“I Am Legend” and the Psychology of Horror.

31Dec07

“Its ****** terrifying!” meowed my sister in law as I asked her if she found the movie as scary as I did.

“I Am Legend” is a good metaphor for things political and psychological. Its poor CGI doesn’t get too much in the way of a very good performance by Will Smith. I’ll discuss my personal experience of the movie and some thoughts r/e the psychology of horror, the state, the Jungian ‘Other’, the false self, etc..

So the sub-heading for this section says:

Quote:

Saw a film that touched you, that got you thinking, made you cry or puke? laughed your ass off watching Curb Your Enthusiasm? Surfed for hours on an obscure website? Share your joy or anger!

And while I don’t know what this will have to do with the general topics as LiMi, I feel invited to just share my experience today watching “I Am Legend” with my brother and sister-in-law. The movie is based on the 1954 sci-fi novel of the same name by Richard Matheson. Its the theme of lone guy vs. the vampires.

Not the greatest movie ever, but does some things very well.

I find it really easy to suspend my disbelief, and scary movies scare the begeezes out of me. Love movies make me cry. Comedy makes me laugh out loud, etc.. I go into horror movies with especial trepidation however, because sometimes the scary feeling stays with me for a few days afterwards. Yeah I know: I’m a real pillar stalwartness. This lingering scary feeling has happened to me since my first scary movie: The Shining. I watched it all alone in someone else’s house while babysitting 2 very young kids. But really, it started even earlier in life with a few episodes of ‘night terrors’, or dreams you can’t wake up from very quickly.

Anyways, I’ve figured out that if I watch a scary movie with someone I can share the experience with, its much easier to shake off the shivers, although the actual movie might still be as frightening for me. Today had already been tragic due to a relationship mini-nova, so I was more primed for sadness than scariness, but off we went to the theatre. I love spending time with my bro and sis. They can be very funny, but also good friends. They are allies in the family non-drama.

The movie uses typical devices to set you on edge from the very beginning. There are some things that happen right away that seem like they might be ‘funny’, but in the context of everything else, just make you even more tense. The suspense builds well. Its not a kind of ‘Gee what is going to happen’ suspense, but classic horror suspense of ‘When does the shit hit the fan, cause this is creeping the hell out of me……’.

Surprisingly though, I didn’t build sympathy with the main character very well during the movie. He remains part of the ‘Other’ throughout. This is no simple ‘Good Guy vs. Zombies’ movie after all. Its even ambiguous whether or not this is intentional, as certain things really draw you to the character, but others leave you wondering what the hell is the matter with him. He’s a man on a precipice, yet he’s thorny in an unpredictable way.

Imagine trying to rescue a very-wounded animal. As you go to tend its wounds there is the tension of “I hope he doesn’t bite the shit out of me”. Half rabid and insane, even the most sympathetic character is full of danger when so pushed to the edge. Moreso, Smith’s character is simply hard to follow in his thinking. There’s an ambiguity that prevents the viewer-empathy from taking full hold, even beyond the thorns of insanity, should you be able to do so. I do think this is intentional on the movie-maker’s part, and leaves you tense about the internal struggle perhaps more than the external one. Excellent!

The movie keeps this up, and the bad guys, though poorly CGI’d and illogically portrayed, scare the crap out of me too. It is never made clear just how intelligent or powerful they are, just how aware. Its never made clear how organized, or what their agenda is all about, or if they even have one. Many of the reviews I read this afternoon chalked this up and said: “Hah, the bad guys suxxors because they are illogically portrayed”. To me this is like saying “The Rembrandt is teh bad because he can’t even draw a field realistically”.

Horror has many levels. One key anxiety is around the logic of the world in some capacity or other. Predictable things, though they may exhibit many kinds of horror, lack the rich and deeply disturbing quality of the undefined. Imagine going slowly insane. That is horror. Imagine not knowing whether or not your self-defense of pushing someone away from you would result in them flying for miles to their death or if your arms would pass right through them (overkill or impotence). A child grows quickly to fill a room. Grows bloody fangs and bites your head. In the words of Dave Chappelle: “Thats some scary shit man!”

I found that the movie rode this line fairly well. I often felt though that it was either mere accident or that the director was drunk and forgot to re-edit. Some scenes disambiguate, while others obfuscate. The CGI creatures, including a herd of deer and a lion or 2 are pretty badly done. This made it hard, even for me, to keep my suspension of disbelief going high enough to maintain the overall anxiety of the movie, or at least what I think it intended.

……

Psychology of vampires, zombies, and the end of the world. Maybe more on that later.

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My sister-in-law, surprisingly to me, was scared to tears by the movie. I was scared, but not as badly. My brother was a little disappointed in the movie. We all loved the dog of the main character though. The love between Will Smith and his pup is brilliantly evoked. Its a lot of directorial technique rather than simply brilliant acting, but it works. Some reviewer said the movie was worth seeing only for the dog, but that was worth it!

We did some discussion and decompression afterwards. I was especially hoping to help my sis-in-law process. The movie is really traumatic I think. I find myself wondering how someone could watch a movie like that and laugh and cheer and not get drawn in at all. But they do, in droves. The reviewers seem like zombies to me……hey, that’s for the middle section!

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Tags: empathy, false self, horror, I Am Legend, Jung, media critic, media critique, movie, movie metaphor, movie review, psychology of horror, psychology of zombies, Richard Matheson, schizophrenia, terror, The Other, trauma, true self, vampire, Will Smith