My 7 year old daughter asked me a weird question yesterday. She asked me what it was like in Earl World. “You know, daddy, that place you go to when you dream at night…” To be honest, I was shocked by the question and it took me a moment to collect an answer. “Well sweetheart, it’s a magical place about two years behind everyone else’s,” I replied. It was literally the first thing that popped out of my brain.
“It takes me a while to connect some of the dots too,” she replied, shocking me again. “Your dreams are out of date then?” she continued.
“Yes, but the nightmares are all fresh,” I told her. She knows me and she smiled.
“Maybe you should write those down, or draw pictures of them,” she advised.
Never ignore the advice of a 7 year old girl, especially in financial matters and spiritual choices. So, here we go…
I like to make strange connections, so follow with me on this weird movie review. I love horror films. LOVE them. I love a few more than others, but because I have spent so many hours of life staring at the nightmares of others committed to film, print, video and stage that my sensitivities to gore, harsh world views, and sex (the worst sin in the universal hell that is the horror film collective, punishable by extreme violence for some reason) have evolved to an almost Angel’s eye view of objectivity.
There’s your warning…
In 2007, Spanish director, Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza unleashed a crazed, found footage style movie on the world called REC (short for Record). It was a claustrophobic, in medias res tale of all hell breaking loose in an apartment complex in the heart of a large city. A news reporter covering a fire station for one of those “closer look” segments you see on the news and her cameraman travel with the squad to an emergency call at the doomed apartment. A virus is loose in the complex and everyone living there quickly succumbs to its horrific infection. Yes, it’s a zombie movie and it’s one of the best I’ve ever seen.
In 2008, American audiences got a nearly identical remake of the Spanish film. Quarantine, directed John Erick Dowdle is an English language version with the same setup involving a reporter, her cameraman, the emergency responder team and the residents of a high rise apartment complex rapidly falling victim to the effects of a horrifying, super-fast acting, viral infection that mutates all the residents into violent, monstrous zombies (of the fast, snarling, flesh eating variety). This one too, as zombie movies and “found footage,” movies go is really well executed and effective as a story.
It’s the sequels to these movies that I noticed something really interesting that creates a weird observation in my brain regarding our popular culture here in America as well as our collective religious views in (America really doesn’t have a collective religious opinion; hang on to that thought) comparison to our European neighbors.
REC 2, released in 2009 and again directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, is a continuation of the story began in the first film taking place almost immediately in the time frame of the first film. This time, there are explanations for the sinister nature of the virus that cause an American mind to resist the story and a European experience to embrace it. In REC 2, we quickly find out that a dark arm of the Vatican looking for a physical, chemistry based link between infection processes and demonic possession has developed an enzyme that facilitates immediate biological doorways to hell and the human body as well as a possible chemical antidote for the condition. As I watched the film I rejected the concept, but the acting performances sold the idea. The priest in charge of finding the antidote, or at least it’s component parts is very human and has been in the action from before the start of our story and seen enough to no longer have to believe in anything. His faith has been replaced by empirical observation and recordable data and resolved in his experience. His “relics” and carefully delivered religious invocations work (up to a point) and the riot police reluctantly assisting him quickly adapt to the priest’s methods. The theme of defeating evil with more evil not being a very good idea runs hard through this movie. The price for all the meddling is high.
I liked the movie very much. I didn’t buy any of it, but I’m not Catholic and I don’t personally believe in demonic possession and I don’t identify readily with stories of that sort. I like protestant monster movies. Jewish monsters do it for me too. Catholic monsters seem to come with too much window dressing and fancy questions that were put to bed long ago (with Constantine starring Keanu Reeves a big exception).
Quarantine 2, released in 2011 directed by Marc Brienstock is very Protestant (or maybe leaning a little toward Shaker). This story also takes place shortly after the events of the first movie (possibly the same night), but unlike its Spanish counterpart, takes place on an airplane flying away from the city and the airport that the plane is forced to land in. Here, the explanation for the contagion is a terrorist cell developing a fast spreading zombie virus. Now I’m comfortable. My disbelief is surrendered without effort. There are no supernatural forces leaking into our reality via viral infection portals. There is only plain, old fashioned, evil terrorists trying to reshape the world into their own designs using a weapon of mass destruction and pretending to be kind and gentle while doing it. As with REC 2 I liked this one. I thought it was well done and somewhat clever. The performances were excellent with regard to the material. The production design was clever and exploited to good effect. The “found footage” approach was for the most part dropped and we have a crazy, fast paced movie with a couple of good scares and a sub plot for our brains to latch on to for a couple of days after the thing is over.
It was in comparing these two films that my real question began to emerge, and this is relevant…
Why is it the European film with its matter of fact Catholic tones caused me to resist my suspension of disbelief (yes zombies and fast acting, ultra contagious, viral infections that animate their hosts long after the host has died is idiotic any way you tell the joke) and yet the terrorist driven American flick locked into my psyche without a hitch? Looking at the financial numbers generated by REC 2 in Europe it did pretty well for a horror film, as did Quarantine 2 (not good numbers, but some) in the US. I know using two low-budget, little seen genre films as a jumping point for the next concept is pretty lame on the surface but if one looks closely at popular entertainment in greater depth, I’m willing to bet that the pattern will fall into sharp detail. That concept being that religion is in itself scary. In Europe Catholicism is the big dog on the block. It’s established, unified to a large degree, driven by a tight leadership. Even non-believers at heart claim membership in the ranks of the Catholic Church. It is to a very large degree a common experience to the western European soul. I’m just saying that you’d be hard pressed to find someone in Italy, or France, or Greece, or England who’s never heard of it.
Here in America, we have no religious common experience so much as a multitude of religious absolute truths. We have Catholics who hold the absolute truth. We have Protestants who are completely in the right. We have non-denominational churches that are the only ones who are right. We have aggressively outspoken atheist evangelists who are the only ones with the truth. We have real, honest to God Satan worshippers who make fun of all of us. We have comedians and doom screamers. There really is no religious unity nor is there even a dominant religious influence here (despite what conservative and liberal talk show personalities would have you believe) in America. At the end of it all, we worship at the altar of “The First Church of How Do I Put Food on The Table,” and “The Temple of Where Da Cash At.” Oh everyone at some time prays with all their might, but not with a sense of religious community that equals the European Catholic experience… or… the leviathan that is Islam. Wow, now there is an interesting phenomenon… A large mass of unified followers moving in lock step toward geometrical progression of absolute domination of all human presence bringing death and destruction to any who would stand in its way. Intolerant of any individuality, religious deviance, and any intellectual pursuit not directly and immediately serving the architecture of the faith, Islam moves through poverty and riches with the same force.
Did I actually say earlier that zombies and
fast acting, ultra contagious, viral infections that animate their hosts
long after the host has died is idiotic any way you tell the joke?
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