Women in Horror: Revenge (2018)

* spoilers *

Jen is flown out to a luxurious home in a remote desert for a romantic getaway with her married boyfriend, Richard. The plan is to have a nice, sexy weekend together before his annual hunting trip with his two friends Dimitri and Stan. The first night goes as planned, but the day, the two friends arrive early and create an awkward situation since Richard wanted to keep her a secret. They party together that night with drinking and dancing. The next morning, Jen finds herself alone with Dimitri and Stan. She tries to ignore them, but Stan won't leave her alone and eventually rapes her. Richard is angry, but then wants Jen to live in Canada with a bribe to save his friend. When she refuses, he pushes her off a cliff and leaves her for dead while he and his friends go hunting. Jen isn't dead and embarks on a grueling journey for survival and revenge.

Revenge is one of my favorite rape revenge films mainly because it's actual from a female perspective that gets so many things that men don't. Right from the beginning, Jen is viewed as an object. The camera focuses on her butt in a skimpy pink bikini. The men at the party view her through binoculars, seeing one part of her at a time. This type of gaze makes it clear that she is an object, only seen in bits and pieces and never as a whole, full person. She is only valued for her appearance. It's off putting to watch, but will change as the film goes on. Coralie Fargeat includes so many excuses that people use to blame women for rape here. Jen is sleeping with a married man. She wears revealing clothing and skin baring bathing suits without caring who sees or judges. She dances sexily with Stan when Richard refuses. Victim blamers would say "look what she's wearing," "she led him on," "what did she expect," but Fargeat lays the blame squarely where it belongs: on the rapist and the men who did nothing to stop it.

Richard leaves the next morning to sort out their hunting trip and leaves Jen alone with Stan and Dimitri. Once Stan is alone with her, he thinks he can claim what he views as Richard's object. He starts a conversation with Jen, seemingly lighthearted, that gets increasingly insistant. When she lightly rejects his advances, he demands to know why she found him attractive last night and then suddenly not today, focusing on her dance as a tease and a come on. The scene where he questions her is so uncomfortable. Jen does so many things to try to reject him in a socially acceptable way like playing a game on her phone to avoid eye contact, uncomfortably laughing, angling herself away from him, and trying to placate him. This felt so real because coming out and saying no or leave me alone can come off as rude. Being alone with someone, especially an entitled man, and being entirely at their mercy is frightening and women are still expected to put the man's (or whoever's threatening them) emotional comfort above their own physical comfort. Stan ignores every cue, invades her personal space, and eventually attacks her.

Too many others films of this subgenre focus on making the rape scene graphic and titillating while this one focuses entirely on Jen's experience. This puts the focus on Jen's emotions about what's happening to her instead of being exploitative. Right before, Dimitri had walked in on them, clearly seeing her in distress. Stan crudely says to join in or leave and Dimitri returns to the pool with snacks. During the assault, Jen's face is seen through a floor to ceiling glass window while Stan shoves her against it. Dimitri turned up the TV so he couldn't hear Jen. The only sounds during this scene are the loud TV, Jen's cries, and the rhythmic pounding against the glass. Beside Jen's face, Dimitri's reflection is seen as he floats in the pool. Dimitri's indifference is squarely in front of her and she can hear it in the loud TV. This puts Jen's emotion and experience into focus rather than the assault itself. This is done very rarely in a rape revenge films, the only other one I can think of being the Soska Sisters' American Mary. It puts Coralie Fargeat's view in comparison to almost every other rape revenge film that clearly views men as their audience to titillate rather than other women who could relate to the woman's experience.

Afterwards, Jen locks herself in the bedroom until Richard returns. He is angry at Stan, but only because he views Jen as an object. In his view, Stan essentially played with the toy Richard brought for himself. Richard's solution is to force Jen to move to Canada, get her a new job, and give her a bunch of hush money without regard to her life, family, or her well being. Jen understandably rejects his offer and threatens to tell his wife everything. In response, he pushes her off a cliff where she is impaled on a tree. Richard and his friends leave for their hunting trip and plan to dispose of her body after they come back. She defies their expectations and survives, getting out of the tree in an ingenious way. From this moment on, the men completely underestimate her. At first, they think she's dead. When they return to see her gone, they view it as just another hunting trip with a weak, wounded animal in their sights. They don't take the proper precautions like staying together, being watchful, or getting prepared in any way.

