A sick movie – in a sick genre. Do not be conned by the publicity for this sleazeball movie: it is not a thriller. It is a horror movie pretending to be a thriller. The essence of the horror movie for me is that the tension, the suspense, arises not from uncertainty about what may happened next. No, in the true horror movie the tension is created because you know exactly what is going to happen next – someone is going to get shockingly and gruesomely killed, tortured or maimed or some infinitely imaginative combination of all three. Sometimes, God help us this trash is often played for laughs. I love good trash. This is bad trash.

And the tension is cumulative; each gruesome dismembering, evisceration, decapitation etc escalates the blood lust and the clinical, dispassionate exploration of exactly how many ways the director’s imagination can conceive of to inflict horrific pain and death on another, almost always with explicit or implicit linkage of sex and sexuality. And the sufferers of this brutal, bestial sexually violent abuse are almost always women and usually at the hands of men. In the world of modern CGI, prosthetics and special effects, there is now no limit to what can be made to look real.

Sorry to those of you who can watch this genre, but I’ve always hated it though of course some, not many, films aimed at the horror market have developed characters, situations and plots that have lifted them out of the horror sewer into genuine thriller status. The violence in a thriller movie is an essential element in a dramatic narrative that it serves: the violence in a horror movie is an end in itself – it is the point of the movie.

Like father, like daughter I guess: that David Lynch has talent as a film-maker is beyond question, as The Elephant Man and The Straight Story amply demonstrate. He also comes off as a pretty f***cked up guy who shares his obsessions, fantasies and fetishes with us in movies like Blue Velvet, Wild At Heart and Mulholland Drive. Zizek argues convincingly that you cannot hope to understand David Lynch without exploring psychoanalytical concepts. Well I’ve never been much of a fan of movie-making as a substitute for therapy.

David’s daughter Jennifer whose second film Surveillance is, after the calamity of her first little essay into movie-making with Boxing Helena in 1993 appears to be at least as screwed-up as dad. You’ll mercifully perhaps have forgotten Boxing Helena – a folksy little tale of a jilted surgeon who, finding the (s)ex-object of his ‘affection’ in a car wreck outside his house, kidnaps her and proceeds to amputate her limbs so she can’t – ha ha – walk out on him. BH only got made because Jennifer raised money on her father’s reputation. In a recent interview she said that Surveillance was tough to finance and once made could not get distribution. So up pops daddy again to stick his name on it as Executive Producer and whoa – off we go again.

In another of my periodic bewilderments about commercial critics – they have been shamefully easy on this nasty little film. David Lynch is a confessedly voyeuristic director, never more so than when he is filming lesbian sex scenes notably that between Naomi Watts and Laura Harring in Mulholland Drive. He regularly put sexuality and violence in the same frame literally and metaphorically. I thought that was pretty much a guy thing but no – here’s Ms Lynch playing out the same kind of fetishistic, violent, adolescent male masturbatory fantasies thinly disguised as a plot.

We’re in the featureless desert territory of Santa Fe. A man has been brutally murdered and his partner terrorised in a blood-soaked opening credits inter-cut. The woman escapes the killers who are wearing masks that look like Scream with acne. Or does she? Elizabeth (Julia Ormond) and Sam (Bill Pullman) turn up at a remote police station as FBI agents taking over investigation of this latest atrocity apparently committed by two killers they have been chasing for months. Local cops resent the FBI but are forced to co-operate. Two witnesses have been brought in from carnage discovered on the highway. Three vehicles and several victims shot by various gruesome means.

It remains unclear throughout constant flashbacks exactly what has happened: we know that 9-year old Stephanie (an excellent Ryan Simpkins) is the sole survivor of her family of 5; and druggie Bobbi (Pell James) has left her off-the-wall boyfriend Johnny on-the-tarmac seeping life. For various convoluted rather than complicated reasons there are quite a few more dead people littering the highway and Lynch takes an unconscionably long time to let us in on what’s supposed to have happened. And even then we don't really care.

