Pessimistic films

We can say that philosophical or cosmic pessimism revolves around the conclusion that the phenomenon of life is not special to the universe, that pain and boredom are fundamental components of sentient life, and therefore there is an immense disvalue in existing, and that given these facts, our ethical response must be the denial of life. By denial of life, pessimists do not mean that suicide is the only or best option, even though they do not condemn the suicidal act as do religious morality — with a few exceptions — and life-affirming ideologies, often disguised as sciences that pathologize every suicidal act, in addition to pathologizing pessimism in general. Another form of denial revolves around an abstention from the continuity of the life cycle, often linked to the refusal of procreation.

Here, however, I will not deal with pessimistic philosophy — or pessimistic philosophies — itself, but with films that marked me for having pessimistic tones, in the sense of the “cosmic pessimism” described above. These are films that present a universe that doesn't care about our suffering, nor about our struggles or desires for improvement. The films I list here can be taken from this perspective from start to finish, or, at least, have notable parts that touch on this type of idea, although they are not entirely marked by this vision. The list I make is not exhaustive and I plan to add new entries in the future. It is also not organized hierarchically, so the fact that a film appears first or last on the list does not mean my preference, nor is it related to its release date. So, without further ado, here is my list of pessimistic films. Warning: this list will contain spoilers.

The Sunset Limited, 2011, directed by Tommy Lee Jones

The film is based on a play written by Cormac McCarthy, the same author of No Country for Old Men. The structure of The Sunset Limited is minimalist. The whole story takes place in a small apartment, in a poor area of ​​the richest city in the world, New York. There are only two characters talking. Throughout the conversation, we discover that the characters met on the morning of that day and one of them, a religious man, prevented the other from committing suicide by throwing himself in front of a subway train. From then on, questions arise about the religious faith of one and the extremely dark nihilism of the other. There is an excellent exposition of pessimistic thinking in which the nihilist (played by Tommy Lee Jones) explains to the religious man (played by Samuel L. Jackson) that evolution inevitably produces animals capable of understanding the futility of the entire process of life, and that the logical conclusion of this process is suicide. At a certain point, the religious man asks, paraphrasing: “If I am understanding correctly, do you mean that everyone who is not an idiot should commit suicide?”, to which the nihilist responds affirmatively.

Chinatown, 1974, directed by Roman Polanski

A neo-noir classic, the film is set in the 1950s and follows Jake Gittes (played by Jack Nicholson), a private detective who uncovers a plot by powerful people to acquire valuable land in California at a price far below its market value. To do this, they use the Los Angeles water department, causing the department to stop irrigating certain areas, which reduces their value. During the investigation, Jake becomes involved with the daughter of one of these powerful men, Evelyn Cross Mulwray (played by Faye Dunaway), who was raped by her father when she was 15 and had his daughter. In the midst of this chaos, he tries to find a way for them to escape to Mexico, but the plan doesn't work. With the help of his henchmen, Evelyn's father, Noah Cross, forces Jake to take him to Evelyn and her granddaughter.

Arriving at the hideout, which is in the Chinatown area of Los Angeles, the police are already waiting for them, ready to serve the powerful Noah and his rich cronies. However, Evelyn does not accept going with her father, shoots him in the arm and tries to escape by car with her daughter-sister. Before the car can pick up speed, the police shoot towards the vehicle, killing Evelyn with a shot to the head. Noah takes his granddaughter-daughter away and the police release Jake, since Noah's goal this whole time was just to get his daughters back, especially his granddaughter, who he will probably rape for the rest of his life. Upon arriving at the location, one of Jake's partners, seeing his desolation at that scene, says the famous phrase to his friend: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”

The phrase is a reference to an old case that Jake investigated, but which also ended in disgrace in the same area of Los Angeles. The theme of powerful insurmountable forces, in this case powerful human forces, is characteristic of the neo-noir genre. No matter how much one tries to escape to a better future, no matter how much one tries to “go to Mexico” or achieve some other allegory of victory and happiness, misfortune always finds a way to win in the end. It's always Chinatown.

Network, 1976, directed by Sidney Lumet

A classic with Robert Duvall, Faye Dunaway and Peter Finch (who received the first posthumous acting Oscar for playing Howard Beale, the main character). The film revolves around Beale, a widower, alcoholic and depressed news anchor who decides to expose all his frustration on air when he receives the news that he will be fired due to low ratings. His speech generates a strong commotion and an increase in the newspaper's audience, causing executives from the conglomerate that controls the news division to use Beale as a kind of “prophet presenter” of modern times. Beale accepts the executives' proposal. Despite seeing himself as an idealist, we discovered that he is just being used by those in power to convey a message to the public.

When he goes off script one night, he ends up damaging the money flow of the powerful: his viewers send millions of letters to the President of the United States asking him to block a merger between different media outlets, which would threaten journalistic freedom and the companies' profits. For this sin, Beale is admonished by the conglomerate's CEO. The CEO explains to Beale that there are no democracies, no dictatorships, no capitalism, no communism, no socialism, but rather a flow of resources and power that controls all human will, regardless of creed, culture, religion, ideology, and that this flow has no purpose: there is no purpose, it's just how things have always been since humans emerged from the primordial soup.

The Road, 2009, directed by John Hillcoat

This is another story written by Cormac McCarthy. The film takes place after an unspecified worldwide apocalypse. We follow a father (played by Viggo Mortensen) and his son, still a child, on a journey on foot to one of the coasts of the United States. They look for some hope in a completely gray world, without food, where the soil no longer produces anything. There is complete scarcity, to the point where there are almost no other animals to eat, which causes many men to walk in groups, hunting and imprisoning weaker people with the aim of slowly cannibalizing them.