Jen doesn't say much after this point in the film and speaks with her actions. After dispatching Dimitri, she steals a dirt bike and tries to escape on it. It eventually runs out of gas, but she walks to a cave and makes a fire to warm herself, eats the peyote hidden in her locket, and tends to her wounds. While some aspects of this are unrealistic, it's more about the metaphor. Through the fire that gets her off the tree and this fire, she is reborn as a revenant in a hallucinogenic haze, emblazoned with a phoenix that healed her wound. The next morning, nightmares upon nightmares visit her, reminding her that she's still being hunted. What follows is an intense cat and mouse game with Stan and Richard that has moments of each getting the upper hand before the men are killed. Before he dies, Richard screams "Women always have to put up a fucking fight" in Jen's face because he's frustrated that she won't just roll over and die. It's wonderful to see such entitled, privileged men get what they deserve and have a woman deliver justice. Jen survives and it's implied that she escapes on the helicopter meant for the men.

Revenge is a satisfying piece of cinema that captures a woman's perspective in a rape revenge story. I was pleased and surprised to see even small details, like the uncomfortable conversation between Stan and Jen, ring true to my experience and what I've seen happen to others. While it's not the first, it's amazing to see and it won't be the last. It has elements of the brutal French extremity movement, but stays squarely with Jen, her feelings, and her experience throughout the film. I look forward to what Coralie Fargeat does next and I hope she will stay in the horror genre for a while.

My rating: 5/5 fishmuffins

Women in Horror: I Am Not Your Final Girl by Claire C. Holland

I Am Not Your Final Girl is a poetry collection, each poem from the point of view of a woman in a horror film from final girl heroes to (seemingly) monstrous villains and everything in between. Claire C. Holland skillfully captures each character, their mindset, and their emotions completely. They are sorted into four categories: Assault, Possession, Destruction, and Transformation.

The introduction of the book contextualizes the collection with Holland's feelings about the current state of affairs in the United States with the Trump presidency and the resulting and increasing attacks on women physically and in legislation. Women's bodily autonomy is constantly debated and, by extension, so is our humanity. She sees final girls and real life women willing to stand up for their rights as those to look to, emulate, and help us deal with our darkest moments. Through this lens, Holland takes characters in horror films and makes them more than the trope they fall in or often how they are portrayed onscreen.

In the section titled Assault, women survive or succumb to many different types of assault. Holland takes their conflict in the film and relates it to things that women experience every day. Rosemary from Rosemary's Baby (1968) shows how her husband, who gave her up like an object, is worse than the Devil himself. Carla from The Entity (1982) points out how doctor's don't believe her about her condition or how much pain she's in, which is a typical experience for many women with fatal results. Sara from The Descent (2005) describes her mindset at the very last scene of the film, where she is surrounded by creatures and haunted by her daughter and the sins of her past. Holland perfectly articulates the feeling behind Sally's maniacal laughter at the end of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)  in the back of the pickup truck, glad to be alive but not sure if she can continue. My favorite of this section is Laurie Strode from Halloween (1978), who shows that this situation of men killing women happens literally everywhere and that she is just trying to live her life.

The second section titled Possession has some unexpected entries. Bea from Honeymoon (2014) puts her story into her context, where her husband is frightening of change in his new wife and also changing to be continually interrogating her and abusive. Shideh from Under the Shadow (2016) focuses on her lost career and how women are meant to give up everything they are when they become mothers, leaving parts of themselves to rot with disuse, while men are exempt. Nola from The Brood (1979) is also focused on society's view of motherhood as the most important thing in the world contrasted with society's treatment of mothers. Ginger's poem from Ginger Snaps (2000) is my favorite. People surrounding her viewed her as sexually available with their catcalls, gossip, and name calling. When she became sexual and embraced it, she became a monster in their eyes. This poem in particular captures the entire film and its message an only a page or two.

The third section title Destruction includes many characters deemed as monstrous. Francisca from The Eyes of My Mother (2016) and May from May (2002) both want to connect with people. While Francisca bathes her dead father and mourns her lost connection, May collects parts like cloth scraps for a new friend and longs to be truly seen. Amelia from The Babadook (2014) thinks of murderering her child and freeing herself from the burden, something women might think of if parenting isn't what they expected or wanted. India from Stoker (2013) is titillated by her own expression of violence. Elsa's poem from Splice (2009) really changed my view of the film. I hadn't really liked it and found it problematic in many ways. However, this view of the creature reminds me more of Frankenstein, where men are obsessed with mothering, giving birth, and creating monsters to do the horrific things they simply can't. She longs to remake the world in her own image in return.

