13 Slots for the Best Horror I've Seen in the Past Year
[3 of 13]
The Danse Macabre Slot

So yes, since both these films have dance as a central narrative element, they're sharing a slot...
 

CLIMAX

(May 2018)

Gaspar Noé’s* self-described "catastrophe movie with dancers," Climax is an interesting entry in the “Cinematic Experience as Endurance Test” horror movie category.

In it, we witness a group of dancers have the Worst. Night. Ever. thanks to an external trigger that shall remain unidentified here.

The fact that the trigger is a very real and possible occurrence also makes Climax the kind of horror film that doesn’t need ghosts or demons or vampires or masked slashers or (Heaven forbid) zombies to make its case, but instead, is a chillingly disturbing example of Sartre’s observation "L'enfer, c'est les autres!" (“Hell is other people!”).

Hell is also a gradual, hypnotic, dizzying, alluringly repulsive descent into chaos.

But while all of the above may be true, it must also be pointed out that Hell has a slammin’ soundtrack!

[Climax is] all about people creating something together, and failing in the second half. It’s like the story of the Tower of Babel. Mankind can create big things. And then with the influence of alcohol, or some accident, everything falls.

--Gaspar Noé

* Noé has pointed to titles like ‘70’s disaster films The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure, as well as David Cronenberg’s Shivers as some of the inspiration that fueled Climax.

SUSPIRIA

(September 2018)

"They are professional performers. Illusion is their craft.”

The best word I can come up with for Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria (billed as “Six Acts and an Epilogue Set in Divided Berlin”), is reimagining.

While the opening credits tell us that the script by David Kajganich is still “Based on the Original Screenplay by Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi,” this Suspiria takes the bare narrative bones of a young American accepted to a dance academy that hides a sinister secret, and lushly fleshes it out, in both theme and character, giving us something at once familiar, and yet bracingly, beguilingly new.

Or, to use the appropriate metaphor, it’s generally the same dance, but it’s set to a different tempo, so it’s got a different rhythm, and it boasts some new, brazenly daring choreography.

“When you dance the dance of another, you make yourself in the image of its creator. You empty yourself, so that her work can live within you.

“Do you understand?”

Some of those new steps are immediately introduced to us.

Even before Susanna Bannion of Ohio (Dakota Johnson) is welcomed into the Helena Markos Tanzgruppe, we meet Josef Klemperer (“Lutz Ebersdorf”**), psychiatrist to Chloë Grace Moretz’s Patricia Hingle (a name that should ring some bells from the original).

And while Argento bound himself largely to the dark fairy tale setting of the Tanz Academie, Guadagnino and Kajganich choose to frame the action against historical events in a “Divided Berlin,” tossing politics (including sexual), societal upheaval, and the long, twisted shadow of the Holocaust into this witches’ brew.

With a full hour more running time than the original, this Suspiria uses that additional time masterfully so motivations come more clearly into focus, and dance becomes even more pivotal and central to the narrative.

“Movement is never mute. It is a language. It’s a series of energetic shapes written in the air like words forming sentences.

“Like poems.

“Like prayers.”

Dance as magick.

Movement as vector for intent and desire, unleashing power more potentially destructive than bombs.

These come forcefully to the surface in this reimagining, as does Argento’s Three Mothers mythology.

As Klemperer recounts:

“Patricia wrote about ‘Three Mothers,’ lost in time, predating all Christian invention. Pre-God. Pre-Devil.

“Mother Tenebrarum, Mother Lachrymarum, and Mother Suspiriorum.

“Darkness, Tears, and Sighs.”

We may not be treated to the added layer of their three Houses just yet, but the basic mythological foundation is here for our inspection.

All these, and more, all discrete steps in this shadowy dance, which builds steadily, crescendoing in a completely batsh!t Grand Guignol finale, before segueing into a surprisingly moving Epilogue.

(Plus, Argento’s Suzy Bannion, Jessica Harper, makes a crucial appearance!)

While it’s safe to say that this was clearly another very serious instance of “Manage Your Expectations, Space Monkey,” I am relieved to announce that this is a dance I was very glad to have witnessed.

“You can give someone your delusion, Sara. That’s religion.”

** I could go on about the whole Tilda Swinton of it all (and she is amazing here, as always), but that would just detract from the whole, so let’s just leave that where it is, and simply bathe in the witchy glow of this powerful and potent “reimagining” without those added distractions.

Parting Shot: Reviews for Argento’s original “Three Mothers” trilogy can be found here, here, and here.

Given my opinions of Inferno and La Terza Madre, I honestly wouldn’t mind some more reimaginings of this type.

Parting Shot 2: Kajganich also wrote the script for The Invasion (review here), but that was butchered thanks to studio/test audience interference, so we’re not holding that against him.

He also co-wrote the script for the Pet Sematary remake, from Starry Eyes’ Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer. (Definitely another case of “Manage Your Expectations, Space Monkey.”)

(Climax & Suspiria OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2019

Candidate #23

CLIMAX

(May 2018)

Gaspar Noé’s* self-described "catastrophe movie with dancers," Climax is an interesting entry in the “Cinematic Experience as Endurance Test” horror movie category.

In it, we witness a group of dancers have the Worst. Night. Ever. thanks to an external trigger that shall remain unidentified here.

The fact that the trigger is a very real and possible occurrence also makes Climax the kind of horror film that doesn’t need ghosts or demons or vampires or masked slashers or (Heaven forbid) zombies to make its case, but instead, is a chillingly disturbing example of Sartre’s observation "L'enfer, c'est les autres!" (“Hell is other people!”).

Hell is also a gradual, hypnotic, dizzying, alluringly repulsive descent into chaos.

But while all of the above may be true, it must also be pointed out that Hell has a slammin’ soundtrack!