Meanwhile Elizabeth and Sam, much more touchy-feely than Scully and Mulder, who appear to have a running private joke going on between them, have set up cameras at the Police station and Sam watches as the events are recounted by the people who experienced them. Ormond isn’t bad, leaving an air of uncertainty hanging in the air. Pullman just twitches a lot and acts weird like he’s still on the set of Lost Highwayeven now, like us, having no idea what the hell is going on.

For no apparent reason other than it seems a bit out of kilter and weird, Highway Cops Jack Bennett and Partner Degrasso liven up their inbred life-styles by playing out little fantasies with motorists they have stopped for speeding by shooting their tyres out. These nasty little scenes have a furtive, guilty, gropey, giggly little sub-text that seems to induce a lot of on-screen vomiting from frightened innocent people.

When this all unwinds in the predictably bloody way heavily trailed throughout, we feel cheated at the obviousness of the ‘twist’ and simply soiled by the gratuitous exploitation of the crap plot to set up a bit of girl on girl heavy breathing where one player gets dead scared: sorry scared dead.

Even technically this junk sucks. The sound is lousy at the beginning and at times later. The filming is grainy and badly lit. Jennifer’s editing is, just like her dad’s, fetishistic in tone and quasi-pornographic in effect.

This is a nasty, brutish, poorly conceived, badly executed exercise in psycho-sexual self examination - nay self-disgust even. It is totally derivative for its slightly weird, off-the-wall tone – simply emulating Twin Peaky, Blue Velvety Daddy D. You do not care for or about anyone in this film from beginning to end – even the delightful little Stephanie seems a bit like an alien at times. No one does anything a real person would – except puke and bleed a lot. Everything and everyone is jumbled together without purpose or artistic insight. The aesthetics of repulsion and disgust - pretty much a definition of the horror genre.

This isn’t a Fargo where real people get caught up in only too believable tragic messes that lead to violence. And Ms Lynch appears to have watched Badlands without understanding anything about it. If daddy David had an occasionally disturbing line in weird as art: Jennifer seems to have settled for weird as weird.

I’m glad my unlimited movie ticket means I didn’t really pay to see this movie. Go if you must but really, why not stay in and clean the toilet? Much like Surveillance: not very pleasant – but at least it’s free. And you can get the toilet clean.

(This and other reviews and writing are available free at " target=_blank>http://www.zettelfilmreviews.co.uk)

The violence in a horror movie is an end in itself – it is the point of the movie.

I haven't seen this movie but I strongly disagree with that comment. I do agree that there is a sub-genre of horror - splatterfest, gorecore etc. - that relishes in violence as an end in itself, but there are many classic horror movies, the Shining, The Omen, Halloween and so on, which do have strong plots and great stories, and don't rely on topless girls screaming through forests while chased by axe-wielding maniacs. Violence happens - mindless, senseless, widespread, unfeeling - and is a lot more true to life than X amount of Hollywood movies. As a species, we revel in violence. Like it or not, our whole society is based on it. I don't condone it, but I don't see why it can't be explored as an artistic form without such heavy criticism...unless one is going to go down the 'violent movies/games/books make people violent, which I personally think is rubbish.

I watched The Devil's Rejects, which sounds similar to this film you've reviewed (and reviewed well, if not with a little bias toward genre). I found it shocking and appalling, but then that is the point of some horror movies, and I think that's what you were getting at, personally, but I wanted to clarify. I think the best kind of reviews are ones that make allowance for genre.

JB

Well said again, Z. I hate films which disguise porn/violence as art. Which means I've hated just about everything David Lynch has done apart from Straight Story (clue in the title?). I'm also allergic to famous directors' offspring making crap films that critics bend over backwards to praise. That goddawful, racist, underwritten, overacted piece of crap by whatsername Coppola comes to mind with Bill Murray in the Woody Allen borderline paedophile role (amazing that it was written by a woman). I was tempted to see her French Revolution follow-up because the trailers made me laugh so much but oh, I don't know, after Carry on Don't Lose Your Head, there's just no point.

