I love horror movies. In case you couldn’t tell over the course of this month, I adore the horror genre. I love the tension, and I love the themes. I love getting scared, and I love reflecting on the bigger implications of a movie that focuses on violating the viewer’s comfort and security. I can find value in almost every horror film and almost every subgenre of scary movies. So let me put it to you this way when I talk about David Lynch’s 1977 cult classic:
I do not feel good while watching Eraserhead.
I built my Halloween Week movie list based on films that have legitimately scared or disturbed. This doesn’t mean that any of the movies this week are necessarily exceptional cinema (though I do believe that some are). But whether a movie is good or not has no true bearing on whether it had an effect on me, and I would consider Eraserhead to fall into this category. Don’t get me wrong, there are parts of David Lynch’s body of work that I enjoy, especially Twin Peaks. But I would not describe Eraserhead as a “good movie.” It’s plot is hard to work out, things are intentionally confusing, and its artistic liberties deprive most viewers of really getting anything out of it. However, Eraserhead probably ranks as the best movie I’ve ever seen at making people feel unsettled, and that is a noteworthy quality.
The visuals in Eraserhead are definitely a source of discomfort for the average horror fan. The baby is a monstrosity, things are constantly covered in a weird goo, and characters do strange things that catch your attention. But I would actually argue that the much more subtle aspects of Eraserhead are what really nails the unsettling atmosphere that Lynch has turned into a fabulous career. The camera lingers on scenes for just a second and a half too long, characters have an inordinate amount of micro-expressions during both silence and speech, weird lighting tricks draw your attention to unimportant things in the background making you paranoid that you’ll miss something important. There is no music when it feels like there should be, and then the audio mixing creates deafening sound in the middle of dialogue. Watching Eraserhead simply does not feel good; it’s a fountain of discomfort that very quickly floods your senses until you aren’t even sure how you should feel about a scene, let alone what is happening over the course of the movie.
I have been watching horror movies since I was about 6 years old, and nothing has brought me more discomfort than Eraserhead. Many people do not consider it to be strictly horror, but the emotional atmosphere that it creates is much more related to fear and the disturbed far more than anything else I can think of. I won’t tell you that it’s a good movie everyone should watch, but if experiencing unique horror films is important to you, you cannot pass up Eraserhead. Just don’t take a job writing for a fandom website, or else you’ll have to watch the damn thing more than once.
“OKAAAAYYYYY PAUL!!!!!!”
Tonight, my friends, we’re watching As Above So Below, a movie that I personally hail as a better Silent Hill movie than either of the actual Silent Hill Movies. It’s on Netflix, so enjoy it with me!
