Editorials
A Look at the Top 10 Claustrophobic Horror Movies!
Fox Home Entertainment is bringing several horror classics to hi-def Blu-ray as part of their Feed Your Fear campaign, with most of them already at a store near you. We’ve joined forces with them to bring you four top 10 lists related to one or more of the titles. In lieu of the classic Stephen King adaptation Misery now available on Blu-ray, we present to you “The Top 10 Claustrophobic Horror Movies”. Watch for another three features in the coming weeks leading up to Halloween.
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According to Forbes magazine, a fear of enclosed spaces — or claustrophobia — is the sixth most common of all phobias. This falls underneath fear of critters (bugs, mice, snakes, bats); fear of heights (acrophobia); fear of water (hydrophobia); fear of public transportation (thanks, Al Qaeda); and fear of storms (here’s looking at you, global warming). For my money though, none of these fears has been exploited to greater cinematic effect than claustrophobia. Sure, at least one good film has come out of all of the above, but I defy you to come up with a list of the “Top Ten Scary Snake Movies” without doing some serious head-scratching and frantic keyword searches on IMDB. Now, not all of the films listed below are specifically concerned with claustrophobia, but all utilize, to a great degree, this all-too-common fear in order to increase the audience’s sense of dread and unease. In other words, let’s just say you’ll have the sudden urge to get outside and breathe some nice, un-recycled air after finishing these babies.
Rec is better, you say? Well guess what — I haven’t seen it yet, so this American remake will have to do. Ok, so while Quarantine falls far short of “horror classic” status, it was a lot scarier than I expected, and utilized the admittedly over-used “shaky-cam” aesthetic pretty effectively. Not only was the setting itself claustrophobic, but the limited first-person point of view made the whole thing feel that much more stifling. Too bad the marketing executives behind the ad campaign decided it was a good idea to give away the final shot in the trailer.
Sure he’s a child rapist (suck it, Woody Allen), not to mention a certifiable head case, but you’d have to be in major denial not to admit that Roman Polanski, in his prime, knew his way around tight spaces (insert your own joke here) better than any other director. Repulsion was the first in what some might call his “claustrophobia trilogy” (followed by Rosemary’s Baby and The Tenant), and the black-and-white cinematography only serves to heighten the suffocating isolation of Catherine Deneuve’s slow descent into madness. A classic in any genre.
Forget the lame sequels; Cube remains one of the most ingenious low-budget horror films ever made. The concept is simple: six complete strangers wake up in a maze of interlocking cubes, many of which possess deadly traps. To escape, the six must band together and use their unique skills (one is a math whiz, one is a building designer, etc.) to figure a way out. The spareness and repetition of the setting alone – cubes measuring 14x14x14 feet, differing only by color – is enough to send any claustrophobic running for their psychiatrist’s office.
So the world is ending, your friends and family have all turned into brain-munching crazy people, and you find yourself trapped in probably the least enjoyable place to wait out Armageddon – a dilapidated farm house. Sigh. Ok, so the shopping mall setting featured in Dawn of the Dead was a lot more fun, but there’s something about the isolated, middle-of-nowhere location in this first of Romero’s never-ending Living Dead series that makes it all the more creepy. At least in a mall, you can stake out your own territory at, say, Hot Topic or Sbarro Pizza. In the house featured here, you’re either stuck upstairs with the crazy blonde chick, or down in the basement with the survivalist nutcase and his glassy-eyed little daughter that keeps eyeing your forearm like it’s a plate of spare ribs.
If global warming-alarmists are to be believed, in 30 years or so not only might your tract home in Fresno become prime beach-front real estate, but movies taking place in the Arctic Circle could potentially feature bitchin’ surfing montages and tanned extras sipping umbrella drinks. Luckily, if this ever comes to pass, those of us who prefer our Arctic cold and isolated need only revisit The Thing, one of John Carpenter’s true masterpieces. In it, the celebrated director utilizes the frigid, remote Arctic setting to brilliant effect. While it’s technically a remake of Howard Hawks’ 1951 film The Thing From Another World, this one features a lot of sweet Rob Bottin creature effects. In other words, give me Carpenter’s version any day.
I once compared the experience of viewing The Descent, director Neil Marshall’s brilliant exercise in audience manipulation, to being trapped inside an angry lesbian’s vagina during menstruation. I know it’s crude, but I honestly couldn’t think of a more apt description at the time (and sorry, still can’t). The film is all sweaty, cramped spaces that, more than any other movie on this list, utilizes claustrophobia in its most literal sense. Sure, the vicious, cannibalistic human-esque creatures that hunt the featured all-female group of spelunkers are way scary, but the super-confined setting is what’ll really haunt your dreams.
I recently re-watched Misery, and I was struck once again not only by what a fine movie it is (this is before Rob Reiner went on to direct such delightful gems as EDTV and The Bucket List), but how well it keeps the audience engaged despite the fact that it’s almost exclusively limited to a single location. Of course, I guess that’s the whole point – the film very effectively taps into our fears not only of isolation and confinement, but of being totally dependent upon another human being for our very survival. It doesn’t help when that person is Annie Wilkes, psychotic super-fan, in the performance that netted Kathy Bates a well-deserved Best Actress Oscar.
Again: Roman Polanski is a child rapist, as in he raped a 13-year-old girl after drugging her with Quaaludes (stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Scorcese). That being said, I can’t in good conscience leave Rosemary’s Baby, his elegant horror opus and the second part of his “claustrophobia trilogy”, off this list. It’s not the setting here that evokes cabin fever so much as the slowly-enveloping sense of dread and doom that permeates every frame (not to mention the ultimate Nosy Neighbors From Hell, played to queasy perfection by Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer). Every time you think your neighbors are annoying, just remember – at least they didn’t try to impregnate you with the Antichrist.
We’ve all heard Alien described as a “haunted house movie on a space ship” before, and really I can’t think of a better description for Ridley Scott’s terrifying sci-fi nightmare, which features the most deliciously phallic monster ever put to celluloid. There are so many reasons why this film works, but at the end of the day it’s all about the setting. This spacecraft isn’t of the gleaming, clean-lined Star Trek variety; rather, it’s a dank, utilitarian labyrinth filled with dark recesses and cramped, anxiety-inducing tunnels and crawl-spaces. In other words, the perfect place for freaky shit to go down.
Yeah, Stanley Kubrick made some kick-ass movies in basically every genre, but for horror-hounds it doesn’t get any better than The Shining. The book by Stephen King was good, if typically uneven for an early King effort, but Kubrick really cut to the marrow of what made the story scary. In other words – it’s the location, stupid. The Overlook Hotel is the ultimate “haunted house” – with hallways like constricted arteries, the creepiest hedge maze ever, and doorways that stand like sentinels against secrets that would drive the average person to insanity. Now take Jack Nicholson in a throat-ripping, Grand Guignol-inspired performance, creepy ghost girls that put all the long-haired “J-horror” phantoms to shame, and Shelley Duvall in a performance that makes you wonder how she survived through principal photography without having a complete mental breakdown, and you’ve got yourself the ultimate in cabin-fever horror. – Chris Eggertsen
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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