I've never got horror; bores me silly. As you say, just a load of bloody escalation on the whole. I like the odd one that actually uses character traits, lighting and suggestion to make you wish you weren't wearing white underpants. The Haunting comes to mind (original one, of course); Night of the Hunter and the first Halloween. So, I think I mostly agree with you, that usually the violence is the point (although I also see where Waxy's coming from, and he knows far more about this genre than I do).

Terry

Sorry guys - because when one edits a piece that comes up as a 'comment' I had missed both your interesting remarks.

Waxy I agree with almost everything you say - though I would have thought for at least the last 20 years or so the balance between Hollywood rose-tinted pap and movies with gratuitous violence almost always linked to sex has tilted heavily towards the latter. As the wonderful parody of the guy in the Orange often says "put in a bit of nudity and violence and we've got a movie."

It's partly a matter of definition - which is another way of saying judgement: I suggested this as key -

"The violence in a thriller movie is an essential element in a dramatic narrative that it serves: the violence in a horror movie is an end in itself – it is the point of the movie".

By this criterion certainly the brilliant The Shining and the very good The Omen and we might add say The Exorcist all have characters and an aesthetic purpose that the violence shown subserves. Not necessarily high-flown or serious just valid. Kubrick took on the challenge of the inherent instinctual violence of human beings in A Clockwork Orange within which were very controversial scenes of violence. But when Kubrick linked sex with violence the way he filmed, the editing, was never erotic. What bugs me about Surveillance and scenes in many David Lynch movies is the eroticisation (ugh) of violent dominatory sex. What bugs me, and I know this is an unfashionable view, about a disturbingly large amount of Scorcese's output is that for me he systematically festishises and eroticises violence itself. That is even more disturbing, for while one might reluctantly accept that some men, and it is men we are talking about here, get off on fictionalised dominatory, violent sex, it is chilling to think of getting sexually aroused by violence itself. That entices us into the mind of the psychotic killer. Valid if that's the aesthetic purpose as with Clockwork Orange, less so with much of Scorcese's obsessive output. I am less disturbed by people who have seen every edition of the Scream franchise than by those many people who have told me they love Goodfellas so much they like to watch it again and again. That's disturbing because not only is Goodfellas a brilliantly made film it is not in any way a schlocky horror movie. That's a subject worthy of full-blown study.

So for me Shining and Omen are clearly thrillers in which horrific events are portrayed to discernible dramatic and aesthetic purpose.

Halloween is marginal for me. Perhaps the exception that proves the rule. What just tips it towards very horrific thriller is the extraordinary performance of Donald Pleasance (it's a very long time since I saw it) that lies at the heart of the movie as I recall. I would be inversely sanguine as we might put it about the subsequent spin-offs.

I guess I'm pretty much defining the Horror genre by what you call a sub-genre because the criteria I have suggested identifies a substantial set of movies with common characteristics - especially the young, even teenage market towards which they are pitched. And there of course there is the rites of passage, can you stomach, put up with this kind of bravado involved.

It gets even more tricky with comic book and graphic novel movies like Sin City and The Watchmen which I just saw. But's that's another story.

Terry

I can forgive Sophia Coppola pretty much anything for Lost In Translation but I agree Marie Antoinette looked pretty naff. However there is discernible talent there which seems not to be true of Ms Lynch.

I agree entirely with you about the key point of those who "disguise porn/violence as art" This is a judgement call in every case.

It is chilling to think of getting sexually aroused by violence itself.

J G Ballard wrote Crash, didn't he? Kronenburg made into a film, dealing with this very subject, but I don't think many people 'got it', to be fair.

It's an interesting argument, and one that you've clearly thought about a lot. My earlier reaction seems a little knee-jerk in light of what you've said, because there is indeed the distinction between gratuitous sex and violence and then horrific scenes that serve a narrative purpose. The root of all these debates is moral. We are taught that violence is wrong all our lives, so I find it interesting, on a purely conjectural level, that there's so much of it about. Violence is wrong unless we're stopping other violent people. Violence is wrong unless we're engaged in war, when it becomes quite noble, and so forth... That human beings are so readily disposed toward it, that is the real horror. That we distance ourselves so much from what is and has always been a primary part of our culture, that also horrifies me, because, well, shoving our heads in the sand over sex and violence clearly hasn't worked, has it? We don't want to confront it, even though it's happening all around us on a daily basis. Like I said, I don't condone violence, I don't relish it, I'm not one these 'men' you mention, but I do explore it, I do write about it, and I believe that exploration is far healthier than sweeping it under the carpet.