Throughout the film, we see flashbacks that show the father's attempt to convince the mother (played by Charlize Theron) to remain with him in the house, taking care of the son. However, the mother loses all hope. She tries to convince the father to kill his son and then commit suicide with her, something that many neighbors have already done. The reason she gives for this extreme act is that the world has ended, there is no order anymore, and worse: there is no more food and no hope of a return to normal.

She cites the gangs of men who are taking advantage of this situation to rape women and children and then eat them to survive. In one of these flashbacks, we see that the mother abandoned them both, leaving the house for one night, never to return. The only thing that keeps the man's hope alive is helping the boy, to whom he says that we must always keep the “flame” of humanity alive.

Melancholia, 2011, directed by Lars von Trier

The first part of the film shows Justine's (played by Kirsten Dunst) disastrous wedding reception at the mansion owned by Justine's sister (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her husband (played by Kiefer Sutherland). Throughout the reception, we see the complete lack of functionality of the rich family and the people around them. The marriage begins and ends right there. Still in the first part, Sutherland's character, who likes astronomy, notices that a star is not appearing in the sky, but no one cares.

In the second part of the film, we see Justine being brought to her sister's mansion. Her condition is deplorable. She suffers from a deep depression and can barely eat, walk or pay attention to the nephew who loves her. Justine even needs help taking baths. In the midst of this particular drama, we discover the reason why that star was obscured that night many months ago: a wandering planet, going about aimlessly through space, was covering its light, while advancing towards Earth. The consensus in the scientific community is that there is no danger because, it seems, the planet — named Melancholia by scientists — will pass by Earth without colliding with us. Since Melancholia is a few times larger than Earth, if a collision were to occur, it would result in the total annihilation of our planet and the end of all life.

As Melancholia approaches, Justine becomes revitalized, but not much. She wants the planet to come. Her sister starts to get very worried and searches the internet for apocalyptic theories, finding some astronomers who disagree with the reassuring scientific consensus. Her husband says there is nothing to fear and thinks that Melancholia's passage through Earth will be a unique spectacle in the history of humanity. In a passage emblematic of the film's inherent pessimism, Justine tells her sister that there is no life outside Earth, that she can feel that we are alone in the universe. Justine says even worse things to her sister: she says that all life is evil and deserves to be eradicated completely from the universe, something she claims Melancholia will do when it collides with our planet.

The day finally comes when the wandering planet will pass Earth and move away. The phenomenon can be seen with the naked eye. Everyone in the house watches the event in amazement and, to Justine's sister's relief, Melancholia begins to drift away. She decides to take a nap. When she wakes up, she no longer finds her husband. She then notices that Melancholia is getting bigger and bigger in the sky, just as the dissident astronomers predicted: first, the wandering planet would pass us by, then return and crash into Earth, killing all life.

She despairs, goes after her husband and finds him dead in the stable, near the horses. In one of his hands is an empty medicine box, which shows that he committed suicide after realizing he was wrong and that the world was really going to end. She then wakes Justine up and they decide to spend the end of the world together in the garden with the boy. Justine teases her nephew, saying that they are protected by a magical tent, while her sister pretends to be calm, but in reality she is completely desperate. The collision occurs and life comes to an end.

The Mist, 2007, directed by Frank Darabont

Adapted from a short story by Stephen King, the film takes place in a small town in the United States. We never know for sure the origin of the mist, but everything indicates that it was a military experiment that resulted in the opening of a passage to another reality, inhabited by grotesque monsters, resembling abominable mixtures of insects, arachnids, crustaceans and everything else we can imagine. These beings seem to come from within the mist that spreads throughout the region, making it incommunicable with the rest of the world.

The story itself follows a group of people who take refuge in a grocery store. Desperate and divided by fanaticism, some humans begin to want to kill others, overcome by an unreasonable religious frenzy. The main characters, whom I will call the “sane group”, including a father (David, played by actor Thomas Jane) and a young son, manage to escape the chaos into one of the cars in the parking lot. By the time they reach the car, only a few of the sane group are left. Led by David, the group drives along the road looking for an end to the mist, but they find only death and destruction, without the possibility of being able to get out of the car, as the monstrous and murderous creatures seem to have taken over the entire planet. There's a huge variety of creatures: some of the monsters are small, others as big as skyscrapers; however, they are all mortal.

Armed with a single revolver and few bullets, the adults decide to commit suicide, while David's son — the only child in the car — sleeps. With the consent of the adults, David then shoots them all, including his son. Desperate, David tries to kill himself, but there are no more bullets in the revolver. He then decides to get out of the car, expecting to be devoured by the monsters, but nothing happens, we just hear a loud noise that gets increasingly louder. Seconds later, we see a huge group of soldiers walking alongside heavily armed armored vehicles and tanks, killing and setting fire to the creatures. Seeing that they were about to be saved, David starts screaming. He also observes a military truck carrying survivors, including some of the religious fanatics who were in the grocery store.

Seven, 1995, directed by David Fincher

New York detective William Somerset (played by Morgan Freeman) is about to retire. But first, he takes on one last case together with a newcomer detective, David Mills (played by Brad Pitt). The case involves a serial killer who murders his victims according to the seven deadly sins. The first victims represent gluttony, avarice, laziness — this one is still alive, but completely incapacitated and condemned to die soon —, lust and pride. Over the course of the investigation, Somerset and Mills become close. Somerset is invited to dinner by Mills and his wife (played by Gwyneth Paltrow). A few days later, she reveals to Somerset that she is pregnant with Mills's child, something Mills does not yet know.

Before the detectives can get any closer and arrest the mysterious killer (played by Kevin Spacey), he hands himself over to the police, walking inside the police station where the detectives are while covered in blood. He is arrested and, through his lawyer, reveals that there are two other victims buried in the middle of nowhere, outside the city. However, the killer will only reveal the location if Somerset and Mills go alone with him to the remote place — a decision that detectives must make in the next few hours or the killer won't reveal the whereabouts of these two victims. Somerset and Mills agree with the proposal, after all, the killer is handcuffed and no longer poses any danger.

