Thursday Threesome - Three movies that were upsettingly not what I thought

Through naivete or cheerful self-delusion I've managed to accidentally traumatize myself a few times, movie-wise. The following list probably explains why I only seem to watch superhero movies these days. No spider-aliens. No torture or sudden nasty surprises. No blind Icelandic singing ladies. 

I used to read a fairly edgy monthly magazine called Juice (anyone remember that?), who were fond of whole-decade retrospectives. As such they published a “Best 100 Films of The Decade” list, and I somewhat obsessively started trying to work my way through them. I was fifteen at the time, and the internet was still mostly for ICQ and Myspace, so I’d wander down the road to the video store with my checklist and watch whatever I could find. I watched a whole lot of things I wouldn't normally have attempted, and I watched everything alone because I was a bit wary about how my parents might feel about my taste in movies. This I experienced the unmitigated horror of Von Trier alone and unprepared. There is a lesson here, folks. Check out the rest of the list after the jump!!

Dancer in the Dark

Dancer in the Dark came about because I knew - and was very charmed by - Bjork. I was almost completely unfamiliar with her music, meaning I really only knew her from It’s oh so Quiet, the cover from Post, which is uncharacteristically cute and spritely. That Bjork was the one I went into Dancer expecting. I was quite epically wrong.

If you haven’t seen Dancer, it’s an emotional gauntlet, and like nothing I’d experienced before. It being a Von Trier was lost on me, I only knew more about him and his general lunacy far later. But for a fifteen year old completely unprepared for the emotional holocaust of Bjorks performance? Oy vey. I must stress that it's good, quite amazingly good in fact, but I did see it half-submerged in the ruff of the family dog so it's possible my experience might have been colored.

Cloverfield

  

I’m not terribly afraid of many things, but spiders - no, specifically Huntsman Spiders - are pretty high on my damn list. It’s an issue of motion. Anything that goes from zero-to-one hundred in a split second causes me some serious distress. 

I had come to terms with the basic premise of Cloverfield pretty early, and while it wasn't my idea of a good time, I was prepared to lock in and clench my way through it. Gigantic city-smashing creatures are no new thing to me and don’t particularly scare me. But things took a turn for the hair-raising when the central group headed into the mostly dark subway, where they were pursued and mostly torn apart by alien spiderling-things that took some substantial reference from Huntsmans.

This particular breed have this thing, which I haven’t seen in other spiders, where their knees can bend flat and backward, instead of arching over like normal spiders. It’s a bodily adaption to help them live undisturbed behind paintings or cupboards, but it’s the freakiest shit ever, and contributes to this nightmarish lightning-fast scuttle that they managed to perfect in the spiderling design in Cloverfield. I came for a Godzilla movie, I only barely stayed in my seat for the entirety. I highly doubt Abrams will ever get forgiven for this.

Pan's Labyrinth

Now I am positive that when I went to see this movie I wasn't expecting Labyrinth, which I know some other people accidentally were. The MA15+ gave that away. I was even prepped for some creepy-grossness via the involvement of Doug Jones. What I wasn't prepared for was Capitan Vidal, played by officially the scariest actor I have ever and will ever see in motion. It's a testimony to the power of this film that among all the supernatural and nightmarish creatures the Capitan is still, by far, the most disturbing thing in the narrative. And I don't want to over-explain, because ultimately, if you've seen the movie you'll understand. If you haven't seen the movie - then, um, don't. Or else pre-book some therapy by way of preparation. The only movie to ever give me nightmares over a prolonged period of time.