Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)
In the summer before seventh grade, I was in a beauty pageant called Miss National Pre-Teen of North Carolina. It was 2001 and I was 11, cute but somewhat shy. I joined because my best friend Ashley was a nationally crowned pageant princess with a china cabinet full of 12-inch tiaras and she was sure I had a chance. Our parents were friends and they convinced my mom to let me enter. I don’t think it was very hard. My mom and I had a close relationship, but it was at its closest when I was in the spotlight making her proud.
When I finally saw Drop Dead Gorgeous in my more cynical adult years, it became an immediate favourite. The film is a brutal mockumentary that exposes the dark underbelly in the lives of small-town teenage girls as they fight to the death to win the local pageant. Skulls are cracked, eating disorders mocked, multiple girls are literally exploded, and it is genuinely the funniest movie I have ever seen.
In 2001, I might have felt most like an Amber Atkins (Kirsten Dunst), naive and out of place in my borrowed heels. I finished okay, placing 5th overall, but I remember being proud of that. Over the course of the weekend, I’d modeled equestrian gear in the sportswear competition, had my glamor shots ranked in the photo contest, and eaten two stacks of pancakes at the family breakfast. I’d memorized choreography with the other contestants in matching outfits, and been assessed for poise in the interview segment, during which we all wore pastel polyester pantsuits.
In a lot of ways, it was just like the movie, though there was no attempted murder or anything fun. Mostly it was just awkward; a bunch of adults watching young girls and evaluating our womanhood. My brightest memory is of my mom rolling my hair with strips of toilet paper in the Sheraton hotel bathroom because we’d forgotten the curlers at home. It was a touching moment in an otherwise strange experience, like Ellen Barkin hugging Kirsten Dunst with a beer can melted to her hand.
The older I get, I fear I relate more to the Drop Dead villains. I’m Becky (Denise Richards) when my ambition precludes me from rational thought. I’m Gladys (Kirstie Alley) when I’m collecting my change for Botox money. Each toxic, tortured character speaks to something secret inside every woman. We’ve all wanted to be number one, the prettiest, the “most smartest” as Amber’s unpolished yet encouraging godmother Loretta (Allison Janney) says. Many of us would do anything to achieve it.
At the end of the movie, after 90 minutes of cut-throat antics, the pageant’s sponsors declare bankruptcy and no one is ever crowned. That’s the Sisyphean game of womanhood. There is no Sarah Rose Cosmetics, there is no ultimate win. Even if you claw your way to what you think is the top, you’ll probably be disappointed when you get there. It’s scary for sure, but in some warped and messed up way, it’s kind of funny, too.
–Kathryn Margaret Rose is a writer, comedian and nostalgia addict living in Brooklyn.
It Follows (2014)
At the end of a night spent downtown, a congested city centre filled with clamour and surprise, my hour-long commute home concludes with a short walk from the bus stop. Past midnight, the grounds of my neighbourhood are illuminated by warm street lamps and the glow of lonely plaza signs. On this uneventful journey, my most challenging obstacles are branches of untrimmed trees hanging into the sidewalk and shallow puddles formed after rainfall. In rare instances, I cross paths with another pedestrian headed in the opposite direction, similarly eager to return home. Still, I feel compelled to glance over my shoulder. In the depths of North York, though, my fear of men, packs of rowdy teenagers, and vans with tinted windows is replaced by the threat from It Follows, a slowly approaching figure in the distance.
I first watched the film in 2014, accidentally, without any knowledge of the premise: a young woman is the latest victim of a sexually transmitted supernatural curse and attempts to avoid a deadly fate with the help of her friends. Recognizing the familiar trappings of suburban life in the outskirts of Detroit—travelling by car, wandering tree-lined streets, gathering in grassy fields—I mapped the film onto my surroundings.
Because the violent entity possesses shape-shifting abilities, seniors on a post-dinner walk, neighbours answering phone calls outside, and anyone engaged in a leisurely stroll becomes a subject of suspicion. I emerged from the screening as someone equally vigilant about commotion and silence, people in groups and isolation, hurried motion and stillness. Without a resolved ending or insight into the curse’s logic, this irrational practice of scanning my environment continued for years until I left North York for urban pastures.
—Winnie Wang is a writer, film programmer and enthusiast from Toronto.
