Notes from Maine - 2023/10/08
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been watching horror movies. I started with House of the Devil (2009). This movie took place in the 80s, but had a 70s aesthetic. It felt like Roger Corman produced an after-school special about Satanism. Next, I re-watched Sinister (2021). That movie does amazing things with lighting. Sitting at the dinner table, it feels like the family is alone on a tiny island of light in the depths of space. The characters are surrounded by a menacing void in every frame.
I watched The Exorcist (1973), which holds up nicely, and then a friend and I went out to see The Exorcist: Believer (2023), which I thought was well done. Some of my favorite horror movies are the ones that have a gradual on-ramp into madness, but that’s not the current style. You’ll see four people hanged in the first five seconds of Sinister. I enjoyed the way that The Exorcist: Believer made me wait for the demon to arrive. We all know it’s coming, so why rush?
Last night, I re-watched Poltergeist (1982). It’s right in the title—you know what we’re in for when you start the movie—but the family is blissfully unaware that anything bad will ever happen to them. Nobody in the family ignores the reality of what’s happening. There are no naysayers, denying the paranormal activity happening around them. When Diane (the mom) discovers things moving on their own in the kitchen, Steve (her husband) is on her side instantly. They even go to the neighbors together, to see if there’s anything happening over there.
That’s one of the things I enjoyed most about this movie. In so many horror films, you have just one person recognizing the approaching doom while everyone else denies it. In this movie, the family is always on the same page. When the ghosts come marching down the stairs, the cameras turn themselves on, recording the event. We don’t have to spend any energy shouting at the screen, begging the characters to believe what they are seeing. They already believe.
A few years ago I had a terrifying dream. I was lying in bed, just about to fall asleep, when something banged on my door four times. I knew it had to be a dream because the dogs didn’t react. But if the dogs hadn’t been there, why would that have been so frightening? A knock at the door is inherently polite. If a person wanted to get in, they could just break through the door—it’s not that hard. Or, they could have just… you know… opened it? But it was a knock. A knock is either a request for entry, or a query to see if anyone is occupying a room, right? Neither of those implies direct harm. At worst, I could have escaped through a window. At best, I could have just stayed quiet, hiding from the inquisitor. But, in the dream, I was terrified.
My friend said, “It’s because we’re most vulnerable when we’re asleep. We’re relying on not being attacked when we’re vulnerable like that.”
I think that’s true, and that’s what the entire movie Poltergeist is based on. Whenever something bad happens in that movie, it’s always after the little kids have been tucked into bed and the adults are getting ready to drift off as well. In the opening sequence, it seems like the entire family has passed out after a bender. Dad is zonked in the La-Z-Boy in front of a static-filled TV. Dana fell asleep on top of a bag of potato chips. Mom is sprawled out on top of the covers and five year old is stumbling around the house playing with monsters.
Later, camped out in the living room, watching closed-circuit monitors and listening for Carol Anne through the TV, the boy whispers his questions about the afterlife. It has the cozy atmosphere of the last two people awake at a sleepover. The movie conjures the perfect setting for a good scare. The lack of foreshadowing, and their stalwart belief that everything is going to be okay, makes the horror even more compelling.
A couple of franchises are coming to a close right now. I’ve heard that Saw X will be the last of those movies, and the original cast is back for Insidious: The Red Door. Maybe I’ll choose one of those to plow through. I don’t think I’ve seen either one of those series from start to finish.
