👻 SO SPOOKY. 👻 A Hodgepodge of Horror!

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Hey there, ho there, howdya do?

I’ve decided to create my own little corner here on E to collect my thoughts on what I am currently watching, listening to, reading, playing, you know, whatever the case is! I love perusing the horror genre – the good, the bad, the mediocre – and wanted to have a space to share my thoughts. My aim is to toe the line between well-known, popular pieces and some more obscure work that I just need to geek out over. Also, I’d love to have contribution from other writers! Feel free to chime in.

Big important note here, there will be some darker/taboo topics discussed in this blog. And while I won’t delve into gratuitous detail of gore or violence, it will obviously be mentioned. Also, just to reassure any readers before proceeding, I don’t plan on posting any NSFW screenshots or bloody imagery. I love horror as a genre because it reflects societal fears and changing ideas, and this is what I want to be the focus on this blog. That being said, if some of these topics are potentially triggering/upsetting to you, please proceed with caution. I will include content warnings in bold, red lettering at the start of each post!

I have a tentative structure in mind here for posts. I chiefly created this blog to share and recommend different media, so I will be providing larger, broader strokes of plot and themes that we will then delve into further in the post. If you’d like to watch/partake, browsing the first paragraph will give you a relatively spoiler-free experience. I would love to serve as a springboard for bigger conversations on different takes on films/etc, so really, don’t be shy! I am also open to suggestions and recommended viewing.

The depth of each topic will likely vary. There are subgenres that I am passionate about, such as the boom of Asian horror at the turn of the 21st century in Hollywood, French extremism, and I feel prepared and excited to share some of my broader knowledge about. However, I want to keep this a fun, casual corner where everybody can learn a little something and feel like they can contribute easily. 



Anyways, once I can get around to it and do it justice, the first horror movie I will by talking about is Carlota Pereda’s Piggy, 2022. I stumbled upon this movie and watching it is what inspired me to start writing on E about horror. It’s available on Hulu and for rent on Amazon Prime currently.

Thank you for reading! Stay creepy, my little ghouls.

-Lin

[persephone325]

Oh my god, I love horror movies and stuff! I'm definitely going to be keeping tabs on this!

If you need me to delete this post, please let me know! I just got excited. ^^

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A note before we get to the good stuff: WOW, how the hell did it take me so long to do this? That, my intrepid reader, is simply a product of my damn anxiety. Everytime my fingers itched to write on this blog (and they did! They ached to share the fun goodies of horror with E!) I was like, what if I forget some crucial part of the story? What if my analysis is too shallow? What if, what if, and then what do you know...

.・゜-: ✧ :- Nothing Happened! .・゜-: ✧ :-

So I am just doing the damn thing, learn as I go, tweak as necessary. Finally folks, here is Piggy.

Content Warnings: Bullying, fatphobia, body shaming, parental abuse, murder, graphic violence.

The story begins with our protagonist Sara, a young woman who works at her family's butcher shop over the summer. Laura Galan, the actress playing Sara, is excellent in this role, giving us so much of who Sara is with very little dialogue. Already in this opening scene, we see Sara is someone who desperately wants to remain unseen. She is often curled in upon herself, nervously fidgeting, chewing on her hair. Throughout the film, she is wearing headphones a majority of the time, giving the viewer a sense of her desire to escape. Sara is bullied by both her peers and her community for being overweight, her classmates call her Piggy and oink at her. Sadly, some of this awful treatment begins at home (more on that later). 

A young woman named Claudia enters the butcher shop, and we see an interesting dynamic between the two. Unlike the out and out hostility and cruelty that many of Sara's classmates heap upon her, Claudia is fairly neutral to Sara. She doesn't go out of her way to be friendly to her, but there is an unspoken understanding between the two, at least when they are alone. After leaving her family's store, Sara goes to the local swimming pool, choosing to go at a time when the pool is empty and no one is there to see her in her swimsuit.

There, Sara's classmates Maca, Roci, and the aforementioned Claudia, arrive to the pool and begin bullying Sara, throwing the pool net over her head, forcing her under water. Let me say it plainly, I am not easily squicked out. This movie is packed with some really graphic imagery, but nothing really hit me harder than this scene in particular. The dread of watching Sara alone in the water as these girls approach is really the most upsetting scene in the entire movie. After tormenting her, the girls run off and steal Sara's clothes, and although we see some reservations from Claudia, she acquiesces, complicit in their bullying. 