Arriving at the remote place, a delivery truck appears on the dirt road leading to their spot. Somerset runs on foot to intercept the truck, leaving Mills to take care of the killer, who is handcuffed and on his knees. The delivery man says he doesn't know anything, just that a guy paid him to bring a box addressed to a “detective Mills” at that remote time and place. Somerset opens the box and notices that inside is the head of Mrs. Mills. The killer set up the whole situation. Somerset rushes to try to disarm Mills, but the killer tells him what he did. He also tells him that his wife was pregnant and that he killed her because he was jealous of the normal life that Mills led — jealousy being one of the deadly sins, he himself must be punished. Somerset tries to convince Mills not to shoot the killer, as that would give him victory, but Mills can't stand it and empties his pistol in the lunatic's head, becoming wrath — the last deadly sin to appear in the story.

The Thing, 1982, directed by John Carpenter

This is a “remake” (in quotation marks, because it is completely different) of The Thing from Another World, from the 1950s. The Thing from Another World is based on the science fiction story titled Who Goes There?, written by John W. Campbell, Jr. In addition to Campbell's original material, John Carpenter was also influenced by H. P. Lovecraft's cosmic horror to make his version. The film takes place at an American scientific research station in Antarctica. In the beginning of the story, we see a helicopter flying over the icy desert. From inside, a man tries to shoot a dog that runs away through the snow. The dog reaches the American station and the helicopter lands. From inside it comes a man shouting in Norwegian, without the Americans understanding. The man starts shooting, trying to hit the dog. One of the shots grazes an American in the leg, and the base commander responds by shooting the Norwegian in the head with a revolver. The helicopter pilot then picks up a grenade and tries to throw it at the Americans, but drops it and dies in the explosion, which also destroys the Norwegian helicopter.

The Americans don't understand what happened and provide shelter to the dog, placing him in the kennel with the other dogs. Some of them then decide to check what happened at the Norwegian base. Although it's not incredibly far, they need a helicopter to fly over there. The pilot is MacReady (played by Kurt Russell). When they get there, the Americans discover the base completely destroyed, some people dead and the semi-charred remains of a being that looks like the fusion of two different people. They bring these bizarre remains and documents back to the American base. As the Americans discover what happened at the Norwegian station, both the dog and the semi-charred remains attack members of the team, killing and assimilating them.

They discover that the Norwegians have unearthed a giant alien spaceship that had been under the ice for hundreds of thousands of years, having crashed there long ago. They also find out that there was an occupant, and that this being has the ability to consume other forms of life, absorbing and imitating them. Paranoia takes over everyone at the base. Men need to remain on guard against the thing at all times. The film sends the message that the universe is extremely hostile and indifferent towards our individuality and also towards the collective desires of our species, since the thing consumes, absorbs and imitates all other forms of animal life that it manages to overpower, even acquiring the memories and intelligence of its prey. In the end, the only way to defeat the creature is to destroy the base and freeze it to death. However, the creature will still be able to survive, as it was buried in a block of ice for hundreds of thousands of years and woke up when the Norwegians dug it up.

Alien 3, 1992, directed by David Fincher

This is the first film that David Fincher ever directed, and we can already notice in it the dark tones that would permeate his other works, such as Seven. Unfortunately, Alien 3 disappointed most fans of the previous two films, mainly because they felt betrayed when they saw such a sad outcome for beloved characters like Ripley, Lieutenant Hicks, the android Bishop and the girl Newt. However, the film is consistent with the universe in which the first two films take place. In the first, we discover that the all-powerful Weyland-Yutani corporation forced the space freighter Nostromo to bring the creature back to Earth because they considered it extremely valuable, disregarding the lives of the crew. Ripley, the only survivor of the Nostromo, slept inside a cryogenic pod for 50 years until she was found by a rescue team. She discovers that her daughter has already grown up and died and, to make her situation even worse, the corporation claims that it will hold her responsible for the loss of the cargo, since she blew up the Nostromo and fled on an escape pod.

The corporation's alternative for Ripley is to go with a team of marines to a colony that is terraforming the same planetoid on which the Nostromo found the eggs that produced the first creature By doing that, they won't hold her responsible. This is the premise of the second film, Aliens. When they arrive on the planetoid, things ultimately go wrong. In the end, only Ripley, Hicks, Bishop and Newt are left, with Newt being the only one of the colonists who makes it out alive. On the return trip to Earth, they all enter cryogenic pods, just as Ripley did at the end of the first film.

At the beginning of the third film, the ship they were on, the Sulaco, has a fire and the crew module is automatically ejected into a planet that serves as a prison colony. In the fall, Hicks and Newt die, and Bishop is extremely damaged (even more than he was at the end of the second film). Ripley survives and discovers that the queen creature brought eggs into the Sulaco before the battle at the end of Aliens. One of these eggs opened while they slept and its parasite caused a fire by breaking through the pod where Ripley was asleep. Another egg remained closed and opened when the dog of one of the prisoners at the penal colony approached — the creature in Alien 3, unlike the other two films, is gestated inside a dog (in the extended version, it is an ox that serves as host).

Through medical imaging equipment, Ripley discovers that she carries a creature inside her — which will invariably kill her when it exits through her rib cage. Furthermore, she needs to fight with the help of the prisoners of the penal colony against the other creature that has already been “born”. As if all these problems weren't enough, Ripley discovers that the corporation — which owns the penal colony — knows that she is infected with a creature and has sent a team to rescue it.