Explorations of violence on screen or in books fascinate me, but, like you say, if it's merely there to shock, with no real purpose behind it, it is pretty dumb. I haven't seen this movie, so I can't pass any deeper comment than that. Halloween, like Silence of the Lambs, represent - fictionally - things that go on in life. For me, horror has never been about cheap shocks and revelling in blood and guts. It's a stark reminder of what we're fighting not to be, a contrast between the light and dark. Know your enemy. Glossing over the shadows never did anyone any good.

JB

JB

I think we are both troubled by and struggling with the same problem. And on essentials I think we agree. We can only judge individual cases on individual merits. That will always, as perhaps it should, mean that we will agree on many cases and perhaps disagree on some individual examples. I think that is healthy because I need someone to challenge my judgement and vice versa. It pretty much ties in to the old saying that when good men are silent evil prospers. We should subject all these issues when in real life or in Art, to personal judgement for which we are each willing to argue pro or con. Just becasue we may disagree on individual cases does not mean that we are not in pretty clear agreement about others. I am happy with that because it means that all cases are debated and discussed thoroughly. And everyone must make their own decision. That's how it must be. I am happier that horror movies exist to be discussed than that they should be banned etc. To disagree about the applicability of an agreed standard of judgement reinforces that judgement rather than allows it to be left unchallenged.

Neither of us will be incontrovertibly right in particular cases but the fact that we honestly and vigorously disagree on the basis of carefully considered arguments is more important than any conventional or unexamined agreement would be.

I wouild rather have this stuff in the public domain and subjected to examination and argument than that it disappears underground and attracts the phoney kudos of claiming to be suppressed or victimised.

as ever - interesting and worthwhile discussion

regards

Z

I think there is an issue of 'need to know' in this, not that it's ever raised much. For example, I can see why detectives, care workers, doctors, psychiatrists, etc, would need to know the details of violent attack and murder. But it's difficult to see why the non-professional person needs to. What are they going to do with the information? Okay, some people are sufficiently balanced, self-aware and so on to 'handle' violence in a movie without it changing their behaviour and/or attitudes to other people (although I might argue against that, actually). But some people aren't. It's like with porn: some people have a clear sense of reality and fantasy; others don't.

It's very easy to argue that freedom of expression should allow pretty much any violent or pornographic act to be portrayed in film (or books, theatre, TV). But, then I think, "Well do I really need to know/see this stuff?" If I don't have a professional reason to, what am I going to do with the extremes of emotional reaction it causes in me?" And this issue become even more muddied when the film-maker has extreme, possibly perverted, which he's not openly declaring.

I don't have an answer to this question. But I think there is a journey to go on at least - through the first and necessary reaction to general censorship, leading one to embrace the principle of freedom of expression, on to a perhaps more thoughtful view of long-term consequences of allowing everyone access to anything that anyone else decides to show them for any reason whatsoever.

Terry

Big issue Terry. Not sure that censorship solves much.

I have to say that what disturbs me most at the moment is the obscene, hateful way that many computer-games are pitched at what must be predominantly a youthful market. For reputable companies like Sony and Microsoft to peddle this stuff marks a sea-change from just a few years ago. The inter-active nature of this stuff seems ot me to add a disturbing extra dimension.

Z

Well I’ve never been much of a fan of movie-making as a substitute for therapy.

I wonder what you mean by this? Does this apply equally to writing?

Just recently I've read a couple of pieces on WW - they were blogs, I think - where writers have said that's just what they do - write about disturbing events to somehow purge themselves. The purpose would be to rid themselve of alarming thoughts or images. Just this afternoon I read an essay - I think it was Edna O'Brien in a piece absout her childhood. She said she couldn't imagine people writing if they were happy because writing was such a sad and lonely business.

I don't neccesarily agree with this point of view, and it might seem a long way from the graphic horror you describe - glad I haven't seen the film although I'm a horror fan.

