I've decided to have a day of making - video crafting to be more precise. i might argue that it is my favourite thing to do but it is also the most difficult in many ways and consequently easy to avoid. I can always sits with a book or make notes and although the text might be challenging, there is no pressure. I have to accept that spending the day trying to create something and possibly failing is a frightening prospect. I've just assembled a piece of footage from some naked stuff I shot. I'm thinking about working a section of uncanny body horror into SBSBI - the torment of the mind disrupting the flesh sort of thing. I realise I need to watch Ben Wheatley's A Field in England as I'm aware it contains mirror effects and I may be accused of ripping him off...
I'm suprised its a period piece, I'd imagined it was contemporary kids on mushrooms. It looks great from the trailer but I find on the subject of references / hommages I'm reminded of Tarkovsky's Mirror.
The wind blowing up suddenly in the cornfields struck me profoundly when I first watched Mirror. It seemed almost that Tarkovsky had the power to command the elements - of course its probably a helicopter but I thought it sublime when I first saw it about 20 years ago. I regularly show a clip when discussing the uncanny with students - the hair washing sequence.
This image, I feel fairly sure, has informed Ringu and the subsequent sequels.
Hair over the face is a standard of Asian extreme horror. It promises the reveal of something that should remain hidden. It is similar to something behind the door or under the bed covers - fear of the unknown.
I had a cracking example of this the other night. My 8 year old daughter, at bedtime ran and hid from me. I thought she had probably got into my bed. There was a lump under the covers - small and not obviously a person but possibly where she was. I went to pull back the covers. I knew that this would either reveal my daughter or an empty bed. There was no other possibility. And yet as i reached out to pull back the covers I was very briefly but intensely awash with uncanny anxiety because somewhere in be existed an uncertainty and in that uncertainty existed the possibillity that there could be almost anything under those covers.
I had a cracking example of this the other night. My 8 year old daughter, at bedtime ran and hid from me. I thought she had probably got into my bed. There was a lump under the covers - small and not obviously a person but possibly where she was. I went to pull back the covers. I knew that this would either reveal my daughter or an empty bed. There was no other possibility. And yet as i reached out to pull back the covers I was very briefly but intensely awash with uncanny anxiety because somewhere in be existed an uncertainty and in that uncertainty existed the possibillity that there could be almost anything under those covers.