Phantasmagoria
Film Review: Martyrs
Martyrs is one of those movies that are considered so controversial and I don’t quite understand why. Maybe that’s because I’m not fazed by anything. After watching 2008′s Deadgirl, I think I’ve plumbed the depths of exploitation that a film can indulge in (and I liked the movie). Lots of people emphasize the “gore” aspect of Martyrs for some reason, but I really don’t think the movie is that bloody, the gore isn’t even as extreme as in many mainstream movies.
This movie is a little tricky. It takes huge, drastic, nearly schizophrenic turns in plot; what’s kind of odd is that it’s sort of about three entirely different things, and sectioned into different parts. It tells the story of Lucie, the main character (during the first part of the film), who as a young girl was kidnapped and horribly abused and tortured by this married couple and escaped, permanently traumatized. She carries a sort of “ghost” around, a vicious feral woman that Lucie perceives as physically attacking her in rage, and for a while it’s hard to tell what this ghost really is, to figure out the reality. (Initially I thought that she might be the grown-up “ghost” of the little girl who was locked up and abused in that basement, that it was who Lucie would have been if she hadn’t in reality escaped; I don’t know if that makes any sense, though).
Tags: film reviews, horror movies, martyrs, surreal horror, torture
David Ho
David Ho is a digital artist and illustrator with a horror-oriented style. His work has a wide range and some of his images are quite different from these selections, but I’ve chosen these “child portraits” of his to portray a unified theme of innocence/corruption or darkness. The macabre, fantasy, myth, and sexuality mix in his works, usually in a very darkly lit, gloomy space with a “cold, metallic” palette.
Tags: david ho, illustrations, innocence/menace, modern fairy tales, pop surrealism, surreal horror
Film Review: Antichrist
One of the best movies I’ve seen that came out in the last couple of years is Lars von Trier’s Antichrist from 2009, starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. It’s almost impossible to describe what this film is like, or “about.” It’s like a slow-moving, beautiful, irresistible nightmare. I would describe it as psychological/surreal arty horror.
The movie is divided into four chapters, titled “Grief,” “Pain (Chaos Reigns),” “Despair (Gynocide),” and “The Three Beggars.”
It tells the story of this nameless couple whose child dies accidentally and who go to a cabin in the woods to cope with the mother’s subsequent trauma. For me, it’s kind of divided into two parts, and it’s weird because these two parts are so different, in terms of what they give away about what the movie is “about.” In the first part, it seems very psychological, as if the movie is really about her psychiatrist-cum-boyfriend trying to help her overcome her anxiety and panic attacks. Nothing that happens in the first part isn’t within the realm of reality. Once they move to the cabin, strange things begin happening, and the movie shifts into an even more surreal, creepy, nightmarish atmosphere. But it never ceases being psychological.
Like I said, the movie is very vague, ambiguous, and doesn’t have a traditional narrative. It takes on this very mystical and surreal bent in the cabin, and gradually builds in horror. It has nothing to do with a literal Antichrist, except for the sort of archaic, cryptic mental atmosphere where such ideas come from.
What I sort of think it’s about is…primal evil. Deep, dark, obscure evil, like the horrific atmosphere surrounding medieval demons. The kind of evil that the woman (a Lilith-like figure) takes on, which seems to originate externally and just exists as evil. Similarly, nature and animals reflect the human happenings and aberrations, like in Macbeth. The bizarre stuff going on with the man and woman is manifested in the outside world, but external forces are also driving her and seeping into her psyche.
The cinematography is absolutely beautiful. It’s so interesting and a breath of fresh air, and even if you’re not that into the subject matter, you should probably check it out just for its visual effect. It’s surreal, eerie, highly atmospheric, and erotic. It has these lovely scenes of surreal, disturbing beauty, like the piles of pale limbs and naked bodies entwined with the tree roots in the promotional image above. Willem Dafoe is great in it, and so is Charlotte Gainsbourg, whom I love. Her character is so crazy and emotional in a very intense, visceral way.
This movie is definitely bizarre, and not for the squeamish, because it has quite graphic sex and some gruesome occurrences (the gore is not visually that over-the-top, just the idea of it is kind of squirmy).
A title like “Antichrist” evokes cheesy ’70s horror films like The Omen, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Antichrist is a gem of subtle, surreal horror, and of artistic, intellectual, and creative filmmaking.
Tags: film reviews, horror movies, lars von trier, religious symbolism, surreal
Precious Creatures: The Art of Ray Caesar
Ray Caesar is one of those artists in the Pop Surreal Movement whose work I’ve seen around for years and years. His medium is quite unique: 3D modeling. And if I were to sum up his subject matter in a few words, I would say something like subverted Victorian morals. His works most often feature young, prepubescent girls, often sexualized, deformed, outfitted with sea-monster tentacles, and in other ways altered from reality. The fetish Batgirl-esque mask is ever present. Women peer from behind fans in Marie Antoinette-style costume, hold parasols in Victorian garb, and sport ’50s-style flip haircuts. His worlds are bright and colorful, the girls vaguely menacing. Macabre and eerie, the works are set in the midst of delicately colored, floral Victorian wallpaper and lush, feminine interiors; the girls are surrounded by objects of taming and domesticity, but they show their teeth and their sinister side.