Perfect Blue (1997)
Silence threads itself through Satoshi Kon’s directorial debut Perfect Blue, materializing in the moments when you least expect it. Where Hayao Miyazaki taught us to dwell on the in-between, quiet moments in life as moments of reflection, Kon turns the notion on its head and shows us the true dread that lies beneath silence. And maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to the film, and to the lead heroine, Mima, who returns to an empty apartment night after night as she slowly loses control of her own life. The film eerily captures the terror of everyday life: dead fish floating in a tank, a sudden phone call in the dead of night, the city darkening against an open window. I can’t handle horror at all, so I thought an animated feature would ease me into the genre. No such luck; Kon takes the opportunity to make things more grotesque, more unimaginable. The film is relatable, in a strange sense: none of Mima’s decisions are truly her own as she dons a practiced smile, forced to leave behind her music career because acting will be more profitable for her company. The constant refrain of “who are you?”, aimed at Mima by the people who’ve taken care of her, feels like a personal attack as I find myself at a Frost-esque crossroads in my own life.
And yet, despite everything, I can't help but notice the beauty woven into the film: neon advertisements around a moving train, the different shades of pink in Mima's wardrobe, the organized clutter in her apartment, the nostalgia of a clunky desktop and pixelated graphics. Even the stalker-like blog that a stranger creates for Mima is cute, with a bubbly font and a red-and-white theme. These moments, however, are scarce as the events of the film meander towards you: just when you think Mima’s life can’t deteriorate any further, that she’ll finally be safe, Kon takes away all feelings of hope. Each twist still is a shock, a widening of the eyes. When the film ends, all I see is my face reflected on a black screen, unsure.
—Sana Mohsin likes nature imagery, tea, and nostalgia.
The Witch (2015)
I often joke with friends about not being scared by certain movies because I already grew up in “a cabin by the woods”, but it’s actually true. My sister Alex, our parents, and I were secluded from the world by guardian trees, our long dirt driveway, and the paved street that seemed, when I was eight, like it stretched for miles. If you want to get away from people, you don’t hit up some remote beach in Mexico or the smallest Midwestern exurb. You go to New Hampshire.
Our rusted red house sat next to a large thicket which could lead you, in daylight hours, right up to the Cold River. At night, well, we knew to stay out of there at night, even when I was furious with Alex and threatening to run away. The moon could be out, and the woods would still look absolutely pitch-black: full of screeches and calls and the rustle of unknown things. An ex-girlfriend of mine was appalled at how many of our outdoor cats were simply swallowed up by the forest, as if deep inside a full, sated stomach.
I loved New Hampshire. I also hated the cold and the limitations of a place that was truly quiet all the time. I left for college when I was 18 and haven’t stayed there longer than two months. When I watched The Witch, directed by a man also born and raised there, I remembered the unconscious, uncanny fear all New Englanders hold about the dark of the woods, about whatever is inside. And when I left, I swear that just like Thomasina, I full-on levitated in the air, ready for whatever deliciousness came next.
—C.M. Crockford is a neurodivergent writer who lives in Philadelphia with his cat Wally.
FeardotCom (2002)
In March I deleted Instagram. I did it on a whim, like ripping off a band-aid, because I’d been feeling like I was drowning in the content of other peoples’ lives—like I was being wrenched by the undertow of the story carousel, which served up an endless onslaught of innocuous imagery of people I barely knew, emotional stomach-punch glimpses of my ex, and ads for pastel phone cases made out of corn oil. I’ve since slowly, and predictably, crept back onto the platform, but I maintain that it is a dangerous and soul-threatening “website”, not unlike the incredible website called Feardotcom.com showcased in this misguided and extremely rainy horror film of 2002.
FeardotCom follows Detective Mike Reilly and Terry Huston from the Dept. of Health as they piece together a string of deaths connected to a mysterious website that knows your name, blows you off your chair when you look at it, and then kills you within 48 hours. Again, even though this movie really stinks, I think there’s actually a brilliant commentary on social media buried somewhere in here, deep under the layers of '90s-era Nine Inch Nails music video aesthetics and stunning dialogue moments like the line delivered by a widow when she’s questioned about her late husband’s presumed murder: “I think he worked himself to death. Always working. Always on his computer.” Cut to a smashed computer screen in the foreground.
