**SPOILERS** **SPOILERS** Is it possible, in the wake of 'Scream' and its inertia-veering ilk, to offer today's audience a 'straight' horror movie, especially if that horror movie is a ghost story, that most vulnerable of its sub-genres to falling on its face. You're inclined to think Robert Zemeckis believes so, because, despite a few humorous moments firmly rooted in character, he offers an admirably solemn chiller aimed at tensing you to maddening point, preying on those fears you'd rather repress, those things that lie beneath.
For about 100 minutes. The first thing to be wary about in this movie - and this is the sort of movie where you need to be manically vigilant or you needn't bother - is the title. It's too easy, almost mocking. After all, the whole point of a horror movie is to reveal what lies beneath. You may as well call a crime film 'Cops and Robbers' or a period effort 'Frills and Flounces'.
By a canny Zemickian paradox, however, the opposite may be actually true. For this is a movie that wears its Hitchcockian subtext defiantly on its surface. It plays with at least three different 'classic' horror-thriller staples. At first you might think you're watching 'Rear Window', as Claire believes the mysteriously uncivil man next door has done away with his wife. As in Hitchcock's film, there is the ambiguous night scene, where the husband appears to be bundling off a corpse. There is the voyeurism, culminating in a brilliant, hilarious, shocking shot, where Claire's prying eye is met by the eye she was spying on through the fence. You figure Hitchcock would approve. She spies on the husband with binoculars and he catches her doing it. Her lover, in this case her husband, doesn't believe her. L.B. Jeffries was a cameraman, photographs play a big part in this movie. While her husband is out making all the money, she is alone and vulnerable. Like the two couples in 'Rear Window', Claire finds uncomfortable affinities with the victim.
But just when you're patting yourself on the back and asking how gender transforms the classic Hitchcockian set-up, the whole thing is revealed as a damp squib, and you have to begin again (although you do get an excellent joke when she meets the suspect and his victim at a party).
The other two options are similarly 'traditional'. There is the psychological deterioration model. Zemeckis pushes this for all it is worth, making Claire a mother who has just lost her only child to college, who's recovering from an horrific car crash only a year ago, whose husband neglects her for his work, and most importanly, who has given up her music career to raise her daughter and support a family. There's enough in there to frazzle the hardiest kook. Add an isolated house with a dodgy front door, and is it any wonder she's having visions?
This model brings horror close to its roots in melodrama, where the horrors become a displacement of the frustration and repressions of a woman limited in her life choices - the home serves as a metaphor for both her entrapment and her deteriorating mind. The first image, over the credits, is seen as an hallucination of Claire's, and we are properly on our guard throughout. This breakdown is catered for by the whole gamut of classic Freudian paraphernalia - repeated scenes (the bath), submergence in water, keys, rings, bracelets, hair, doors, glass, mirrors, Oedipal problems etc, all leading us to suspect a sexually based trauma. This is linked to the third model, the family secret, where a past horror is locked away, and is slowly eating away at the family and its individuals. Relief will not come until it is expelled.
As I say, for about 100 minutes Zemickis plays on all three models with surface seriousness and covert playfulness (which is what really lies beneath). This is fine by me, the repertoire of haunted house cliches is generally amusing, especially when done with such intelligence, visual (all that white with its sparse splashes of red; the ghostly message on the mirror, 'You Know', cracking over Claire's fogged reflecton), formal (loved those scenes with the psychiatrist) beauty, and rich characterisation of the female lead. This method achieves some excellent jerks, and an atmosphere almost as chilling in its potential as 'Final Destination'.
But a state of tense suspension cannot be held indefinitely (in Hollywood anyway), and plot must out. This shift can be accurately traced at the moment when Claire's point of view, which has, without interruption, dominated and filtered the film for 100 minutes. For the film to achieve resoluton, it has to move from female time, which is repetitive, fluid, elliptical, enigmatic, open into male time, which is straight-ahead, no-nonsense, progresive, explanatory, closed. This is a gross stereotype, but it's true here, and as Norman takes over, the film collapses into daft 'Fatal Attraction' territory. Or it appears to, until you wonder whether Zemeckis's joke is finally paying off, as he asks how we could possibly have taken this seriously, with the 'Psycho' quotes in the film and on the soundtrack virtually giving it away. The way Claire gets out of the death-bath and her final supernatural rescue are so ridiculous they have to be a joke. And so a subtle portrait of marriage and female loneliness becomes another post-modern joke. Oh well.