The fourth section titled Transformation has some less obvious choices that focus more on interior rather than exterior transformation. One of the contentious scenes in Black Christmas (1974) is when Jess remains in the house even though she was told the killer is there. Her poem shows how she isn't satisfied waiting outside to be saved and has to do what she can to save her friends. Mia from The Evil Dead (2013) also has the strength to fight for and save herself. Dana from The Cabin in the Woods (2011) refuses to be sacrificed for a broken world and braces herself for whatever changes that brings. Carrie (1976) rejects responsibility for original sin heaped upon her and fights back covered in blood. Clarice from The Silence of the Lambs (1991) finds it hard to tell the difference between men and monster since both look at her while stripping her down. Selena from 28 Days Later (2002) rejects the military's effort to rebuilt society with rape when that world is already gone.

I Am Not Your Final Girl is not something I would normally seek out. I am not the biggest fan of poetry, but so many reviewed it favorably that I had to read it. I have never been so emotionally affected by poetry. Claire C. Holland masterfully captures each character as they are in the film and relates their experience to women today, whether it be in surviving emotional or physical abuse, being ignored, rejecting the status quo, not fitting into society's view of women, or long for some sort of connection. I was happy to see new perspective of films from the point of view of the character and so much variety in the film choices. I will eagerly read whatever Holland writes next.

My rating: 5/5 fishmuffins

Women in Horror Month X!!!

It's the tenth Women in Horror Month! Although I haven't participated every year, this event has truly reshaped how I viewed films and read books. It made me venture out of my comfort zone in many ways and look at horror and stories in general more critically. It also made me pay more attention to female filmmakers because it seems to still be a small percentage of films made by women. Just because a film features a woman as the main character doesn't mean it's automatically a feminist film and just because a film has rape or misogyny in it doesn't make it a misogynistic film. This year, my goal is to publish an article a day and feature most if not all works by directors, writers, and podcasters who are women.

The Women in Horror website and Twitter features and retweets events for this month, so follow them to support other creators. They are also offering a free month of Shudder, an excellent horror movie streaming service that is definitely worth your time, with code: wihmx. Happy Women in Horror Month!!

Escape Room (2019)

Six people are mailed identical puzzle boxes by people they trust. When solved, an invitation to the most exclusive escape room pops out with a $10,000 reward for people who can get to the end of the experience. All six arrive at an office building where the waiting room is the first puzzle in the escape room. When they barely escape a fiery fate, it becomes clear that their lives hang in the balance and they have to work together to solve each room.

Escape Room feels familiar: six strangers with their own secrets being forced to solve puzzles with fatal consequences. Many films take this basic formula like Cube or Saw, but this one felt different. While the others establish what's going on pretty quickly as the characters get to know each other and work together, Escape Room keeps the audience guessing until the last 20 or so minutes of the film. It isn't the most unique premise, but it's a decent reason for everything. The lead up is entertaining and kept me frantically thinking about how to solve each room. The first room is a giant oven that heats up more and more as they find clues and trigger traps. The second room appears outside to be in a freezing climate and they have to solve the room before they freeze to death. The third room is upside down and the ceiling gives way as time goes on, causing the players to climb on furniture and props to survive. Each room has unique clues, dangers, and specific references to the players' secrets.

The characters are varied and of course butt heads over the course of their ordeal. Zoey Davis is a gifted but extremely shy college student and the youngest of the players. Ben Miller works in a grocery store stock room and seems to be going through a hard time, choosing to cope with alcohol. Cheerful Mike Nolan is a retired miner while intense Jason Walker works on Wall Street. Amanda Harper is one of my favorite characters and a scarred war veteran. Danny Khan has the most experience with escape rooms and excels at puzzles. All of them have skills and talents that lend themselves to figuring out how to survive and solve the puzzles. On top of this, the most hidden and intimate details of their lives are included in these rooms and at times shake them to their core. These details added a layer of complexity and let the audience get to know the characters much better than is usual in this type of film.

As a January horror release, I didn't expect much from Escape Room. It takes familiar tropes from films like Saw and Cube and keeps what's actually going on a secret for most of the runtime. The flaws come at the end. The reveal is a bit underwhelming, but what really brings the film down is the coda. It's like a mini sequel already at the very end and takes away from the rest, already springboarding into a franchise. I think it would make a good one, but let the film end before that happens. Other than that, Escape Room is a fun, exciting film to start off the year with.

