My Top 5 Non-Horror Horror Movies
By Luke Lucas
Horror-Melancholia-Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
2. Melancholia
A giant planet careens through space and obliterates the Earth. That happens during the opening of Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia.
Like No Country for Old Men, the Internet is rife with hot takes on how Melancholia is a metaphor for the destructiveness of depression. For me, the movie is also like No Country for Old Men in the level of claustrophobia that I felt watching it.
Destruction is coming. No one will escape. You feel a brief few moments of reprieve and then the horror comes back far worse than it was. You can’t hide in a castle. You can’t run out into the open.
The movie actually starts at an extravagant wedding for Justine (Kirsten Dunst). The structure reminds me of elements of The Exorcist. Everyone but Justine is having a good time. She ends up being excluded from the party. As the story moves along, Justine switches from being wildly out of control to being serene and withdrawn. Her family has no idea what to do with her and resort to keeping her in a secluded room.
In The Exorcist, newly possessed Regan (Linda Blair) comes down to her mom’s dinner party and blankly states, “You’re gonna die up there.” She’s warning astronaut Captain Billy Cutshaw. In Melancholia, Justine is concerned about life down here on Earth. She takes things a lot further than Regan when she says, “The Earth is evil…Nobody will miss it…Life is only on Earth and not for long.”
That gives me the chills. Her co-stars Kiefer Sutherland and Charlotte Gainsborough are also unnerving in their supporting roles. I’m not used to seeing Sutherland lose his stuff quite like this. Gainsborough nails her usual state of giddy hysteria.