Takashi Miike's Audition

Audition is an interesting and unsettlingly realistic horror story based around deconstructing the Japanese concept of a Yamato Nadeshiko, a perfect wife as seen through traditional Japanese values. A widower named Shigeharu decides he's finally ready to date again, and decides to set up a fake film audition in order to find a woman he finds suitable. He narrows it down to an attractive young woman named Asami, and discovers that she is herself enamored with him. As he examines his relationship further, however, he begins to note a horrifying atmosphere surrounding Asami's past, and he realizes just how far she's willing to go to ensure that he remain hers, and hers alone.

The film takes some time to get the ball rolling, but the pace starts to accelerate around the time the audience begins to wonder about Asami's mental stability, as she sits in her completely unfurnished apartment seemingly alone, simply waiting for Shigeharu to call after her audition. Once Shigeharu starts suspecting things the movie quickly ramps up, jumping around the timeline a bit to establish the circumstances under which Asami's insecurities and violent clinginess developed. By the climax of the film, it starts unraveling, becoming unclear what is real and what is being imagined, including a horrifying trip to Asami's apartment and the fate of her ex-lover (featuring a stomach-churning vomit sequence involving few fewer “special effects” than one initially hopes) and a disturbingly well-done torture scene in Shigeharu's home after Asami discovers that he has a family and she's “not the only one he loves.” The story has very few morally sound characters and it's resolution is ambiguous, but it's plausibility as a worst case scenario in dating makes it one of the most unsettling films I've ever seen.

Let The Right One In

Let The Right One In is a unique take on the genre of Vampire films from an adolescent point-of-view that combines horror with a boy-meets-girl, coming of age tale. The main character is a bullied boy named Oskar who's fascinated with serial killers. He meets a girl named Eli who's just moved in with her father, Hakan. It's very quickly shown that these two are not who they appear to be when Eli appears to Oskar in the freezing snow in her casual wear, completely unfazed by the cold, and her “father” starts murdering people and draining their blood.

The film plays around with the cliches of modern vampire stories by featuring a vampire that was turned before their sexual maturity, eternally stuck as a child, as opposed to the young adult or full-grown vampires that are usually seen in fiction. The title refers to the superstition that vampires can only enter a dwelling when invited, and at one point, Eli demonstrates what happens when she isn't invited with very unpleasant results. She is also not capable of feeding by herself as her victims will fight back and she is very uncomfortable with personally killing people. Thus she requires assistance from a guardian. The movie implies that Eli was not actually a girl at the time of turning into a vampire, with an incredibly brief shot of a castration scar, and as such, her statement of “I'm not a girl,” takes on a double meaning, with both, “I'm not female” and “I'm not human.”

Oskar assures Eli that he doesn't care about her issues and that he loves her anyway, and she promises to watch over him with his bully problems. By the end of the film, Hakan has died after feeding Eli one last time, Eli horrifically murders Oskar's bullies and he runs off with her, promising to stay with her and keep her fed, possibly eventually falling into the same exact role that Hakan had.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Being familiar with the pop culture image of Frankenstein, the sort of, “mad scientist breaks laws of nature and unleashes a lumbering, curious brute of a monster upon the populace,” makes actually reading the original story a very bizarre experience. The legacy of the story is completely different from the novel that began it all. The first thing I noticed is the framing device, or rather, the series of framing devices that make up the entire book. Instead of the bulk of the story being presented to us straight on, we are told stories within stories, with the primary viewpoint being that of an explorer writing to his sister. The layers add on as Doctor Frankenstein dictates his story to the man, eventually going even deeper once the monster reveals its intelligence to Frankenstein and the audience, and describes its life experiences watching a downtrodden family from a distance. 

The characters of the novel are far more complex than the pop culture icons they would spawn. Victor Frankenstein is not simply a mad scientist pushing past nature’s limits, and accidentally killed by his own twisted creation, but a man with depth. He is a genius, although one prone to poor decisions, and his monster’s malice is primarily borne due to his inability to take responsibility for his actions. The Monster himself is a tortured soul, created with no outlet for his pain, and no reference for his morality. He is genuinely shown none of the sympathy or understanding he deserves, and his hatred for mankind is fully understandable for a creature of a blank slate whose viewpoint has being constructed entirely under prejudice and fear.  All the monster wants is companionship, and he attempts to force Frankenstein to provide him with such, rightfully pointing out that the entire situation was the doctor’s responsibility. Frankenstein becomes paranoid that the monsters will reproduce, and backs out of his promise to create a mate, despite knowing the Monster will lash out at his loved ones for breaking his word. This is another example of Frankenstein’s problems stemming from his poor judgment, as he could have simply rendered the female sterile.

Frankenstein’s words attempt to convey the lesson of seeking happiness instead of ambitiousness, but his actions speak more loudly in teaching us to carefully apply both knowledge and common sense.

Genre conventions of classic horror

-Dark lighting
-Always at night
-Overly dramatic music stings
-Dramatically spooked animals
-Man VS. the laws of nature
-lightning strikes, everywhere
-Unnecessarily large castle homes
-complicated secret passages
-Black and White film, even after color is possible
-Young, attractive female victim character, usually blonde
-rural, superstitious European villages
-Wolves howling at all times
-Bats hanging everywhere
-Crows out during night (despite not being nocturnal)
-Lightning is magic and can do anything.
-Hammy mad scientists
-Philosophical line from the hero after the defeat of the monster
-Long, dark tower stairway, lit by candles
-Dungeons, filled with torture devices, bonus points if skeletons of previous victims still inside