My rating: 3.5/5 fishmuffins

Holiday Horror: All the Creatures Were Stirring (2018)

All the Creatures Were Stirring is an anthology holiday horror film. The frame story has friends Max and Jenna seeing an avant garde, minimalist play on Christmas Eve. A title card for each segment is presented and a part of it is pantomimed after each one. Overall, the frame story is cute and a little weird. The ending of it (titled And To All a Good Night) seems unfinished, but is definitely creepy and unsettling.

* All the Stockings Were Hung

A corporate Christmas party with white elephant gifts goes horribly wrong. Someone decides to make it his personal Saw where the building is flooded with toxic gas and coworkers have to open presents that could be conventional presents, weapons, or something that exposes a secret. This segment ramps up really fast with the first surprising kill. People's behavior goes south real fast as this sick game continues. The corporate environment is captured well and a few kills are unexpected and well done. It's a fun short for sure, but the bad effects, tenuous logic in choices, and spotty acting held it back.

* Dash Away All

A man is last minute grocery shopping on Christmas Even when he locks his phone and keys in his car. The only people around are three women in a van, so he approaches them for help. This is my favorite segment by far because the concept and execution are the best. There's a little bit of Christmas in the family frustration and shopping aspect and a really interesting creature that is mostly kept hidden. It's hard to talk about this one with spoilers, but it's the most successful and fun of all the segments.

* All Through the House

A curmudgeonly man, who hates his neighbors and their gaudy Christmas decorations, decides to stay home and watch TV on Christmas. It's essentially a modern, short take on A Christmas Carol with a coke-snorting jerk instead of a greedy old man. This segment is pretty forgettable for the most part because it doesn't really do anything to the formula of the story. The rest comes off as silly and weird without much of a payoff.

* Arose Such a Clatter

A distracted driver hits a reindeer and bashes its head in to put it out of its misery, but something witnesses the accident and follows him home. The concept is fun and one of my favorites, but the reality disappoints. It's revealed quickly that the reindeer is Blitzen, so Rudolph watches and seeks revenge. This could have been so fun, but Rudolph is never shown. We only see his red tinted point of view. The budget clearly wasn't there to fully flesh out the unique concept and the acting makes the characters seem like they aren't taking the threat seriously.

* In a Twinkling

Gabby and her friends have a surprise Christmas party at her boyfriend Steve's house. He always spends Christmas alone and they all will soon find out why. This segment would fit in well with The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits. There are automaton people who look like their friends, some unknowable beings, and a surprisingly sweet ending. This one has the best acting by far and it's a wonderful segment to end on.

Overall, All the Creatures Were Stirring has a lot of potential and good concepts, but the execution suffers at times. Most of the segments look very low budget and what visual effects looked shoddy. Many segments are supposedly to be dark comedies, but the execution made it fall flat for me. I had high expectations for this, especially with the inclusion of several talented indie horror actors. However, there's something missing in the writing and acting and the budget seemed to limit their ideas.

My rating: 3/5 fishmuffins

Holiday Horror: Anna and the Apocalypse (2018)

In Little Haven, Anna and her friends are seniors in high school and poised on embarking their adult lives. As they agonize about the effect they have on the world, what they will do next year, and if their love is returned, zombies take over their town on Christmas. Anna and her friends must hack, slash, sing, and dance their way to the school to rescue their friends and families.

Anna and the Apocalypse is a breath of fresh air in the current state of horror. Most films take themselves deadly serious and it's nice to have a horror comedy that provides gore, some drama, a little bit of sadness, and a lot of humor. Our protagonist Anna is bored with her small town and wants more for her life than what her friends and father want for her. Her friends want everything to stay the same so they hang out and have fun while her dad wants her to immediately go to college and embark on a career. She wants to explore the world and find her place in it before she settles down to adult life. This is met with incredulity and eye rolls from everyone around her. It's a horrible feeling at any age to not be supported by those around you.

The other teens have different goals in mind. John is Anna's best friend and completely in love with her. He has conventional dreams to go to college. Their friends Chris and Lisa are rather wrapped up in each other. Steph is more of an outcast, but wants to truly make a difference in her community while being thwarted by classmates and authority figures at every turn. This varied view of teens feels refreshing. They aren't all bored or consumed by technology or monolithic in any way. Everyone wants something different and wishes others would see and support them. The one outlier is Anna's ex Nick, a bully who spread rumors about Anna. Even his character is fleshed out and sympathetic by the end of the film.

