Ah, the wonderfully painful hysterical woman trope. Too emotional to function, too dumb to stay alive, too overwrought to be believed. Once on the medical books as a "worrying chronic disease," female hysteria (or just being a normal functioning human) was seen as a trouble-making issue for those surrounding her. In a lot of instances, this "hysteria" was so troubling for some, mostly men, that these women were institutionalized and received forced hysterectomies to "curb" the "insanity." How quaint. And infuriating.
Within drama, this trope is usually seen as the matriarch with a secret to keep. In comedy, her aloofness is the butt of jokes. In horror, it tends to kaleidoscope into different slivers of objectivity. Has anyone gotten close to closing out this denigrating emblem? Some. We're getting better views of trauma onscreen and different expositions of how specific incidents affect a character's emotional and mental motivations.
So, what do I mean here by "distort"? All of the films below center on women in the mental and emotional throes of an inciting incident. Some are affected by past or present, and some are on the preventative path to never experiencing that depth of trauma again. Is it mental, or is it emotional? How these are posed onscreen are great examples of character depth. And speaking of a little character depth, let's get into..
Strait-Jacket (1964) Joan Crawford in a horror/thriller is the stuff that celluloid dreams are made of. After twenty years in a mental institution for the axe murder of her philandering husband, Lucy (Crawford) makes her way home, acclimating slowly back to a normal life on her grown daughter Carol's (Diane Baker) farm. Carol and her betrothed, Michael (John Anthony Hayes), don't get the warm reception they wished for their hoped-for nuptials from Michael's family, and Lucy ain't havin' it. And that's when the bodies start piling up. Lucy fights to create and maintain a normal life by any means necessary, and she's got a lot to prove. Her triggers, to her, are very real harbingers of danger to come. The film definitely sets Lucy as the still-homicidal maniac with a volatile nature, which is really cheap on the front end. But what we actually have is reactionary output on the screen. We're eager to see Lucy lose it, and as the audience, we're convinced she's responsible for all the murders that begin to take place because, well, when people show you who they are, believe them, right? But what this film does right is the sleight of hand with Carol, who (spoiler) is the real mastermind here. She's sent Lucy's already fragile state of hypervigilance into overdrive by (second spoiler) being the real murderer. What we're looking at here is reactionary abuse, wearing a hysterical woman's coat, and it's a hell of a ride.
Relic (2020) This excellent first feature film from writer-director Natalie Erika James explores a manifestation of dementia haunting three generations of women. Concerned daughter Kay (Emily Mortimer) rushes to her mother's home after a caretaker notices her mother, Edna (Robyn Nevin), missing for several days. With her daughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) in tow, Kay soon realizes the extent of her mother's mental decline. When her mother reappears, muddy and disheveled with no details of where she's been, Kay's helicoptering spins into overdrive, and as Edna's actions become increasingly disturbing, Kay and Sam realize that something in the house may have ill intentions. What's strikingly beautiful about this film, other than the knockout visuals and sound design, is the paradigm shift of what memory means to us individually and the gut-punching role reversal of parent and child. At the top of the film, Kay worries about her mother's mental decline — how long they have brushed it off until now, and how responsible Kay feels about that. Sam just wants her grandma back. Edna feels trapped, confused, and running the gamut from paranoia to anhedonia. We have three women whose emotional motivations take them to the same place, a lack of control. Edna's decline is laid out so deftly, symbolized by the maze within the walls of her home. Her "breadcrumbs" in the form of sticky notes are an unmistakable metaphor for memory loss and difficulty with reasoning. Kay has to juggle her own grown daughter along with assuming the role of caretaker and everything that comes with it: planning, end-of-life care, and, lastly, burial. It's all moving too fast for her, she can't catch up to the decline. Sam is helpless while watching it all. She can't pull either Kay or Edna out of the clutches of this disease, as she notices the mark of dementia on her mother at the end of the film. It's a testament to Natalie Erika James and Christian White's writing and to how insidious dementia can be.
