For this lesson we dove into the sub-genre of horror films titled “nightmares and fear”. I am someone who has particularly vivid dreams, and I always absolutely hate nightmares as I’m sure we all do. As a kid, ever so often I would have a nightmare but they were quite different than my adult nightmares. When I was young they were more about monsters and other imaginary things, but as an adult they are just about my real life fears. Just for a quick example, my nightmares changed from having the boogieman chase me as a kid to real fears like being killed by a dangerous person as an adult. Nightmares and fear go hand in hand. Nightmares are dreams of your deepest fears. The two films we were required to watch for this section were Takashi Miike’s Audition (1999) and Wes Craven’s A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984). I really thought both of these films were done well. Audition did get rather confusing at times though. The main thing I was really confused about was what was a dream and what wasn’t one. I am much more familiar with A Nightmare On Elm Street as I am sure most people are. Freddy Krueger is a historic character and they will continue making films with him as the antagonist for at least my lifetime probably longer.
Audition was the story of a Japanese man who is seeking a new woman to marry as his wife died when his son was a child. This film just had such a creepy feel to it from right off the bat. From the moment I saw Asami’s picture, I knew something was off about her just like some of the other characters in the film thought. I guess the protagonist, Shigeharu, was just desperate to find a new wife. Asami was just so creepy and abnormal, that I really don’t see what Shigeharu saw in her. I will not go into a full summary of the film as we all watched it, but I will just discuss my thoughts about it and how it connects to this section. This film included a long dream sequence that was very confusing to understand. I am still not sure exactly what was real and what was a dream. Either everything after Asami and Shigeharu slept together was a nightmare Shigeharu was having or everything actually happened in the film. I am not a fan of films that have an “it was all just a dream” ending so I hope that is not what Miike intended for this movie to end. If it all was just one long nightmare to end the film, then it was Shigeharu’s biggest fear being played out in his head. His biggest fear was illuminated in his nightmare.
Wes Craven’s A Nightmare On Elm Street is one of my favorite horror movies of all time. Freddy Krueger scared me to death when I was a kid. The way he looked, the way he talked, and just his power to kill someone in a nightmare was terrifying to me as a kid. My parents would always calm me down after a nightmare by saying “it’s not real, it was just a dream”. Freddy Krueger was not “real” either as he was just a dream but he could actually murder people in their dreams. This definitely caused me to lose some sleep when I was young. The film was fantastic in my opinion. It did not have a happy ending as the filmmakers had to keep the idea of a sequel alive, and it had many sequels. This film relates to this section because of course it was all about nightmares and fear. All of the characters feared Freddy, but the deeper fear they all had was to die. To me, that is the biggest fear of them all. This film did a great job being just, for a lack of a better word, scary and that is the main goal of a horror film.