Let it Die
“Afterthoughts” is a new Fear of God blog series featuring co-hosts and guests further unpacking thoughts, themes, and ideas that keep them up at night from the conversations and content covered on the show. This entry is from staffer and FoG Horror Enneagrammarian, Asia Swartzentruber, and is a follow-up to this past week’s episode featuring Hellraiser. Enjoy, then, the latest entry in this new chapter of The Fear of God…
It probably doesn’t come as any kind of surprise that it took me more than one viewing to fully understand how I felt about this picture. Although its iconography of the notorious “pinhead” is beyond universal, I knew virtually nothing about this movie going into it, which I think was the experience of just about anyone who did not either see this film shortly after its release or has not read the novella that inspired it (myself still being one of those who have not).
I, like most of my fellow viewers for this warm-up phase of the Fear of God 80’s party, started the movie expecting the devilish, needle-faced sadist to be as much of a presence as his contemporary big-money horror cousins like Freddie Krueger or Jason.
But that was not the film we watched at all.
I’d be lying if I said that the first thing that struck me about the movie wasn’t the gore. It’s extreme and it’s realistic, donning practical effects to rival (for at least for 2/3rds of the experience) that of The Thing and other much higher budget films. The gore is an absolute staple of this movie, and I was tempted initially to worry what exactly I had gotten myself into by agreeing to watch it. Can you blame me once supernatural fishhooks started lodging into what appeared to be our main character’s skin, eventually ripping him to literal pieces?
Everyone, say it with me (yes, Andrew, you can sing it): That Ain’t Right!
However, the second element of this film that quickly grabbed my attention away from the ever-present blood-bath was that of the characters and the relationships between them.
(As the Horror Enneagramarian, I will be mentioning my assessment of each lead character’s type, but I will not be going into detail, since this is an “Afterthoughts” and not an Enneagram installment.)
It certainly doesn’t take an astute watcher to notice that Julia (4w3) is less than enchanted with where her life has taken her and her adoring husband, Larry (2w3). It would appear that something grander or at least cleaner was in her life-vision as they explore their newly acquired home, which has sunk into such a state of decay and disrepair that it would make anyone shudder.
Larry, however, sensitive and forgiving as anyone could be, tries to accommodate his struggling partner, also asking his daughter (apparently from a previous / late marriage) Kirsty (8w7) to be patient with her.
However, none of these naive characters could fathom the hell (there it is) that they have stepped into. Which is probably why it’s so apt that the door to that hell is first opened by Julia, who, upon learning that Frank (7w8) (the missing brother of her husband) has been in and out of this place they have come to call home. This shocking news sends Julia on a downward mental spiral, desperately seeking solace and answers in the sordid memories she clings to of the secret, brief, yet wildly passionate affair she shared with Frank.
It might be easy to say that the gates to the hellish places in this movie were opened by Larry’s blood, accidentally (and bountifully) spilled after slicing his hand open on a precarious nail while trying to shove a mattress up the stairs – but the real hell started in Julia’s mind.
One of the deepest themes of this movie is pain. Particularly the use of pain as a surrogate for pleasure. Masochism in its purest, most extreme form – so hauntingly represented by the Cenobites (I preferred Cinnabons, but we’ll leave that alone).
And perhaps the first example of this sort of pain milked for its pleasure is Julia’s inability to release herself from the agonizing grip of the dashing, mysterious man who seduced her a long time ago. Frank abandoned Julia once her devotion to him was complete. “I’ll do anything!” she pleads, as he tries to leave her alone after a disappointing encounter.
And this rejection, coupled with her let down expectations of her now disenchanted marriage, seems to have stripped her of any amount of contentment she could have carried. Alone, in the attic of this dilapidated house, she is more content to emotionally flog herself with the painful memories of love lost and lust fueled.
And maybe, had Julia not allowed herself to sink so deeply into this non-reality of secrecy, unmet desires, and resentment, the real hell might never have been allowed to make earth its home.
Long story short, Larry’s blood miraculously resurrects his brother from his terrible demise, but only as an amalgamation of tissue and sinews crawling and writhing on the floor towards a horrified Julia.
It’s difficult to understand why Julia would ever have agreed to help Frank restore himself to health (especially as it required her to commit acts of unspeakable treachery,) with him now such a shadow of the man he once was. But this is one reason I assess Julia as a 4. It is apparent as she watches Frank beg for her help, that she is repulsed. However, it is the memory, the idea of what she once had with him that ultimately leads her to agree to an evil plan.
