"The Witch"

The Witch is perhaps the most provocative movie we watched this maymester. Riddled with themes of incest, sin, and demonic coercion, it’s a movie that you feel long after it’s over. What’s so brilliant about this movie is how mysterious it is. There’s a family of settlers, succeeded from their community, in the middle of the wildlands, forced to survive on their own. We are given an establishing shot early on of the dark, mysterious wood, and with score cues, we’re warned that these woods are rather threatening. There is also talk of a witch, among the family, which adds another fear element. All this mixed in with their oppressive religious beliefs makes for a big messy paranoia stew. Sexuality plays a role here as well. We first get the feel for this when Caleb eyes his sister’s chest down by the creek…a very odd and seemingly out of place shot that almost forces you to ask… “did that really just happen?” It did, and it happens again. There is also the unsettlingly familiar relationship between Thomasin and the father, as we see in the seen where she unclothes him in front of the family. Not to mention the times that the father comes to bat for her even after suspecting her to be a witch. Then there’s also the weird Freudian rivalry between the mother and Thomasin for the father’s attention…it’s a mess. The only queer moment, perhaps, is when the coven of witches gets together at the end of the film. An amass of naked, androgynous bodies flail around and dance by a fire, then begin to levitate. A particular close up of Thomasin shows a rather…orgasmic face being made as she levitates.  

"Vamp": To be gay or not to be gay

Vamp was…entertaining. I found the redeemable quality of the movie to be its classic campy 80’s style. Mise-en-scene plays a huge role here; neon signs, exaggerated, saturated lighting, and of course, goofy over-the-top graphic violence. But, in a sexuality class, there is of course another element. A particularly gay element. The plot is basically two freshman college guys, presumably heterosexual, that are sent out by a fraternity to bag a stripper as a sort of initiation rite. They end up in a strip club run by vampires and have to survive. What’s interesting is the relationship between the two main protagonists. They seem to have a sort of unspoken love. The main character, Keith, meets a cute young human girl in the vampire strip club named Allison. She immediately takes to Keith, but he never really seems to be interested. At this point, AJ has gone off with a stripper who has mutilated and turned him, but Keith doesn’t know this, he just thinks his buddy’s getting laid in the back. However he still seems more adamant to find AJ rather than get to know this girl that is practically throwing herself at him. There is even an utterance of “love” in a scene where Keith confronts the now vampire AJ, and then of course, the “heterosexual” penetration of AJ by Keith as he stabs him in the heart with a stake. There is a continued theme of the heteronormative relationship (Keith/Allison) getting in the way of the homosexual relationship (Keith/AJ) that was there from the start, and it’s interesting to watch how this plays out. After AJ rescues the pair and essentially give them his blessing, he sort of follows them underground, as he is now a vampire and can’t be in the sunlight. He’s willing to do whatever it takes to be a part of Keith’s life and revel in the normalcy, even offering to take “night classes.” Oh, and let’s not forget the rainbow that streaks across the sky in the last shot.  

"28 Days Later" Zombie Projection

Hands down, my favorite film on the list. I'm a pretty big nerd when it comes to zombie stuff, or really anything apocalypse. But beside Danny Boyle's directorial magic, there's something special about the zombie in 28 Days Later; it’s fast, viral, and even deliberate. Before the era of 28 Days Later, one might think of the Night of the Living Dead type zombie; slow, lumbering nuisances that are only formidable in large numbers. These aren’t exactly the “Braaaaaaaiiiiiiiiins” type zombies. They are particularly terrifying because they are so fast and deadly, and as Munteen and Payne put it, “emotional”. They screech and scream and snarl, they puke blood which is extremely viral and contagious, they literally spew their ideology. So why are these zombies so viral? This is where Munteen and Payne’s article, “Attack of the Living Dead: Recalibrating Terror in the Post-September 11 Zombie Film”, comes into play. They so effably describe the movie zombie as a sort of tabula rasa, a philosophical term made famous by John Locke, literally translated as “blank slate”. This is to say that the zombie is a movie monster that starts as a blank slate, and is projected upon by the social and cultural fears and anxieties of the time. So, this being said, would explain multiple narratives of the movie zombie, starting with the Night of the Living Dead zombie. As it was released in 1968, the most current World event of the time was the Cold War. This was a war that was fought quietly, behind the scenes, via intelligence; if one were to ever think of spies and double agents and what not, this was the war. Part of this style of “warfare” was the spreading of ideology, particularly the threat of the spread of communism to the west; i.e. the Red Scare. This threat was a slow and gradual descent, fought off via propaganda and counter-intelligence. Much like this spreading of ideology, the movie zombie at the time was slow, quiet, and lumbering; all while maintaining a menacing appearance. So what makes the 28 Days Later zombie so different: why domestic terrorism! Munteen and Payne posited that the incident of 911, the first example of domestic terrorism in the States, was the social anxiety and fear that penetrated to movie-making world. It gave need for a new, scarier, and in a way, more relatable zombie. That is exactly what the film delivered. A viral, panicked, emotional zombie.