While the United States and France have always made transgressive films, Italy’s horror boom corresponds with the fall of Italian fascism. The United States, Italy, Japan, and France have produced some of the most shocking movies of all time, movies that went so far that they become not just shocking and disturbing but unwatchable. The film is a favorite of director Quentin Tarantino.
BRUTAL BEDROOM SCENE FROM SPARKLE 1976 MOVIE
How much is too much? At what point are things too violent? Too obscene? Too triggering? Too unwatchable? When do they cease being horror movies and become unbearably profane to a respectable culture? Audition is 2000 horror movie from Japan that is disturbing and towards the top of the list. How far are filmmakers allowed to go without censorship?
In a sense, then, the role of the macabre in mainstream cinema is an interesting barometer of a society’s openness. Historical regimes such as the Soviet Union in Russia and the Nazis in Germany repressed all horror cinema. In more repressive Middle Eastern countries, horror movies are an underground phenomenon (which births exciting films like 2014’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night). North Korea doesn’t even have a real film industry. Indeed, modern China doesn’t have horror movies, although Hong Kong does.
BRUTAL BEDROOM SCENE FROM SPARKLE 1976 PLUS
Mother! suffers from screeching (albeit intentional) sound design, plus a preachy, weird and abstract plot that even star Jennifer Lawrence admits she didn’t understand. Totalitarian societies don’t allow horror movies because they undermine grand narratives, exposing all-too-human tendencies toward revolution, perversion, abuse, and the terrifying reality of the ever-present force of violence as well as the sheer complexity of being. Perhaps you can judge how free a society is by how many horror movies they’re making.
Or, alternatively, it offers a revolutionary new way of looking at the world through a vehicle that horrifies the audience. The horror genre is built upon a subversive narrative structure that mirrors back the worst aspects of human nature. Horror cinema is by default disturbing and shocking.
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