Shutter, Grudge, and Audition

Asian horror movies that delve into deep psychological thrillers are my favorite. With most being about revenge and/or justice oriented (e.g. guy kills, rapes, or tortures person and said person's spirit comes back and haunts them, usually ends up in killing them)


The story in Shutter is about a ghost who takes revenge on this guy who watch her get raped when he was younger. The way the spirit manifests its way into photographs the man takes reflect the voyeurism he partook in the incident. This is very important to understand, because throughout the story you are rooting for him because the audience does not realize what he did wrong until the end of the movie.

Grudge, a movie thats been remade so many times, has two spirits that were both murdered, however their motives are not clear. Whenever a trespasser enters the household, they either die or disappear. Movies like these to me are scarier than movies with spirit with reason, because you could be the next victim… why? No reason.

Audition holds the same weight as Grudge and shuter. Still holds the no reason motif behind it, but intentions get clearer and clearer in the end.

Riddles in the Dark

When I first heard about The Hobbit, I heard that it was a book written specifically for children. After seeing the movie, I couldn't believe that the book would be appropriate for small children! I would be scared out of my mind! It didn't take me long while actually reading it, though, to realize that the book is vastly different than the movie. First of all, the dwarves are described as a lot more colorful in the book, which is probably what would make kids feel like they could connect to the dwarves much easier. Plus, there are a lot of references to Bilbo's character being small, which is something that a child can relate to easily. Children are often told what they can or can't do because of their age and height, so a story about a very small and scared character going on an adventure and ultimately doing something great sounds like a huge fantasy for a child.

Since the last movie hasn't come out yet, I was unaware of just how many unexpected deaths there are in this "children's book."

Children's book or not, I still find Gollum to be one of the most interestingly creepy characters to ever have been created. Granted, that's after having seen all of the Lord of the Rings movies a dozen times. I feel like reading the description of Gollum in The Hobbit would have been far less creepy if i hadn't already had a preconceived visual of him. I do appreciate, however, that the Riddles in the Dark scene was almost verbatim how the book was originally written, and it was adapted as an adult film really well. I also appreciated the fact that even though they wanted to go for a more "adult" movie, they still managed to make the scenes where the dwarves sing work for the adaptation. In fact, it's one of my favorite scenes.

As a side note, here's the Riddles in the Dark scene from the 1977 cartoon of The Hobbit, which was made for children. Gollum's look is much more animal-like than human-like, but somehow he's still just as creepy.

As a concluding point, these examples are seriously just grazing the surface of how many differences there are between the book and the movies. Many of the scenes in the movies came out of the back of The Return of the King, which, by the way, was clearly NOT written for children.

Aunt Maria, Halloweentown, and The Crucible.

Aunt Maria was a really frustrating book to read because the mother was such a pushover. I, for one, know that after a few days of trying to be nice, my mom would tell Aunt Maria to back off. Chris was by far my favorite character because he was the only one willing to stand up to Aunt Maria. In the end, that didn't seem to do him any good as he was turned into a wolf. 

What I find funny is the fact that, depending on the story, a witch can either be good or bad- which is something we don't see very often. Let's take cyclops's for instance. They are never perceived as good. even though the only real consistent difference between cyclops's and humans is that humans have one extra eye. So why are witches one of the only mystical characters that can be both good and bad? What about unicorns? Why aren't there any evil unicorns? I digress.

Anyway, We have bad witches and we have good witches. Bad witches include: The Wicked Witch of the West, Aunt Maria, the 3 witches from Hocus Pocus, etc. Good witched include: Glenda the Good Witch, Marty from Halloweentown, Samantha from Bewitched, Sabrina and her family, etc. BUT THEN we have the historical significance of witches. I reread The Crucible recently and realized that witches were actually a huge concern in the 1600's. Even though witches didn't actually exist, people from that time period were paranoid that anyone could be a witch, and they were willing to drown or burn their own family just to be sure that they were safe, which is just an interesting thought.

new weird

Edgar Allen Poe's works are all perfect examples of "The New Weird," which is a genre I had never really considered to be "my thing." After finally deciding on reading A Tell-Tale Heart by Poe, I came to the conclusion that I really love the genre. 

The short story is from the perspective of a crazy man who can't stand the eye of the old man who lives with him. I imagine the old man being a distant relative of the crazy man's- possibly the only family member who volunteered to take care of his insane relative. I also imagine that the crazy man is narrating the entire story from the inside of an insane asylum. The story is very ambiguous, so a lot of the imagery is left to the imagination. I think the ambiguity of the story works to its advantage. In many cases, the imagination can conjure up much more frightening things than any visual ever could. I think this is why, in many cases, books and short stories have the potential to be much more frightening than any movie ever could be, because the contents of the deepest and darkest parts of our mind bear more disturbing and personal terrors than what can be fed to us through a screen.

The whole story revolves around the old man's blue eye, which is somehow the only thing about the old man that makes the insane main character want to do him in. I love how simple the overall story is, yet so ridiculously eerie. I think that's what this genre is really all about.

Gothic

Gothic examples

• Thunder storms
• Paranormal activity
• Bats
• Long candles and holders
• Castles
• Blood
• Supernatural
• Roses
• Graves
• Vampires
• Crosses
• Amulet
• Nightmares
• Skulls
• Mystery
• Werewolf’s
• Chains
• Torture chamber
• Rain
• Night time
• Winding staircases
• Secret passages
• Death
• Spider webs
• Corpses
• Sleepy hollow

A lot of these themes and examples are used in both Frankenstein the novel and in Young Frankenstein the film. I think that the most important aspect of gothic films and novels, however, are the strange characters. Obviously, this could be apparent if the characters have some kind of mutation themselves, but also, anyone who's willing to live in a setting that has many of the above qualities must be strange.

The Southern Vampire Mysteries

The Southern Vampire Mysteries, is a series of books written by bestselling author Charlaine Harris. In the series Harris develops a detailed mythology and alternate history that approaches supernatural beings as real. It's history has otherwise unfolded so closely to that of the real world that the series contains occasional references to pop culture.

The series represent vampires as a new race of people. Since they are a new discovery to the human race, they are outcasted by rest of society. The vampire race have been given powers such as speed, strength,  keen sense of senses, as well as other supernatural powers (some with flight) to protect themselves from the human race. The series really shows how fast the entire world can become racist towards an entire new species giving little hope for human society.

The mythology of vampires being sex objects still stands in the series and is even more supported by followers of vampires called Fangbangers, who volunteer to have their blood be sucked by the vampires.

I feel like the deeper meaning behind the series portrays society's reaction to race and racism, and shows how quickly we are willingly to blame an entire race for their "evil" ways, when in reality the chauvinists are the ones that forced that race to be what they are.