Hello readers! How are you?
It’s been a while…
No excuses, but lots of progress at Camp GG in non-writing arenas. Progress in the day job, in personal goals, and in home-making, all of which is hugely important but doesn’t leave a lot of time to speak to you lovely, lovely people.
So… where are we..? Well, I have a Halloween Sprint to finish(!) and for the first time, I’m going to give you a rundown of my films of the year for 2022.
I’ll start with an intersection between the two. It’s been a good year both for horror and for cinema generally. We’ve seen the return of the Scream, Hellraiser and Texas Chainsaw franchises (with questionable results). Original movies have done well too: Smile I have unfortunately yet to see, but I’m looking forward to it immensely. Probably the biggest waves were made by Barbarian, which is now available on Disney+. A film which one famously needs to watch knowing as little as possible, save the opening premise about a young woman turning up to her Airbnb booking only to find a man already there. It’s a lot of wild fun and horror fans are bound to enjoy it.
Long-time readers know where I’m going next… horror is so personal, so subjective, and so dependent on the viewing experience. Barbarian is great. It’s funny, gory, disturbing, shocking… it does a lot of things really well, has an immediately likeable lead and features one of my all-time favourite actors (no spoilers). But… it didn’t scare me once. And despite its best efforts, it didn’t really gross me out either or make me look away.
There was a horror movie that hit physical media and streaming at the end of October that on first viewing I could barely watch.
For that reason, Fall, rather than Barbarian is one of Geek Graffiti’s (deeply personal) films of the year. It has a very simple (very) high-concept plot, a la Frozen (2010) and Open Water (2003):
After a terrible climbing tragedy, two extreme sports enthusiasts decide to climb a two-thousand-foot-high television tower for catharsis and re-engagement with the world, only for the ladder to break while they are at the top…
That’s it. That’s the whole plot. It has none of the crazy, gonzo unpredictability of Barbarian, it just puts these two characters in a frightening situation, leaves them there and asks you to sit with them and figure out what you would do to get out of it.
Now… there is one negative in comparison to Frozen (three skiers trapped on a ski lift after the resort closes) and Open Water (two divers left alone in the ocean after the dive boat leaves). Frozen is the best of these movies because I’ve yet to hear a convincing way to get out of it. Fall has a plot device which seems to leave a pretty straightforward way for them to escape. Maybe the script could have used one more draft.
That is the only negative though and there is one way this movie can widdle over the others from a great height: relatability. You may not have vertigo, but you’ve surely been too high for comfort before now, surely had that sensation we always describe as ‘legs turning into water.’ Not everyone skis or dives – everyone has at some point been scared of falling. That’s what makes this film at times unbearably horrifying. Many people simply won’t be able to get through it.
With stories such as this, it’s vital to have well-drawn and ideally likeable characters. It’s important to stress how well this is done because superficially the protagonists are typical horror characters – two young, pretty girls. Bad horror films just throw hot people at the screen and let the machete do the talking. Not so here. These are well-rounded human beings and there is enough believability to them to maintain interest. While there’s a second act reveal you can see coming from at least another two thousand feet away, it’s well handled and deepens and strengthens the character development. Much as I love The Descent, the same plot point was thrown under a bus in that movie. Is it a feminist film? No, not really, despite the action heroine aesthetic. But in the same way that there is much more to The Shallows than Blake Lively in a bikini, so too here the film does a good job of maintaining the more noble tradition of the horror genre: the strong female lead. And really folks, this is all about the fear.
This might be the most visceral use of high-definition cinematography we’ve seen. Did anyone ever actually feel vertigo while watching Vertigo? One suspects not. Here… dear lord. If this does get a 4k release (it really should) then it’s a must-buy. For now, we have the Blu-Ray. When the camera looks down and the distant Earth is picked out in high definition… well, it genuinely feels like you’re there. Your legs fail, your heart hammers and involuntary noises likely escape your mouth. This is a tough watch, people.
So, there you have it. The Geek Graffiti Horror Film of the year award for 2022 goes to… Fall.
Back soon.