Another problem is deciding the threshold beyond which depiction of violence becomes unacceptable. Some people I talk to, especially those who restrict film-watching to literary adaptations and costume dramas,find even a small amount of violence (or sex) intolerable.

Interesting points.

Sheila

It's very easy to argue that freedom of expression should allow pretty much any violent or pornographic act to be portrayed in film (or books, theatre, TV). But, then I think, "Well do I really need to know/see this stuff?"

Yes, it's a valid point, but then again, under this there are individual freedoms and censorship ratings. Nobody forces anyone to watch/read/play this stuff. We're not strapped into the cinema seats with our eyes pinned open, being flash-mobbed images of graphic sex and violence. People go to see these things willingly, enthusiastically, most of them well aware of what they're about to see. But you don't have to. Freedom of expression is only half of it. Freedom of choice is the other. Both have their own responsibilty.

I agree with Z wholeheartedly that the theme is way too big, and we all have very different tastes, for anyone to agree or be entirely right or wrong. With freedom of technology, the internet etc. there is simply no point in trying to close the stable door now, because the horse bolted long ago. And I hear there are things out there a hell of a lot worse than 18 certificate horror movies. I think it's important we hold a moral stance over our art, absolutely, but we should also accept that people are curious, especially kids, and they want a good look at the dark side, they want to be shocked and they want to be scared. A crap horror film is one that you laugh at. A good one makes you queasy, or hide behind your popcorn. It's what the genre relies on. It is what Horror is. Maybe some aspects of the genre take it too far, but as Z points out, that's just a matter of personal taste. I prefer a little meaning, a little more story, than chainsaws ripping through nubile blondes, but some people don't, and as long as they're not going out doing the same, I can live with it.

There is yet to be a recorded legal case of violence in movies, music, books or art being to blame for real life crime. I think that's because the entire premise is whack. A sick mind doesn't need an excuse. A criminal is a criminal. A psycho is a psycho. Censor our art, and we punish the healthy, upstanding majority for the sick acts of the minority. That's my view.

Finally, I'm not sure about the 'purging' argument. It sounds like an excuse, and a weak one at that. I think at some point, if you write graphic scenes of sex and violence, you have to hold up your hand and admit you enjoy it, for whatever reason.

JB

Sheila

When I said about filmaking as a substitute for therapy I had in mind the fact that while David Lynch clearly has talent he also intentionally and I think unintentionally shares his hang-ups and inner conflicts through his movies in an explicit and confessional way. Well ok if that's your thing but while it would probably be fascinating to put cameras into Hollywood Psychoanalysts' consulting rooms, I'm not sure we should do it just because the 'patients' would like us to and we might even be intrigued enough to watch.

The best comparison here I think is Hitchcock. Even the psychoanalytically naive or sceptical will pick up a pattern of preoccupations even obsessions or fetishes in Hitchclock's work but while we can understand how some such feelings may come through in a film I don' remember any Hitch film where I thought he was using the film in order let us all see his darker thoughts. What sticks in my throat about Jennifer Lynch is that she displays no discernible talent other than exploiting the fact that her father can help her to make a movie. When there is so much talent out there unable to fund a movie - that sucks.

Certain Directors, notably as they get older seem to me to film women, especially young women often in erotic lesbian scenes the director himself a has set up, in an uncomfortable, voyeuristic, leering kind of way. Three who come to mind are Woody Allen, Bertolucci and of course David Lynch. Of course they may argue that all is in the eye of the beholder but all one can do is make a judgement.

I think there is a profound undertow of at times pathological misogyny in a depressingly large number of films - Brian De Palma's Dressed to Kill for example. Also straightforward erotic, sexually explicit adult material seems to me to have an honesty lacking in the furtive, dishonest, finely judged way that mainline Directors sneak what we might call coy porn through the 18 certificate and worse much worse, soft sexual porn and pretty hard core violence through the indefensible sham of the 12A certificate.

There is very explicit material, sexual and violent, in Jane Campion's seriously under-rated, (in my view) film, In The Cut but as a woman she has a particular right to deal with such material*, especially as in that case she is so bravely honest about some deep even unflattering aspects of women's sexuality.

