Editorials
Naomi Watts: The Queen of American Horror Remakes
By now it’s safe to say that Naomi Watts is a bona fide Scream Queen. After more than a decade in small roles or B movies, the British actress finally found widespread acclaim in 2001 with David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. She followed this up with a star-making role in Gore Verbinski’s The Ring, and sky-rocketted to international fame. Watts has worked steadily since then, winning coveted parts like Ann Darrow in Peter Jackson’s King Kong, Oscar Nominated roles in 21 Grams and The Impossible, and franchise fame in the Divergent series.
Born in England, Watts and her brother moved around the UK with her Welsh mother before relocating to Australia at the age of 14 where she broke into acting. Despite this international upbringing, Watts is most known in the horror world for starring in American remakes of acclaimed foreign films. Her role in The Ring was just the beginning of a series of films in which she plays an Americanized version of an international character. In fact she even stars in the new Netflix series The Watcher, Ryan Murphy’s thriller about the American dream of homeownership gone terribly wrong. Watts considers herself British, but she’s come to symbolize a U.S. interpretation of femininity and motherhood within the horror genre.
The Ring
In Verbinski’s The Ring, Watts stars as Rachel Keller, a single mother and journalist investigating a mysterious tape rumored to kill you seven days after watching. The Ring is a more or less faithful adaptation of Hideo Nakata’s Ringu, which stars Nanako Matsushima as Reiko, the concerned mother and journalist. Telling essentially the same story, The Ring and Ringu follow these women as they race against time to save their sons from the tape’s curse.
Though the punishment for watching is the same in both films, Verbinski alters the content in an interesting way. Nakata’s version of the tape is a projection of rage from Sadako (Rie Ino’o), a little girl pushed into a well by her illegitimate father to cover up proof of his affair. Verbinski’s film removes this affair from the equation. Samara (Daveigh Chase) is a child from a mysterious land adopted by Richard (Brian Cox) and Anna (Shannon Cochran), parents struggling to conceive. When Samara appears to have deadly psychic powers, her adopted mother pushes her into a well and leaves her to die. By changing the identity of the murderer, Verbinski provides a contrast between Good Mother Rachel and Bad Mother Anna.
Verbinski’s film also gives Rachel a more heroic arc. Both versions of the story see Rachel and Reiko descend into the well to rescue the body of Sadako/Samara. However, Reiko (understandably) only goes down into the well when her ex-husband Ryuji (Hiroyuki Sanada) climbs out and asks her to take his place. Rachel falls into the well by accident, only realizing what’s down there after she’s already been submerged in the water. In addition to sexualizing Rachel by showing her in a wet sweater, this change also presents her as both a heroic mother and a damsel in distress. Putting aside the film’s devastating twist, Rachel has not only saved her own son, but she’s righted Anna’s wrong and erased a taboo rarely seen in American films.
Funny Games
Watt’s next foray into horror remakes came five years later as another mother in a desperate situation. Michael Haneke’s Austrian Funny Games (1997) is a rough watch and often named among the most disturbing films in horror. Chronicling the destruction of a family, Funny Games follows Anna (Susanne Lothar), Georg (Ulrich Mühe), and Schorschi (Stefan Clapczynski) as they’re held hostage by two collegiate madmen while vacationing at their lavish lake house. Premiering ten years later, Haneke’s American remake is a shot-for-shot recreation of his original film with nearly identical sets, script, and staging. The same decorative quilt even hangs on the wall near the home’s back door.
As Ann, Watts embraces the acting challenge, making the role her own though she’s playing a part made famous by someone else. Taking over for German actress Susanne Lothar, Watts is slightly more glamorous in the role, remaining gracefully pretty even while sobbing and enduring sadistic torture. Of course one could argue that Watts is just naturally beautiful and the film is only capturing that reality, but Haneke makes one significant change to highlight her appearance.
As a part of their torture, the two young men demand that Anna take off her clothes so they can inspect her physique. This upsetting scene is shot identically in both films with tight framing on Anna’s and Ann’s faces and the nudity kept outside the frame. We watch her reaction to this emotional torture rather than join in the objectification with the sadistic intruders. Finally allowed to dress again, Anna puts back on a slip while Ann remains in her bra and panties. This could be chalked up to a simple wardrobe change, but every other costume in the film is virtually identical to its original counterpart, occasionally differing in color but rarely in style or silhouette. Perhaps in a film that examines the ethics of horror fandom, Haneke is making a statement about how American audiences have been conditioned to objectify our leading ladies.
