Pig (2021)

directed by Michael Sarnoski

USA, UK

92 minutes

5 stars out of 5

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Pig has been described as a deconstruction of the revenge genre that pokes holes in our expectations of it; kind of an anti-John Wick. But I struggle to really compare it to anything else, because my experience watching it and what it imparted on me was so singular that I can't think of many other movies that do the same or even similar things. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, something about this goes beyond film and beyond fiction and resonates very, very deeply with real life.

So the gist of it is that Nicolas Cage plays a truffle farmer whose beloved truffle pig is stolen one day, and the film follows his journey to the city (accompanied by his initially-a-scumbag truffle buyer) to find out who has the pig and get them to return it. But this does not play out in an action-packed sequence of events full of adept fights and pulse-pounding negotiations with a slew of clever bad guys. When Cage's character, Robin, first comes to his buyer with the news of the theft of his pig, he immediately knows the language he has to speak to this guy, who lives in an entirely different world from him. He goes right to the money to convince the buyer to help him, telling him "You want your supply, you help me find her." This one line is small, but in saying it, Robin has to debase his deeply personal and transactional relationship with the pig and re-craft it as something the buyer can understand. The pig must be commodified, her status as a living, feeling creature reduced to her ability to bring in cash. Under capitalism all relationships with creatures deemed "lesser" than humans must necessarily form without reciprocity: The pig works for us, brings us money; the pig gets nothing in return. This lack of respect for the most basic parts of the world in which we live is a central, recurring theme of Pig.

I think more than anything the heart of this movie is about the total senselessness and meaninglessness of life, and its impermanence. This does not have to be a bad thing, but we live in a world where people will do bad things because they either misunderstand that or don't realize it at all. Robin's entire philosophy seems to basically be that sooner or later everything is going to fall into the sea. He has that uniquely West Coast awareness that a natural disaster is one day going to come and wipe everything out, and none of us are really prepared for that, so we're all going to die. But in the meantime, there are a few things, just a few things, that each of us can find and hold onto- like a pig, like a favorite meal, like the relationship you wish you had with your father. And the fact that there is no ultimate goal in life other than to get yourself into a place where you're surrounded by the people and things you love, and to bring joy to other people as they try to do the same for themselves, is what makes it so deeply horrifying that, despite the limits of our time in this world, capitalism continues to persist. It is horrifying that in the face of our own impermanence, the most powerful among us still enshrine a system in which a select few control the vast majority of wealth, and instead of creating a better future, they keep up this everyone-for-themselves version of life in which your ability to work determines whether you live in relative peace or suffer and die hungry. Robin has to couch his desire to find his pig in the pig's ability to turn a profit because he knows that the people who abducted the pig won't understand his real feelings about her, subscribing as they do to the system of endless and increasing profit generation.

There is a scene where Robin visits his old house in the city, now much changed since his retreat to the woods. The back door is open and there's a very young boy sitting on the steps playing a handpan. They have a conversation, just a short one, but a meaningful one all the same. Our first reaction as viewers comes from instinct; of course we want to tell this boy not to talk to strangers. We react to how dangerous it is for a little boy to be calm and stay put while an adult stranger sits down next to him. But this is a story, a film that's deliberately trying to tell us something. It is not real life. And I think what it's trying to tell us is that it's important and beautiful that there exists a little boy this trusting, this innocent. And it's important and beautiful that there is an adult who will respect that trust as sacred and not break it.

I don't really know how to talk about this film. Part of me is uneasy with the artifice of it, with Cage as an extremely rich person putting on this disguise of a loner living out in the woods to whom finances are irrelevant. However, his character's material poverty is a choice, not a result of classism, so this portrayal doesn't feel like a Hillbilly Elegy-esque exploitation of the poor as some sideshow exhibit. There are flaws here, but I also can't pretend to demand that any creator with a message about compassion and peace divest themselves of their worldly wealth to deliver it. I would not believe any statement Jeff Bezos put out regarding loving one another, because he has the actual ability to lessen suffering greatly, and chooses to go to space and continue stockpiling mind-boggling wealth instead. But on the level of this film, on the level of the people who made it, I don't think that contributes enormously to the overall suffering of the world, and, if even one person can watch this and realize that there's no reason to struggle, because everything is futile and we don't get, as Robin says, a lot of things to really care about, then that's worthwhile. I feel like this movie aged me ten years.