The best part of this film is a book that is compellingly titled The Secret Soul of the Internet, which we learn absolutely nothing about after the man carrying it gets run over by a subway train when he’s startled by the hemophaeliac child-ghost of a woman who was tortured by a deranged doctor for views on Feardotcom.com. Can a person haunt you through the internet? Does the internet itself have a soul? I think the moral of the story here is to stay off your computer (and that includes your phone), or else you too might hallucinate that hundreds of cockroaches are swarming your body and launch yourself out a ninth-storey window. I don’t make the rules!
—Nancy Webb is a writer based in Montreal and a little bit in San Francisco.
Cube (1997)
Friday night. I’m about seven, and I’m forced to spend the weekend at my grandma’s. She’s asleep. I’m sitting in the dark neighbouring room flipping through channels. I’m not supposed to be here. It’s my first time alone away from home without my parents or friends and I’m lonely and desperate. The gleaming cube across the room offers nothing but re-runs, and the Cartoon Network—my usual source of late-night comfort—isn’t helping either. My eye meets that of another man as he wakes up finding himself trapped in a cube-shaped room. Soon, I’m introduced to six more people that are inside this geometric contraption. I think about how I’m not supposed to be here, and neither are they. I’m the fly on the wall of the deadly maze they aimlessly wander through. Questions start popping up in my head, and they’re echoed by the prisoners: How? Who? Why?
As I go closer to their faces, I learn more about each prisoner—Quentin's darker side, Leaven’s fragility, Holloway’s fatalistic nature, Worth’s guilt and search for redemption—and I try to imagine them existing outside the cube. Leaven making everyone dinner, Holloway taking care of patients, and Kazan enjoying bags of gumdrops (not the red ones); but it’s futile. I watch them psychologically deteriorate as they helplessly conjure villains that fit their worldview. The Government? Aliens? Some twisted rich fuck? Each of these is more comforting than the alternative: absolute nothingness. Better to have someone watch your every move than not being watched at all. Without a clear enemy or sense of direction, salvation has to come from themselves alone, and that’s the part that truly terrified me.
In the end, one got out, but it wasn’t me. I never did fall asleep that night, the alluring and enigmatic light kept me awake. Almost twenty years later, I’m still troubled by the mystery of the Cube. Watching it takes me back to that forlorn Friday night when comfort was scarce. I never get out of the cube either, and that light never faded. I still make my way through the maze, purposefully searching for meaning.
—Rumen Lasev is a literature student, film buff, and aspiring second hand bookshop owner. He lives in Berlin.
Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)
I moved home to take care of my Mom for a little while as she manages her brain cancer. My parents have a big screen TV but the big screen TV has strips that make its picture and those strips, worn out, have toned the TV a nearly unwatchable indigo blue hue. Dad, since I started writing this, had a heart attack during a flight, and so instead of buying a new TV, we bought him a “power chair” to recover from his quadruple bypass. We watch and talk about a lot of TV these days, much of it terrible, little memorable.
Bubba Ho-Tep, from director Don Cascorelli (of Phantasm fame), is quite the opposite of deadened TV programming. It’s one of those insane pieces of B-movie art that requires that bit of goodwill from the viewers, asks us to take it on its own terms. In the film, Elvis is alive and played by Bruce Campbell (a different iconic ‘king’). JFK is also alive, rendered hilariously by the late Ossie Davis, and has had his skin dyed black to protect him from further assassination attempts.
They’re both trapped in a senior’s care facility where the tenants’ souls are being slowly sucked out their assholes by a loose mummy who fell from the back of a car one rainy night in transport, and who leaves cuneiform graffiti in the bathroom stalls—Elvis describes it as “stick pictures on the shit-house wall”— which JFK translates: “Cleo-patra does the nas-ty”. They’re not dealing with some long entombed deific ruler, they’re dealing with an asshole D-lister mummy, an ancient-though-immature, almost teenage, force that robs the elderly of their dignity and life-force.
No one believes Elvis or JFK’s real identities or their exploits, and even Elvis is wary of his new friend’s apparent identity nearly ‘til the closing credits. On top of being constantly condescended to and infantilized, the omnipresent loneliness of the facility is punctuated by the air of death (‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ alike).
But it’s because of these raised supernatural stakes that Elvis and JFK begin to reclaim their dignity. For example, Elvis’ struggles with erections are turned around, the sense of danger restoring his virility mid-ointment application for a tumorous growth on his penis.