The songs prove to be much better than I expected. In the trailers, the tune and words seemed fairly basic. However, each song shows how a character feels and is fun to listen to. Break Away and Hollywood Ending establish the characters and what makes them tic with relatable themes of fitting in, the unknown of the future, frustration, and dreams. It's That Time of Year is ridiculously laden with double entendres, a more vulgar Santa Baby. Soldier at War is my favorite zombie fighting song with sass and energy. My favorite visually is Turning My Life around because Anna and John obliviously sing this upbeat, inspirational song as zombies destroy their town.  Even seemingly throwaway songs are a delight like Christmas Means Nothing Without You and The Fish Wrap. The former could have been any Christmas song, but it gave a specific flavor at the start of the film. The latter is so silly and punny that I wish it were longer. The songwriting is good on every song even if the production and orchestration aren't the best. The use of non-autotuned voices is not only refreshing, but makes the characters and the film have a sense of realism and vulnerability.

The actual plot is pretty basic with Anna and her friends gathering weapons (the best being the giant candy cane lawn ornament) and saving their friends and family. Tonally, the vast majority of the film is lighthearted and fun, which I love. Some scenes are more comedic like Headmaster Savage's whole character and his songs. He desperately wants to control everyone in the school and becomes hilariously unhinged when zombies attack. When people start dying, it just doesn't have the emotional resonance needed. It seems out of character compared to the rest of it and simply doesn't fit. It's the only real flaw in an otherwise fun, enjoyable film. The ending has a dose of realism that felt more in line with everything else.

I knew Anna and the Apocalypse was my kind of movie just from the trailers. This Christmas zombie romantic comedy musical combines the gore and horror of zombie films, the wonder of Christmas, and the warm fuzzies of a romantic comedy with some surprisingly well written songs. The main characters feel real with their own view of the world and how they fit in it. The film's biggest strength is taking its teen characters seriously and portraying them as varied. I had so much fun watching Anna and the Apocalypse and I'm eager to own it to put into my yearly Christmas viewing rotation.

My rating: 4/5 fishmuffins

Holiday Horror: The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina's A Midwinter's Tale

A Midwinter's Tale is a holiday episode that takes place right after the end of the first season. Sabrina has signed her name in the Book of the Beast and essentially turns her back on her mortal life. The winter solstice is when the veil between this world and the world of the dead is thinnest, so witches huddle around their yule logs, lit all day and night to stave off supernatural threats. Sabrina decides to have a seance to contact her mother trapped in limbo, but Madam Satan extinguishes their Yule log at the same time to expose her and her family to dangerous creatures.

A Midwinter's Tale is a fun interlude between the first and second seasons of the show that deals with the fallout of the season one finale and draws from various dark Yuletide mythologies. Susie and Roz are still being awful, shunning Sabrina even though they had hidden powers they didn't tell her about. Sabrina is equally terrible because she still arrogantly solves Harvey's problems with magic even though she knows he wouldn't want that. He rightly sets a defined, specific boundary against Sabrina using magic on or around him even though he already made his feelings clear. I'm excited to see more of this confident Harvey in the next season.

The Church of Night celebrates Yuletide in their own way with pentagram wreaths, Yule trees with Satanist ornaments, sharing ghost stories, and an ever burning Yule log to stave off evil spirits loose in the world. It's charming and a wonderfully dark version of the holiday. Sabrina decides to use this dangerous day to have a seance to contact her mother trapped in limbo. Madame Satan decides to sabotage the effort because Satan ignored her victory in getting Sabrina to sign his book. It's disappointing to see Madam Satan being so insecure and vindictive after being the grand manipulator of the first season.

Two figures from Christmas folklore make an appearance. The first is Gryla called upon to collect her Yule lads, mischievous spirit children who have invaded the Spellman home and played some dangerous tricks. When alive, she made a pact with another witch to eat their own children to survive. Gryla ate her child, but the other witch didn't, so she has spent over a thousand years collecting children. The Icelandic myth has her eating misbehaving children, so the show takes some liberties. However, I enjoyed the tricky way the Spellman's dealt with her. The second figure is Bartel, a demon who collects beautiful people and encases them in wax a la House of Wax. In actuality, he's the Austrian version of Krampus, but his embellished method of punishment is nightmarish. These figures are tricky for the Spellmans to navigate around and brought a fun horror flavor to Christmas.

A Midwinter's Tale is only one episode, but it made me excited for the next season of the show. The biggest take away for me is the stark difference between Sabrina and Zelda. Sabrina is willing to risk everyone else to get what she wants (as observed by Zelda) while Zelda is willing to have Leticia raised by other witches for her safety. Other than that, I did love some of the developments with the seance and Sabrina's mother. This holiday special ended with a bang and showed promise for further episodes.

My rating: 4.5/5 fishmuffins