For about 100 minutes. The first thing to be wary about in this movie - and this is the sort of movie where you need to be manically vigilant or you needn't bother - is the title. It's too easy, almost mocking. After all, the whole point of a horror movie is to reveal what lies beneath. You may as well call a crime film 'Cops and Robbers' or a period effort 'Frills and Flounces'.
By a canny Zemickian paradox, however, the opposite may be actually true. For this is a movie that wears its Hitchcockian subtext defiantly on its surface. It plays with at least three different 'classic' horror-thriller staples. At first you might think you're watching 'Rear Window', as Claire believes the mysteriously uncivil man next door has done away with his wife. As in Hitchcock's film, there is the ambiguous night scene, where the husband appears to be bundling off a corpse. There is the voyeurism, culminating in a brilliant, hilarious, shocking shot, where Claire's prying eye is met by the eye she was spying on through the fence. You figure Hitchcock would approve. She spies on the husband with binoculars and he catches her doing it. Her lover, in this case her husband, doesn't believe her. L.B. Jeffries was a cameraman, photographs play a big part in this movie. While her husband is out making all the money, she is alone and vulnerable. Like the two couples in 'Rear Window', Claire finds uncomfortable affinities with the victim.
But just when you're patting yourself on the back and asking how gender transforms the classic Hitchcockian set-up, the whole thing is revealed as a damp squib, and you have to begin again (although you do get an excellent joke when she meets the suspect and his victim at a party).
The other two options are similarly 'traditional'. There is the psychological deterioration model. Zemeckis pushes this for all it is worth, making Claire a mother who has just lost her only child to college, who's recovering from an horrific car crash only a year ago, whose husband neglects her for his work, and most importanly, who has given up her music career to raise her daughter and support a family. There's enough in there to frazzle the hardiest kook. Add an isolated house with a dodgy front door, and is it any wonder she's having visions?
This model brings horror close to its roots in melodrama, where the horrors become a displacement of the frustration and repressions of a woman limited in her life choices - the home serves as a metaphor for both her entrapment and her deteriorating mind. The first image, over the credits, is seen as an hallucination of Claire's, and we are properly on our guard throughout. This breakdown is catered for by the whole gamut of classic Freudian paraphernalia - repeated scenes (the bath), submergence in water, keys, rings, bracelets, hair, doors, glass, mirrors, Oedipal problems etc, all leading us to suspect a sexually based trauma. This is linked to the third model, the family secret, where a past horror is locked away, and is slowly eating away at the family and its individuals. Relief will not come until it is expelled.
As I say, for about 100 minutes Zemickis plays on all three models with surface seriousness and covert playfulness (which is what really lies beneath). This is fine by me, the repertoire of haunted house cliches is generally amusing, especially when done with such intelligence, visual (all that white with its sparse splashes of red; the ghostly message on the mirror, 'You Know', cracking over Claire's fogged reflecton), formal (loved those scenes with the psychiatrist) beauty, and rich characterisation of the female lead. This method achieves some excellent jerks, and an atmosphere almost as chilling in its potential as 'Final Destination'.
But a state of tense suspension cannot be held indefinitely (in Hollywood anyway), and plot must out. This shift can be accurately traced at the moment when Claire's point of view, which has, without interruption, dominated and filtered the film for 100 minutes. For the film to achieve resoluton, it has to move from female time, which is repetitive, fluid, elliptical, enigmatic, open into male time, which is straight-ahead, no-nonsense, progresive, explanatory, closed. This is a gross stereotype, but it's true here, and as Norman takes over, the film collapses into daft 'Fatal Attraction' territory. Or it appears to, until you wonder whether Zemeckis's joke is finally paying off, as he asks how we could possibly have taken this seriously, with the 'Psycho' quotes in the film and on the soundtrack virtually giving it away. The way Claire gets out of the death-bath and her final supernatural rescue are so ridiculous they have to be a joke. And so a subtle portrait of marriage and female loneliness becomes another post-modern joke. Oh well.