Although he’s playing a decrepit, aged-up Elvis, Campbell still looks tight and fit, even as recently as the Ash Versus Evil Dead TV series (which wrapped up sixteen years after the release of BH-T). I’m glad he seems hale and hearty at 64, three years younger than my father, a year older than my mother.
I’m also glad my parents are home on the farm, even as I forfeit a comfortable and curious queer life of my own to care for them for the foreseeable future. I am glad they’re not trapped in a withering care facility: glad they’re not imperiled at the site that suffers most in a culture that outright discounts the elderly, the chronically ill and the disabled because they’re “tired” of the smallest possible asks of all time (masking, common sense); glad they’re not weakly warding off a mummy ready to sap their every energy as they’re hunched over the remote with their off-the-rack prescription glasses, futilely toying with the colour temperature settings on their spent TV.
And I gotta tell you, Elvis looks good in blue.
—bonny CD is currently in a dark room drinking a slimy green drink, adroitly cultivating their next bad take.
X (2022)
As I watched Ti West's latest horror film after successfully dodging our latest coronavarient, I could not help feeling like the horror-movie-final-girl. At first, X seemed like the perfect escapist flick: a stylish ‘70s-retro Southern goth slasher pitting a crew of young indie porn makers against the malevolent elderly residents of a decaying Texan farm. What could be further than present-day life in downtown Toronto? But as the body count started rising, X began to feel less like your typical A24 horror commentary on the monstrousness of women and more like a replay of watching everyone around me catch the cron as the year played out. With that, this faraway film suddenly felt all too close to the real-life body horror of yet again entering a packed subway or wee family-run grocery store crammed with the unmasked. If we were to imagine a cinematic representation of what it has been like trying to avoid the talking, laughing, coughing, virally-spewing, "just a summer cold" maskless masses, I suppose getting stalked by a desiccated and dishevelled rural recluse driven by a preternatural lust fits the bill. You cannot see it, but under my N-95, Mia Goth's stricken grimace as she flattens herself against the floorboards while her would-be butchers bang on the mattress above her is the exact expression I'm making as I'm about to cross the threshold into yet another crowded indoor space.
—Kawai Shen is a writer based in Toronto.
Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)
In the summer before seventh grade, I was in a beauty pageant called Miss National Pre-Teen of North Carolina. It was 2001 and I was 11, cute but somewhat shy. I joined because my best friend Ashley was a nationally crowned pageant princess with a china cabinet full of 12-inch tiaras and she was sure I had a chance. Our parents were friends and they convinced my mom to let me enter. I don’t think it was very hard. My mom and I had a close relationship, but it was at its closest when I was in the spotlight making her proud.
When I finally saw Drop Dead Gorgeous in my more cynical adult years, it became an immediate favourite. The film is a brutal mockumentary that exposes the dark underbelly in the lives of small-town teenage girls as they fight to the death to win the local pageant. Skulls are cracked, eating disorders mocked, multiple girls are literally exploded, and it is genuinely the funniest movie I have ever seen.
In 2001, I might have felt most like an Amber Atkins (Kirsten Dunst), naive and out of place in my borrowed heels. I finished okay, placing 5th overall, but I remember being proud of that. Over the course of the weekend, I’d modeled equestrian gear in the sportswear competition, had my glamor shots ranked in the photo contest, and eaten two stacks of pancakes at the family breakfast. I’d memorized choreography with the other contestants in matching outfits, and been assessed for poise in the interview segment, during which we all wore pastel polyester pantsuits.
In a lot of ways, it was just like the movie, though there was no attempted murder or anything fun. Mostly it was just awkward; a bunch of adults watching young girls and evaluating our womanhood. My brightest memory is of my mom rolling my hair with strips of toilet paper in the Sheraton hotel bathroom because we’d forgotten the curlers at home. It was a touching moment in an otherwise strange experience, like Ellen Barkin hugging Kirsten Dunst with a beer can melted to her hand.
The older I get, I fear I relate more to the Drop Dead villains. I’m Becky (Denise Richards) when my ambition precludes me from rational thought. I’m Gladys (Kirstie Alley) when I’m collecting my change for Botox money. Each toxic, tortured character speaks to something secret inside every woman. We’ve all wanted to be number one, the prettiest, the “most smartest” as Amber’s unpolished yet encouraging godmother Loretta (Allison Janney) says. Many of us would do anything to achieve it.
