David Cronenberg

Junji Ito is sure that the true horror is hidden in everyday life. The future manga grew up in a town full of streets and alleys, and it seemed to him that the city was like a labyrinth where you could not only play hide and seek with friends, but also get lost forever. This feeling, which appeared as a reaction to the environment, formed the basis for the “Uzumaki” manga.

Stephen King also uses a similar technique. His works almost always begin with everyday themes and only eventually stumble over turning points that radically change the characters' stable lives. For example, the engines of horror in the famous “The Shining” were moving, excessive self-control and bad habits.

In “Cell”, the same King went even further. The global apocalypse was not due to a solar flare, melting ice, or the arrival of aliens. Mobile communication has destroyed humanity: because of telephone signals, people have turned into zombies. Simply put, even household appliances can create fear; you just need to change the established order.

There is an opinion that almost all stories not only in cinema but also in art in general are based on three themes: food, love and death. And there is hardly a work that does not even touch on one of them tangentially. Horror movies are especially interesting in this regard.

Quite often they scare with the most trivial things and touch on three “eternal” topics at once. Their characters confront both carnivorous monsters, supernatural evil or their own reason, as well as simple weaknesses — seduction, stagnation in family life, or painful reflection.

Countless zombie movies readily mix food and death. For the living dead, the main characters are food that faces death. In addition, most of these paintings also have a love line. Sometimes everything gets so confused that the object of interest is the living dead, as was the case in the melodrama “Life After Beth”.

The same can be said about vampire movies. Food for them is people, and most often young girls, whom ancient creatures make sure to fall in love with themselves, and then kill or convert their loved ones. Even an elementary bite is a metaphor for sex: victims fall into painful ecstasy as a vampire invades their bodies.

“Classic” slashers about immortal maniacs acting as “avatars of evil” are mainly based on the theme of death, but there is enough love in them. Rather, its derivatives are madness, manic attraction and the thirst for revenge that arose against the background of the loss of loved ones.

A vivid example is the Halloween movie franchise. It is based on Mike Myers' overwhelming obsession with his own sister and, after her death, with another girl. At the same time, the “chemistry” between the main character and the antagonist has not faded away for more than 40 years. Moreover, the way victims are killed is close to sexual experience, as Mike Myers wields a knife, piercing the flesh of the victims over and over again.

And in the “Friday the 13th” franchise, the driving force was a mother's parental love for her son, and in the sequel, the son's love for his mother, which resulted in revenge for her death. In terms of sexual metaphors, the series is as close as possible to “Halloween”. Jason, like his mother, invades teenagers' bodies with a huge cleaver and takes their lives. Often, right during sex.

In turn, a simple romantic story in the style of “guy meets girl”, when superimposed on the horror genre, easily turns into a disturbing experience or a nightmare in reality. And a banal date turns into silent persecution, injury or death, as Nicolas Pesce's “Piercing” and David Robert Mitchell's “It Follows” vividly illustrated.

The word “erotica” comes from the name of the ancient Greek deity of love Eros and literally means “love”. Art trends that primarily rely on eroticism focus on romantic feelings, the individuality of love as a state, and partially nude nature. This is what makes erotica different from porn.

Horror films about love often incorporate erotic elements. Any relationship, healthy or unhealthy, sooner or later leads to bed scenes of varying candor. Imminent death encourages us to think about legacy and procreation. Therefore, in horror movies, intimate scenes are not an ordinary storytelling tool, but an important part of the story.

In this regard, horror movies are so flexible that they can use carnal pleasure as an attribute of fear. It is with the main character's appetites for various pleasures that “Hellraiser” begins, one of the most striking films about desires and why you should be afraid of them. Moreover, the creators of the picture were specific about intimacy, because in their understanding, a naked person is a person without skin.

Directors can use bodies not only as an attribute of “adulthood”, but as a shocking element. For example, Ari Aster shows naked and not-so-attractive characters in all of her movies. And the root cause of the drama and all the supernatural elements in “Mulholland Drive” is the sexual relationship between the main character and her lover. At the same time, explicit scenes were not used to demonstrate “real” love, but as a synonym for despair, anger and the bitterness of loss.

The themes of food, love and death are no strangers to Cronenberg's films. To some extent, the director is obsessed with them; he only explores them in his usual manner. Satisfying hunger in his works turns into taking certain substances, death leads to other worlds, and love and its inherent erotica take on phantasmagoric forms, teetering on the verge of allegorical porn.

The key idea behind all of Cronenberg's works is the deconstruction of man and his environment. Each film is a story about external and internal transformations, changing the status quo and sometimes visual mutation. And the “hero's path” is supported by vile, sometimes nauseating scenes.

“The Fly” gradually turns into something else and rots alive. The writer from “Naked Lunch” is enslaved by a mysterious substance, his craft and obsessions about his wife's death, which is why he loses his former appearance by the end. The thrill-seekers from “Crash” intentionally get into accidents and disfigure themselves because they are turned on by scars and crutches.

The characters in Cronenberg's films live ordinary lives until an event happens that radically changes it. After that, they separate themselves from society and go their own way, plunging into the abyss of madness and changing physically. Together with them, the environment is also deformed, and the narrative is more like a hallucinogenic dream.

Even in dramatic films like “Cosmopolis”, Cronenberg uses this storyline. However, there are no standard bed scenes in his films. Metaphorical porn takes their place — one character cuts the flesh of another and this act is presented as the most explicit erotica.

For example, the main character of “Videodrome”, after watching the program of the same name, craves for more shows and pleasures that ordinary people cannot afford. An incision appears in his abdomen that looks like an innermost female organ. And, touching him, the hero gets the desired pleasures and learns the unknown, gradually losing his mind and human appearance.

The heroes of “eXistenZ” gain a new gaming experience by immersing themselves in virtual reality using a flesh-and-blood console. You need to connect to it through wires that are inserted into special connectors on the body. The director also compares connected scenes to sexual intercourse. Heroes even resort to light petting before gaming sessions to make the wires easier to connect.

In his recent “Crimes of the Future”, Cronenberg compares art to sex, and sex to cutting out a variety of tumors. Heroes invade each other's bodies with unconcealed passion and operate on them with a special surgical device. They look at even a seemingly simple act of self-harm, when an artist mutilates her face with “beautiful” cuts, with admiration.