"i'll get you out of there"

make no mistakes, this film is intensely creepy and displays frequent bursts of grotesque barbarism, with the slashes, arrows and skin peeling making the experience uncomfortable and the sight of blood revolting. the knives penetrate the skin and cut away, decapitations, throats being crushed, fingers being sliced off and having to watch and feel your body being burned with wax, mutating itself around you as it forms a new being, your eyes being the only part of you that'll be able to function before your slow agonising death. there is more that i haven't described, but this is a film where the violence isn't necessarily cool or enjoyable like in other schlock but something to dread, something to be feared. and in the midst of all of this carnage and blood, there iis genuine empathy and characters that feel like actual human beings. sure a lot of them are obnoxious but a lot of teenagers are, and their stupid decisions and asshole behaviours feel completely genuine. there is a lot of build up before the pain begins and in that time, we grow to learn and experience a snippet of these people's lives, begin to understand their relationships with one another and get to see them, as idealists, as people looking forward to their future, hesitant about moving away, worried about pregnancy, dealing with family conflict etc. we see a lot of these people's last day on earth and the sad part is that they feel like they have their whole lives ahead of them, that things are just beginning. even the villains are treated with empathy, well one of them in particular who comes off across almost as a precursor to james mcavoy's character in split, only less problematic and not quite as centralised. the empathy is expressed most deeply in a scene late in the film where one of the characters finds his friend covered in wax and trapped in this horrifying device. there is no life in his eyes but all his friend says is "i'm gonna get you out of here" with tears in his eyes. he knows even before the horrific sight he sees when he touches him that he's gone, that there is nothing he can do to save his friend but he believes it anyway, he cares so deeply for him that he can't let him go, not yet. serra's obviously a formal master, his compositions are remarkable and he has a real knack for crafting tension and atmosphere, which is established before the horror even begins, with the backwater southern landscape feeling rotten and grimy, a place from a time long gone. the contrasts between the faces of the future and the dying places of the past become even more extreme when the past refuses to accept its fate until everything ends up in smoke. violence is cyclical and the traumas of the past are doomed to plague the future if left to fester, even when the bodies die, the pain will never. the survivors here will never be able to overcome their traumas and suffering, they're doomed in a sense. that's the real horror