Clearly traumatized and sobbing, Sara makes the trek back home, walking barefoot and still soaking wet in her swimsuit. On her way home, she discovers her bullies have been abducted by a nameless man, implied to not be local to the area, watching as Claudia bangs on the back window of his van and begs Sara to help her. The abductor observes Sara and, having seen the earlier incident at the pool, drops her a towel for her to wrap herself in and drives off with the three girls. When Sara returns home, she watches as the community scrambles to find the missing girls, keeping what she witnessed to herself.

Yes, there is the typical Big Bag! killer in this story, with the suspicious white van to boot, but that is not what makes Piggy a horrifying movie. What is so unsettling about Piggy is that we are experiencing this story through Sara's perspective, a vulnerable woman who has this unshakeable target on her back simply because she is fat. There is heavy handed symbolism in play here as her family owns a butcher shop, as well as a pivotal scene later on that takes place in an abadoned meat locker.

This move is laden with scenes of raw, butchered meat, and this imagery lends to the way everyone around Sara objectifies her, and feels justified in their objectification because she is overweight. In many ways, Sara's bodily autonomy is under attack; the mean girls post their torment of her on social media, her mother openly fatshames her, her body is something to be gawked at, poked and prodded.

I wondered while watching this how things might have been different for Sara if she had any sort of support network. Sara, despite being a perfectly decent, kind young woman, is thoroughly ostracized by her community, subjected to their spite and ridicule with no repreive. Her othering starts at home, spurred on largely by Asun, her overbearing, dismissive mother. Asun is more concerned with Sara's weight than her emotional wellbeing, and exacerbates the cruelty Sara faces on a daily basis by publicly deriding her and insisting upon putting her on crash diets.

I don't believe I can describe Asun as an entirely malicious or ill-intentioned character; she wants her daughter to be accepted and does care about her. But whatever good intentions she has is misdirected at criticizing her mistreated daughter and her weight, rather than the community that harms her. There are no repercussions for the people that torment Sara, save for the karmic retribution at play here for her bullies. Given the visceral, upsetting nature of their treatment of Sara, the viewer is left feeling ambivalent about their abduction and Sara's continued silence. 

At the climax of the movie, we see Sara finally own her pain and rage. Galan is so powerful in this role and there is something cathartic in watching Sara push back against her mother and bullies. The ending of this movie is certainly not what I would call a typical good ending, as the fate of the characters is actually quite tragic. Despite this, Sara exudes a sense of strength as the movie ends with her walking down a long, rural road, bloodied but resilient. She is no longer a victim. 

Rating: 4.0/5
I understand the subject material here might be too much for some, but if you think you can stomach it, this is a really well done film that leaves you with a lot to think on, much of which I haven't really been able to dive into here. This one is definitely a slow burn and I've read some criticisms online saying the ending did not pay off for them, but I do often enjoy slow-paced movies. If you have watched Piggy, please feel free to share your thoughts in this thread! I would love to hear someone else's take on this.


Up next! Dominique Rocher's The Night Eats the World (La nuit a dévoré le monde), 2018.

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The Night Eats the World.

Content Warnings: Bloody and graphic imagery.

Okay, I am loathe to write this on my HORROR blog, but I believe The Night Eats the World isn’t strictly a horror movie. There is some more horrific elements and graphic imagery, (y'know, because everyone save for our protagonist is an undead zombie) but this film is first and foremost a meditation on loneliness. Watch this movie on a rainy night alone. For those of you that are skeptical towards zombie media and find it derivative, might be worth it to give this one a shot. I think it's one of the best recent pieces of zombie fiction, right up there with Train to Busan, but never received the praise it deserved.

Pre-zombie outbreak, Sam is an American musician in Paris who has just recently broken up with his girlfriend, Fanny. He visits her flat in the middle of a swank party to pick up some of his work, has a chilly encounter with her new beau, and meanders impatiently in the crowd, utterly lost and disconnected from all the fun happening around him. We get a taste for Sam’s inability to form connections with others right away. Fanny has clearly moved on from their romantic relationship, but she clearly still cares for Sam, encouraging him to socialize while she grabs his things, an idea he quickly rejects.

