OK, I am going to move away from the horror aspect of things for a bit and take a look at two films, that, in my humble opinion, ushered in this odd little decade that is just now coming to an end. While neither of these films can rightly be called "horror" , they do contain some horrific, as well as, fantastic elements ; but most importantly they seemed to be omens of things to come - not just on the screen, but in real life as well.
Just before the dawn of the 2000's a little movie called
Fight Club came on the scene. With its nihilistic vibe all dressed up in homoerotic overtones (buff boys beating each other into a bloody mess because what they really wanted to do is fuck each other), imaginary alter egos, acts of terrorism that occur in hopes of crippling the economy;
Fight Club spat in the face of polite society and seemingly aimed a clenched fist at a sleeping populace lulled into complacency via Ikea,
Martha Stewart and the overall lack of anything meaningful in the life of a consumer driven Idiocracy.
When The Narrator (
Edward Norton) chooses to beat up Angel Face (
Jared Leto) because he felt like "
destroying something beautiful", it spoke volumes about where we were as humans. With nothing left to fear, it was time to attack what we loved or admired or even desired. Obviously The Narrator wanted to remove all sorts of comfort and beauty from his life (as he did by blowing up his condo earlier, as well as leaving his job), - what he desired and what disgusted him seemed to be the same thing - and when he opts to fight Angel Face, he is also attacking someone (something) he probably lusts after. And in those Metro-sexual years of the late 90's it was hard to tell what guy was playing for what team, so it seems that the line between desire and disgust really was blurred.
Consider then, the final scene of the film when The Narrator and Marla (
Helena Bonham Carter) stand holding hands while watching two office buildings come crumbling down. It's as if we were given a view into the not too distant future when we'd all be sitting passively watching office buildings crumble into a cloud of dust in mid-town Manhattan.
But were we finally shaken out of our complacency?
***
Early in 2001, David Lynch released his nightmarish attack on Hollywood in the guise of Mulholland Dr.
What starts as a twisted Nancy Drew-like tale of a bright eyed ingenue trying to solve a mystery while she attempts to break into films, soon degenerates into a Wizard of Oz-on-acid trip populated by tortured souls in brightly lit diners, monsters living behind dumpsters, movie studio mobsters, hit-men who are not particularly good at their chosen profession, and an old couple who become miniature cackling daemons.
Like
Fight Club,
Mulholland Dr. gave us a world where the main character creates an imaginary other she can hold responsible for her misfortune. While The Narrator in
Fight Club could accuse Tyler Durden for everything, Diane (
Naomi Watts) cooked up an alter ego (Betty) as well as a dream world where she could place blame at the feet of everyone except herself for what was wrong in her life (namely that she paid someone to kill the woman she was in love with).
For my money, Diane was the perfect character to usher in a decade that would give us eight years of
George Bush and his ilk. She was the Jane Q. Public who pulled the lever that brought the Village Idiot into power,
twice! And then sat at night, nodding her head while watching Fox News, sure that a grand conspiracy was in place -sure that the monster was indeed not only behind the dumpster, but waiting to strike again.
***
