The Monster Lies Within

[Spoiler alert for The Wailing (2016), Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) and Colossal (2016)]

The relationship between cinema and monsters has always been fascinating. From the classic horror of Nosferatu to Del Toro’s delightfully romantic Amphibian Man (1961), monsters have in fact occupied every position on the cute to terrifying spectrum. This is not surprising. Monsters are, after all, manifestations of what we consider the Other. For the longest time, humanity thought of the Other in terms of what they fear and hate. Through time and the cumulation of various art forms, we are now able to grasp the implications of said fear and hatred.

On the one hand, this has led to monsters becoming sympathetic. The Amphibian Man is the best example in this case. However, we can also look at the latest Godzilla movies. In these movies, Godzilla is portrayed either as a good character or a force of nature. What We Do in the Shadow (2019) turns vampire mythology into a feature-length episode of The Office. Obviously, there is an increasing reluctance to portray any monster as a threatening inhuman thing. On the other hand, we are also witnessing a trend that is best called the monster within. This is the idea that the most terrifying thing of all lies among us.

There are so many ways one could approach this. The most common approach nowadays seems to be a manmade monster, or at least a symbol of it, allowing for exploration of humanity in relation to hubris. We see this in the original Godzilla (1954), Frankenstein (1931), The Host (2006) and more recently in Shin Godzilla (2016)… The list goes on but you get the idea. As tired as this trope is, they still provide a nuanced look into our society. It would be hard to not get goosebumps watching the parallelisms in the Godzilla films to the changes in Japanese society post-WW2. The original Godzilla was an allegory of the tragic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, shedding light on some harsh truths about the aftermaths of war, particularly in relation to nuclear weapons. Shin Godzilla, on the other hand, further this allegory by representing the government’s failure in responding to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis.

(Image credit: Japanese Film Reviews, Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, IndieWire & Time OUt)

We can all agree that monsters as representations of societal flaws often give ways to sharp, nuanced and hard-hitting social commentary.

However, in this article, we would like to focus on another perspective of the monster within. This is when films create monsters that are manifestations of our emotional, psychological and existential crisis. They can be manifestations of grief, depression or even uncertainty. Indeed, they can be social and even historical so long as they reflect individual feelings other than objective world problems. The difference is that in the former category, the monster is publicly seen. The focus of the film will often be how society responds to such things. Society's response can be explored in many ways. A scene in a zombie movie where the characters are trapped together will highlight different themes in comparison to say, a scene with the priest in The Wailing (2016).

While the ultimate evil in The Wailing is technically social, in that it is representative of doubt in the face of faith, the response to this “evil” is individual. One can only have faith as an individual, not as a collective. The whole point of monsters as manifestations of individual crisis is that they become viscerally existential. Instead of prompting us to actions like the societal-flaws monsters, the existential monsters paralyze us, make us question who we are and what it all means. In recent years, we’ve seen a lot more of these monsters, often in the new trend of emotional and psychological horrors popularized by filmmakers like David Robert Mitchell, Jennifer Kent, Mike Flanagan and Ari Aster. In fact, we would take Kent’s manifestation of grief and fear in the form of the terrifying Babadook (2014) as the prototype of the existential monsters.

In this article, we will be looking at more recent entries of existential monsters that will be joining the ranks of It (2017), the Babadook (2014) and the Bent-Neck Lady from The Haunting of Hill House (2018) as existential monsters that worsens our insomnia.

I. THE WAILING (2016): MONSTERS AND FAITH

First, let’s go a little bit more in-depth with The Wailing. This 2016 South Korean horror film is set in a small town where there has been a sudden outbreak of a mysterious illness, causing people to become uncontrollably violent. Our main character is a police officer who became intertwined with the case professionally and then personally when his daughter became infected with this same illness. The film is filled with moments of tension and not exactly terror, but chills. By the end of the film, you’re left uncertain of who or what is behind this supernatural disaster. At one point, one of the main characters who’s a priest decided to confront the main suspect, a Japanese man who seems to be conducting shamanic rituals that were speculated to have caused this widespread illness.

(Image credit: Filmotomy)

The scene between the Japanese man and the priest is one of the most chilling in cinema history. The priest is uncertain if he has found the true evil. Still, he feels convinced that this man is the Devil. But then the Japanese man plants doubt in him. And it is this doubt that causes the priest to become paralyzed, uncertain of what he should believe. At the same time, the police officer is told by a mysterious but beautiful woman in white not to go back to his home or his daughter would succumb to the illness. When he defies the mysterious woman out of doubt, his daughter ends up killing his entire family. While that unfolds, the priest is met with the image of the devil himself. This is perhaps the most fearsome creature cinema has created, despite appearing before the screen for only a few minutes.

The important question that bogs our mind is: what does this creature represent?

But to answer this, we would have to launch ourselves into another set of questions: why did The Wailing so blatantly play on the xenophobia, the image of the religious other and the figure of purity that is the woman in white?