Goodnight Mommy
Watt’s newest horror remake is an American version of the Austrian film Goodnight Mommy. Written and directed by Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, the original follows the twin sons of a TV hostess recovering from facial surgery. Wrapped in bandages, Mutter (Susanne Wuest) asks Lukas and Elias (Lukas and Elias Lukas Schwarz) to respect some simple boundaries and they begin to believe that their mother has been replaced by an imposter. This film is a brutal examination of motherhood and sacrifice as Mutter is viciously punished by her son who can’t accept her desire to move on with her life. Matt Sobel’s American remake stars Watts as Mother and Nicholas and Cameron Crovetti as Lukas and Elias. It’s a serviceable version of the story but Sobel makes significant changes that rob the film of its upsetting bite.
Taking the subtext and making it explicit, Sobel seems afraid to explore the depths of matricide in Franz and Fiala’s film. Like Mutter, Watts’s Mother does not survive, but in the newer remake her death is an accident. Elias realizes that the twin brother he’s been talking to the whole time is only an illusion. Lukas has actually been dead for the duration of the film, killed in a tragic accident. Elias begins to turn against the manifestation of his brother Lukas and tries to rescue his mom, killing her by accidentally knocking her off a beam in the barn where Lukas died. The original Elias never shows Mutter this compassion. Along with the ghost of his dead brother, Elias brutally tortures his mother to get her to admit that she’s an imposter. When she can’t share his delusion and allow him to keep believing Lukas is in the room with them, Elias burns her alive by lighting the curtains on fire. Rather than dying by immolation while glued to the floor, Watt’s Mother perishes in the flames while unconscious, having already gotten a heartfelt reunion with her son.
Though the American version ends in the same place, Sobel seems reluctant to show Watts enduring extensive abuse on par with Franz and Fiala’s Mutter. Watts is merely bound, doused with water, and gagged with tape over her still healing skin. Mutter sustains prolonged imprisonment, burns to her face from a magnifying glass, and mouth torture perhaps best left to the imagination. Though she is in a similar predicament, Watts’s face remains relatively unharmed, enduring a loss of glamor rather than actual mutilation.
In addition to these changes, Sobel seems determined to avoid presenting Watts as a villain. Franz and Fiala depict Mutter as rather standoffish with her sons, feeding the audience’s belief that she might actually be an imposter. A scene in which she bites a roach that’s crawled into her mouth furthers this assumption. But despite the bandages, she always appears as herself. Sobel’s film gives us more information about Mother, showing her frustration with her ex-husband and expertise in charming a leering police officer. Sobel also has Mother explicitly tell her sons why she’s gotten this surgery, reasoning left to the audience’s deduction in the original film. All of this humanizes Watt’s character, setting up maximum sorrow at her death. Unfortunately it also removes any doubt that she may be an imposter, presenting the boys as sad and confused rather than dangerously curious and disobedient.
Sobel entirely removes Watts’s image from that of the monster, further positioning her as the tragic hero of the story. Rather than crunch a roach, we see her pull a bit of skin off of her toe. Continuing to peel her outer layer, Mother slowly skins herself to reveal an inky black humanoid shape below. This figure returns again, bursting through a window to attack her sons. While both films show that this monstrous behavior is a dream, it’s notable that the original film allows Mutter to be monstrous while looking like herself and Sobel’s film must transform Watt’s image completely before presenting villainy. Rather than an exploration of familial taboos, this new remake becomes a tragedy in which a mother and son are consumed by grief.
Each of these three original films, Ringu, Funny Games, and Goodnight Mommy, are transgressive in their brutality and their confrontation of societal norms. Your mileage may vary on their American counterparts, but each remake features Naomi Watts as the ideal of American motherhood. The talented actress does her best with the roles she’s given and many would argue that her performances elevate each film from straightforward remake to artful reimagining. With her blond hair and blue eyes, Watts fits the physical archetype of an American woman and mother; a nurturing and compassionate caregiver who will stop at nothing to protect her child. She may not be perfect, but her flaws are usually minor and always stem from an all-consuming love for her children. She must always look attractive, even when in distress, and she must always be the hero rather than the villain. Even when she does get a chance to be evil, it’s never for keeps.
