Editorials
‘Mr. Wrong’: Feminist Ghost Story Challenges Genre Expectations [Horrors Elsewhere]
Spending several years abroad in England forever changed Gaylene Preston. It was there the filmmaker got a firsthand education in second-wave feminism before finally returning to her homeland of New Zealand. Now sporting a different outlook, Preston could not help but feel like an outsider in the then-current macho atmosphere of Kiwi cinema. What she learned overseas, however, inspired her creative outlook and became a throughline in her oeuvre.
Preston pulls no punches in her first feature, Mr. Wrong (also known as Dark of the Night). In this 1985 film, co-written by Geoff Murphy and based on a short story by Elizabeth Jane Howard, Preston tells a feminist ghost story about an average woman wrapping her head around perils of both ordinary and uncanny persuasions. The protagonist, Margaret “Meg” Alexander (Heather Bolton), leaves her hometown and moves to the Big Smoke. Wellington, the director’s stomping grounds, becomes the main setting for this obscure haunter, but Meg intends to regularly visit home so long as she has dependable transportation.
From the start Meg is taken advantage of by the opposite sex. A slippery car salesman dupes her into buying a previously owned Jaguar rather than allowing her to buy something she picked out. Regardless of how it came into her possession though, Meg finding the Jag is no mere coincidence; they were brought together for a reason. Had she trusted her instincts, Meg might have avoided the mess ahead of her. That first trip to her parents’ house is later soured by an unexplained and eerie sensation coming from the car. She even dreams of being chased down by the Jag on a lonely road.
On her way back to Wellington from her parents’ house, Meg stops for a stranded woman (Perry Piercy) caught in the rain with a broken-down car. Also in tow is a man (David Letch) who outs himself as a scumbag in no time. The uncomfortable trip comes to a screeching halt when the silent lady in the backseat disappears like the stuff of old vanishing hitchhiker legends. It does not take long for Meg to then give her male passenger the boot based solely on the fact that she does not trust him. The gnawing apprehension swells from this point onward, and Meg is unable to shake it so long as she possesses this car.
Mr. Wrong accepts its horror leanings more and more as Meg continues to step outside her comfort zone. By chance she uncovers the origin of her car’s bad energy; the Jag belonged to a well-publicized murder victim named Mary Carmichael. The very same person she picked up earlier, in fact. Reality and fantasy have collided; Meg’s general discomfort around men now parallels her burgeoning fear of the unknown. And with Carmichael’s tragic death still unsolved, Meg’s intense uneasiness only festers. Her paranoia about women’s safety has all to do with how close this case hits close to home.
Preston’s mixed feelings toward the horror genre — namely its depictions and treatment of women — might suggest she has no predilection for building suspense or interest in terrorizing another woman, but on the contrary, she communicates Meg’s terror with considerable delicacy and effect. Preston combines equal parts fables and classic ghost stories in Mr. Wrong. The subplot of a slasher targeting women drivers is buried beneath a sincere character study, only to then be topped off with a more substantial and spectral tale. Those expecting a bloodthirsty killer chasing various women down on the open road should prepare themselves for something entirely different. While perceivable dread relating to cars and strangers is demonstrated throughout, Preston aims for an analytical and feminist interpretation of familiar scenarios and tropes.
It is not only the men in Mr. Wrong who underestimate Meg’s abilities and depreciate her value. Upon feasting her eyes on the new wheels, Meg’s mother (Kate Harcourt) asks her daughter, “You sure it’s not too much for you?” While they have only a few shared scenes, there is a quiet but discernible tension among the Alexander women. The matriarch is nosy (albeit apologetically) about Meg’s love life, and when they circle back to the car, she inadvertently projects her own fears of the big city onto her daughter. There is no ill will in Mrs. Alexander’s words, yet they have a profound effect on Meg’s precarious voyage into adulthood.
Although the other women in Meg’s life bear no evil intentions toward her, they can be careless with her feelings. The harm they do is less obvious than that of the men. Edith (Jan Fisher), Meg’s best friend from back home, is at first disapproving of the Jag. “Well, you didn’t go south just to blow your nose, did you?” she says before then taking delight in how bothered Meg’s father and boss are about her having a car fancier than theirs. Or as Edith puts it, “reverse penis envy.” Meg faintly expresses her loneliness to Edith; she even asks her to come visit her in the city. Edith declines without grasping the real reason why Meg asked her in the first place.
Meanwhile, Meg’s flatmates Val and Sam (Suzanne Lee, Margaret Umbers) make no time for her; they fail to help her acclimate. Val is the most concerned of the two, seeing as she picks up on her cousin’s unhappiness and tries to schedule a belated one-on-one chat. Even so, Val is as guilty as Sam when it comes to excluding Meg from their social schedules. The more carefree Sam has her own relationship misfires to contend with; she has two Mr. Wrongs at the moment. Ex Bruce (Gary Stalker) cannot take a hint and invites himself in at all hours. Martin (Don Linke), on the other hand, sets off red flags when he shows open revulsion toward the thought of women’s self-defense training. “You don’t go for that sort of thing, do you?” he asks Meg in response to her choice of mealtime entertainment. There is a chasm between men and women’s behavior in the film. The likes of Bruce and Mary’s murderer wreak physical harm wherever they go, whereas the women are unmindful of Meg’s sensitivity. Much to her own astonishment, the only person looking out for Meg is the one she feared all this time.