The Night House (2020) There are a good handful of horror films that deal well with grief and loss, and we're gonna add The Night House to the pile. A widow (Rebecca Hall) slowly unravels the disturbing secrets of her late husband, Owen (Evan Jonigkeit), after his suicide. I was really impressed with this film early on. Hall's turn as Beth is a well-written character in the throes of grieving and all its nasty steps. Beth is caught between phoning it in on life and peppering in anger and confusion. Beth struggles with the letter left behind: "You were right. There is nothing. Nothing is after you. You're safe now." As she tries to tread the water of being the one left behind, strange dreams, specters and silhouettes turn sinister, sending her looking for answers into his past, and we know when you go digging, you may hate what you find. What Beth uncovers is a home that mirrors her lake house with dark and devastating secrets of its own and an atrocious system Owen designed to keep her safe, from Nothing. Beth rides the fences of feeling crazy, numb, and curious. The heaviness of grieving the loss of someone suddenly taken is brutal. You don't get the time to grieve them while they're still here, make plans or reminisce. What's interesting about this film is that we're following a grieving widow anxiously watching as the world moves on around this horrific incident. Her friends see her as callous to it, morbid even, and as she seeks out more and more of Owen's past and tries to put the puzzle together, we see her losing herself to it. She needs his death to make sense. She's looked after by her close friend, Claire (Sarah Goldberg), who begs her to stop digging and, at the close of the film, finds her and rescues her from the same boat her husband committed suicide on. It's a disquieting and painful film when you look at how hard it is to pull yourself out of grief and what you need to contend with about the person you thought you knew.
Prevenge (2016) Ruth (Alice Lowe) is seven months pregnant, a widow, and on a homicidal rampage (coached by her unborn baby). Things are tough for Ruth. She's alone, attending prenatal yoga and going to her passive-aggressive obstetric appointments. She's going through the motions, all the while grieving the father of her child, lost in a freak climbing accident. As we trickle through Ruth's encounters, her grief finds a lasting foothold, leaving room for her baby to take charge of her anger and murderous tendencies as she tracks down those responsible for the accident. Look, Ruth's got a lot on her plate here. Being pregnant and alone is no easy task.
With no one to lean on, no close friends or confidantes, she's working one hundred percent internally. Her anger and helplessness in her current physicality slowly pull her psyche apart. Now, you could say, Mo, really, this woman IS a bit hysterical. Fair, but let's look at it from a desperation standpoint. Here is a woman pining for her lost partner, holding up her end of the deal, raising and growing this child alone, a child they both created. And her partner is dead because a few people made a choice. And no one takes the blame. The only way she can find to justify it is the validation from her unborn baby, to give her the go-ahead to induce a little street justice of her own. It's not the best way to do it, but she gets it done. At the close of the film, after giving birth, Ruth realizes that this small creature doesn't have any more power over her than a flea, and it really is all on Ruth to carry the blame for the killings. Ruth shamefully (albeit briefly) understands her role in carrying out these murders and closes by continuing her rampage. It's a nice look at seeking justice and the approval to continue grieving.
Audition (1999) At the behest of a producer friend, a widower screens girls at a fake film audition to find his next wife. Of all the absolute dumbest ideas for matchmaking, this totally takes the cake. Shigeharu (Ryo Ishibashi) has been widowed for seven years, and after his son sheepishly asks if he'll ever remarry, he decides to find a way to meet the love of his life. At this "audition," Shigeharu meets Asami (Eihi Shiina) and is immediately taken with her. I was taken by her as well, as she accurately depicts how we project, vilify, and dispose of love we're not ready for. I don't believe that Asami is an actual person, just a reflection of Shigeharu's guilt for moving on. Asami is timid and beautiful, without expectations, a perfect beginning to a relationship: no wants, no problem. Shigeharu isn't exactly clear about what he wants from a woman, and to some degree, it's not important. It's a body, someone to adore or fixate on for the time being to help him move on. He's using Asami as a crutch to move forward, as many do. But what's important is how Asami changes throughout the film. She is an ingenue, a passionate lover, an unhinged psychopathic killer, a traumatized woman, and a gentle woman who hoped for love. All of these are faces Shigeharu has posed on her to combat his own fears of a relationship. The Ingenue: low expectation, high value. This Asami wants for nothing but to be in his company. He is charming with her; he is adored. The Passionate Lover: again, Shigeharu is seen as virile and attractive. There's been no one around to make him feel as such, so she wins that part. The Unhinged Psychopath: here's the vilification part. She's too possessive, too clingy, too damaged, and too violent. He's back peddling out of the relationship before it's begun. He's not ready. The Traumatized: I'm going out on a limb to say that he believes her to be damaged goods. Usually, people who don't know who they are without their own trauma don't want to be responsible for helping someone through theirs – he simply feels that's a weight he won't carry. And lastly, the gentle woman: as Asami slowly dies of her broken neck, he's come to the realization that things could've been good had he simply given it a chance. But it's much easier to believe that Asami is just a hysterical woman.
We're close to moving away from the Hitchcockian hysterics that drove the thriller and horror film engines. The examination of emotional and mental reactions becomes more accurate with every film, and it's important to show and state that. The more we assume that "women be trippin, yo" is a viable reason to have a character react in a certain way in horror, the less we're willing to believe that female characters actually enjoy agency, dimension, and development. I think they're owed that. And let's face it, how long have male slashers been trippin'?