He opts to wait for Fanny to return with his things in an empty room, eventually falling asleep as things quickly go to hell around him. (How can this dude sleep through the cacophony of all the people dying outside might be a plot hole) Sam’s social avoidance is his salvation here – he has unknowingly escaped the incoming chaos of the initial outbreak, and when he wakes up in the morning, the flat is soaked in blood and empty. What I love about this film is that at no point does Sam turn into a grizzled, zombie-slaying survivor – he methodically clears the apartment complex, stockpiles canned food, wipes up the blood and hunkers down. He is not a machismo action hero, he’s just an average dude trying to hold out.

And to his credit, Sam attempts to establish a new sense of normalcy – he starts his morning with a jog through the hallways with his headphones on, marks each day as it passes, and spends his free time making music. But we are already seeing the cracks in his mental wellbeing as he wallows in his isolation.

The Night Eats the World gives us an interesting scenario we don’t often see in post-apocalyptic plots. If someone was given ample shelter, food, and water, but no other human contact, how long would they truly last? What would compel them to keep moving forward? Again, Sam does a credible job of setting up a comfortable existence for himself post-apocalypse, but as time passes, his suffering and paranoia increase tenfold. And he is starved for some human contact. Sam begins hearing noises in the building (whether these are real or imagined is left vague), and his expression oscillates between terror and hope that he is not truly alone.

Sam pays the dead elderly couple downstairs tribute, covering their bodies with sheets and laying personal items over their bodies. He finds the childish tape recordings of a young boy who lived there and laughs along with his antics. He sees a cat on the street and tries to cajole it inside with some canned food, putting himself at considerable risk in the process, only to watch the little guy run off.

And, of course, Sam befriends Alfred, the zombie trapped in the birdcage elevator in the building. After what appears to be a few months of isolation, Sam lights up a cigar and sits and talks to Alfred, and his conversation with the dead man is revealing:

You probably thought you'd drop dead peacefully in your sleep, and then, this happens. Do you think there's a cure, or are we all goners? The hardest part is... not knowing what's happened to them. Because my mother, she's not really the type walk all over people to make it. So I guess it ended pretty quickly for her. […]

She died like everyone else. With everyone else, like you. Dead is the norm now. I'm the one who's not normal.

The end of the world is another big damn party, and Sam once again missed the invite. There are so many small moments of humanity in this movie - Sam listens to voicemails of the now deceased partygoers saying tearful goodbyes or urgently checking on their loved ones, watches a family attempt to flee their home and get attacked, and scrolls through a mother's camera, displaying happy shots of her children. Other than his mother, who is presumably overseas, he is untethered in Paris, an observer to the madness unfolding around him. For those familiar, Sam reminds me a lot of Henry in Silent Hill 4.

Well into his ordeal, Sam finally encounters another living soul, Sarah. She has been on the run, moving from place to place, and takes temporary shelter with him. With another person in the story, the viewer is able to see Sam as Sarah sees him - gaunt and pale, nervously fidgeting. They talk briefly about what she has seen outside: 

- Have you met any other survivors?

- Not many. A few guys hiding out in apartments, kinda like you. Most of them more or less crazy. Just like you, actually.

- Being on my own saved me.

Despite his social awkwardnesss, Sam is able to connect with others through his music. He plays for Sarah, who joins along and sings with the melody he creates. At the film's climax, Sam sets up a drum set and speakers and smashes out a incoherent beat, drawing hordes to the door of his building. I really love how this is done in a way that shows Sam performing for the horde, drawing the audience he has always craved, their hands stretched upwards for him like worshipping fans. At this point, it is only a matter of time before the barricade is destroyed and he is vulnerable prey. He is either going to escape and continue onward looking for other survivors, or remain hunkered down in his makeshift fortress and die.

Rating: 4.5/5
I think I am just incredibly biased here, but man, I just love this movie. Beyond the sort of mundane humdrum approach to a zombie story that I find so much more interesting than a typical action flick, the scant dialogue delivers so much. Anders Danielsen Lie does a great job portraying Sam, from the morose dude at a party to a ragged survivor reaching his mental limit. In a fun twist, the zombies are not snarling, they are just silent, save for their footsteps and snapping teeth. The sound design is really so effective and creepy, yet the movie really shies away from typical effects or jumpscares to deliver on horror.