Mr. Wrong goes to great lengths to put its audience in Meg’s shoes and make them sympathize with someone who behaves like an exposed nerve. From Bruce drunkenly accosting her in the middle of the night to a lurking prowler she is oblivious to until the last minute, Meg’s jumpiness is warranted. She only blames herself when stress gets the best of her; she turns every interaction into something scary or at the very least awkward. “I don’t mean to be like this,” Meg confesses to Mr. Right, a kind transplant aptly named Wayne Wright (Danny Mulheron). Even though her situation is out of the ordinary, Meg’s constant panic about everything is relatable.
In the end, Mr. Wrong speeds toward its phantasmal conclusion after Meg overcomes what she thought were insurmountable odds. She reclaims sureness in herself just as the real threat in her life — which was never Mary Carmichael’s ghost — makes itself known. Meg’s paranoia has indeed come to fruition, but she is more than ready to confront what holds her back. Be it supernatural danger, or the messiness that comes with adult life, Meg is prepared to face it all with she has learned so far. And based on the final scene and its hopeful message about looking out for others, she is not alone in her journey.
Horrors Elsewhere is a recurring column that spotlights a variety of movies from all around the globe, particularly those not from the United States. Fears may not be universal, but one thing is for sure — a scream is understood, always and everywhere.
Found footage movies rely on immersion and a particular kind of suspension of disbelief in order to scare viewers, so it stands to reason that playing along with the “kayfabe” of it all is necessary for these movies to be effective. However, despite being something of a purist when it comes to in-universe recordings, I’ve come to accept that traditional productions can benefit from the occasional injection of found footage thrills.
For instance, Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation makes genius use of the analog gimmick in order to trap us in the titular rooms alongside our main characters before effortlessly switching back to a more cinematic language. In honor of these dynamic films that manage to combine the best of both worlds, today I’d like to share six other hybrid horror movies that successfully incorporate found footage into their scares!
For the purposes of this list, “hybrid” horror movies are defined as any flick that shifts between diegetic recordings and traditional filming techniques for a significant amount of time (or at least for pivotal scenes).
As usual, don’t forget to comment below with your own hybrid favorites if you think a particularly freaky one was missed.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. The Last Broadcast (1998)
Internet critics may have overstated the influence that Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler’s The Last Broadcast had on The Blair Witch Project, but the found footage subgenre still owes a huge debt to this underrated piece of avant-garde filmmaking. However, while the movie sets itself up as a documentary about the disappearance of a group of cryptid-hunters attempting to track down the Jersey Devil, things take a darker and much more grounded turn towards the final act.
I won’t get into details in order to avoid spoilers, but suffice to say that the jarring shift in perspective actually helps to sell the idea that everything we’ve seen before the finale was an attempt at using filmmaking to manipulate the public perception of a “real” incident.
Not bad for a movie with a $900 budget!
4. Cam (2018)
When you consider just how much the internet affects our daily lives, it’s strange that we don’t see Screenlife elements pop up in more movies these days. For instance, Isa Mazzei & Daniel Goldhaber’s highly underrated Cam only works as a freaky parable about online sex-work because it masterfully balances Madeline Brewer’s intimate moments with highly immersive segments within cyberspace.
While one might argue that the entire film could have been produced as a Screenlife experience, the hybrid approach allows the filmmakers to explore our main character’s life beyond the screens – with the duality of modern human existence actually becoming a recurring theme in the story.
3. Banshee Chapter (2013)
Most of H.P. Lovecraft’s popular stories were told in the epistolary format (where the text is presented as an in-universe compilation of letters or personal notes), so it makes sense that a spiritually faithful adaptation of his work would incorporate elements from the modern-day equivalent to epistolary fiction – found footage!
That’s why Blair Erickson’s Banshee Chapter is such an effective scare-fest, as this hybrid adaptation of From Beyond -retold through a conspiratorial lens as it references MK-Ultra and even secretive numbers stations- immerses viewers in a mind-bending tapestry of Cosmic Horror that blurs the line between fiction and reality.
2. The Deep House (2019)
The underwater setting does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s The Deep House, with the film being especially uncomfortable if you’re already scared of tight spaces and being deprived of oxygen. However, even the universally unsettling elements of the flick only work because the POV often shifts into claustrophobic footage courtesy of our main characters’ GoPro cameras.
Telling the story of a couple of YouTubers who encounter a haunted house at the bottom of an artificial lake while vacationing in France, The Deep House’s first-person exploration sequences contain some of the film’s scariest moments. In fact, I’d argue that the movie didn’t even need ghosts, as becoming trapped in the titular House already sounds like a fate worse than death.
1. Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)
My personal favorite instance of filmmakers successfully managing to combine traditional cinematography with POV filmmaking, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, is proof that the two formats can co-exist if the right story comes along.
After all, what better way to conclude a mockumentary all about reality getting increasingly more cinematic than by ditching the found footage gimmick altogether during the finale? Not only does this shift in presentation work on a conceptual level, but it also elevates Behind The Mask into a proper Slasher, which is probably why we’re so excited for that long-overdue sequel!
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