[Climax is] all about people creating something together, and failing in the second half. It’s like the story of the Tower of Babel. Mankind can create big things. And then with the influence of alcohol, or some accident, everything falls.

--Gaspar Noé

* Noé has pointed to titles like ‘70’s disaster films The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure, as well as David Cronenberg’s Shivers as some of the inspiration that fueled Climax.

(Climax OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I’ve Seen in the Past Year [1 of 13]

SHIVERS

(October 1975)

“If this picture doesn’t make you scream and squirm, you’d better see a psychiatrist. Quick.”

That’s some of the most awesome copy ever heard in a trailer.

And yes, indeed, it’s from the trailer for Shivers, David Cronenberg’s first feature film in the wake of his self-described “underground” work, Stereo and Crimes of the Future.

It’s been a long quest, this, getting to see Shivers, and finally finding this particular Grail (thanx so much to Jeb for that) was certainly a rewarding experience.

For Cronenbergians out there, all of the themes and preoccupations that would subsequently recur throughout most of his body of work, they’re here, in this disturbing tale of a sexual parasite and the spread of its contagion throughout an apartment complex.

Quite tellingly, Shivers is also an unsettling, prescient take on the horror of AIDS.

In this day and age where even Steven Soderbergh is up for making a movie like Contagion, it’s also worthwhile to take a look at a very early example of the form; Cronenberg would, of course, journey through similar narrative terrain with Rabid.

And, all those zombie movies that are all over the place these days?

They may find their roots in George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, but the influence of Cronenberg’s Shivers and Rabid are also undeniable.

Thirty-six years after it was made (filmed in just over two weeks on a very limited budget), Shivers still has a potent and disquieting impact.

I mean, how can it not?

Copy that awesome can’t be wrong…

(Shivers UK quad courtesy of wrongsideoftheart.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2011
Candidate # 34

SHIVERS
(October 1975)


“If this picture doesn’t make you scream and squirm, you’d better see a psychiatrist. Quick.”

That’s some of the most awesome copy ever heard in a trailer. And yes, indeed, it’s from the trailer for Shivers, David Cronenberg’s first feature film in the wake of his self-described “underground” work, Stereo and Crimes of the Future.
It’s been a long quest, this, getting to see Shivers, and finally finding this particular Grail (thanx so much to Jeb for that) was certainly a rewarding experience.
For Cronenbergians out there, all of the themes and preoccupations that would subsequently recur throughout most of his body of work, they’re here, in this disturbing tale of a sexual parasite and the spread of its contagion throughout an apartment complex. Quite tellingly, Shivers is also an unsettling, prescient take on the horror of AIDS.

In this day and age where even Steven Soderbergh is up for making a movie like Contagion, it’s also worthwhile to take a look at a very early example of the form; Cronenberg would, of course, journey through similar narrative terrain with Rabid.
And, all those zombie movies that are all over the place these days? They may find their roots in George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, but the influence of Cronenberg’s Shivers and Rabid are also undeniable.
Thirty-six years after it was made (filmed in just over two weeks on a very limited budget), Shivers still has a potent and disquieting impact.
I mean, how can it not? Copy that awesome can’t be wrong…

(Shivers UK quad courtesy of wrongsideoftheart.com.)

reVIEW (48)
RABID

Before today, I last saw David Cronenberg’s Rabid in the very early ‘80’s, on Beta. Beyond some key moments, my memory of the film had grown terribly fuzzy over the years.
Now, having seen it again after over two and a half decades, I can safely say it’s got the dodgiest acting I’ve seen in a Cronenberg film, and of all of them that I’ve seen, is the one that can benefit tremendously from a responsible redux (certainly more so than either The Brood or Scanners, both reportedly on the remake block).

In Cronenberg’s second feature film, porn star Marilyn Chambers stars as Rose, whose injuries from a motorcycle accident are treated to a revolutionary skin grafting technique by Dr. Daniel Keloid (Howard Ryshpan), whose Keloid Clinic, Inc. happens to be in close proximity to the accident site.
The surgery though will cause Rose to become a carrier for a rabies-like disease, whose vector was a bizarre, Cronenbergian bit that had never before been seen, and actually has also never been seen since, as far as I know.

The most noteworthy aspect of Rabid is quite possibly the fact that this film is the precursor for recent horror fare like Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, and, from everything I’ve heard about it, Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza’s [REC].
Here, we track the spread of the disease as the narrative follows the characters who have the terrible misfortune of crossing paths with Rose, whose newfound compulsions inadvertently cause the contagion to eventually reach civilized areas.

Scenes of armed security at the mall, and roving garbage trucks assigned to gather the infected and the dead, are just some of the chilling sights Rabid has to offer, scenarios which are arguably more troubling now than when the film was first released in 1977, what, in our post-millennial age of bird flu and SARS.

And, given the sexual trappings Cronenberg surrounds the manner by which Rose inadvertently spreads the disease, Rabid (as with Cronenberg’s debut feature, Shivers) can also be read as an eerily prescient portrait of AIDS.
As timely as Rabid is though, as I mentioned above, the acting leaves a whole lot to be desired. The original score is also rather horrific.* (Howard Shore, why must you still be two films away?)

All told though, Rabid still leaves an impression, in its depiction of the breakdown of civilization in the face of a virulent disease, and the disturbing visual of exactly how Rose spreads the contagion.

* It’s interesting to note that Ivan Reitman—yes, that Ivan Reitman—is an executive producer on Rabid, as well as Music Supervisor. (He also served in similar capacities on Shivers.)

Parting shot: Reviews of other Cronenberg films can be found in the Archive.

(Rabid DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.co.uk.)

(Thanx must go out to Jeb, for making this reunion with Rose possible.)