For better or worse, Naomi Watts has built a career on translating films that examine feminine taboos and translating them to a more mainstream audience.
Soon after the New Hollywood generation took over the entertainment industry, they started having children. And more than any filmmakers that came before—they were terrified. Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), The Omen (1976), Eraserhead (1977), The Brood (1979), The Shining (1980), Possession (1981), and many others all deal, at least in part, with the fears of becoming or being a parent. What if my child turns out to be a monster? is corrupted by some evil force? or turns out to be the fucking Antichrist? What if I screw them up somehow, or can’t help them, or even go insane and try to kill them? Horror has always been at its best when exploring relatable fears through extreme circumstances. A prime example of this is Larry Cohen’s 1974 monster-baby movie It’s Alive, which explores the not only the rollercoaster of emotions that any parent experiences when confronted with the difficulties of raising a child, but long-standing questions of who or what is at fault when something goes horribly wrong.
Cohen begins making his underlying points early in the film as Frank Davis (John P. Ryan) discusses the state of the world with a group of expectant fathers in a hospital waiting room. They discuss the “overabundance of lead” in foods and the environment, smog, and pesticides that only serve to produce roaches that are “bigger, stronger, and harder to kill.” Frank comments that this is “quite a world to bring a kid into.” This has long been a discussion point among people when trying to decide whether to have kids or not. I’ve had many conversations with friends who have said they feel it’s irresponsible to bring children into such a violent, broken, and dangerous world, and I certainly don’t begrudge them this. My wife and I did decide to have children but that doesn’t mean that it’s been easy.
Immediately following this scene comes It’s Alive’s most famous sequence in which Frank’s wife Lenore (Sharon Farrell) is the only person left alive in her delivery room, the doctors clawed and bitten to death by her mutant baby, which has escaped. “What does my baby look like!? What’s wrong with my baby!?” she screams as nurses wheel her frantically into a recovery room. The evening that had begun with such joy and excitement at the birth of their second child turned into a nightmare. This is tough for me to write, but on some level, I can relate to this whiplash of emotion. When my second child was born, they came about five weeks early. I’ll use the pronouns “they/them” for privacy reasons when referring to my kids. Our oldest was still very young and went to stay with my parents and we sped off to the hospital where my wife was taken into an operating room for an emergency c-section. I was able to carry our newborn into the NICU (natal intensive care unit) where I was assured that this was routine for all premature births. The nurses assured me there was nothing to worry about and the baby looked big and healthy. I headed to where my wife was taken to recover to grab a few winks assuming that everything was fine. Well, when I awoke, I headed back over to the NICU to find that my child was not where I left them. The nurse found me and told me that the baby’s lungs were underdeveloped, and they had to put them in a special room connected to oxygen tubes and wires to monitor their vitals.
It’s difficult to express the fear that overwhelmed me in those moments. Everything turned out okay, but it took a while and I’m convinced to this day that their anxiety struggles spring from these first weeks of life. As our children grew, we learned that two of the three were on the spectrum and that anxiety, depression, ADHD, and OCD were also playing a part in their lives. Parents, at least speaking for myself, can’t help but blame themselves for the struggles their children face. The “if only” questions creep in and easily overcome the voices that assure us that it really has nothing to do with us. In the film, Lenore says, “maybe it’s all the pills I’ve been taking that brought this on.” Frank muses aloud about how he used to think that Frankenstein was the monster, but when he got older realized he was the one that made the monster. The aptly named Frank is wondering if his baby’s mutation is his fault, if he created the monster that is terrorizing Los Angeles. I have made plenty of “if only” statements about myself over the years. “If only I hadn’t had to work so much, if only I had been around more when they were little.” Mothers may ask themselves, “did I have a drink, too much coffee, or a cigarette before I knew I was pregnant? Was I too stressed out during the pregnancy?” In other words, most parents can’t help but wonder if it’s all their fault.
At one point in the film, Frank goes to the elementary school where his baby has been sighted and is escorted through the halls by police. He overhears someone comment about “screwed up genes,” which brings about age-old questions of nature vs. nurture. Despite the voices around him from doctors and detectives that say, “we know this isn’t your fault,” Frank can’t help but think it is, and that the people who try to tell him it isn’t really think it’s his fault too. There is no doubt that there is a hereditary element to the kinds of mental illness struggles that my children and I deal with. But, and it’s a bit but, good parenting goes a long way in helping children deal with these struggles. Kids need to know they’re not alone, a good parent can provide that, perhaps especially parents that can relate to the same kinds of struggles. The question of nature vs. nurture will likely never be entirely answered but I think there’s more than a good chance that “both/and” is the case. Around the midpoint of the film, Frank agrees to disown the child and sign it over for medical experimentation if caught or killed. Lenore and the older son Chris (Daniel Holzman) seek to nurture and teach the baby, feeling that it is not a monster, but a member of the family.