Space Amoeba (1970)

directed by Ishirō Honda

Japan

84 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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It seems like this is regarded as a lesser kaiju film, but I found it to be exceptionally fun. I think a lot of my enjoyment of it had to do with the fact that for once I was watching what looked like a perfectly restored, clear, clean print of it as opposed to a grubby VHS rip, which is the way many of us watch kaiju films due to the prohibitively expensive DVD prices. It really did make a difference to see this with beautiful, vibrant colors the way it was meant to be seen; the tone of it is heavily early-70s, but the quality of the cinematography makes it feel timeless.

The plot, inasmuch as there is one, is recycled pretty much entirely from several other kaiju films. Developers send a team of researchers to a remote island with plans for building a resort there, but the island is already inhabited not only by suspicious natives but also one or several monsters. It's clear that they tried to steer away from the horribly offensive depiction of indigenous people that Toho seemed to be a huge fan of in earlier films, and while the people of the island in this movie are still basically caricatures, they at least are respected and feel like actual people with lives that matter. Their opinions and beliefs are sought after and play into the decisions of the Japanese characters, instead of being brushed aside immediately as superstitious nonsense. Interestingly, they reuse a musical motif from earlier films in which the islanders are cast as superstitious crazies, even though Space Amoeba attempts to distance itself from such things.

As usual, the human plot is vastly less interesting than the monster origin story and everything involved therein. The monsters in this case are three gigantic, mutated versions of normal Earth animals: a squid, a crab/lobster, and a snapping turtle, possessed by a formless alien organism bent on taking over the planet. We learn this when the organism eventually possesses a human, too, which despite the campiness manages to still be somewhat horrifying. By now I'm sure I've said many times that the kaiju in most of these movies are nearly or entirely blameless, and this is no exception, because they're literally puppets trapped by the influence of a more powerful force. You never really root for the humans in kaiju films, even though you do feel for them - after all, they're just trying not to get their houses stomped on - and in most cases humans don't seem happy about having to kill whatever monster invades this week, but still, there's something that's deeply upsetting about humans and animals being forced to fight each other when they otherwise would live in harmony. And that makes the unseen, incorporeal aliens even more frightening: The only ones to blame in this situation are them, because they force the humans and animals into a situation where only one of them can survive, and to live they have to fight each other to the literal death. Again, despite the campiness and the rough edges and everything that goes with films of this kind, there's something potently creepy about the concept of alien slavers forcing innocent creatures to fight and kill each other not even as their end game but simply as a stepping stone on their quest to gather information before they invade the planet.

The quality of the suits also felt well above average here, and because the picture was so clear, I could see and appreciate every detail. Gezora was the last kaiju Haruo Nakajima played, and though he never reprised the role (...nor did anyone else), it's one of his best. He specifically moved in a way to disguise his legs and feet among all the other squid tentacles and it pays off; you can't figure out what's him and what's the suit. I'm assuming he was also inside that lobster costume somewhere, but it's hard to see where. The point isn't really to create something that a person disappears into, though; it's not that you're fooled into thinking you're watching a real giant squid rampage around an island. I would liken this instead to stage plays that utilize a crew of people dressed head-to-toe in black to manipulate objects around the stage: you can still see them, but their appearance signals that you are not supposed to see them. The person in the monster suit is more like shorthand for the monster. I watch kaiju movies with an eye for the sheer craft of making suits and sets, not for the realism.

So I really don't know why this one isn't regarded more highly - yeah, it's not original, but it gives us not one, not even two, but three new kaiju, four if you count the vaporous malevolent aliens. This is a little more light-hearted than Ishirō Honda's typical fare, but it still has a message about self-sacrifice for the good of the world at the end, and more than enough disturbing implications to go around.