Right at the beginning of Alien 3, we see Ripley's sadness over Hicks' death and, especially, over the loss of Newt, to whom she had become attached during the events in Aliens. In Alien 3, there is a fight against time to kill the creature that is loose in the colony and, later, for Ripley to commit suicide, destroying the creature inside her. Her goal is to thwart Weyland-Yutani's plans. Victory, in this film, is the defeat of the corporation, and for that to happen, all the creatures need to be incinerated, which means that Ripley will also have to die. In the end, however, the corporation remains all-powerful. Little changes, apart from the fact that now Weyland-Yutani will no longer be able to use that extremely dangerous life form.

Angel Heart, 1987, directed by Alan Parker

At the beginning of this neo-noir film, which takes place in the 1950s, we see private detective Harold Angel (Mikey Rourke) being hired by the mysterious Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro). His job is to go after an old singer from the 1940s called Johnny Favorite. Favorite had disappeared from the map and left behind a large debt to Cyphre. As he unravels what happened to Favorite, Angel starts to have memories of things that he has no idea where they came from. Apparently, Favorite went to World War II and suffered severe head trauma, to the point where he forgot everything that had happened to him. He was hospitalized for many years in a hospital paid for with money from rich friends, but disappeared from the hospital at a certain point. Clues lead Angel from New York to New Orleans, where he discovers that Favorite was involved in satanic rituals and had participated in human sacrifice to achieve fame and success as a singer.

To carry out the ritual, Favorite and his New Orleans cronies kidnapped a young American soldier who was celebrating the New Year in New York City. The soldier's name was Harold Angel. Favorite ate not only Angel's heart, but took his soul, acquiring his memories. He became a famous singer, but was called up to serve in the war, where he was injured and forgot everything that had happened. He no longer remembered being a singer, being Favorite, or the rituals they performed. He believed himself to be Harold Angel and became a private detective. At the end of the film, having discovered this, Angel/Favorite realizes that he is completely lost and that there is nothing he can do to escape the debt he owes to Louis Cyphre, a figure he discovers is the Devil, Lucifer. Harold Angel/Johnny Favorite's soul will burn in hell forever. All he can do is cry.

Blade Runner, 1982, directed by Ridley Scott

Based on the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. In the film, we follow Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a “blade runner”, a detective whose job is to find and “retire” (i.e. destroy) biological robots known as “replicants”. The replicants, made by Eldon Tyrell's corporation, are used in various jobs considered dangerous for humans outside the planet, in exploration colonies. At the beginning of the film, Deckard's bosses demand a job from him: find four replicants who came to Earth illegally. Their names are: Leon, Zhora, Pris and Roy Batty (played by Rutger Hauer). As the story progresses, Deckard becomes romantically involved with a new replicant, created by Tyrell with false memories of a life she never had, which makes her believe she is human.

The four replicants who came to Earth discover that they have few years to live and that their time is running out. One of them, Roy Batty, goes to Tyrell with the help of one of the human scientists working at the corporation. Batty asks Tyrell to give him more time to live, something Tyrell says is impossible. Batty then kills Tyrell. At the end of the film, Deckard manages to eliminate all the replicants, but is almost killed by Roy Batty, who is starting to fail because his lifespan is almost up. Despite this, Deckard is much weaker than Batty. He tries to escape the confrontation by jumping from the terrace of the building they are in to a neighboring building, but ends up hanging from the roof. Batty manages to jump between the two buildings without difficulty and saves Deckard, who was about to fall. Injured, Deckard sits and listens to the replicant's death speech. Batty says that all the fantastic memories he has of space and his adventures will be lost like tears in the rain. His last words are: time to die.

The Fly, 1986, directed by David Cronenberg

The film shows us a brilliant and eccentric scientist, Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum), inventor of a machine capable of instantly teleporting things between two pods connected only by a few wires. At first, he has difficulty teleporting organic matter, which always comes out extremely deformed and damaged in the second pod. Brundle becomes romantically involved with a reporter, Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis), and finally manages to solve the issue. She witnesses him teleport a monkey that emerges safe and sound in the second pod. The next step is to test the process with humans. However, after a fight with Veronica, he decides to test the teleportation pod alone, becoming the first human being to go through the process. What he doesn't notice, but we in the audience notice, is that a fly entered the pod with him.

Throughout the film, we see Brundle slowly metamorphosing into a hybrid creature, we see his despair when he discovers that his DNA has been fused with that of the fly, a process he is unable to reverse. To make things even worse, Veronica discovers she is pregnant. Unsure whether she conceived before or after Brundle's genetic fusion with the fly, she decides to have an abortion. Brundle, who has acquired extraordinary strength and the ability to stick to walls, kidnaps Veronica before she can undergo the procedure. Crying, he begs her not to abort the fetus, as their child will be the only thing he will have left behind in the world. This film has one of the saddest (and terribly grotesque) endings of all time, when the metamorphosis is complete and the man, now without the ability to speak, tries to drag Veronica into the pod, with the aim of merging her and him into one disgusting organism.

The feat doesn't happen because a friend of Veronica's, who had already been injured by the creature, shoots the teleportation pod's wiring with a shotgun, which allows Veronica to escape before the teleportation takes place. The monster, however, is unable to fully escape the first pod and is teleported along with a piece of the door to the second pod. Agonizing in pain after being fused to a piece of the first pod's door, the creature slowly crawls on the ground and approaches Veronica, who now holds the shotgun. The monster then uses one of its paws to point the shotgun at its own head. At first, Veronica cries and refuses to kill him, but Brundle-fly repeats the gesture. Veronica then blows her beloved brains out.

Martyrs, 2008, directed by Pascal Laugier

In the 1970s, a girl named Lucie escapes from an abandoned slaughterhouse where she had been imprisoned for a year and where she was subjected to torture perpetrated by a mysterious group of people. After escaping, she is rescued and sent to an orphanage. There, she befriends Anna, the only person who realizes that Lucie believes she is being stalked by a bizarre supernatural apparition. The film jumps fifteen years into the future and we see Lucie breaking into the home of a seemingly normal family and killing everyone with a shotgun. She calls Anna, who goes to the place and is horrified by what her friend did. For Lucie, that family was responsible for what had happened to her as a child, even though she had no way of proving it. She believed that she would be able to free herself from the supernatural visions that attacked her after she killed them, but she was wrong. The creature attacks her again. Anna, however, only sees Lucie harming herself. Lucie, realizing that she will never be free from her torments, commits suicide.