At the end of the movie, after 90 minutes of cut-throat antics, the pageant’s sponsors declare bankruptcy and no one is ever crowned. That’s the Sisyphean game of womanhood. There is no Sarah Rose Cosmetics, there is no ultimate win. Even if you claw your way to what you think is the top, you’ll probably be disappointed when you get there. It’s scary for sure, but in some warped and messed up way, it’s kind of funny, too.
–Kathryn Margaret Rose is a writer, comedian and nostalgia addict living in Brooklyn.
It Follows (2014)
At the end of a night spent downtown, a congested city centre filled with clamour and surprise, my hour-long commute home concludes with a short walk from the bus stop. Past midnight, the grounds of my neighbourhood are illuminated by warm street lamps and the glow of lonely plaza signs. On this uneventful journey, my most challenging obstacles are branches of untrimmed trees hanging into the sidewalk and shallow puddles formed after rainfall. In rare instances, I cross paths with another pedestrian headed in the opposite direction, similarly eager to return home. Still, I feel compelled to glance over my shoulder. In the depths of North York, though, my fear of men, packs of rowdy teenagers, and vans with tinted windows is replaced by the threat from It Follows, a slowly approaching figure in the distance.
I first watched the film in 2014, accidentally, without any knowledge of the premise: a young woman is the latest victim of a sexually transmitted supernatural curse and attempts to avoid a deadly fate with the help of her friends. Recognizing the familiar trappings of suburban life in the outskirts of Detroit—travelling by car, wandering tree-lined streets, gathering in grassy fields—I mapped the film onto my surroundings.
Because the violent entity possesses shape-shifting abilities, seniors on a post-dinner walk, neighbours answering phone calls outside, and anyone engaged in a leisurely stroll becomes a subject of suspicion. I emerged from the screening as someone equally vigilant about commotion and silence, people in groups and isolation, hurried motion and stillness. Without a resolved ending or insight into the curse’s logic, this irrational practice of scanning my environment continued for years until I left North York for urban pastures.
—Winnie Wang is a writer, film programmer and enthusiast from Toronto.
Perfect Blue (1997)
Silence threads itself through Satoshi Kon’s directorial debut Perfect Blue, materializing in the moments when you least expect it. Where Hayao Miyazaki taught us to dwell on the in-between, quiet moments in life as moments of reflection, Kon turns the notion on its head and shows us the true dread that lies beneath silence. And maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to the film, and to the lead heroine, Mima, who returns to an empty apartment night after night as she slowly loses control of her own life. The film eerily captures the terror of everyday life: dead fish floating in a tank, a sudden phone call in the dead of night, the city darkening against an open window. I can’t handle horror at all, so I thought an animated feature would ease me into the genre. No such luck; Kon takes the opportunity to make things more grotesque, more unimaginable. The film is relatable, in a strange sense: none of Mima’s decisions are truly her own as she dons a practiced smile, forced to leave behind her music career because acting will be more profitable for her company. The constant refrain of “who are you?”, aimed at Mima by the people who’ve taken care of her, feels like a personal attack as I find myself at a Frost-esque crossroads in my own life.
And yet, despite everything, I can't help but notice the beauty woven into the film: neon advertisements around a moving train, the different shades of pink in Mima's wardrobe, the organized clutter in her apartment, the nostalgia of a clunky desktop and pixelated graphics. Even the stalker-like blog that a stranger creates for Mima is cute, with a bubbly font and a red-and-white theme. These moments, however, are scarce as the events of the film meander towards you: just when you think Mima’s life can’t deteriorate any further, that she’ll finally be safe, Kon takes away all feelings of hope. Each twist still is a shock, a widening of the eyes. When the film ends, all I see is my face reflected on a black screen, unsure.
—Sana Mohsin likes nature imagery, tea, and nostalgia.
The Witch (2015)
I often joke with friends about not being scared by certain movies because I already grew up in “a cabin by the woods”, but it’s actually true. My sister Alex, our parents, and I were secluded from the world by guardian trees, our long dirt driveway, and the paved street that seemed, when I was eight, like it stretched for miles. If you want to get away from people, you don’t hit up some remote beach in Mexico or the smallest Midwestern exurb. You go to New Hampshire.
