Editorials
‘Secret Window’ and the Thin Line of Dissociative Identity Disorder Representation [Unveiling The Mind]
Welcome to Unveiling The Mind. This bi-monthly column takes an analytical look at art that explores mental illness.
Is one bad day enough to make someone go mad? How far would one need to be pushed to dissociate from reality and go on a homicidal rampage? These are questions I’ve asked myself over the course of many years watching movies and playing video games. In some ways, I’ve had difficulty fully wrapping my head around such concepts. Without enough context to fully understand a character, how does Billy so-and-so go from being a pleasant dude one day to a psychotic killer the next?
In many cases with films of this subject matter, filmmakers are either hinting at or directly pointing to dissociative identity disorder. DID involves an individual balancing at least two distinct personality states and can include memory gaps. DID can also include OCD, eating and sleep disorders, depression and more. Also, those with DID are more likely to be violent towards themselves rather than act out towards others.
DID is one of the more popular tropes used throughout horror cinema. Everything from Psycho to High Tension has tried to piggyback off it. However, the disorder is rarely ever portrayed in a realistic (or honest) light. For those who have little to no understanding of what DID is, these depictions may be their only source (which is far from okay). There are layers to what DID involves and the struggles it can bring on. There are even some experts that debate whether it is a real disorder or an offshoot of other psychiatric problems.
For this month’s installment of Unveiling The Mind, I’m going to share my thoughts on a film that goes head on into such tropey waters. A film with an interesting enough premise, but that is bogged down by its half-baked protagonist and lack of psychological depth.
Secret Window stars Johnny Depp as Mort Rainey, a writer living in upstate New York. As soon as the film starts, the viewer is thrown into a moment of turmoil; we see Mort sitting in his car stressed and staring into space. After a couple sequences of abrasive driving and stealing some hotel keys, he makes his way into a hotel room, finding a woman sleeping with a man. We come to find out shortly that this is his wife. Secret Window then jumps six months later to a disheveled Mort who is struggling to write. He is visited by a man named John Shooter (John Turturro) who claims that Mort stole one of his stories. Throughout its runtime, tension escalates as Shooter messes with Mort, his taunting and acts becoming more violent.
Written and directed by David Koepp, Secret Window plays out just like a Stephen King novel – which is ideal, given that it is based off a King short story. Everything from the characters to the suspense and small-town atmosphere feel King-ian. There’s also a good bit of cheese along the way, but that cheese is not without its merits. It had been awhile since I re-watched Secret Window; upon my first view of this movie back in 2004, I loved it. However, now revisiting the film in 2020, I see it for a more problematic presentation.
It isn’t until the end of the movie that it is revealed that Shooter is actually Mort. Shooter is made up of abstract ideas from Mort’s mind, pieced together to help him cope with the infidelity and separation of his wife. However, in Mort’s case, coping appears to be torturing himself with accusations of plagiarism, burning down a house and killing people.
Several lines of dialogue provide intriguing bits that hint at the idea that Mort is not completely sane. In one scene where Mort is talking to his housekeeper, who finds a manuscript from Shooter in the trash, she makes a remark how she thought the name was a pseudonym that Mort was going under. In a later scene, Mort’s literary agent makes a comment about a crazy fan Mort had a run in with, and how the individual could not tell the difference between reality and the made-up stuff Mort writes about.
These types of narratives need more than twists though; twists can only go so far in making things engaging. When covering such heavy mental subjects in horror, or any genre, there needs to be in depth research regarding why and how a character acts. When it comes to the narrative striving to provide context to Mort’s psyche, that is where the film is the weakest.
To its credit, the film does brief glimpses into Mort’s past that point to a violent nature. The audience learns that Mort’s wife had a miscarriage, he had a drinking problem and he is someone with a temper. Though his frustrations with his wife are understandable, it’s a little concerning to see him take the phone while talking to her and shake it in a choking manner. However, the most problematic aspect of that relationship may be how he brought a gun when confronting his wife in bed with the other man.
But even if each of these points serve to acknowledge an unhinged Mort, they don’t provide a logical foundation for why he becomes so violent and disconnected from reality. Dissociation is a sincere symptom of DID, but murderous drive is not. In many works of horror, DID is used as an excuse for why a character acts violently – this is ludicrous. Proper research would confirm that those with DID are not a threat to anyone, and that it takes much more than the disorder itself to provoke violence towards others. And yes, the film does point out that Mort was a drinker in the past, but that is not enough to sell his horrific actions. The way Secret Window handles Mort’s descent into Shooter is – well, there is no progression there.
What may have helped the film is if the audience was given more insight into Mort’s life – specifically his younger years. Experts have found that DID tends to spring up in those who have suffered traumatic experiences in childhood; what possibly may have happened in Mort’s life to stir on such a disorder? Rather than attempt to explore this idea and how trauma has festered within him, the film only looks to provide bits of exposition, expecting the audience to buy in and accept. The audience experiences the turmoil Mort currently faces and is provided a small taste of matters from the past, but never a full comprehension of his psychological being.
When it comes to portraying mental illness in media, context is essential. Secret Window never tries to address Mort’s mind state beyond brief comments. It is all surface level psychological flare, lacking the potency of any deep-thinking substance. Not only does it make for poor writing, but it continues a pattern of lazy, somewhat harmful tropes.
Thankfully though, in the years since Secret Window’s release, we have seen small improvements. We are seeing horror effectively and respectively navigate subjects of mental health (while still providing loads of scares and tension). It is possible to utilize and cover mental illness in horror, one just has to put the time in to know what they are talking about and how to properly represent the disorders being presented on screen.