Anna, in shock, stays in the house until the next day, when she hears strange noises and discovers a secret passage to a complex that exists beneath the house and extends far away. There, Anna finds a young woman imprisoned, with clear signs of torture on her body, which proves that Lucie was right about the family. Before she can help the poor girl escape, a group appears, kills the prisoner and imprisons Anna in the dungeon. An older woman, who everyone refers to as Mademoiselle, comes to Anna and explains to her what is happening: they are part of a philosophical organization that seeks to understand what happens to us after death. Over the years, the organization has noticed that certain people, while dying in extreme agony, seem to see the other side of death, in a kind of ecstasy caused by pain. The group, led by Mademoiselle, tries to produce this effect on their victims, whom they call “martyrs”.

The organization subjects Anna to various forms of physical violence for months, until the moment when she appears to begin seeing supernatural visions. From that point on, the torturers skin Anna alive, tearing off all her skin with sharp objects. Anna, dying, begins to stare at a point, in the same way that the martyrs sought after by the organization do. Mademoiselle is quickly called to hear what Anna has to say about the afterlife. At this point, Anna is only able to whisper in the ear of the old Mademoiselle, who she listens attentively. Anna dies, and the organization throws a big event to finally reveal her secret in a mansion. While everyone is gathering in the hall of the mansion, Mademoiselle talks to one of her lackeys through the bathroom door. She asks him if he can imagine what happens after death. He replies no, to which she replies: “keep doubting”. Mademoiselle then commits suicide by shooting herself in the mouth with a revolver.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1978, directed by Philip Kaufman

This film is a remake of another film of the same name, from 1956, which in turn is based on a book with the same title. The story revolves around Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams), a scientist who works at the San Francisco Department of Health, and Matthew Bonnell (Donald Sutherland), her colleague at the Department. Elizabeth discovers a flower with a different fragrance among the local flora and brings a specimen home. What she doesn't know is that the flower was produced by a bizarre gelatinous cocoon that attached itself to the local flora after coming from space, fleeing its planet, which was about to die. She goes back to the apartment she shares with her boyfriend, puts the flower in a vase and they go to sleep. The next day, she notices that her boyfriend is acting strangely, distantly, without showing emotions. She then talks to Matthew, and they both decide to talk to Matthew's psychiatrist, David Kibner (Leonard Nimoy). David says she shouldn't worry, that maybe it's time for her to break up with her boyfriend, which she does.

In the midst of all this, Matthew receives a call from his friend, Jack Bellic (Jeff Goldblum), asking him to investigate a gelatinous body that resembles his own, which was found in his wife, Nancy's (Veronica Cartwright) spa. Matthew senses that something terrible is happening in the city, and rushes to warn Elizabeth. He arrives at her apartment and saves her from being killed and duplicated in her sleep by one of the alien pods. The two flee from there, leaving her half-formed body in the apartment. They bring the police, but when they arrive, the body is gone. The group of friends realizes that the city is gradually being duplicated by cocoons while people sleep. The replicas have the appearance and memories of the original humans, but are devoid of emotion. The four try to escape the city, but the police, who are already undercover, end up chasing them, tracking them through the phones they use. At a certain point, during a chase, the couples (Matthew and Elizabeth, Jack and Nancy) get separated, and Jack is captured. Matthew and Elizabeth go to the Department of Health, but there they are captured by Jack and David, both transformed.

They manage to kill Jack's copy and trap David inside a body freezer, and later find Nancy, who is still human. Nancy tells them that she discovered a trick to avoid attracting attention: pretending not to have emotions among other “people”. The three then try to get into transport that is leaving the city for other places, but at that moment, a dog with a human head (the result of a single cocoon sucking the life out of a beggar and his dog at once) appears near them and Elizabeth lets out a scream, which alerts all the aliens around her that she is human. Matthew then grabs Elizabeth and the two run away. Nancy manages to disguise herself and stays behind. The couple goes to the city pier to try to find a boat to escape from there. There they notice that there are ships being loaded with cocoons to be taken around the world. Matthew leaves Elizabeth to look for a boat, and when he returns, he sees her body falling apart, turning to dust. Elizabeth fell asleep while she was waiting for him and was duplicated by a cocoon, which was in the woods. Elizabeth's replica then stands up and tells Matthew not to fear, that it's better this way. He then runs away and hides.

Days later, we see Matthew walking in a city. He watches children being taken away in trucks to be duplicated. Virtually all adults have been duplicated and are, in fact, aliens. Nancy ends up seeing him in the middle of a square while he was walking and tries to whisper to him, to tell him that she was still human. He turns to her and lets out a scream characteristic to the aliens, alerting everyone else that Nancy is human.

The Empty Man, 2020, directed by David Prior

In addition to directing, Prior (who worked for years with David Fincher) also wrote the film's script. The Empty Man “borrows” the title from a comic series, but is somewhat different from it. Prior's saga of managing to release his film amid the sale of Fox to Disney is in itself a long and sad story, too big to include here, but worth researching. So let's go to the film.

In 1995, two couples of friends, Greg, Fiona, Ruthie and Paul, are hiking in the mountains of Bhutan, when Paul is attracted by a sound and ends up falling into a crevice in the rock. Greg goes down into the cave to rescue Paul and finds him in a trance in front of a bizarre skeleton. After the rescue, everyone takes shelter from a blizzard in an abandoned house nearby. During the night, while everyone sleeps, Paul whispers a sinister mantra in Ruthie's ear. On the third day, Paul disappears. The friends find him in the lotus position in front of a precarious bridge, which stretches over a huge precipice. While Greg and Fiona argue, Ruthie goes into a trance, stabs Greg and Fiona and throws them off the cliff, still alive. Afterwards, Ruthie also jumps in.

