There's plenty of people who think it's silly to over-think entertainment based around the supernatural. To them, it's ridiculous to argue say, why slow zombies are more realistic than fast zombies since both are made up and can react however their creator wants them to. The rules for entirely fictional creatures, planets, characters, etc. don't have to be set in stone from one narrative to the next. I'm not one of these people. I believe that rules should be created for fictional things and followed. It enhances the realism and the tension. If you know that their are no boundaries to what something can do, then there is really no surprise when it does anything.
I've been thinking about these supernatural "rules" a lot lately because, starting with the House series, I've been watching my share of ghost/haunting movies. The more I watch, the less I understand about how ghosts work and the more unrealistic the scenarios become. I'll try my best to explain, but there are many different kinds of hauntings, so I hope this doesn't all become confused.
The first issue is do the deceased get to decide to come back as a ghost? There are enough horror movies that have someone vowing revenge as their executed (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Shocker, The Horror Show) that it seems willful. And if they are allowed to come back, what does that say about the afterlife? Surely God wouldn't allow these criminals (and they're always criminals) to kill innocent people or even the people responsible for there demise. The first time I heard about "unfinished business" was from the movie adaptation of Caspar, but I hardly think this falls under that category. It's just vengeance against the people who most recently did them "wrong." The inference of this type of haunting is that they decided to forego that afterlife to kill (generally), but what happens to them when they are vanquished (if they are vanquished)? Limbo? Hell? Heaven? God did let them go back, after all.
As far as "unfinished business" goes, what happens if they can't finish their business? Can they decide to give up and return to heaven or wherever they go or are the doomed to haunt the earth just because they never told their sweetheart that they love her? Being a ghost is forever, in theory, so time will pass and the ability to complete the unfinished business is gone. What then? Is there a degree of importance to unfinished business? Is never learning to play guitar enough to come back or does it have to be something big and "meaningful."
And I really don't like the idea of people being haunted and the spirit follows them around. First, it ties in with my first concern where it was a conscious decision to be a ghost, but doesn't make much sense, either. Haunting a place where you were murdered or abused makes sense to me because that was a severe trauma and maybe you can't help but relive it. But following someone around indicates decision and basically everything above I already spoke of.
Finally, what are the rules of touching? If a ghost can move furniture around, what doesn't it just grab the person it's pissed at? Why do they spend so much time screwing with the haunted and not just finish the job right there? Do they get off on being a ghost (well... I guess the spirit in The Entity does)? This is a bigger problem for the ghosts seeking revenge because they must be filled with rage to seek it so badly they become a ghost.
As it stands, I can only really get behind the "unfinished business" ghosts (to an extent) or the "reliving past trauma" ghosts. There's at least some semblance of logic based around their existence and that suits me fine. All of which brings me to 100 Feet.
The premise is pretty amazing. A woman is under house arrest in a haunted house. That takes care of the "why don't they just leave the house" crowd as the alternative is going back to jail. The rest of the movie is crap. Eric Red wrote and directed 100 Feet and I had high expectations. This is the man responsible for writing The Hitcher! But instead of playing the movie for suspense, he plays it for "scares." The ghost is shown very early in a "boo" scare so there's not mystery as to what's happening. Red doesn't even try to infer that Marnie (Famke Janssen) is going insane being trapped inside all the time.
Of course, if the ghost wasn't shown so early, then we wouldn't have as much of that ghost-kicking-the-shit-out-of-a-woman action. You see, the ghost is Marnie's abusive husband who she killed in self-defense. Her husband was a cop and none of her abuse complaints were taken seriously leaving her no recourse and apparently a very bad lawyer. For some reason, he gets to come back to her and abuse her even in death and there's nothing she can do about it (except one thing, but that's the climax and I won't spoil it for you in all of it's terrible ridiculous-ity).
100 Feet is guilty of nearly all of my complaints above and it's incredibly frustrating to watch. The clear answer to many of my issues is "there would be no movie," but is there anything more frustrating that a movie that exists just because? I there isn't a convincing reason for making something and hour and a half, don't do it! Maybe it wouldn't be as big of a deal if every character wasn't so obnoxious and Janssen didn't speak with a terrible New York accent, but we'll never know.
There is some affective action if you can fight off the voice in your head saying, "this is stupid." and Red plays with the mirror trope (though not as well as House). There's also a neat parallel between no one believing that she was being abused by her husband to the fact that no one would ever believe she was being believe by the ghost of her husband, either. Other than that, 100 Feet is a hunk of disposable garbage. A massive
Re: ghost "rules", I think it isn't so much that they make a conscious decision to be the ghost, but it's that they had such strong, deeply embedded issues that were unresolved at the time of death that as spirits, they simply could not go over to the "other side" whether they wanted to or not. They were weighed down with too much baggage in the land of the living and could not be at peace as spirits.
ReplyDeleteSo they're basically doomed as ghosts to try to resolve their issues, and I can definitely think of stories where ghosts persist long after the people they wanted to talk to, or avenge, or whatever, were dead themselves and there was nothing they could do to resolve the issue (at least in the way originally intended). I think that's the horrifying aspect to ghost stories: the potential of being doomed to suffer between the land of the dead and living for eternity.
And I don't think it has to be something important; usually, since it's so tied to a person's psyche when they were alive, it tends to be, but I think it just has to feel very important to the ghost.
And as far as ghosts touching, I don't think any consistency has been established, but the movie Ghost provides an explanation that I think makes the most sense.
My issue comes with the killers who swear vengeance on those executing them. Or in the case of 100 Feet, a woman who killed in self-defense. I don't believe that these are "strong, deeply embedded issues." They may be violent and disturbed, but in the end, they got apt punishment. They shouldn't get to come back and continue their killing. It doesn't make sense to me because in most cases, it's not baggage but psychosis. If that explanation works out, then the world in which the story is taking place would be rife with psychotic ghostly killers.
ReplyDeletePlus, allowing the ghosts to return to kill says weird things about the afterlife since their clearly is one in movies about ghosts. In a film like 100 Feet, the ghost isn't doomed because all he wants to do is beat the crap out of his wife and it looks like he'd be happy to do it forever.
I'm not familiar with the Ghost explanation. Care to elaborate?
You're right - in those cases, it seems the person is so evil that he/she willingly is continuing what he/she did while alive, just as a ghost. It's a weaker premise than the "unfinished business" explanation.
ReplyDeleteIn Ghost, Patrick Swayze's character had to learn, with practice, how to manipulate physical objects as a ghost. Basically, it showed that it wasn't easy or automatic, and I liked that idea.