Horrors of Malformed Men (1969)

directed by Teruo Ishii

Japan

99 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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This has a reputation for being totally bonkers, which is well-earned and certainly bolstered by the name, although that factor probably isn't working in the film's favor as it sounds more like an ultra-trashy exploitation film than... whatever this is. While there is some stereotyping of mental illness, this isn't a movie where we're meant to be frightened of deformed people; the important thing to note is that the people have been malformed. "Malform" is used here as a verb.

Particularities of language aside, the other thing to know about this movie is that it is denser than it has any right to be, and - especially if you're using subtitles - you can't really look away for a minute or else you'll miss a part of the story. In the middle it does drag a bit and there are parts that don't feel absolutely essential, but at the beginning and towards the end when it turns into the world's biggest exposition dump, there's so much detail going on that viewing the whole thing is required to even vaguely understand it (and even then you might just... not). This is based on an Edogawa Rampo story, and it definitely has that feeling of being lifted from another source - I mentioned this in a review I have not made public yet, but filmed stories taken from books tend to have a kind of linear progression from event to event with a structure (even when they're uber-weird like this) that feels like it has backbone behind it. Maybe it's just the fact of being aware that what you're watching was written before that makes it feel like you kind of know what's going on, even if you don't. So while Horrors of Malformed Men is totally nutso, it does make sense in its own fast and loose way.

From the beginning the film shows the protagonist as shifting between multiple identities that we are fooled into assigning to him. We first see him in a cell with a bunch of wild, partially unclothed women, trying to avoid being stabbed, but then we're shown that the knife was a trick knife and the women mentally unsound, not actively malicious. Then we're shown that he is in fact also a prisoner in this harsh, medieval asylum, but he's not insane. The identity and origin of the protagonist is kept unclear to both us and to him, the search for his background being the impetus for the whole film, more or less. By chance he hears a woman singing a tune that he remembers from his own childhood, and after finding out that it's a lullaby sung only by people living in a specific coastal area, escapes the asylum and begins a journey to find his family that ultimately ends in horror and confusion.

But it doesn't happen that neatly. Events in this film progress through a haze of dream logic. The protagonist stumbles upon his twin, recently deceased, and somehow ends up assuming his identity in order to learn more about his family in the process, assimilating himself into his twin's family and love life. From there he is led to the island where he ultimately finds out the truth about what and who he is. This movie is notorious for starting out weird and then, after about forty minutes, right when you've gotten familiar with its strange and vaguely Giallo-esque brand of discomfiture, sticking out a metaphorical foot to trip you up. You don't think it can get any more bizarre, but the surprises just keep on coming.

I think this movie is fundamentally about identity and alienation from the "self", as well as alienation from the family and the loss of steady ground as one moves from the house of their birth to the larger world. This is delivered in a maximalist, extreme way, so that the gruesome imagery and the tragic story of the main character intertwine and enhance one another. This really isn't a movie that you watch and think "Oh, this is just excessive, this is way too much flesh and gore and animalistic cruelty". Everything has a purpose and the motif of tortured human bodies is an externalization of the internal struggle to find family and selfhood in a world where those things may just not exist. But because this movie is never content to stick to one thread and follow it, the plot changes several times to focus on several different things, especially in the last half-hour or so. There is a dramatic shift from weirdo montage of upsetting science experiments and a whacked-out cult leader type's idea of a new free world to basically a crime drama. A guy who had previously been a literal nobody in the story steps in all of a sudden and takes over the narrative. This is jarring, but no more so than anything else in this movie.

If nothing else, one can appreciate this just for the aesthetics. It's a tableau of deeply strange and inventive ways to make the human body look inhuman, all covered over in wet stringy gauze and white chalk powder. Gross and nasty and relentlessly confusing, body paint and fire, blood and hair and familial alienation. In fact, the look of it is so strong that it might require two watches, one to check out the scenery and another to actually understand what's going on. But even skimming it imparts the weird feeling of futility that I think it's meant to have. And no matter how weird I've made it sound, trust me, it's weirder.

