EW, HAG: Fresh Meat
This one's a little raw.
Spoilers and triggering content ahead
I went into Eileen (2023) blind, my only prior knowledge being that Anne Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie experience the all-too-familiar sapphic yearning popular in period pieces. The ‘60s aesthetic through an ominous filter was enough to make it a must-see.
Immediately, I felt seen. Then, after a few minutes, I felt embarrassed. Not in Eileen’s longing for the older, glamorous Rebecca (Hathaway) and how it’s an obvious case of transference and confusion – that’s par for the course. It’s a canon event. We can’t interfere. We’ve all been there.
I felt embarrassed seeing my abuse and that of many police families so plainly laid out without poetic justice or truly satisfying resolve. Both in the novel and the screen adaptation, author Ottessa Moshfegh strips away the emotional, but-they’re-my-family push and pull we typically see in abuse stories.
We see Eileen’s ex-police chief father given leeway in his abusive, alcoholic behavior because of his status, regardless of why he was asked to retire. He keeps his gun until he drunkenly threatens children with it, at which point it’s unceremoniously given to Eileen. His dysfunction is treated with all the gentleness absent in the history of the Boston Police Department’s dealings with residents.
We see Eileen dissociate deeply, often escaping into suicidal ideation before the audience realizes we’re seeing her thoughts and not her reality. She’s quiet, weird, flighty, and filled with desperation in all directions.
Everyone in town is sympathetic toward Eileen, especially Rebecca, but no one offers her help to live her own life. They simply encourage her to keep the status quo.
Having recently watched the HBO docuseries Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage & Reckoning, I can’t help but draw many parallels between its historical account of BPD’s tyranny over the city from 1974 on, and Moshfegh’s expansion of that control from a familial perspective. Where entire communities were being terrorized by cops to the point where they couldn’t sit comfortably in their own homes without fear, so too were the families of those cops, even as they were indoctrinated to hate the communities experiencing a different side of the same coin.
If you’ve found this newsletter, I likely don’t have to tell you that today’s police forces are modeled after slave patrols in the 1700s. Meaning the people hired to “protect and serve” whichever municipality you live in were trained and directed to behave in ways that protect and serve primarily wealthy white people. It makes it all make sense. It makes it all a horror movie.
But what I’m becoming more frustrated with as we see and read more accounts – both fiction and non-fiction – of just how inherently harmful law enforcement is to our society, is what are we doing to change it?
I can watch documentaries and read articles and repost social media posts and buy novels and donate to people and causes working to help those abused by police, but it all feels like beating a dead horse. At some point, we have to stop tenderizing the same story to repackage it in ways that might wake others up. When do we stop prepping and priming? When do we light the stove?
As we zoom out from Boston, zoom out from the United States, and observe those same patterns of racism and abuse on a global scale, the ways American law enforcement has been influenced by and continues to influence atrocities like the suffering we’re seeing in The Democratic Republic of the Congo and especially the all-out genocide of Palestinians are so breathlessly apparent. And when we as Americans add to that the fact that our tax dollars are directly funding the downfall of these populations, reading about it and throwing $20 at it just isn’t cutting it.
I’m going into 2024 hungry. Hungry for actual movement away from a police state. Hungry for those with money and power on my plate. Hungry for those who could change it but won’t on my fork. Hungry for a big bite of those peers who stay silent to stay comfortable. I’m hungry for the horror movie ending we’ve been writing for decades.
Let’s dig in.
COMING SOON. 2024 is shaping up to be an interesting year for horror movies, and while I’m hesitant to get my hopes up, there’s no denying a big sense of nostalgia in what’s to come.
Lisa Frankenstein | Dir. Zelda Williams | Feb. 9
MaXXXine | Dir. Ti West | TBA
The Wolf Man | Dir. Leigh Whannell | Oct. 25
Nosferatu | Dir. Robert Eggers | Dec. 25
Honorable mention: Your Monster | Dir. Caroline Lindy | Jan. 18
HELP WANTED. As I gather resources and ideas for a fifth season of Ladies and Ligaments, I’m looking for Atlanta-ish horror creators to connect with. Having moved here a few months ago, I’m itching to find mutuals and creatives to support. So if you are someone or you know someone who does cool horror stuff, I’d love to connect for a future episode!
Who knows, maybe new friends will come from this creepy endeavor.
THIRST BY MARINA YUSZCZUK. Sapphic Argentinian vampires! This novel promises existential ache and terror as an ancient vampire who watched Buenos Aires birth itself struggles with her love for a human mother with human responsibilities. Out March 5.
THE BLACK GIRL SURVIVES IN THIS ONE EDITED BY DESIREE S. EVANS AND SARACIEA J. FENNELL. Fifteen YA writers celebrate Black girls fighting and overcoming monsters and while growing up. I’m so excited to read this peek into the next generation of horror geniuses. Out April 2.
AND DIAVOLA BY JENNIFER THORNE. Because it’s giving Saltburn. Out March 26.
BRAG. Just gonna take this time to gloat about my first story for FANGORIA back in October. I got to talk to the famous Goth Dad aka Dusty Gannon of Vision Video at the filming of the music video for “In My Side.” You should read it, it’s great.