30 in 30: A MONTH OF HORROR. APOSTLE

DAY 17

APOSTLE (2018)

Netflix’s new hit.

I was interested in this movie when I heard Gareth Evans was directing. For those who don’t know him, he is the director and mind behind THE RAID and THE RAID 2. Two of the best action films of the past twenty years.

Evans is very expressive with the use of the camera in his films. Odd angles, movement tied to the characters, and smart usage of handheld, fill his fiction. This means I was very interested to see how would he use those qualities in a horror flick.

Do you want the short answer? It’s great. Evans stylings make the moments of tension and physical contact between the characters feel very alive. The scenes depicting graphic violence were particularly impressive. He definitely has a knack for it.

But this is not what I want to talk to you about today. Today will talk about ‘The Uncanny Valley’. You see, this movie has an interesting character that appears maybe only three times, but his design, actions, and all around presence are very memorable. Spoilers ahead.

If you’ve seen this film, you’ve probably guessed that I’m talking about the masked man-creature that follows the goddess around. He’s credited as “The Grinder”, which is frankly a great name. Every time he was on screen, my attention was immediately drawn to him. He’s horror made a character.

This got me thinking. “What is so different about this guy that’s just inherently creepy?”. It reminded me of something straight out of Silent Hill 2 (the game, not the film) and then it clicked. It’s the uncanny valley.

For those who don’t know, the wiki defines it as:

A hypothesized relationship between the degree of an object’s resemblance to a human being and the emotional response to such an object. The concept of the uncanny valley suggests humanoid objects which appear almost, but not exactly, like real human beings elicit uncanny, or strangely familiar, feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers.

Meaning that things that look human but are not quite there, are super scary. For us, horror scholars, this is a great tool which we can see displayed in almost all of horror-driven media. The concept described above talks only about humans, but I feel like we can extrapolate that same idea into nearly everything.

A lot of the uneasiness we find in horror films comes from the feeling that something is not quite right. The uncanny valley idea can be applied to a house, a town, or anything that’s going to be on camera really. Maybe even dialogues and music. The audience needs to recognize what it is, but they have to realize that something is just not right about it.

APOSTLE taught me that horror comes from a break down of expectations.

Tomorrow: GERALD’S GAME (2017)

Yesterday: TRICK ‘R TREAT (2007)