Censor (2021)

directed by Prano Bailey-Bond

UK

84 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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Censor opens with a scene that is deeply familiar to us as horror fans: A tired, scared woman running through the woods from an assailant that we do not see, the scene being shot, as it is, from the perspective of her pursuer. Instead of being a re-hashing of an overused trope, though, this scene is decontextualized and framed as deliberate self-reference. Immediately following the dragging away of the girl by her unseen attacker, we switch to watching as the main character of Censor itself decides what about this fictional horror film that she (and the audience) has just been watching is acceptable for distribution, what has to be cut, and what might qualify it for being rejected permanently.

This film takes place in the era of the U.K. "video nasty", when upright British audiences became highly concerned about a perceived "wave" of gory films overtaking their country. The presence of these low-budget movies, with their amateur actors and directors, with their streams of corn-syrup blood and frequently unclothed women, challenged the moral standards of the ruling class at the time. Like the debate about violent video games that would eventually follow it, adults (mostly older adults and parents) saw these films as influencing the "weak-minded" of the country and driving up the crime rate as well as, though this opinion is more veiled, causing people to rebel against the governmental status quo. It's a testament to how widely hated Margaret Thatcher was that films set during her era are still being made, but it is also a testament to how the aims of those in power never really change that these films are often used to highlight, in addition to how bad her time was, how many of the same policies are still in effect today. If not in an official capacity, then in the hearts and minds of conservatives.

I want to be clear here, because "censored" has become a bit of a hot-button word, that this movie does not have the kind of attitude towards censorship that a Donald Trump or a Milo Yiannopoulous does. Censorship in this case doesn't mean the calling out of genuinely hateful, hurtful opinions and a subsequent whining and moaning about it. The censoring of video nasties is portrayed here for what it is: A futile desire to protect the populace from anything that could lead them to believe life under their government isn't rosy perfection. When we see the notepad where the censors write down what to cut, it's not just "take out all instances of blood". It's direct references to emotional concepts like girls suffering, trauma, anguish, et cetera. One could be forgiven, even justified, in wanting their children not to see a certain amount of blood and gore at a young age. But one would be direly misdirected if not actively malicious to want to shield all children everywhere from ever experiencing- or even simply viewing- negative emotions.

So onto the film itself: It is obviously gorgeously made, with a color palette, score, and tendency towards shadows that calls back to the older horror films its characters are loathe to let the public see unedited. Niamh Algar is great as the protagonist and her character is extremely faceted: The eventual breakdown of her calm public face to reveal the traumatic memories that control her life is gently paced and spread out throughout the film, but Algar plays her from the start as somebody who obviously has something eating at them.

The point of this movie seems to be to make the comparison between film censorship and the way we censor our own memories, sometimes unknowingly. The main character has the disappearance of her sister weighing on her mind at all times, and blames herself because she is unable to remember exactly what happened on the day she disappeared. The way she picks and chooses what should be left in the horror films she watches and the way memory is naturally fallible are a mirror to each other. We want to smooth out pain, take away the parts that hurt us. Our personal attempts to make our memories a more welcoming place can sometimes be directed outwards into trying to avoid ever witnessing negativity, although in Censor it's taken to its extreme as we're shown a panel that's attempting to make the whole country avoid it. I've watched many a film that can be said to be a love letter to the horror genre, but I've only seen a very scant few that do what Censor does and use the genre as a way to talk about personal trauma and avoidance.

The only real complaint I have about this movie is that I wish it had been more of what it was. It has a very restrained style, not overly gory despite its subject matter, and it's tightly directed in a manner that I can't complain about at all, but something about it just felt like it needed to be ramped up. The final fifteen minutes are perfect, and I think it's well and good that most of the true paranoia and uncertainty is contained to those minutes, because if it had spilled over into the rest of the film, we would have a different film. But I wish there had been just a tiny bit more harshness throughout the whole thing, not just during the finale. It could have been less ambivalent. The horror here isn't so much a sudden danger as it is a drabness in which atrocities lurk. Again, though- it would be a different film if this wasn't so. Censor is excellent, refreshing and new as it is. It occupies an interesting place in the history of the video nasty and the public's response to it.