FILM

FOUR HORRIFIC SCENES

the perverse logic of gothic cinema

by Katelyn Laisure

It’s every parent’s nightmare. A young girl falls into an icy pond. Each second that she’s under the water feels like an hour. It’s agonizing. When her father finally plunges into the icy depths, we can feel the cold seize him; his every stroke is an act of desperation, fighting against the water's cold weight. Time collapses around him; the brutal reality of the situation dawns on him and us. As he emerges from the water, his daughter’s limp body in his arms, he unleashes a cathartic roar, a horrifying and primal scream that cuts through the air like a knife. It's monstrous, bone-chilling, and symbolizes the torment of a loss so profound his soul has shattered. We know this wound will never heal and in a way the audience never heals from watching the opening scene of Nicholas Roeg’s 1972 shocker, Don’t Look Now, starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie.

Number 2: Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

What's the fun of violence, if there are no witnesses?

As Ofelia and her mother are falling asleep for the first night in their new home, the movie cuts to Ofelia's stepfather, Vidal, brutally torturing two local farmers. The men claim that they are only hunting rabbits, but Vidal doesn’t believe them. He beats the younger man to near death with a glass bottle, while forcing the man's father to watch. You don’t know which is worse, the horrific beating or the terror and despair in the eyes of the old man watching his son’s brutal beating. After Vidal is finished, there is a massive hole where the son’s nose and upper mandible were. The fact that he's still conscious is terrifying. And yet the director Del Toro knows that terror is more than just an act of brutality, but knowing that someone is watching that brutality. Vidal leaves the son alive just long enough so that he can see his father shot and killed. Seconds later, we find that the father and son were telling the truth and that they were just hunting rabbits. Their deaths are completely unwarranted. Vidal doesn’t show any signs of remorse; instead, he just tells his men to be more thorough in the future.

Number 3: Frank LaLoggia’s The Lady in White (1988)

A scarred and scared ghost

The year is 1962 and Frankie Scarlatti is 10-years old and he's thrilled that it’s Halloween. Unfortunately for Frankie, some boys trap him in the cloakroom after school, where he’ll be stuck until Monday if no one comes looking for him. But he soon discovers that being locked in a cloakroom for two days is the least of his problems. Just as the church bells ring out at 10 o'clock, he hears giggling, and a little girl appears, passing easily through the locked door. The little ghost girl sees Frankie, becomes scared, and begins pleading with something invisible to take her home, that she wants her Mommy, and that she’s scared. The unseen companion then begins dragging her around by her hair, beating her, and then proceeds to strangle her while she screams for help. The invisible killer lifts the girl’s body and carries her out. Frankie is left in the cloakroom.

Number 4: Kim Jee-woon, A Tale Of Two Sisters (2003)

A family dinner worse than Thanksgiving

After being institutionalized in a mental hospital, Su-mi reunites with her sister, Su-yeon, at their country home. But strange events plague the house. At a family dinner, their stepmother (in the company of her brother and sister-in-law) begins to tell stories of her and her brother’s childhood. While the stepmother giggles and is short of breath, everyone else at the table looks uncomfortable. When pressed as to whether he remembers any of his sister’s stories, the brother says, “No, I don't.” The stepmom begins to get angry when her sister-in-law, Mi-hee, suddenly has a violent seizure. She flails, screams, and grabs at her throat as if possessed by a demon. But then she goes rigid, unable to move, her eyes lock onto a space under the sink as she struggles to breathe. For no logical reason, she recovers, and on the way home, Mi-hee tells her husband that she saw a dead girl under the kitchen sink. The scene abruptly cuts to an image of the dead girl and a horrific scream. What we see is sickening: a little girl covered in blood and dirt shoved under the sink.

What to say?

Julie Christie in Don't Look Now

Gothic cinema defies the boundaries of traditional storytelling; it is not only a spectacle of the macabre, but also a visceral exploration of trauma that strips away the layers of our perceived realities. It presents us with the raw and the real, where the unbearable truth of existence surfaces as ordinary and yet unfathomable. It is raw trauma that breaks down the parameters of the world. It literally destroys a sense of the real. From world wars to systematic injustice, or even generational trauma, the gothic goes there and wallows in it. Here, the gothic is not merely an artistic expression; it is a powerful agent that leaves an indelible mark, challenging us to reflect on the weight of history and its persistent echo in our present lives.

©The CCA Arts Review and Katelyn Laisure