From Jonathan Levine Gallery Online:
“Working for 17 years in the Art and Photography Department of The Hospital For Sick Children in Toronto, Ray Caesar documented things such as child abuse, surgical reconstruction, psychology, and animal research.Using a 3D modeling software called Maya, he builds models and wraps them in painted and manipulated texture maps. The models are set up with an invisible skeleton that allows him to pose each figure in a 3D environment. Digital lights and cameras are added to simulate shadows and reflections, completing the effect of a mysterious and strange alternate world.”
Some of my favorites of his works:
Tags: fetish, historically inspired, innocence/menace, pop surrealism, ray caesar, victorian
Injured Children: The Art of Gottfried Helnwein
You probably thought this was a photograph when you first saw it (I definitely did); but it’s not. It’s an amazing painting by the renowned artist Gottfried Helnwein. His paintings are unbelievably photorealistic, and they often feature disturbing and provocative representations of children who are bloodied and injured, bandages wrapped around their heads: an allegory for innocence and trauma, emotional injury, the consequences of violence, abuse, and other scarring forces out in the world.
Black Swan/Poisoned Apple
Artwork by Keith Eric Williams
Snow White’s Happy Ending by Melissa CampaTags: keith eric williams, modern fairy tales, snow white, surreal, swan
Alice: Madness Returns
American McGee’s Alice from 2000 is one of my favorite video games, because it’s just so stylish. A short teaser trailer for the sequel, titled Alice: Madness Returns, which is set to be released sometime in 2011, has surfaced.
Tags: alice in wonderland, american mcgee, horror video games, madness, victorian
Fatal Frame II
Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly is one of my favorite video games.
It’s creepy, moving, and engaging. It has some of the best voice acting in a video game I’ve ever heard. I love the tender/complex/dependent relationship between Mayu and Mio, which does remind me a little of the one in A Tale of Two Sisters. Mayu, the weaker sister, is the one who seems so much more emotionally vulnerable, and who needs to be taken care of by Mio, but is sometimes left behind by her, even though it’s not fully intentional.
Mayu and Mio are two sisters who come to a deserted place called All Gods Village. The game mostly takes place in these eerily elegant, sparely furnished, minimalistic Edo-period houses, inhabited by many, many ghosts. They try to piece together the story of the Crimson Butterfly Sacrifice, a ritual that took place periodically in the village where two twins were sacrificed to seal off the entrance to the Hellish Abyss. This failed during the last ceremony, causing the village to be annihilated. There’s only one weapon, the Camera Obscura, an old camera from the 19th century which can capture images of ghosts and exorcise them.
The horror of the game builds up; at some point, it becomes genuinely creepy. It’s like watching a horror movie unfold, and to be actually playing it yourself and going through the actions intensifies the dread. The ghosts are varied and move in creepy, bizarre ways; examples are the Falling Woman, who repeatedly falls from the ceiling, shrieking, and squirms/wiggles on her back towards you, and the Hanged Woman, whose neck is bent at an impossible angle. The Twin Sisters, who are undeniably twisted victims, seriously creeped me out; I never knew when they’d pop up again, whispering, “Why do you kill?”
The only faults I found are that at some point after the middle of the game, the dialogue, including the letters and journals you find, and the stones from which you can hear people’s thoughts on a special radio, becomes kind of repetitive and barely tells you anything more. It doesn’t seem as well-developed as the earlier dialogue. Video games never, ever tie up in a satisfactory way for me, because they’re not movies; they are always something of a letdown. I don’t know what I was expecting, but somehow the resolution just wasn’t quite engaging/explanatory/psychically fulfilling enough for me. I felt like the message of the ending I got was contradictory to everything I thought about the game. My general attitude towards the Village and the Ritual was that they just perpetuated a traditional evil in some misguided attempt for collective security. But it seemed like the ending implied that compliance was okay, or resistance impossible/fruitless. Like sometimes you need to just close your eyes and let an external force take you over and lead you over the precipice. It was also kind of abrupt. That’s hard for me to accept. I don’t know if the other endings have a different tone.
But I still love it.
I’d give it 4.5 out of 5 ♥s.
Tags: asian horror, edo-period japan, ghosts, sisters, survival horror video games
The Fleshly Mirror
Down the Primrose by Victoria ReynoldsA few more of Victoria Reynolds’ meat-depicting oil paintings can be here.
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Fine China Autopsy ArtTags: bizarre, meat, surreal, victoria reynolds
The Magic Bottle
The Magic Bottle by Camille Rose Garcia is a wonderful children’s book (for weird kids, maybe) that demonstrates her writing skills as well as her visual artistry. This book is dark, whimsical, and delightfully imaginative. It expresses in a very complete way her concept of “The Tragic Kingdom,” of strange animals and inanimate things (even the ocean is alive and conscious) on a human level living and struggling under the black cloud of industrialism; creating a whole roiling breathing world that has never been seen before. Her cutesy, yet melancholy and acid trip-like style features constantly weeping, lugubrious-looking cartoony characters, in a world entirely of her own creation, populated by bizarre, menacing, and threatened creatures. Growing up in the sinister shadow of Disneyland, Camille was intensely disillusioned with the artificial, sterilized promise of heaven that it offered.
Tags: animated inanimate things, camille rose garcia, cartoony, cute n creepy little creatures, dark side of disneyland, environmentalism, pop surrealism
