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A Walking Study in Demonology
Mar. 29th, 2014 01:56 amI saw two horror movies back to back recently - Contracted and Alyce Kills (both on Netflix). They're both like Girls episodes gone bloody, which is always interesting to me since we know how much I like the whole women-in-horror thing. I told a friend who doesn't like horror movies the plot line of The Descent this evening and she came away saying, "I will never watch that because I can't handle gore, but it sounds intriguing." Which of course it is! I have come up with a new crazy theory about how watching and writing horror has made me a stronger person, but I think it needs to be fleshed out before I show it to the world.
Contracted is about sexually transmitted diseases. Alyce Kills is about being obsessed with your best friend, I guess. The main characters of both movies are lesbians in their 20s living in some L.A.-like city, working as a waitress (Samantha from Contracted) or a menial office worker of some kind (Alyce from Alyce Kills). Both are surrounded by an infuriating cast of realistically - sometimes absurdly - obnoxious characters.
Neither of the two are especially sympathetic, but both are - at least at first - at the mercy of larger forces, both supernatural and societal. Samantha is a nail-biting bundle of nerves who's recently broken up with too-cool-for-school Nikki and living with her ridiculous mother, whose inability to accept that Samantha is a lesbian is perfectly mirrored by her inability to see that Samantha has contracted some terrible, terrible illness. Samantha is not over Nikki and wants desperately to get back with her, but meanwhile she's being harassed by dweeb-leech Riley. She's sleepwalking (nightmaring, really) through life. Then she goes to a party and has her drink spiked by a dude no one seems to know named B.J., who we previously saw engaging in necrophilia. B.J. rapes her. Samantha thinks she's got a bad cold... then a bad stomach bug... then a bad STD. But come on, people: her eyes are bleeding, her hair and nails are falling out... Samantha's turning dead, and no one seems to be all that alarmed. The movie is an allegory about a lot of things, but I came away thinking mostly about invisibility, intense helplessness, and apathy. Samantha definitely has an external locus of control, and unfortunately the world just doesn't give a shit about her - until, of course, she's become a full-on zombie.
Alyce is different, and in some ways a relief after the excruciating passive weakness of Samantha - except that Alyce has murderous, apocalyptic tendencies. But Alyce, to her credit, gets shit done. When she pushes her best friend off a roof - accidentally? again, Alyce, like Samantha, has been drinking when the great Calamity happens and the horror rabbit-hole opens up - she quickly figures out that she's going to lie to the police about having been on the roof too. She decides she'll have sex with a drug dealer for the drugs she needs to get the ghostly visage of her best friend out of her head. She decides she needs to kill her paralyzed best friend (who she loves, and hates, and everything in between) before the best friend can point the finger at her. She decides to cause a terrible scene at the best friend's funeral. She decides to start killing people who hurt the best friend. Etc. Alyce, if nothing else, is a very active agent in her life. She also makes terrible - evil, really - decisions with very little regard for others. Both Samantha and Alyce kill people, but Samantha does so out of a combination of her slow-burning frustration with existence and more importantly, the zombie disease inside her. Alyce, like her best friend before the fall, is hovering over the precipice and cracking up, probably because she's one of those people who doesn't really consider other people to be "real."
Neither of these are much fun to watch, and neither are beautiful in any way. My favorite scene in Alyce Kills is one where Alyce takes home a douchey stud-muffin who's been hitting on her and can't resist inflicting minor pains on him - he'll punch her off the bed, and she gets right back up, laughing. It's perfectly uncomfortable and hysterical in a Hole-ish way. The equivalent scene in Contracted is horrific, grotesque, and involves maggots ("my body the hand grenade," indeed). I'm not sure I had a favorite scene in Contracted because the whole experience is so uniformly unpleasant and sad and there's not an ounce of mirth or glory in it. But Contracted stayed with me for longer. These are both flawed movies that certainly won't speak to everyone, but they're certainly interesting additions to women-in-horror-the-saga-continues.
On that note, one of my favorite horror-Hole songs:
Contracted is about sexually transmitted diseases. Alyce Kills is about being obsessed with your best friend, I guess. The main characters of both movies are lesbians in their 20s living in some L.A.-like city, working as a waitress (Samantha from Contracted) or a menial office worker of some kind (Alyce from Alyce Kills). Both are surrounded by an infuriating cast of realistically - sometimes absurdly - obnoxious characters.
Neither of the two are especially sympathetic, but both are - at least at first - at the mercy of larger forces, both supernatural and societal. Samantha is a nail-biting bundle of nerves who's recently broken up with too-cool-for-school Nikki and living with her ridiculous mother, whose inability to accept that Samantha is a lesbian is perfectly mirrored by her inability to see that Samantha has contracted some terrible, terrible illness. Samantha is not over Nikki and wants desperately to get back with her, but meanwhile she's being harassed by dweeb-leech Riley. She's sleepwalking (nightmaring, really) through life. Then she goes to a party and has her drink spiked by a dude no one seems to know named B.J., who we previously saw engaging in necrophilia. B.J. rapes her. Samantha thinks she's got a bad cold... then a bad stomach bug... then a bad STD. But come on, people: her eyes are bleeding, her hair and nails are falling out... Samantha's turning dead, and no one seems to be all that alarmed. The movie is an allegory about a lot of things, but I came away thinking mostly about invisibility, intense helplessness, and apathy. Samantha definitely has an external locus of control, and unfortunately the world just doesn't give a shit about her - until, of course, she's become a full-on zombie.
Alyce is different, and in some ways a relief after the excruciating passive weakness of Samantha - except that Alyce has murderous, apocalyptic tendencies. But Alyce, to her credit, gets shit done. When she pushes her best friend off a roof - accidentally? again, Alyce, like Samantha, has been drinking when the great Calamity happens and the horror rabbit-hole opens up - she quickly figures out that she's going to lie to the police about having been on the roof too. She decides she'll have sex with a drug dealer for the drugs she needs to get the ghostly visage of her best friend out of her head. She decides she needs to kill her paralyzed best friend (who she loves, and hates, and everything in between) before the best friend can point the finger at her. She decides to cause a terrible scene at the best friend's funeral. She decides to start killing people who hurt the best friend. Etc. Alyce, if nothing else, is a very active agent in her life. She also makes terrible - evil, really - decisions with very little regard for others. Both Samantha and Alyce kill people, but Samantha does so out of a combination of her slow-burning frustration with existence and more importantly, the zombie disease inside her. Alyce, like her best friend before the fall, is hovering over the precipice and cracking up, probably because she's one of those people who doesn't really consider other people to be "real."
Neither of these are much fun to watch, and neither are beautiful in any way. My favorite scene in Alyce Kills is one where Alyce takes home a douchey stud-muffin who's been hitting on her and can't resist inflicting minor pains on him - he'll punch her off the bed, and she gets right back up, laughing. It's perfectly uncomfortable and hysterical in a Hole-ish way. The equivalent scene in Contracted is horrific, grotesque, and involves maggots ("my body the hand grenade," indeed). I'm not sure I had a favorite scene in Contracted because the whole experience is so uniformly unpleasant and sad and there's not an ounce of mirth or glory in it. But Contracted stayed with me for longer. These are both flawed movies that certainly won't speak to everyone, but they're certainly interesting additions to women-in-horror-the-saga-continues.
On that note, one of my favorite horror-Hole songs:
