartwarming story. It’s the fear at the heart of the Evil Dead reboot that has so entranced me.
Because I know from experience, as someone who comes from a deeply damaged lot of refugees, political prisoners, and victims of family catastrophes, that love can perform miracles for sure, but it can’t save every person, every relationship. Not everyone has the strength or insight to rise above the traumas that were visited upon them when they were young. Sometimes, after a life of swatting away demons, such people are finally consumed by them.
That’s a common enough horror story.
(Chainsaws are a theme in the Evil Dead franchise.)“Oh, my God, I would so go see that!” my youngest daughter, Josephine, said as she caught me watching yet another clip of the new Evil Dead movie the other day. She’s a fearless horror buff who laughs her way through such films, delighting in every jump-scare, and never once looking away from the blood and guts. I envy her.
“Yeah, I’m not so sure,” I said. “I think I’ll stick to the trailers. It’s not really my thing.”
Josephine wasn’t buying it. She hugged me from behind and gave me a sweet kiss on the ear.
“It’s a movie, mom. And it’s not real. Look, here’s a picture of the actress who plays the demon mother. Isn’t she pretty?”
“Yup.”
“So, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
(She does look a lot better without all the blood.)She’s right.
While it is daunting to contemplate worst-case scenarios through the allegory of a murderous family drama, it’s important to remember that it’s not real. We are not destined to repeat the mistakes of our own pasts, let alone the mistakes of our foremothers. One of the great, glorious things about life is that it is a boutique experience, unique to every individual and circumstance.
But that won’t stop me from looking under my bed for monsters.
And yes, I do have a perfectly appropriate excerpt from my Cold War Noir work-in-progress:
Savonlinna, Finland, 1959
Ales’s eyes swept the room, taking it in for the first time. Handsome oil portraits of men with curled white mustaches and women wearing pearl jewelry and dour expressions. Furniture made of polished wood and wrought iron. The most striking feature was the bed they’d made plenty use of. It was soft and firm all at once and large enough that it could have fit three grown adults easily. The place sure looked nice to him.
“I don’t stay in hotels very often,” he told her.
“Well, the luxury hotels in India – I can tell you they’re quite something. Too much something. Still, they are what they promise.”
He nodded as if he’d seen them himself.
“How long are you staying?” she asked him.
“I don’t really know.” That, at least, was true. He was beginning to not like that everything he’d told her so far about himself was a lie.
“Well, I’m staying for a while.” The woman stubbed out her cigarette and came back to the bed, crawling to him like a cat. She came close but didn’t kiss him. She’d only kissed him once and hard, immediately after they’d entered her hotel room. The rest of the time they’d spent doing everything but kissing.
“I do hope we can see each other again,” she said.
“I’d like that very much,” he told her. “Tomorrow?”
She placed her finger on his lip, tapping three times as if for luck. “Perhaps.”
Ales licked his lips, tasting where her finger had touched them. He swallowed hard, wanting to reach out and touch her right then, but he didn’t have the nerve.
“My name is Ales,” he said.
The woman’s expression didn’t change. She neither acknowledged nor rejected his formal introduction, as he feared she might do.
“I thought you should know, in case we do get together again.”
“Nice to meet you, Ales,” she said.
“What’s your name?”
The woman leaned back, taking a slow, lavish breath. “I’d like you to call me Mother.”
