A great movie, even if taken only as a horror movie. If you catch all the other commentary, much better. I will add a fifth to my other four favorites: Event Horizon, Martyrs, Jacob's Ladder, and the Hellraiser series (only the first and second ones of that franchise count.) Granted, it's the least scary of those five, but the most - interesting, I would say.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought of Being John Malkovich when I saw Catherine Keener condemning people to be in the Sunken Place, from where you're mostly a passenger in your own body. (Coming up with your own narrative for how the same actor is actually the same character in different movies can give you a lot of fun subtext. I wonder if Peele's fears of what happens to split brain patients influenced this, or he just watched the video for Metallica's One too many times.)
I can't help but wonder if the single Japanese party-goer was a reference to the single Japanese attendee at the birth of Rosemary's Baby.
I also notice that both Hellraiser II and this movie feature a malevolent psychiatrist and neurosurgeon doing their tricks on victims, although in Hellraiser it was the same person (Chennard appeared to be double-boarded.)
There were a few bits that were clearly intended to make theater-going audiences laugh ("T S fucking A, we get shit done" and all the sex slave discussion) but it wasn't done to the point where it damaged the movie's overall tone.
Then there's the racial commentary. First of all, at the ending, you're absolutely in the protagonist's shoes, thinking "Great, I almost escape, and here I am, a young black male at a murdered rich white family's estate, with police lights approaching. What chance do I have?" (Or, maybe the police are in on it.) Even forgetting that all the partygoers are sinister, their seemingly well-intentioned commentary on the protagonist's race are nonetheless douche-chill-inducing. And when the protagonist is talking by intercom to the blind guy whose brain he'll be hosting, he asks the blind guy "Why us?" (black people) to which the blind guy responds "I don't care what color you are." Yes, but the very real fact is that it is us, and here I sit - not some hypothetical demographically average person - strapped to a chair about to have my brain sliced up. Finally, the protagonist's buddy goes to the police and says "My friend from Brooklyn" (who the protagonist ran into by sheer chance) "must have been abducted. He's from Brooklyn, he didn't dress like that" to which the black police woman says "I'm from Brooklyn, and I never used to dress like this." And this is different...why?
I like that the protagonist doesn't hesitate (much) when it comes time to kill the bad guys, and does it in somewhat nasty ways. Antlers? TOTALLAY NOICE! But he does wait too long to try to escape. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered to his fate, but I would have been swimming across that lake as soon as that guy had his "seizure".
Betty Gabriel is a unique combination of very attractive, and very creepy. One of the most disturbing scenes in the movie is the tight shot on her face in the discussion about disconnecting the phone, and without her acting ability this would have fallen very flat. She actually turns into a grandmother in the scene at the end. I can't wait to see her in Westworld, which I also love, but hope she doesn't get typecast as a Stepford Wife.
No comments:
Post a Comment