you can't live on movies alone, she says

[intertribal]

Watching Night of the Living Dead (1968) for the first time.  Actually, watching a George Romero original for the first time.  I know it's hard to believe, but I'm one of those people who instinctively gets bored when the screen's in black and white.  It is strange to see such slow zombies, because I've only seen jumping zombies (China) and sprinting zombies (28 Days Later).  Even the zombies in the Romero remakes have some oomph to them, they just lounge around when in mass groups.  It's pretty good, though.  The level of gore is unexpected.  I was really impressed by the opening sequence, because it seemed so much like a genuine nightmare - everything's going along smoothly (at the cemetery), it's daytime, it's quiet, and then suddenly, oh, jesus, there's a dead guy walking around.  Very effective.  Cognitive dissonance accomplished.

I mentioned this before, but I recently realized that my attraction to zombie movies is I used to have recurring dreams, when I was in elementary school, where the entire world had either become zombies or vampires - my parents, my neighbors, every single person I ran across - and I was the only person left.  Like that ad for that BBC show Survivors, except I was being chased.  The first time I had the dream, when I screamed in the dream I woke up.  The second time, I tried screaming, and it didn't help.  The last time I had the dream, I decided to let them bite me and turn me into one of them. 

Other than that, I've been disappointed by the recent horror movies I've watched.  Frontiers really tried to add something new to the Psycho Hicks in the Woods genre by making them ~Nazis~ in race-rioting France, but when the neo-Nazis decided that they would add this girl of Middle Eastern descent to their breeding pool because they were too inbred, the movie lost all credibility.  Tried to make up for it with massive amounts of blood, almost as much as Shallow Ground.  I ended up thinking about the final girl again - how violent she's become in recent years.  This isn't Laurie running around stabbing Michael Myers with knitting needles anymore - this is ripping throats out, circular saw through the rib cage.  The more violent she becomes, I have to say, the less believable she is.  Her morality was always specious, but I'm not sure I buy the idea that the average person, even when confronted with the violent deaths of their companions, will be fueled by enough adrenaline and rage to kill so many psycho killer hicks with knives and circular saws and guns and bare hands. 

And then I just stop caring.

Comments

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

The last time I had the dream, I decided to let them bite me and turn me into one of them.

That is...really eerie, especially if you try go think all Freudian-like.

Also, nice title. And you mean there's a trend in 'final girls' in movies recently?

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

*to. to think

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Analyze me!

Well, "final girls" is such a standard trope in horror, I'm not sure it ever goes out of fashion.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

no! well, i think you got the gist of the obvious interpretation in a comment below. but i feel like, you are much better than i am at fitting into society, at making compromises that i can't make, and i have never had any such dreams. the closest i come is my giving-up-on-the-church-and-steve dream, which is...very different. i guess i used to have dreams where people were chasing me, but always men, always with the threat of rape or something. obviously i didn't--couldn't--join them.

No, I meant you describing final girls as more violent recently, is that a trend? i'm always not sure if "final girls" is really the name of a trope and not like, some reference i'm missing, and then i wasn't 100% sure if you meant that as an analysis of the entire horror genre over time.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I don't think that's totally true, about me being better than you are at fitting into society. I think maybe I see it as inevitable and you don't, or something along those lines.

oh! yeah, I think it is a trend. I notice that when I watch '70s and '80s horror movies, the heroine rarely does much violence. She usually survives by running, screaming, conveniently running into policemen. I don't know enough chronology, but the Saw movies (starting in 2003) really pushed forward the idea of the victim "taking matters into their own hands" and doing violence to others in order to survive. The victims weren't always women, but I think it's now spread to the final girl style of horror. People have praised it as a form of empowerment, hilariously. I felt that Drag Me To Hell (2009) portrayed this active-victim character much more convincingly than, say, this movie, Frontiers.

[pgtremblay.livejournal.com]

Funny, I was just talking horror movies with my brother last night, and I was saying how well the original NOLD holds up.

I picked up The Last Winter on your rec, but haven't watched it yet.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the only bad part is when the zombies are eating "human parts" and it's like, clearly a turkey leg. But there's certainly a spook factor that's lost in newer zombie movies.

Ooh! Let me know if you like it.

[selfavowedgeek.livejournal.com]

RE: "Her morality was always specious, but I'm not sure I buy the idea that the average person, even when confronted with the violent deaths of their companions, will be fueled by enough adrenaline and rage to kill so many psycho killer hicks with knives and circular saws and guns and bare hands."

See? That's why I was pleasantly surprised by the movie Wolf Creek.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

One I haven't seen! I'll have to add it to Netflix (why oh why can't everything be Watch Instantly?).

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The last time I had the dream, I decided to let them bite me and turn me into one of them

Dude. I did the same thing in my similar nightmares, and after that I stopped being chased.

Frontiers really tried to add something new to the Psycho Hicks in the Woods genre by making them ~Nazis~ in race-rioting France ---that really cracked me up. I guess "psycho hicks in the woods" as a genre cracked me up, first off, and then the when-in-doubt-add-Nazis element. How to spice up your movie--add Nazis!

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah - what if it means something like, we're resisting the pressure of joining society/the material world, but there's no way to keep running from it forever? Ick.

I like the Psycho Hicks in the Woods genre, but it's nothing to take seriously - same with Nazis in horror movies. Frontiers definitely had no sense of humor.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's something kind of disconcerting about dreams where you give in. In my dreams, it always turned out that the bad people chasing me (usually enemies in a war or whatever) were not so bad after all, but I just looked at my subconscious kind of skeptically when it fed me that line. Oh sure. I give in to them, and you try to comfort me by telling me they're not so bad?

For me I wondered if there was some kind of sexual element to it. (Not suggesting there is for you at all--I think the same imagery could have different meaning/significance/whatever for different people.)

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Hahaha. The dream where I gave in, the bad people were my classmates. They were also vampire-velociraptors, fwiw.

I think a lot of dreams have a sexual element to them, and I could totally see how this dream could be sexual. For me I doubt it was very overt because I was 8 at the time.