Our rusted red house sat next to a large thicket which could lead you, in daylight hours, right up to the Cold River. At night, well, we knew to stay out of there at night, even when I was furious with Alex and threatening to run away. The moon could be out, and the woods would still look absolutely pitch-black: full of screeches and calls and the rustle of unknown things. An ex-girlfriend of mine was appalled at how many of our outdoor cats were simply swallowed up by the forest, as if deep inside a full, sated stomach.
I loved New Hampshire. I also hated the cold and the limitations of a place that was truly quiet all the time. I left for college when I was 18 and haven’t stayed there longer than two months. When I watched The Witch, directed by a man also born and raised there, I remembered the unconscious, uncanny fear all New Englanders hold about the dark of the woods, about whatever is inside. And when I left, I swear that just like Thomasina, I full-on levitated in the air, ready for whatever deliciousness came next.
—C.M. Crockford is a neurodivergent writer who lives in Philadelphia with his cat Wally.
FeardotCom (2002)
In March I deleted Instagram. I did it on a whim, like ripping off a band-aid, because I’d been feeling like I was drowning in the content of other peoples’ lives—like I was being wrenched by the undertow of the story carousel, which served up an endless onslaught of innocuous imagery of people I barely knew, emotional stomach-punch glimpses of my ex, and ads for pastel phone cases made out of corn oil. I’ve since slowly, and predictably, crept back onto the platform, but I maintain that it is a dangerous and soul-threatening “website”, not unlike the incredible website called Feardotcom.com showcased in this misguided and extremely rainy horror film of 2002.
FeardotCom follows Detective Mike Reilly and Terry Huston from the Dept. of Health as they piece together a string of deaths connected to a mysterious website that knows your name, blows you off your chair when you look at it, and then kills you within 48 hours. Again, even though this movie really stinks, I think there’s actually a brilliant commentary on social media buried somewhere in here, deep under the layers of '90s-era Nine Inch Nails music video aesthetics and stunning dialogue moments like the line delivered by a widow when she’s questioned about her late husband’s presumed murder: “I think he worked himself to death. Always working. Always on his computer.” Cut to a smashed computer screen in the foreground.
The best part of this film is a book that is compellingly titled The Secret Soul of the Internet, which we learn absolutely nothing about after the man carrying it gets run over by a subway train when he’s startled by the hemophaeliac child-ghost of a woman who was tortured by a deranged doctor for views on Feardotcom.com. Can a person haunt you through the internet? Does the internet itself have a soul? I think the moral of the story here is to stay off your computer (and that includes your phone), or else you too might hallucinate that hundreds of cockroaches are swarming your body and launch yourself out a ninth-storey window. I don’t make the rules!
—Nancy Webb is a writer based in Montreal and a little bit in San Francisco.
Cube (1997)
Friday night. I’m about seven, and I’m forced to spend the weekend at my grandma’s. She’s asleep. I’m sitting in the dark neighbouring room flipping through channels. I’m not supposed to be here. It’s my first time alone away from home without my parents or friends and I’m lonely and desperate. The gleaming cube across the room offers nothing but re-runs, and the Cartoon Network—my usual source of late-night comfort—isn’t helping either. My eye meets that of another man as he wakes up finding himself trapped in a cube-shaped room. Soon, I’m introduced to six more people that are inside this geometric contraption. I think about how I’m not supposed to be here, and neither are they. I’m the fly on the wall of the deadly maze they aimlessly wander through. Questions start popping up in my head, and they’re echoed by the prisoners: How? Who? Why?
As I go closer to their faces, I learn more about each prisoner—Quentin's darker side, Leaven’s fragility, Holloway’s fatalistic nature, Worth’s guilt and search for redemption—and I try to imagine them existing outside the cube. Leaven making everyone dinner, Holloway taking care of patients, and Kazan enjoying bags of gumdrops (not the red ones); but it’s futile. I watch them psychologically deteriorate as they helplessly conjure villains that fit their worldview. The Government? Aliens? Some twisted rich fuck? Each of these is more comforting than the alternative: absolute nothingness. Better to have someone watch your every move than not being watched at all. Without a clear enemy or sense of direction, salvation has to come from themselves alone, and that’s the part that truly terrified me.
