This section was on Nightmares and Fear. I was shocked that I wasn’t terribly scared by Nightmare on Elm Street. I’m sure if I had been one of the characters in the story, it would have terrified me but the idea of someone in a dream being able to kill was so abstract that I didn’t feel like it could happen to me but it definitely makes an interesting movie. In the real world, scary things can make it difficult to fall asleep but once you finally fall asleep, you expect to be in a safe place. Nightmare on Elm Street took what should feel safe (sleeping in your bed) and turned it into the very place you can get killed. “One structure for the composition of horrific beings is fusion. On the simplest physical level, this often entails the construction of creatures that transgress categorical distinctions such as inside/outside, living/dead, insect/human, flesh/machine and so on. Mummies, vampires, ghosts, zombies, and Freddie, Elm Street’s premier nightmare, are fusion figures in this respect. Each, in different ways, blur the distinction between living and dead.” (Fantastic Biologies and Structures of Horrific Imagery) Freddy Krueger is uncanny in that he is supposed to be dead but he comes alive in the nightmares and can kill people. Having that kind of horror come when you are sleeping can drive you to insanity. You either accept the irrational and accept that you can be killed in your dreams (Never Sleep Again) so you can face Freddy or you lose your mind from sleeplessness trying to stay awake. It certainly seems like a hopeless situation. Freddy will always have victims because people must sleep so it’s just a matter of time before you fall into his trap.
I enjoyed Audition even though I don’t know what was dream and what was reality. The idea that part of it was a nightmare is the only connection that I made between the two films. The “monster” in this film looked normal but her behavior was unsettling. In the beginning, I was expecting the man to be the monster since he was being dishonest about the audition and was just trying to get a woman for himself. But in reality, his fear of being alone led him into a horrible situation. He was so desperate to have a companion that he didn’t recognize what he was getting himself into. After seeing how she acted, it was clear that there was something strange with her. For example, at some point, you see the bag at her place and it moves but you don’t know what’s in it. It is later revealed that it is a live human inside the bag. While I was watching, I assumed that everything was real and that she had actually incapacitated him and performed the gruesome acts. But when he woke up back at the place where they had slept together and she was laying with him, I questioned what was real and what was dream and honestly, I’m still not sure.