I’m a huge fan of J-Horror and have always thought of movies like Ringu ,Ju-On, Dark Water Rising, etc were incredibly scary. Seeing Japan being the best at completing the tests made me chuckle- and felt like a nod at how different their cinema is. In the same vein, seeing the children at the end actually achieving victory and no casualties made me laugh. We always see the bad or lukewarm endings in these movies, so a happy one felt like some kind of bucket list item being crossed off, even if it was only done in the context of an entirely different movie.
2. To me, the movie felt like a huge critique of torture porn and at some point like a criticism of humanity in general. As a general audience, we consume movies that just up the gore and random scares- that’s why tropes are as big as they are still being used. Like So in some sense, we’re the Elder Gods. If a movie doesn’t satisfy we leave it awful reviews, “destroying” it, if we don’t get what we expected from it. This is exemplified really well in one transition scene when Dana is going up, and then suddenly we see the underground lab taking out ice cold beers on a job well done. It frames her as the object, even though she suffered, we don’t really care- it was all a narrative, and now that it’s done we can go back and party.
This makes it feel like a deeper criticism of us as a people instead. The feeling is exemplified with the Director. She directly explains that Dana has to do what she has to do or everyone will die. In cold utilitarian logic, the choice is either brutally kill people or let everyone die. The question at hand is at what point do we really let go of our humanity and become the monster.
3. The one big plot point I got annoyed with was how inept it seemed like the underground lab facility was. Obviously, a lot of the people there had been doing this for years, and usually achieved success. But based on the amount of screw-ups they had, it just felt less believable. The idea that faculty missed Marty’s (Fran Kranz) stash, and that he somehow only smoked that stash the entire trip as opposed to all of the spiked stuff, felt off. Also how did he survive the initial zombie attack when we saw all the blood come up? Or the fact that only officer was sent to the elevator to confront Dana (Kristen Connolly) and Marty, and then he dies from being hit against the elevator? It just feels like if this really was the most important thing ever, single-handedly determining the fate of the entire universe,they would do better. But given that the movie was about destiny and the bigger picture was about what kind of orientation we should even take towards the world- is it worth saving if we have to compromise ourselves in the worst possible way- I can get over it.
