One thing my little girl loves to do is watch horror films with her Papa. Whenever she comes to visit or whenever I make that five hundred mile trek to see her she'll ask, even before I manage to shake the road dust from my boots, when we can sit down to watch The Blob or Them or Bride of Frankenstein together. It's been quite the ritual for us these last few years, but it hasn't always been easy. As most kids do, she went through that shakey phase of scary films, the one where catching a flick on the couch in the afternoon meant waking up in the middle of the night with the frights. She would be too freaked out to wander around the house to find me, so she would go across the hall and crawl into her mother's bed, instead. I would always hear about that the next morning, about how she was too young for scary movies, but it never stopped Punkin from wanting to go another round with the creatures and beasts of the night with me.
I have to wonder what she would think of the latest round of thrillers, horror and sci-fi that I've been catching these days. Most have been coming off the shelves of the foreign film collection at Hollywood Video, occasionally from the racks of my local second hands. I don't seek out horror that is especially violent or bloody, but rather films where tension and drama and what happens off the screen prevails. I don't mind the man in the rubber suit movies, but CGI has taken the place of that and has given large monsters a new lease on life. Science fiction films are always grand, so long as there is a good story and they have well written dialogue. It's one thing to assemble a grand universe on the blue screen, it's another to immerse the viewer in the imaginative world of a good tale. That's where Neill Blomkamp's film District 9 really shines.
Because it's so well done I don't think I'll want to wait too long to introduce Punkin to District 9. It had all the requisite strangeness that we love about creature features, plus a large dollop of outrageous and wonderful special effects that help make the story special but also allow the tale to live and breathe on it's own. The best part is that it has a nice small film feel to it, not so overwhelming like so many of it's CGI driven Hollywood brethern. Setting the film in South Africa is unusual, as is the documentary feel. It's retro and contemporary all at the same time, like Alienation but different. It's a message film, a comment on the stranger not truly welcome in this strange land, a tale about the moral obligation society places on itself to take in refugees, but the harsh attitude the locals have about aliens and how they ultimately blame all of society's ills on them. Coming from a household where my Grandmere was a green card holder, I can relate to the tensions that the authorities in Distract 9 provoked. I can only imagine how hard life would have been if we had been forced to live behind barbed wire in shanty towns as well.
Punkin might be put off by the gunslinging and the shootouts, might be grossed out by the blood and such, but we can grow into it. Maybe we'll give War of the Worlds a try for starters. Maybe I'll screen The Host for her, if she's interested in moving beyond Toho studio's rubber suits and wants to give current monster movies a try. It'll be awhile before we watch Paranormal Activity, The Orphanage or The Others. Maybe we can start her haunted house film education with a viewing of Robert Wise's The Haunting or The Uninvited with Ray Milland. We can pop in almost anything by Hammer Studios starring Vincent Price or Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing, but for the time being we'll leave those Italian horror films alone.
Life is full of scary moments, most of which have nothing to do with celluloid. I think that horror films, in small doses, helps to serve a purpose, somewhat in the way that a flu shot helps you ward off a bigger and nastier dose of a bug. Scary movies familiarize you with those dark, cobwebby corners of your mind, help you cope with the things, real or imagined, that go bump in the night. I read newspapers every day and know that there are more real life monsters out there than I ever could possibly face on the silver screen, ones that strike more real life fear in my heart than a boatload of cinematic vampires or aquatic monsters ever will. I suppose that's one reason why I don't mind watching those kinds of movies with Punkin. One, she can then learn the difference about what is fiction and what is truly horrible and scary in the world , and two, she can find out that no matter what she sees and faces on the tv or movie screen, she can always call out, come to me in the dead of night and we can face down those monsters together.
Bring on The Blob and those giant ants and Frankenstein's monster and let them do their worst. We're ready to take them on any day, any time.
Action!
District 9 reviews:
No comments:
Post a Comment