In 2018, we follow former police officer James Lasombra, who lost his wife and son in a car accident a year earlier. During the accident, he was cheating on his wife with his neighbor, Nora, Amanda's mother. James has a brief conversation with Amanda, and later that same day, Nora calls to say that Amanda has disappeared, leaving only the phrase “the empty man made me do it” written in blood in the bathroom. James discovers that several of Amanda's friends have also disappeared. Following the clues, James ends up finding them dead, in an apparent suicide, hanging under a bridge. Only Amanda is not there. All the young people were participating in a mysterious cult at a place called the Pontifex Institute.

James goes to the institute's city offices and the institute's retreat in the remote countryside. In these places, he discovers that this sect has existed for decades and aims to conjure a man through the power of group mentalization, a manifestation they call “tulpa”. Several attempts fail. One of them was recorded on video and shows the tulpa driving himself and the Pontifex Institute cultists crazy, leading to everyone's death. James discovers that the institute has detailed files about his life but, to his surprise, all the information about him is clippings and photos of other people's lives. He follows cultists to a hospital and there discovers a man who has been in a coma for a long time being worshiped by the institute's members. The man in a coma is Paul, who was possessed at the beginning of the film by the macabre entity in the mountains of Bhutan.

The entity uses bodies to convey its message of nihilistic madness to cultists. James discovers Amanda in the hospital, and she informs him that he is a tulpa, a physical manifestation created through the sect's mentalization just three days ago, to serve as a new vehicle for the entity. As the vehicles end up succumbing to a deep coma after a short time with the entity inhabiting them, and as it takes a long time between one vehicle and another, the Pontifex Institute decided to create a tulpa, an empty man, to serve as a receptacle and accelerate the incarnation of the entity. James, discovering that his life is a lie, succumbs to the entity, who takes possession of his body. It then shoots Paul in the head. Outside the hospital room, several cultists kneel to “James”.

Winter Light (Nattvardsgästerna), 1962, directed by Ingmar Bergman

At the beginning of the film, we see a Lutheran pastor and widower, Tomas Ericsson, finishing a mid-day service in a Swedish village. Among those present are Marta, who dated Tomas after the death of his wife, Jonas Persson (Max von Sydow), a fisherman and Karin, his wife, who is pregnant with another child. In addition to them are the slovenly organist, Fredrik, and the sacristan, Algot. After everyone has received communion and the service is over, Karin takes Jonas to talk to Tomas. She reveals that Jonas is depressed and frightened by the state of things in the world, something made even worse after he learned that China was close to building an atomic bomb. The three talk quickly, but Karin and Tomas make Jonas promise to return in half an hour so the pastor can talk with him alone. After the couple leaves, Marta enters the office to console Tomas, asking if he had read the letter she sent. He says no and says he doesn't know if he can help Jonas, since he is as depressed and faithless as he is. Marta leaves the room and Tomas reads his letter.

In the letter, Marta talks about the neglect with which Tomas treated her after she developed a severe skin irritation and that Tomas' prayers and faith did not help her at all. She also talks about how she grew up being loved and cherished in a family that didn't care about religion. After Tomas finishes reading the letter, he dozes off, but Jonas returns and he wakes up. Tomas initially tries to advise Jonas, but ends up confessing that he also has no faith and feels abandoned by God. He tells Jonas that, when he was still a young pastor, he was in Lisbon during the Spanish civil war and was unable to reconcile the image of a benevolent God with the atrocities he witnessed — so he decided to ignore all of it. He ends by saying that the world becomes intelligible only when we deny the existence of God, because then the cruelty of existence does not need to be explained: it just happens, without a reason.

Jonas leaves, while Tomas ponders whether he has actually been abandoned by God. He collapses crying in front of the altar of the small church and is embraced by Marta, who was still there. Tomas says that he tried until the last moment to see if God would send him a light, but nothing came, and that now he is free. Marta starts kissing him, but he doesn't return her affection. The two are interrupted by an elderly woman who arrives at the church to tell them that Jonas had just committed suicide, blowing his brains out with his rifle. He goes to the scene and talks to the police officers who are there. Afterwards, he takes Marta by car to her house, where he insults her, saying that he hates her, and that the only woman he loved was his late wife, who understood him. They then go to Jonas' house to tell Karin that her husband had killed himself.

Afterwards, they go to the neighboring village, so that Tomas can celebrate the three o'clock service. Only Fredrik and Algot are there. Algot speaks alone with Tomas and states that much is said about Jesus' physical suffering, which for him was short-lived, and little is said about his mental or spiritual suffering. As examples, he recalls that his disciples constantly disobeyed him and did not understand his teachings, in addition to denying him when he was finally arrested. To make matters worse, Algot remembers that, stuck on the cross, Jesus cried out to God and received silence in return. He asks Tomas if God's silence is not worse than the physical pain he suffered, to which Tomas responds yes. Meanwhile, Fredrik tells Marta that the best thing she can do is leave that godforsaken place and live a good life abroad, without having her dreams destroyed like all the locals.

Under the Skin, 2013, directed by Jonathan Glazer

The film follows an alien protagonist (played by Scarlett Johansson) who disguises herself as a human to capture men who are slowly killed and consumed by being submerged in a bizarre liquid. Throughout the story, we see her driving around the streets of Scotland in a van, seducing drunken men looking for an adventure, only to take them to the place where they will be killed and have their nutrients extracted. In addition to her, there is another alien, disguised as a man, who monitors her activities while riding a motorcycle.