In the end, one got out, but it wasn’t me. I never did fall asleep that night, the alluring and enigmatic light kept me awake. Almost twenty years later, I’m still troubled by the mystery of the Cube. Watching it takes me back to that forlorn Friday night when comfort was scarce. I never get out of the cube either, and that light never faded. I still make my way through the maze, purposefully searching for meaning.
—Rumen Lasev is a literature student, film buff, and aspiring second hand bookshop owner. He lives in Berlin.
Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)
I moved home to take care of my Mom for a little while as she manages her brain cancer. My parents have a big screen TV but the big screen TV has strips that make its picture and those strips, worn out, have toned the TV a nearly unwatchable indigo blue hue. Dad, since I started writing this, had a heart attack during a flight, and so instead of buying a new TV, we bought him a “power chair” to recover from his quadruple bypass. We watch and talk about a lot of TV these days, much of it terrible, little memorable.
Bubba Ho-Tep, from director Don Cascorelli (of Phantasm fame), is quite the opposite of deadened TV programming. It’s one of those insane pieces of B-movie art that requires that bit of goodwill from the viewers, asks us to take it on its own terms. In the film, Elvis is alive and played by Bruce Campbell (a different iconic ‘king’). JFK is also alive, rendered hilariously by the late Ossie Davis, and has had his skin dyed black to protect him from further assassination attempts.
They’re both trapped in a senior’s care facility where the tenants’ souls are being slowly sucked out their assholes by a loose mummy who fell from the back of a car one rainy night in transport, and who leaves cuneiform graffiti in the bathroom stalls—Elvis describes it as “stick pictures on the shit-house wall”— which JFK translates: “Cleo-patra does the nas-ty”. They’re not dealing with some long entombed deific ruler, they’re dealing with an asshole D-lister mummy, an ancient-though-immature, almost teenage, force that robs the elderly of their dignity and life-force.
No one believes Elvis or JFK’s real identities or their exploits, and even Elvis is wary of his new friend’s apparent identity nearly ‘til the closing credits. On top of being constantly condescended to and infantilized, the omnipresent loneliness of the facility is punctuated by the air of death (‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ alike).
But it’s because of these raised supernatural stakes that Elvis and JFK begin to reclaim their dignity. For example, Elvis’ struggles with erections are turned around, the sense of danger restoring his virility mid-ointment application for a tumorous growth on his penis.
Although he’s playing a decrepit, aged-up Elvis, Campbell still looks tight and fit, even as recently as the Ash Versus Evil Dead TV series (which wrapped up sixteen years after the release of BH-T). I’m glad he seems hale and hearty at 64, three years younger than my father, a year older than my mother.
I’m also glad my parents are home on the farm, even as I forfeit a comfortable and curious queer life of my own to care for them for the foreseeable future. I am glad they’re not trapped in a withering care facility: glad they’re not imperiled at the site that suffers most in a culture that outright discounts the elderly, the chronically ill and the disabled because they’re “tired” of the smallest possible asks of all time (masking, common sense); glad they’re not weakly warding off a mummy ready to sap their every energy as they’re hunched over the remote with their off-the-rack prescription glasses, futilely toying with the colour temperature settings on their spent TV.
And I gotta tell you, Elvis looks good in blue.
—bonny CD is currently in a dark room drinking a slimy green drink, adroitly cultivating their next bad take.
X (2022)
As I watched Ti West's latest horror film after successfully dodging our latest coronavarient, I could not help feeling like the horror-movie-final-girl. At first, X seemed like the perfect escapist flick: a stylish ‘70s-retro Southern goth slasher pitting a crew of young indie porn makers against the malevolent elderly residents of a decaying Texan farm. What could be further than present-day life in downtown Toronto? But as the body count started rising, X began to feel less like your typical A24 horror commentary on the monstrousness of women and more like a replay of watching everyone around me catch the cron as the year played out. With that, this faraway film suddenly felt all too close to the real-life body horror of yet again entering a packed subway or wee family-run grocery store crammed with the unmasked. If we were to imagine a cinematic representation of what it has been like trying to avoid the talking, laughing, coughing, virally-spewing, "just a summer cold" maskless masses, I suppose getting stalked by a desiccated and dishevelled rural recluse driven by a preternatural lust fits the bill. You cannot see it, but under my N-95, Mia Goth's stricken grimace as she flattens herself against the floorboards while her would-be butchers bang on the mattress above her is the exact expression I'm making as I'm about to cross the threshold into yet another crowded indoor space.