It’s Alive takes these ideas to an even greater degree in the fact that the Davis Baby really is a monster, a mutant with claws and fangs that murders and eats people. The late ’60s and early ’70s also saw the rise in mass murderers and serial killers which heightened the nature vs. nurture debate. Obviously, these people were not literal monsters but human beings that came from human parents, but something had gone horribly wrong. Often the upbringing of these killers clearly led in part to their antisocial behavior, but this isn’t always the case. It’s Alive asks “what if a ‘monster’ comes from a good home?” In this case is it society, environmental factors, or is it the lead, smog, and pesticides? It is almost impossible to know, but the ending of the film underscores an uncomfortable truth—even monsters have parents.
As the film enters its third act, Frank joins the hunt for his child through the Los Angeles sewers and into the L.A. River. He is armed with a rifle and ready to kill on sight, having divorced himself from any relationship to the child. Then Frank finds his baby crying in the sewers and his fatherly instincts take over. With tears in his eyes, he speaks words of comfort and wraps his son in his coat. He holds him close, pats and rocks him, and whispers that everything is going to be okay. People often wonder how the parents of those who perform heinous acts can sit in court, shed tears, and defend them. I think it’s a complex issue. I’m sure that these parents know that their child has done something evil, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are still their baby. Your child is a piece of yourself formed into a whole new human being. Disowning them would be like cutting off a limb, no matter what they may have done. It doesn’t erase an evil act, far from it, but I can understand the pain of a parent in that situation. I think It’s Alive does an exceptional job placing its audience in that situation.
Despite the serious issues and ideas being examined in the film, It’s Alive is far from a dour affair. At heart, it is still a monster movie and filled with a sense of fun and a great deal of pitch-black humor. In one of its more memorable moments, a milkman is sucked into the rear compartment of his truck as red blood mingles with the white milk from smashed bottles leaking out the back of the truck and streaming down the street. Just after Frank agrees to join the hunt for his baby, the film cuts to the back of an ice cream truck with the words “STOP CHILDREN” emblazoned on it. It’s a movie filled with great kills, a mutant baby—created by make-up effects master Rick Baker early in his career, and plenty of action—and all in a PG rated movie! I’m telling you, the ’70s were wild. It just also happens to have some thoughtful ideas behind it as well.
Which was Larry Cohen’s specialty. Cohen made all kinds of movies, but his most enduring have been his horror films and all of them tackle the social issues and fears of the time they were made. God Told Me To (1976), Q: The Winged Serpent (1982), and The Stuff (1985) are all great examples of his socially aware, low-budget, exploitation filmmaking with a brain and It’s Alive certainly fits right in with that group. Cohen would go on to write and direct two sequels, It Lives Again (aka It’s Alive 2) in 1978 and It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive in 1987 and is credited as a co-writer on the 2008 remake. All these films explore the ideas of parental responsibility in light of the various concerns of the times they were made including abortion rights and AIDS.
Fifty years after It’s Alive was initially released, it has only become more relevant in the ensuing years. Fears surrounding parenthood have been with us since the beginning of time but as the years pass the reasons for these fears only seem to become more and more profound. In today’s world the conversation of the fathers in the waiting room could be expanded to hormones and genetic modifications in food, terrorism, climate change, school and other mass shootings, and other threats that were unknown or at least less of a concern fifty years ago. Perhaps the fearmongering conspiracy theories about chemtrails and vaccines would be mentioned as well, though in a more satirical fashion, as fears some expectant parents encounter while endlessly doomscrolling Facebook or Twitter. Speaking for myself, despite the struggles, the fears, and the sadness that sometimes comes with having children, it’s been worth it. The joys ultimately outweigh all of that, but I understand the terror too. Becoming a parent is no easy choice, nor should it be. But as I look back, I can say that I’m glad we made the choice we did.
I wonder if Frank and Lenore can say the same thing.
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