In a certain scene, the alien is on a remote beach. There is a surfer, who she talks to, trying to attract him, and a couple with a baby. The parents go for a swim, leaving the baby on the sand, but end up being swept away by the rough sea. The surfer, seeing the commotion, runs to try to save the couple. He manages to rescue his father, but the father, desperate, goes back into the water to try to save his wife and they both drown. The surfer, tired from the effort, lies down on the sand. The alien picks up a rock and hits him hard on the head, making him faint — or die. She drags his body to the van, ignoring the baby crying alone on the beach, next to the rough sea.

Further on, she seduces a lonely man with facial deformities. She takes him to the same mysterious place where the other men were submerged in the liquid and consumed. But, before the deformed man is completely submerged, she feels sorry for him and sends him away on foot. He walks without clothes to his house in the early hours of the morning. The alien on the motorcycle intercepts and captures him, placing him in a car. He then reunites with three other alien on motorcycles and they all go in search of the woman alien, who flees through the Scottish countryside. Having developed a certain empathy for humanity and for her own disguise as a human, she goes through some banal experiences, such as trying to eat and interact with a man, all without success.

Walking alone on a trail, she passes a truck driver. When the weather gets worse, she goes into a public shelter and sleeps. She wakes up to the truck driver trying to molest her and runs away. The truck driver catches up with her and tries to rape her, but ends up ripping off her human skin. Afraid, he runs towards her truck. Meanwhile, the alien, now partially stripped of her human skin, looks at it, while the mechanical human face looks back. Paralyzed, she doesn't notice that the truck driver has returned with a gallon of fuel. He pours the liquid on the alien and lights the fire, burning her alive. The biker appears in another location, without knowing what happened to her.

The Last Exorcism, 2010, dirigido por Daniel Stamm

Charismatic pastor Cotton Marcus has served his father's church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, since he was a boy. However, since the birth of his son, who has a hearing impairment, he has lost faith in God. Furthermore, since he read about how children died during exorcisms performed around the world, he was inspired to prove that exorcisms are fake. To do this, he is accompanied by a small team of documentary filmmakers, the couple Daniel and Iris. Both Cotton and his father — who, unlike Cotton, has not lost his faith and still believes in demonic possession — have performed numerous exorcism rituals in the past, therefore they are famous in the region. Cotton's father even shows a medieval manuscript that catalogs various demons and how to exorcise them.

After checking the post office for requests for help sent by letter, Cotton agrees to perform the exorcism on young Nell, daughter of Louis Sweetzer, a fundamentalist Christian farmer who lives semi-isolated in Louisiana. Cotton's and his team's objective is to perform the exorcism in such a way that they show that it was all just psychological suggestions and that, deep down, Nell had a psychological problem that was exacerbated by her father's religious fanaticism. On the road to the Sweetzer farm, Cotton points out, sometimes hilariously, how Louisiana is a poor, backward, and rather superstitious state.

At first, Nell's father Louis is wary of cameras. He isolated himself from the local Protestant church, led by Pastor Manley, after the death of his wife and decided to educate his own children because he did not like secular influences. Nell's brother, Caleb, is even more hostile, telling Cotton and the documentary filmmakers to get out of there, which angers his father, who scolds him. After several attempts and violent reactions from Nell, Pastor Cotton manages to make her admit that she is suffering from deep sadness and does not know how to act because she lost her virginity and is pregnant after going to a secret party. The child's father is a boy the same age as Nell, named Logan. Louis finally accepts the truth and allows Nell to return to Pastor Manley's church, which goes to Louis's residence, where the two make peace.

Cotton and the documentary filmmakers begin to leave, satisfied that the whole problem was caused by religious fanaticism and isolation. They believe that by following a normal and welcoming church, Nell will have more support and openness to the world. The group stops to eat at a roadside restaurant. There, they talk to Logan, the boy who supposedly got Nell pregnant. He says that he only met her once at a party at Pastor Manley's house, months ago, and that he is gay and would never be interested in Nell. Suspicious, Cotton and the documentary filmmakers return to the Sweetzer residence and find it vandalized, without power and full of satanic paintings. They see a group in the middle of the woods performing a satanic ritual, led by Manley. Louis is imprisoned and Nell gives birth to a demonic baby, which is thrown into the fire by Manley.

The bonfire begins to grow and take shape. The two documentary filmmakers, scared, want to run away, while Cotton's faith is restored and he tries to run towards the bonfire to face the demon, only to be taken over by the fire. Members of the sect, including Caleb, Nell's brother, run after the documentary filmmakers and kill them with axes and other sharp objects. God is nowhere to be found — and if he is, he has clearly abandoned everyone there.

Vivarium, 2019, directed by Lorcan Finnegan

Tom, a gardener, and Gemma, a kindergarten teacher, are looking for a house to buy. Their plan is to have children after they buy a good house. One afternoon, they go to a brokerage firm and find a single employee, a strange man named Martin. Martin talks to them about Yonder, a type of suburb development full of standardized houses. At first, Tom and Gemma don't want to go see the house in person right then and there, but Martin seduces them with his strangeness. They think: what harm will it do?

Martin makes them follow his car to where Yonder is and shows the house to Tom and Gemma, who like it, but don't decide anything. However, after talking in the back yard of the house, Tom and Gemma notice that Martin left them there alone. When they come out in front of the house, they see no sign of Martin's car and are outraged. They try for hours to leave Yonder, but no matter which route they take through the streets of the neighborhood, they end up back to the same house. The car eventually runs out of fuel and dies. With nothing to do, they sleep in the house.

The next day, they try to walk to the end of Yonder, but Yonder seems to have no end, and they always return to the same house. Outraged by this, Tom sets fire to the house, and they sleep outside. When they wake up, they notice the house intact, much to their dismay. A box is left with a baby inside, with instructions that say they must raise it and then be released. Over time, other boxes arrive with food and to pick up trash, but they are never able to be present when the boxes are dropped off or picked up, events that only occur when they aren't looking.

