Letterboxd Horror Lists

letterboxd horror lists

video nasties - banned films in the united kingdom

paranormal/supernatural - some movies may be missing but i had a lot to cover

slasher - same issue with above

folk horror 

experimental horror 

found footage horror 

gothic horror

splatter horror

survival horror

erotic horror

medical horror

science-fiction horror

horror comedy

campy horror

my 111 favorite horror movies

‼️potential dune spoilers‼️

sometimes your babygirl is a revengeful pretty boy witch that is a mass murderer on an intergalactic scale

modern dating is embarrassing i want to meet someone the old fashioned way (he’s the local hot priest who will question god because of me)

Hello! I recently watched The Piano Teacher because of your recommendation, I liked the movie loads, but I’m not the smartest person ever and I was wondering what general thoughts you have on what the film is trying to say. Sorry if this is too vague.

the film is using freudian psychoanalysis of the masochistic fantasy to create a situation in which erika and walter each have their desires nominally satisfied by one another, but in ways that contravene what they actually wanted and leave both of them harmed (albeit quite differently) by the climactic act of rape. erika's masochistic fantasy is fulfilled, but in a punitive way that robs her of the control she sought as a counterpoint to her relationship with her domineering mother and absent father; walter's desire for a sexual relationship with his teacher also comes to fruition, but at the cost of him acting in a manner that he deems perverted and that runs counter to his ideas of 'correct' romance and sexual intimacy.

[post discusses rape and incest in michael haneke's 'the piano teacher' (2001)]

according to freud, a child's fantasy of being beaten comes in three phases. in the second phase, which is masochistic, the child's pleasure in witnessing a sibling or rival being beaten has been converted by guilt and sexual repression into the fantasy of the child themselves being beaten by the father; this is ultimately the result of incestuous desire for the father. for erika, her father's absence prevents her from either enacting this fantasy or moving beyond it to the third phase of freud's beating fantasy. stuck in the repressed, unconscious phase, she is emotionally restricted, particularly in her professional life, and engages in acts of self-harm directed specifically at her genitals—unconsciously trying to punish herself for her sexual interest in the father figure.

erika's mother controls every aspect of her personal life and dominates her, fighting with her physically and berating her. she specifically expresses disappointment that erika failed to become a successful concert pianist—essentially a wish for erika to have become the man of the house. thus, both mother and daughter attempt to cast one another as the absent father, though to different psychosexual ends. for erika, her total lack of control in her relationship with her mother, combined with her repressed childhood desire for her father, results in her seeking a sexually violent relationship in which she can live out her beating fantasy, with her lover now cast as the violent father. because her relationship with her mother has stymied all sexual expression and seemingly all non-professional interpersonal relationships as well, erika has no frame of reference for a sexual relationship—she becomes so stimulated by seeing the couple at the drive-in that she urinates—and can only conceive of it as a way to enact her masochistic fantasies.

the key for erika is that she wants to experience masochistic violence that she has chosen and asked a partner for; the fantasy only works for her if she is ultimately the one in control of the relationship (another way in which she identifies with a 'masculine' sexuality, unlike the freudian boy child who must assume a 'feminine' attitude in the third phase of the beating fantasy). this is why she becomes upset in the bathroom scene, when walter disobeys her commands; although she is a masochist, what she wants with her sexual partner is the opposite of what she has in her relationship with her mother, ie total control. after walter reads her list of sexual demands and rejects her, erika seeks sex with her mother, an overt act of incest in a relationship that has previously been strongly subtextually incestuous. at this moment, erika's conflation of her mother's domination over her with her absent father becomes most overt, but her mother refuses to engage in the acts of sexual violence that erika desires, meaning she must seek out walter again.

though we spend far less time with walter than erika, it's clear that to him there is allure to seeking a sexual relationship with an authority figure, in this case a teacher. however, walter ultimately wants reciprocity in his relationship in a way erika does not: he wants to touch her in the bathroom scene, he tells her he loves her at the hockey rink, he is initially both shocked and disgusted by her list of masochistic desires and sex acts. recall also that erika and walter initially connect over a mutual love of schumann and schubert, romantic composers, though erika disagrees with walter's interpretation of a schubert piece, telegraphing a fundamental incongruity between their respective views of romance and relationships, and their sexual desires.

thus, walter's rape of erika at the end of the film is in some sense also a break with his own sexual desires and mores. he views the act, and erika's masochistic desires in general, as perverted and immoral. by raping her he is in some sense engaging in the fantasy that she has been asking him for, but configuring the act as punitive (it's an angry reaction to the 'wrongness' he perceives in her for failing to have sex with him at the hockey rink) and violating the underlying premise of the fantasy by actually overriding her will, thus replicating and elevating the violence she experiences from her mother rather than subverting it, which was what she actually wanted. having been cast in the role of the violent father despite naturally gravitating toward a more 'feminine' sexual attitude, walter ends the film by acting out the paternal role (once again conflated with the maternal one through the act of locking erika's mother in the closet, so that walter is replacing her as well) with verisimilitude that erika never actually desired, simultaneously granting her wish and making a traumatic mockery of it. meanwhile, walter has finally gotten the sexual relationship that he desired with his teacher, but at the expense of his idea of sexual normalcy, and only by acting in a way he considers perverted.

for erika, the final cruelty is seeing walter laughing happily with his family at the recital. in the freudian beating fantasy, both phases one and two are marked by the need for exclusive incestuous love between the father and child; the beating of the sibling in phase one is construed as an expression of love toward the non-beaten child, whereas by phase two the repression of this genital interest has turned the fantasy into a desire for exclusive physical violence that stands in for the sexual act. for erika, seeing walter with his family is not just seeing the man who raped her laughing carelessly; more specifically, she is hurt by this demonstration of the non-exclusivity of his love. thus, her earlier acts of self-harm (directed at her genitals) turn into her stabbing herself in the shoulder, simultaneously an act of self-punishment for the masochistic fantasy and an externalisation of the pain and trauma walter has inflicted on her by breaking the rules of the beating fantasy—both through the rape and through the emotional infidelity.

he’s a prophet and a pusher, partly truth partly fiction, a walking contradiction

the endings of gone girl and american psycho both HAUNT ME because they’re both like “okay so you don’t face consequences for your actions in a satisfying way but you will always have to be who you are and that’s a punishment in and of itself” and that’s fucked