JB I still don't want to ban anything but I have never really understood the insistance that possible harm from watching not just a movie but a diet of movies of a certain kind, must be defined as a one-to-one causal link. There are no definitive causal links in human behaviour anyway. If we are not directly influenced by cleverly constructed images designed to affect our behaviour - then why are trillons of £s spent every year all over the world on advertising?

* because virtually all rapes, pretty much all child abuse sexual and violent, and a very large proportion of domestic violence is perpetrated by men on women and children.

Z

<Added>

By "your thing" I of course don't mean your thing. The minefield of language.

Z

Before I read the pieces I mentioned I always thought that the catharsis was supposed to be for the audience, not the writer. I can see, though, that strong issues need empathy, probably rooted in experience.

Yes, it is awkward when elderly male directors cast themselves opposite very young women. I watched Woody Allen's 'Husband and Wives' again recently and the whole film leads up to a scene where Allen, playing a creative writing teacher, gives Juliette Lewis a prolonged kiss at her twenty-first birthday party. It spoils the story. The director even sets up the young woman's persona to suggest she's the 'seducer!

Similarly with 'Gran Torino', although the relationship Kowalski had with the teenage girl wasn't overtly sexual it wasn't credible and made me uneasy. I couldn't even bring myself to see the one with Hilary Awak where he's supposed to be her boxing trainer.

Hitchcock's another case where the skewed depiction of women can be a problem. It took me a long time to appreciate his strengths as a director and I still don't like watching his films.

I sometimes think male directors are best at action movies such war flms,gangster movies or westerns, with women absent or well away from the main story. Women seem to throw them off balance. My happiest film memories are of POW escape stories my father took me along to in the forties and early fifties.They usually starred Jon Mills and/or Jack Hawkins and no women appeared.

I re-watched 'Ice Cold in Alex' on DVD recently, where John Mills, Harry Andrews and Anthony Quinn cross North Africa in an ancient Red Cross ambulance. Sylvia Syms as an accompanying nurse is there for the audience to ogle - a lot of scrambling in and out of the van in slacks- but is treated by the men like one of the boys. It's amazing that not a single suggestive remark is made. It spoiled it a bit at the end when kisses a reluctant John Mills but it didn't affect the enjoyment of earlier scenes.

I haven't seen the Jane Campion movie mentioned but went to a talk this week on 'The Pianist', where the protagonist is a crinolined mute, played by Holly Hunter. She passed between the men in the film, starting with a father who sells her into marriage.

The talk included only extracts and it focused on the music. It's a long time since I saw the film as a whole but I didn't think it so much 'brave and and honest' as a kind of pandering to male fantasies, although it was ambiguous enough to allow other interpretations. I remember another Jane Campion film, about a New Zealand poet (played by Kerry Fox) who was put into an institution for being too much of an 'individual', in a society where women were expected to be silent. It makes me think that Jane Campion's films are about the effects that societies have on women.

I think it's best for women to drop any incipient feminism near the popcorn counter when they go to the cinema.

Sheila

Hilary Swank. One of the keyboard keys has broken.

Sheila

Given the latent dangers in Hilary Swank's name your misskeying could have been worse! Not one to misplace the apostrophe methinks. Sorry rude. But it's a word thing not a sex thing.

Ah Johnnie Mills, and Kenny Moore, Dickie Todd et al (all given cricketer's nicknames - how apt). Quintessential Brits all: "you can have sex chaps - as long as you don't enjoy it too much. And don't be late for net practice"

Those were the days my friend....those were the days.

When not only the pictures were black and white.

regards

Z

I see 'Time Out' vaguely approves of 'Surveillance' but mentions it took the director 16 years to raise funding after 'Boxing Helena'.I didn't see that. I'll try to catch 'Surveillance' to make up my own mind.As you say, no extra charge. Tomorrow, though, I'm going to see the top-of-the-crits-list 'Wendy & Lucy', a 'US Indie'. I'm even braced to go outside the Unlimited zone.

Sheila