Although seemingly normal, the baby grows much faster than a human child. In a matter of months he is already a boy who looks to be six years old. He is strange. Every now and then he watches weird symbols with deafening audio coming from the living room television. Eventually, he starts going out for a few hours every day. The child gets a notebook, which Gemma looks at and sees strange symbols. One day, Gemma asks him to imitate the man he meets when he mysteriously leaves for a few hours, and the boy starts making bizarre sounds while his throat becomes deformed, showing that he is not human at all.

Tom wants to kill the boy, but Gemma won't allow it. But as months pass, Gemma regrets it, as the boy becomes a young adult, capable of defending himself if necessary. He dresses like Martin, the broker who took them to Yonder, and has a very similar physical appearance, only younger. Basically, the couple's job is to raise the baby of this strange species. However, contrary to what was promised, they are not freed, but remain there until they die, shortly after the creature reaches adulthood. Gemma even gets to see other couples imprisoned in other complexes like the one she is in, but it is all in vain. On her deathbed, when asking the creature what is the role of a mother, the creature responds: to raise the boy. She asks what happens after, to which he responds: “she dies”.

After they are dead, the boy-creature goes to the same brokerage from the beginning of the film, where he finds an old and decrepit Martin, on the verge of death. Martin dies, and a new Martin takes his place. A couple enters the brokerage.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, 2018, directed by the Coen brothers

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a film made up of short stories set in the old American West. Here, I will talk about the third of these stories. Titled Meal Ticket, the story follows two men, one older and taller (played by Liam Neeson), and the other younger and disabled, having been born without legs and arms, which makes him totally dependent on others to survive. We don't know the relationship between the two, although at one point the tall man says he found him on the streets of England years ago.

They are itinerant artists, who go from one small town to other in the American West, travelling in a small wagon driven by the tall man. The young disabled man presents himself, reciting poems by Percy Shelley and speeches by former presidents of the United States. At first, everything seems to be going well, and they gather relatively large audiences in town squares. After each performance, the tall man passes by with his hat in hand, collecting change from anyone who wants to give it.

However, over time, audiences decrease. The tall man starts drinking more and getting irritated with having to feed, clean and help the boy perform his necessaries. One night, the tall man sees other traveling performers with a large audience. They are showing a chicken supposedly capable of giving the answer to mathematical calculations. He waits for the show to end and buys the chicken, without realizing that it was all a cheap trick.

Sometime goes by. Eventually, while travelling on a deserted dirt road between icy and snow-covered mountains, the tall man stops the cart next to a bridge that crosses a river. He silently walks to the edge of the bridge, where he throws a heavy stone. Meanwhile, the poor disabled boy watches, saying nothing. After seeing the stone disappear into the river, the tall man looks at the cart and begins to walk slowly. The two look at each other: the young man without arms and legs has watery eyes while the tall man has a disconcerted smile. The next scene shows the tall man driving the cart across a snowy plain, carrying only the chicken.

Cabinet of Curiosities, 2022, series directed by several directors and presented by Guillermo del Toro

While not exactly a film, an exception must be made for one of the stories contained in this series presented by Guillermo del Toro. All the episodes were very bad, except one, which is excellent. This episode was directed by the same director who helmed The Empty Man. The episode is titled The Autopsy. This story takes place sometime in the 1970s or 1980s. In it, we follow pathologist Carl (played brilliantly by F. Murray Abraham), who goes to a small American town at the request of his old friend, Sheriff Natan, to perform the autopsy of miners who had been buried due to an apparent explosion.

In addition to the criminal investigation, the possibility of the mining company's insurance company not paying for lost lives is at stake. Carl needs to determine the cause of the miners' deaths. Before the procedure starts, Natan tells him the story of how it all happened. He and the police in the region were investigating missing people, which ended up becoming a homicide investigation when they found a body that looked like it was being slowly devoured by a butcher. They discover that the culprit was a miner named Joe Allen. In his apartment, the police found a strange, hairy sphere the size of a basketball and placed it in the squad car, after discovering that Allen will be at a local mine in a few minutes for work. The strange sphere had been picked up by Allen in the forest after a meteor shower.

Arriving the mine, the police approach Allen, who breaks the squad car's window, takes the sphere in his arms and jumps into the coal mine. The explosion follows shortly thereafter. In it, Allen and other workers die. On their way to the morgue, Carl reveals that he has terminal cancer and has six months to live. Natan leaves Carl at the morgue for the night to perform the autopsies and try to solve the mystery of the explosion. Carl investigates three of the bodies, noting that two of them, those closest to Allen, did not die from asphyxiation after being buried, but appeared to have had their blood sucked out through a hole made in their chest. The entire procedure is recorded on an audio tape for Natan to listen to afterwards.

After investigating the first three bodies, Allen's body comes back to life and straps Carl to one of the gurneys. He explains that he is from an alien species that, over the eons, has adapted to parasitize other life forms. These beings are small and horrible, lacking good sensory ability. They only have small tentacles that they use to pilot their ship — the sphere — and enter the bodies of their victims through their feeding holes. They use their hosts' bodies to feel pleasure and feed. Now that Allen's body is dead, it needs a new host: doctor Carl.

However, when carrying out the transfer, the creature becomes temporarily vulnerable. Carl manages to grab the scalpel, but because his hands are tied near his head, he is unable to stab the alien, who is trying to enter his body through a cut he made in his abdomen. Carl then stabs his own eyes, ears, and slits his throat so that he can no longer speak. He writes on his chest, in blood: “listen to the tape and burn me”. The creature internally communicates with Carl, who laughs, saying it vandalized his body. Carl ends up bleeding to death and Natan finds him the next morning. The ending suggests that Natan listened to the tape and incinerated his friend's body, destroying the fragile creature.

by Fernando Olszewski