Julia is willing to shrink her own soul in the service of something that no longer exists - and if she were truly honest - never really did. Frank never loved her, as witnessed by his thoughtless leaving and by photographic evidence she discovers of his many sexual escapades, of which, she was certainly not the most meaningful. But she has been so desperate and so lonely, lost in a world that she can’t let anyone but her own pain into, that even the idea of what once was is more profound to her than her flesh and blood counterpart craving her attention on the lower floors of the house.
Julia becomes what Frank was to her – the deadly seducer – preying on the vulnerabilities of those she can get close to, only to lure them into the web of Frank.
Everything always comes back to what Frank wants. Both for him and for Julia.
Reed very astutely pointed out in our conversation that this is the pattern we so often see with abusive and co-dependent relationships. Julia’s fresh-faced enthusiasm towards her new marriage is quickly robbed from her when the unreasonably handsome and unrelenting form of Frank all but forces himself upon her, accepting nothing less than her absolute captivation.
I wouldn’t blame Julia if part of her inability to move on was to (in some sense) protect herself from acknowledging her own broken will. For, while she did ultimately return Frank’s advances with enthusiasm, my heart ached watching her have to fight against what felt like an un-winnable battle. An impossible situation she should never have been put in, overseen by an obsessive task-master.
Julia violated her own will and her own vows by engaging with Frank, and admitting that to herself or (God forbid) her husband is simply too painful to endure. And with moving forward ruled out as an option, the only available solution is to keep looking back.
Thus, being so hurt, Julia hurts people, captivating as she was captivated, and literally feeding them to her lover. Just as she allows her heart to be consumed repeatedly by him for his own emotional energy.
Frank, at one point, says to her, as a means to control her, “for better or for worse”. That they are bound to each other in a way that no other two people could be. That the heinous nature of what they have done has woven them together. It’s a sort of perverse iteration of a marriage vow, as Julia promises to never “cheat” on him.
Which is why I was totally struck by the imagery in a scene when Julia is laying in wait for her next victim, her spirit calcifying at an alarming rate. As she stares into the abyss, numbing her heart yet again for the kill, we can see that her thick red hair around her temples is pulled back, revealing two streaks of newly grey hair. This striking image reminded me so deeply of The Bride of Frankenstein, and it felt like an apt critique of her own “marriage” to a sort of monster.
However, as seamlessly as their plan appears to be going, Kirsty is growing suspicious.
There is a lot I could say about brave, determined Kirsty, but the majority of my actual thoughts continue to hover around Julia and Frank.
It’s not an understatement to say that as Frank grows more and more human with every visage he drains Julia becomes more and more a shell of herself, until that broken woman I wanted to shed a tear for is willing to offer up everything good in her life in service to a fantasy. She lays down her own humanity in order to restore a human who doesn’t even want her.
Which is why, in the end of it all, Julia becomes that last human needed for Frank’s hellish transformation to be completed. She has given every ounce of who she is in service to a desire that must be fulfilled, which is exactly what Frank did by opening that puzzle box. And as promised, he took all of her.
He kills her. He accepts her gift of everything, looking into her terrified, betrayed eyes, and knowing that this had been inevitable.
Frank may be running from the Cenobites, who wish to re-claim his soul, but the longer he is allowed to exist, the closer he is to becoming one of them. And he dragged an entire family unit down with him.
I don’t think Frank seduced Julia initially because he was particularly attracted to her.
I don’t even think that it had much of anything to do with lust.
I think that Frank chose Julia and discarded her so quickly, because what he wanted was deviance. A thrill beyond pleasure.
And what could be a more deviant place to start than by taking his own brother’s wife?
Frank wasn’t enjoying Julia.
He was hurting Larry.
His first step towards the Cenobites.
I don’t want to make this too long, as I am very apt to do, so I’ll leave you, reader, with the question my husband asked me after we watched this movie.
I had asked him what his favorite element of the film was, and he had replied, “Well, everyone has a Frank.”
I said, “What do you mean by that?”
He replied, “I mean… Everyone has that thing that it would be better if we just let die.”
I was speechless.
It would be so easy to connect the dots here and say that if Julia had just let Frank starve in that attic, none of this would have happened. But I think the correct answer is actually farther back. If only Julia had let the memory of Frank die. If only she had let the secrets, the lies, and even the guilt die – Frank would have had nothing in her to feed off of once finally alive again.
So, I ask you (and myself), dear reader:
What do you need to let die?
