Disturbing Non-Horror Movies
A long-standing debate I’ve had with some of my cinephile friends is whether Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite is a horror movie. When I first expressed this sentiment I was met with skeptical eyebrow raises (which was not the reaction I anticipated) and the insistence that I, somehow, had it all wrong. “It’s not scary,” they informed me matter-of-factly. “And you of all people should know that.”
What I find hysterical is if you Google the film, it describes it as a thriller/comedy — a label my peers seem to agree with. But I staunchly disagree with this, even seven (seven!?) whole years later. How could a movie whose pivotal scene involves a deranged old man ascending from his underground prison and launching into a fugue state be a comedy?
Anyway, this protracted debacle made me think about a genre of film I always find myself gravitating towards, even when I know it’s not good for me. I call it “Disturbing But Not Quite Scary.” Think Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy, David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, or pretty much anything by John Waters. They’re not exactly horror, but they’re unsettling in just the right way.
If this sort of thing interests you, you’re likely the type of weirdo who’ll dig the following films. And you’re also the type of weirdo I would probably get along with.
Wake in Fright (1971)
At a high level, Wake in Fright is an Australian film about a displaced English teacher’s misadventures in the sweaty, sticky Outback — which has always felt like the down-under version of America’s wild, wild West. John Grant, who deigns to work at some ramshackle hut passing itself off as an educational institute in the middle of the desert, is planning to visit his girlfriend in Sydney over the summer holiday. But things quickly turn sideways when he gets waylaid in a village called “The Yabba” and inadvertently gambles all his money away.
Unable to afford basic train fare, John is trapped with a wily coalition of blue collar sots who spend their time hunting kangaroos, playing poker, and destroying community property. Everyone is constantly one Budweiser away from having their stomach pumped and nobody knows what a shower is (seriously, this may have been the slimiest, sweatiest film I’ve ever had the displeasure of watching… except maybe William Friedkin’s Sorcerer). The people in this town are carnal in the way they holler and shriek and grunt. Roads aren’t paved and houses don’t have windows. Law and order is virtually nonexistent.
Needless to say, John knows he’ll go crazy if he hangs around The Yabba any longer, but the only way out is to keep gambling every night and hope he can scrounge up enough cash to escape. But over time he falls victim to the mentality of the locals and ends up just as uncivilized as every other lout in the village. He’s eating the dirt under his fingernails and wrestling with kangaroos tough enough to TKO Andre the Giant with one swift kick.
Wake in Fright left me feeling existential and covered in twenty years’ worth of grime. What’s disconcerting about it is twofold. Perhaps the most overtly unnerving aspect of the film is the quiet claustrophobia that foments as John slips further and further into a state of paranoia.
When he initially expresses disdain about the lifestyle in The Yabba, the drunken townsfolk scoff and exclaim: “You don’t like The Yabba?! What’s not to like?! Have a drink, mate! WHY DON’T YOU HAVE A DRINK?!” They then proceed to shove a beer in his hand and browbeat him into downing it — and then another one after that, and maybe a third one for the road. You can’t think clearly when you’re plastered, and being plastered from dusk till dawn is the only way to survive in a place like The Yabba.
Which leads me to my second point: thinking too hard about your own stagnancy and the lateral trajectory of your career is a nightmarish scenario for many young people. Sure, without a viable way to get out of town John is quite literally trapped in this village — but he’s also trapped in another way.
Early on in the film it’s made painfully clear that John’s gig as a schoolteacher is not what he envisioned for himself, especially as a stalwart, ruggedly handsome twenty-something. He wants to be more, wants to do more, but due to financial reasons and the poor state of the Australian economy, he just can’t. John is a powerless agent in his own life, and this terrifies him. To me, the ethos of The Yabba dwellers (gamble, drink, sleep, repeat) is a literal manifestation of the current state of his mind.
On second thought, maybe this movie scares me so much because I’m also a twenty-something trying to forge a career in a fiercely competitive job market. Hmm. Either way, it’s a brutally honest film that isn’t afraid to get nasty. It’s got that classic grittiness reminiscent of a lot of 70s American cinema, which makes it feel all the more real.
Crash (1996)
Crash — not to be confused with Crash, the 2004 film that made a lukewarm attempt to end racism and instead robbed Brokeback Mountain of their Best Picture win — is a Cronenberg classic.
Full transparency: the first time I watched this I spent ninety odd minutes just gawking over a black-and-blue James Spader. But this movie has a lot more to offer than eye candy; it’s an erotic and visceral thriller.
