In honor of our hatred for the stupidest holiday ever dreamed up and our obsession with Jensen Ackles, who is sadly married, Jordan and I watched an interesting movie yesterday after class. My Bloody Valentine came out in 2009 and is essentially a Texas Chainsaw Massacre type of scary movie. The movie also tied into our class because of the psychological aspect.
The story is based on Tom Hanniger (Ackles), a guy who was raised in a small mining town. When he was a young employee at the mine, he indirectly was at fault for the murder of 5 trapped miners (he slacked on his job above ground and caused the cave in). The guy who actually killed his fellow miners, Harry Warden, went into a coma immediately after. When he awakes from the coma he goes on a killing rampage on Valentine's Day. Of course he tries to kill Tom but fails and from that moment on Tom has serious psychological issues. He skips town and nobody sees him for ten years. But when he comes back to settle his deceased father's affairs (he owned the mine), the killings begin again. His high school friend is now sheriff and married to Tom's high school love and immediately assumes Tom is the one actually killing all these people because Harry Warden was, in fact, dead and buried at this point. I'm not going to give away the ending but this gives you the idea behind the psychological aspect.
In almost all of the stories we've read, we've discussed people and their mental states. We've justified some of the supernatural stories as the memories of mad men/women. So this is what came to mind while watching this movie. Even though the movie was not a major success, I think it did a great job of confusing you. It made you want Tom to be innocent and assume that Harry Warden had come back to life on the tenth anniversary of his previous rampage. It even made you want to peg the crimes on the sheriff/ex-friend of Tom's. At some point you're convinced Tom is doing it, then you doubt yourself. So not only is the movie psychological in itself, it makes the audiences mind spin.
I think most horror films and books require this psychological mind game for its entertainment value. Let's face it, not many of us would watch people get hacked to bits for fun unless we had the added entertainment of trying to figure out what is going on the entire time. Jordan and I were bouncing ideas off each other the whole time (she ended up being right, I admit) and I think that is what made the movie so entertaining to us...on top of getting to watch Jensen Ackles play a crazy person.
So I recommend the movie for anyone who likes that kinda stuff, which should be the majority of the class because of what we talk about and read every week. It really wasn't bad at all.
3 comments:
*Stewie voice* VICTORY IS MINE! I was right. But I seriously doubted myself a couple times, which I think is what the movie wants you to do.
I'm probably going to write a paper based on the various psychological aspects of nearly every horror story we've looked at, plus movies such as this or Black Swan, which I mentioned in one of my previous blog posts about the psychology of horror.
I'd like to argue that in order to be realistic and actually scare people, horror fiction needs to throw in that psychological component that make the audience think, "Wow. This really could happen to a person. And that's TRULY horrifying."
Thoughts?
Oh yeah I definitely think that realization that people are capable of anything and this could happen to me/someone I know gives the horror genre its backbone. For example, things like Paranormal Activity wouldn't scare you as much unless it says "this is a true story and the whereabouts of this psycho is unknown". I think you have a lot of fuel for that paper in books, movies, and tv shows.
Not to be a bummer here, but your plot description just kind of makes me giggle. Massive killing on valentine's day? (OOO NO! *bruce voice* what shall we doooo?) Way to go, Hollywood. Guess it was released Valentine's day to give some blood and gore to the single people... and those couples that give me the heeby jeebies buying matching neon hair dye at Hot Topic. But seriously, I think that these movies are becoming such a big part of entertainment just for the something jumping out and then there's a big twist thrill. I wonder, however, how long movie producers can keep it up before we are completely desensitized.
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