We think the director knows that the audience, having a good grasp of epistemology in cinema, would be more inclined to reject straightforward decoding that the Japanese man is evil, or that the woman in white is a good person. In a way, the director had planted seeds of doubt into our minds too. Ultimately, it does not matter if the Japanese Man was good or bad and this logic applies to the lady in white too. The fact is that there is no way the characters could have known. This reality coupled with the constant hammering of this theme that the character should or must have faith, puts the characters and us the viewers in a conundrum.

We don’t know where to place the faith.

And that’s the true horror.

It is the uncertainty of the material world, the arbitrariness of human choices and the undeniable emptiness of faith that lies in the image of the Devil in The Wailing.

II- UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (2010): MONSTER AS PAST REGRETS

While the arbitrariness of faith can be a genuinely destabilizing idea, what if the choices we make are also constrained by social and historical forces beyond our own control?

In a 2010 film by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul called Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, we see that exact kind of notion. The story follows Uncle Boonmee, who is suffering from kidney disease. One day he is visited by two spirits. The first is the spirit of his ex-wife, who tells him that he is about to die. The second is an odd and haunting creature called the Ling-Phi, which is Thai for the Monkey-Ghost. The Monkey-Ghost looks like a large ape, with dark furs and bright red eyes that would haunt your dreams, but perhaps not just in the way that you think.

(Image credit: Culture Trip)

You see, this monkey-ghost is the long-lost son of Boonmee, Boonsong. Boonsong had disappeared into the jungle while he was trying to photograph a monkey-ghost he saw. And now he had become one of these ghosts because he had apparently mated with one of the monkey-ghosts. Now, this is a deeply complex and nuanced film, so it’s almost impossible to touch on everything. But suffice to say, Boonsong becoming a monkey-ghost seems at first to be the film’s subscription to a classic trope of humans mixing with Inhumans. It seems like the classic cautionary tale pushing for some kind of ethnic endogamy, which although is great enough of a concept on its own, there is more to the film.

(Image credit: Chicago Film Society)

Later in the film, the monkey-ghost appears in various photos of soldiers in the jungle. Given that for Thai people, images of soldiers in the jungle strongly evokes memories of the period of communist counter-insurgency, we might be able to attribute the significance of the monkey-ghost as a representation of the communist insurgents. Here, director Weerasethakul simultaneously represents the non-progress and the non-existent. The fact that Boonsong’s search for the creature made him into a creature is fascinating. The Thai military’s violent counter-insurgency is arguably a ghost of the Thai past. Those involved in the campaign that led to the deaths of many communists across Thailand and particularly, the North-eastern region of Thailand, would likely regret what they did. The scene where uncle Boonmee dreams of a future light that shines brightly enough to erase the past may indicate to us his regret in participating in such campaigns in the past.

Whether or not this is narratively intended, the monkey-ghost represents the regrets of one’s past deeds. It is the manifestation of the past in the form of a ghost. The appearance of that creature alongside the ex-wife might have been a representation of the Boonmee’s past regrets as well as happiness. Therefore, the monkey-ghost invoked the fear of the has-beens, the shadows of your former selves and the past that you cannot erase.

(Image credit: Phil on Film)

Think about the worst mistakes you have made, and imagine seeing those mistakes and your pervading sense of regret manifested into the form of a creature. It is truly terrifying.

III: COLOSSAL (2016)- MONSTERS AS ADDICTIONS AND COMPULSIONS

(Image credit: Cinetic Media)

Our final creature carries on this theme of regret. Only now it is rooted in the present. The indie film Colossal (2016) stars Anne Hathaway as Gloria, a female writer struggling with crippling alcohol addiction. Her addiction and toxicity make her a truly despicable companion, driving people around her away. Unlike Boonmee, Gloria faces regrets about her current actions. In other words, she struggles with her compulsions. She cannot help herself. She has to drink. She has to be irresponsible. She has to be, for the lack of a better word, a bad person.

One day, Gloria wakes up to find that a monster has manifested in downtown South Korea. And very soon, she realises that whatever movement she makes, the monster would mimic her. If the symbolism isn’t clear enough, the movie is manifesting Gloria's psychological problem into a physical form, visually highlighting its impact on the people around her. More often than not, psychological problems and dysfunctions are portrayed as an internal battle. The reality is that it can also be a social issue that affects everyone in the vicinity of the individual. This is particularly true for Gloria’s alcohol addiction. The movie perfectly ends when Gloria overcomes her own compulsion and finds it in herself to at least try to be better. Granted, this monster is not really scary, but it creatively reflects an existential crisis, this time in relation to overcoming one’s compulsion and becoming a better person.

All these tours of the existential monsters are our weird little responses to the new Godzilla versus Kong trailer. On a side note, the trailer looks pretty cool. It seems to reflect the newest trend of Avengers-influenced mash-up. If these new Kong and Godzilla films are really just that, they would remain disappointing additions to the cinematic world of monsters. Monsters are not just nostalgic accounts that we marvel at. They are the reflection of our social and individual flaws. They are the reflection of who we are not, sometimes who we are and, in some cases, who we want to be. The genealogy of these monsters can illustrate the breadth of humanity and the depth of the human soul. Only if we look a little deeper, we might find those monsters that lie within us.