Here’s the rundown: Spader is a third-rate porno director who’s nearly killed in a car accident one day after a shoot. He encounters the woman he smashed into in the hospital parking lot (Dr. Helen Remington) and the two of them begin having a tryst where almost no words are spoken to one another and instead communication mainly occurs through stilted moans and backseat fondling.
This eventually leads to Spader joining a psychosexual cult of morose individuals whose near-death experiences in car accidents have awakened crash-related desires within them. Helen is obviously a part of this, but there’s this weird homoerotic tension between Spader and the cult leader, Vaughn, who’s increasingly infatuated with recreating the fatal accident that killed James Dean.
This film isn’t afraid to lean heavily into its own dark sexuality. In all of the love-making scenes, there’s a curious juxtaposition between warm tender flesh and the cold, corrugated metal of a wrecked automobile. This is a world where a hood ornament is a weapon of pleasure and vehicular suicide is a coquettish form of autonomy.
Crash is trying to say something but I’m still not sure what it is. It may be a commentary on the bleakness of modern society and how we’re all numbed to the point where we’re forced to resort to extremes to feel even a sliver of emotion, whether that be pain or pleasure or something in between. It could also be about the catharsis of embracing your inner freak, for better or for worse. There’s even a chance it’s about nothing, in which case Cronenberg was just baiting all of us with film constructed purely for shock-value’s sake (in which case he’s still an evil genius).
But just like witnessing a real accident, this movie’s so disturbing you can’t seem to look away.
The Day of the Locust (1975)
I don’t think many people know about this one, and I’ve realized whilst writing this article that pinning it down tonally is next to impossible. It’s more or less about a young artist moving to L.A. and becoming clinically disenchanted with the parasitic nature of good old Tinsel Town. He vies for the affections of a primordial Marilyn Monroe character (Faye) and competes with bumbling art director Homer Simpson (yes, you read that right) to win her over.
I’m aware my synopsis may have made this film sound boring. At this point, I think the concept of peeling back the lacquered sheen of the Hollywood machine to reveal the malefic underbelly beneath is more or less a hackneyed trope. But the way The Day of the Locust executes a traditionally predictable plotline is wholly unique and almost Lynchian; although it’s technically about Tod Hackett losing his infatuation with L.A., it’s not really about that at all. It’s about how the relentless pursuit turns you into a soulless husk and how the eventually uncontrollable yearning for spectacle rids people of their humanity.
When I think of this movie, an abstract Jekyll-and-Hyde-like scenario comes to mind. From start to finish there’s this whiplash power struggle between characters behaving like normal, civilized people … and then bam! You blink and find yourself watching a bunch of sweaty beasts whipped into a rabid frenzy.
For example, Faye gets entangled with this man who runs an illegal cockfighting gig. And unlike her, he’s dirty, disheveled, and probably smells like onions. In one scene, the two of them are enjoying a sexually charged meal together on the beach and, in an effort to seduce him, Faye begins licking the grease of the spit-roasted chicken off her lips, biting and tearing at the poultry as if she’s a lioness, and lets bootleg liquor drip down her chin and cascade down the steeple of her throat. Any semblance of a table manners is hurled out the window; you feel like you’re watching a mating ritual on National Geographic.
Later, the cockfighter is invited to Homer Simpson’s house to host a brawl in his garage. At the same time (and this makes no sense to me), Homer is busy conducting a rather hoity-toity dinner replete with frilly plate doilies and a collection of snazzy jazz records for guests to listen to as they digest their expensive meals. The camera constantly cuts from the rowdy cockfight to the austere-looking Homer until both realities collide when Homer finds himself grabbing the chicken man in a jealous fit of rage and smashes him headfirst into his dining room window. How dare he try to steal his woman?
Everything eventually culminates in a bloodthirsty riot outside a movie premier on the Hollywood strip. Homer, devastated by Faye’s duplicitous ways, is harassed by an obnoxious child actor pretending to be some warped caricature of Shirley Temple. Completely at his breaking point, he ends up curb-stomping this kid into a pulp and is viciously pursued by the people who witnessed the murder.
To really get the gist of this scene, imagine the classic “angry pitchfork” style mob. Now, whatever you’re thinking of, multiply it by at least ten. Absolute pandemonium breaks out and Homer is turned into pulled pork.
I think the takeaway of this movie is that, whether we want to admit it or not, we’re all animals at the end of the day. Even the name of the movie, The Day Of the Locust, only made sense right as the credits rolled. Locusts swarm mindlessly…just like the mob!
When this realization struck me, I smacked my forehead and went “doh!” in a very Homer Simpson-esque way.