In this day and age, the word “troll” is often used to describe various online nuisances. Yet as abundant and irksome as the modern troll can be, they aren’t usually as fearsome as their mythological counterparts. I’m not talking about the small and gentler versions that have become more common to see in media. No, there are much bigger and scarier trolls out there—and André Øvredal’s movie Troll Hunter is one of the best places to find them.
It doesn’t take long for Troll Hunter (or Trolljegeren) to dump the Blair Witch Project-esque setup and aim for something a lot fresher. The trajectory of the story is augmented by Otto Jespersen’s character Hans, the titular Troll Hunter. The second he comes barreling out of the deep, dark woods and shouts “troll” at the camera, this movie takes a turn into what feels like uncharted territory. Not only subject-wise, but also conceptually.
For fantastical and made-up subject matter in cinema, found footage is a fast way to add a guise of believability. After all, what we accept to be the most crucial aspect of documentaries—the truth—rubs off on pseudo-documentaries, despite our understanding of the pretense involved. That is what Øvredal delivered with Troll Hunter: a movie so convincing that some viewers wondered if trolls really do exist. So, had this been straightforwardly made, it likely wouldn’t have been as effective. Conventional narratives would be more inclined to treat something like trolls as flat out unreal, and never try to convince the audience to think otherwise.
Hans petrifies the three-headed Tusseladd troll.
The viewers, like the characters trailing Hans, are quickly thrown into the deeper end of that extraordinary story. They have to process all this new information while staying on the go. So, although there is no significant amount of meandering, narratively or physically, there is still a good amount of atmosphere, not to mention tension building. It’s never anything frightful, but then again, Troll Hunter isn’t your standard offering of horror; it’s more on the low end of the dark fantasy spectrum. We aren’t ever spirited away to a faraway world—we stay in rather familiar surroundings, as well as dip into those less so. The outcome is a movie where you’re constantly more in awe than in terror.
As fantasy fiction might do, Troll Hunter prefers not to deal with incredulity. There is no time to waste on doubt, as interviewer Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), soundperson Johanna (Johanna Mørck), and cameraman Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) all follow Hans around, recording whatever this character is willing to reveal about his bizarre job. Of course, the Troll Hunter himself is not an open book; in that respect, the diegetic documentary fails to fully capture and unpack the more interesting of its two subjects. Yes, all those giant, monstrous trolls are indeed incredible, but understandably, your mind wanders to their pursuer. What kind of person signs up for this gig and then chooses to stick with it for so long?
Reviews have called out Troll Hunter for its lack of character development. In regard to Thomas and his fellow documentarians, that criticism is valid, but bear in mind, they aren’t the focus of the story, either. Meanwhile, Hans is a well-crafted character. At least better than first realized. Before he was introduced, Hans had already grown tired of the troll grind. Fed up with that low compensation for his services, resentful of the bureaucracy, and wanting to expose his employer on a large scale, Hans’ discontent is glaring.
Then there are those finer details about the Troll Hunter, such as that indifference to both the natural splendor of his everyday surroundings and the affections of an obviously smitten colleague, that also suggest some level of despondency. So it is fair to say this movie doesn’t feature any sizable growth for its characters; however, the namesake isn’t underwritten. No doubt, putting a real-life character like Otto Jespersen in that role is partly why Hans is so fascinating—maybe even relatable.
Otto Jespersen as Hans the Troll Hunter.
There is always a small risk whenever using the term “mockumentary” to describe a found-footage movie, as the word could imply humor where there is none. In the case of Troll Hunter, the term’s usage is appropriate. Some folks have claimed the English-dubbed version has the more comedic tone, however, the Norwegian cut isn’t exactly humorless. Apart from the trolls’ absurd appearances, this is a movie where the characters nearly choke on the monsters’ farts, and Christians are like walking targets. Hans’ complete apathy towards everything is another cause of laughter. Overall, the comedy is intentionally dry and inconsistent. Unfunny, though? Absolutely not.
In a movie where endemic creatures are maltreated, as well as disavowed from living freely and peacefully, it’s hard not to notice the ecological message buried beneath the story. In addition to that is the unmistakable political satire. There is this whole business about intrusive and unsightly power lines—like trolls, they’re big blemishes on the land—that leads to what is perhaps the movie’s funniest moment. The scene in question is that one where certain electric lines, the ones secretly being used to keep the trolls at bay, go in a loop and don’t actually send power to any residents. Yet the monitors of said lines don’t find this at all weird. So it stands to reason that Øvredal was having a go at those who accept the government’s doings without question.
Looking past the fact that trolls aren’t actually real, this movie is an enlightening source of information. And not just for international audiences; Norwegians, too, get schooled about their homeland’s own mythology. It’s also evident from everything on screen that Øvredal and his crew were enthusiastic about the topic. The creature designs are the most indicative of that zeal; those imaginative yet myth-accurate manifestations are equally amusing and grotesque. One second you’re laughing at their phallic noses, the next you’re white-knuckling during a hairy sequence. Most surprisingly is how well the trolls’ visual effects hold up after fifteen years. It’s not all spotless, but on the whole, they remain impressive.
Vouching for a mockumentary about trolls isn’t easy, but those who do come around and give it a shot will more than likely be grateful for the recommendation. For Troll Hunter is a real find in that vast and varied genre we call “found footage“.
A bridge troll reaches up for food and finds Hans decked out in armor.
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