Cybersurfing: Lambs to the Slaughter
Taboos in horror films are a weird, inexplicable thing, perhaps understandable only when subjected to psychoanalysis. There are certain easy targets (vapid teens, officious bosses, and skeptics come to mind) whose deaths are greeted with a shrug of indifference, yet other, arguably lesser offenses (e.g., the slaughter of cute animals) are greeted with howls of outrage. One big taboo, only rarely violated, is the killing of small children. Sure, there was the kid eaten by JAWS back in 1975 (even then the camera remained at a discrete distance), but more often than not even exploitation filmmakers shy away from this one (the recent HILLS HAVE EYES films, for example, practically revel in brutality, rape, and murder, but they only threaten the baby, who survives). Of course, one of the things that horror films do is cross boundaries, go where other films dare not go. So it is no surprise when fans celebrate them for violating taboos like this. A recent example is a review at the Horror Movie a Day Blog.
WARNING: THIS REST OF THIS POST IS ONE BIG SPOILER! STOP READING NOW, OR ELSE!
Brian Collins praises THE RUINS for daring to do what few films do:
The surprising R rating is well-earned, with some truly brutal and shocking moments (such as the first onscreen child killing in a horror movie in ages! YEAH! The movie’s got some goddamn balls!), and some truly impressive (but thankfully sparse) gore as well.
Good call, except for one thing: This is not the first onscreen child killing in ages. That honor goes to Dario Argento’s THE MOTHER OF TEARS, which opened in Italy last October. In that film, after ancient relics are accidentally unearthed, an ancient witch called Mater Lachrymarum (the Mother of Tears) reasserts her powers over the city of Rome, inspiring death and destruction from all who fall under her sway. The first, shocking sign that the city is going (almost literally) to Hell comes when a smiling mother takes her baby out for a stroll on a bridge, lifts the child out of the baby carriage, and hurls the innocent babe to its death in the river below!
It’s a bold, broad-daylight piece of horror, so unexpected that it almost undermines its own effectiveness; the brain short-circuits in disbelief, refusing to accept the evidence of its own eyes. Coming so early in the film, it also sets extraordinarily high expectations: If this happens in the first twenty minutes, what can the rest of the film possibly do to top it? Clearly, no one and nothing is safe, and when the male lead’s child is kidnapped by the witch cult shortly thereafter, the usual audience assurance (that the hero will effect a rescue in time to save the child) is completely destroyed.
Personally, I hope this sort of thing doesn’t become a new trend in horror films - the potential for crass exploitation is too obvious. But in this particular case, at least, you have to applaud Argento for his daring. He throws down the gauntlet, setting himself an almost impossible challenge, and then he meets and exceeds it. The result is one of his best films in years.
NOTE: “Dreams in the Witch House,” one of Stuart Gordon’s 2005 episodes of MASTERS OF HORROR, also involves the death of a child, but since that was for television, it does not count.
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