These words follow most good or at least exceedingly bizarre horror movies. It was in 1408, different Hellraiser movies, as well as other horror movies and most student experiences at NEIU.
Sometimes you end up right back where you started. These words follow most good, or at least exceedingly bizarre, horror movies. Yes that was intentional. Think of it as a poor attempt at being humorous. Getting stuck back at step one is just one of life’s little surprises. You think you’re safe when really you’re just as screwed as you were, if not more so at that time.
The thing that this goes off of is the idea that you might have escaped a horrible situation and think that you’re now on safe ground. Then, the big indicators that your safe ground has been tainted happen, like the walls bleeding and random stuff flying around the room, usually at you. The worst of your ordeal is about to begin. And you thought you were safe. HA!
It’s actually kinda fun to see situations where everything goes to hell, sometimes literally, in a film, book or game. Then again, when it happens in real life, it just gets interesting and horrific, if the person didn’t deserve it. If they did, it’s just hilarious. However, we aren’t talking about real life so I digress.
One of the films that managed to pull off this beautiful sense of dread is based on the simple potential for being safe is the Japanese version of Premonition. A lot of the movie returns to previous events whether they happened in story time or delving into the back the story. It’s all about how something as mundane as a newspaper, through a small twist of fate and telling the future, can become terrifying. The ending itself is doesn’t really garner much hope of resolution since [spoiler alert: skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want to know] the main character is dead and his daughter sees the ethereal newspaper that predicts nothing but death.
Another one that manages to pull that off is John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness. It is a film that makes the most mundane everyday object, a book, unsettling. Why? You literally get sucked into the story. What was once fiction becomes your reality. Being that this film was essentially a call to the Lovecraft cultists out there, Lovecraft crafted books like with this same primal dread of “What if it’s not over?”
Stephen King, one of the masters of modern horror, pulled this off beautifully with 1408. 1408 followed Mike Enslin through the ordeal of getting stuck in an evil hotel room that has the ability to get people to kill themselves or just die of natural causes. Halfway through he thinks he escaped, when in reality the evil of the room is just screwing with him by giving him one of the best and worst emotions people can have, hope. Even when he finds a way out and the movie ends, it is implied that he might not have actually fully gotten out. He could’ve died in the fire he started in the room. He could’ve survived. He could’ve started hallucinating in a way that would be tolerable for him in the room. The movie has a great deal of resolved conflicts but it isn’t entirely sure whether or not the conflict regarding the room is truly over.
Jacob’s Ladder always gives a certain level of comfort but then you’re back where you started in a demon-filled world. You think you’re out but in reality it’s just going to get much worse from here. Your friends will die. You’ll get taken into a hospital that is literally hell. You’ll hear the voices telling you repeatedly to dream on indicating that something is wrong. You’ll be told repeatedly that you are actually dead and when everything resolves itself, you are, without a doubt, dead having bled out on an operating table in Viet Nam years earlier than you think it is.
This false escape premise is linked in with paranoia and sheer insanity. The thing that makes books, movies and games following the premise of “did I really escape and am I really safe” memorable is the insanity behind it. There is a certain logic to the machinery that makes up good horror entertainment. It’s just something that few people would dare to dwell on. Why would they decide to ignore the logical insanity behind the premise? It’s simple but is to be answered with a question. “What if it was right and we are simply doomed regardless of what we think?”
Japanese movies like One Missed Call, Infection, Ringu or Ju-on also follow this premise. People do something that might’ve seemed like the right thing but in the end it makes it worse. An evil spirit’s sphere of influence goes beyond its normal bounds (Ju-on). The sole survivor just dies from the infection that was spreading through the staff of the hospital, and she thought she was fine (Infection). The evil spirit that was killing people possesses the main character and the cycle starts back up again in a different way (One Missed Call). It balances out in a weird way to make security and the resolution of the events worse than being hunted.
The Korean movie Into the Mirror and the recent remake Mirrors followed this in a strange way where you think you’ve escape but you’ve just been sucked into the other side of the mirror. That ends up being a problematic ending because all the questions that arise from the turn of events. What about the demon that was being fought? Did it escape? Is it dead? Am I dead? How did I end up on the other side of the mirror? Is this completely FUBAR ([expletive] up beyond all recognition/[expletive] up beyond all relief) series of events really over or is it just going to go downhill from here?
There’s a lot that goes into this topic though and it is a pain to try to stick to word counts with really in depth topics like false senses of security. So if you want to know more by all means get in touch with me and we can talk it out.
If you wish to know more about your being doomed, Jonathan Gronli can be conjured at jon.gronli@gmail.com