Father’s Day (2012) & In My Skin (2003)
I’ve been doing ‘Best of’ lists for decades now and I honestly can’t recall if I’ve ever had a tie before, but I absolutely could not leave either of these jaw-dropping horror films off this entry. Both Father’s Day (not the Robin Williams/Billy Crystal joint, though hilarious in a very different way) and In My Skin (not to be confused with Under the Skin or The Skin I Live In) provided more vocalized “Oh my God!” and “Holy shit!” moments than the previous twenty horror films I’ve seen combined.
Before diving into either film, let get this straight right off the bat; these films are NOT for everyone. If your love of horror films consists of rushing out to go see Us, A Quiet Place, Hereditary, The Babadook or The Witch, balanced out with a healthy dose of 80’s and 90’s throwback love, you may find yourself utterly horrified at what lies before your eyes, and not in ‘The Exorcist and The Shining were super scary’ type of way.
I tend to gauge how shocking or bloody disgusting a horror film is by my wife, Charlotte’s, reaction to them. She is made of much stronger steel than I. You could often find me holding my hand in front of my face, squinting through the sliver of space between my fingers, shielding myself from jump scares or brutal violence/gore. Charlotte can watch these scenes in the same way as if she were watching a home improvement show. I have never, in all my days, seen the cacophony of shocked and repulsed expressions cross her face as with these two films.
Let’s start with Father’s Day then, shall we. Oh man…where to begin… The setup for this Canadian import, written and directed by Astron-6, a group of, ironically, five Winnipeg artists (kind of like Ben Folds Five is actually three) who produce low-budget horror comedies, is like the opening of a bad joke: What happens when a one-eyed white dude named Ahab, a gay male prostitute and a priest set off on the trail of a father rapist? As in he only rapes fathers. Made even more ludicrous, and setting the stage for how serious we are meant to take the film, is that the rapist in question is known only as The Fuchman, pronounced exactly how you think it is.
I know what you’re probably thinking. How much comedic mileage can you get out of rape? In real life, obviously none, it’s a crime that should be punishable by the guillotine in my opinion. And this doesn’t even take into account the host of other ultra-taboo topics Astron-6 sets up on a tee and kicks in our face. But this film is presented in such a bizarre, surreal, almost hyper-cartoonish fashion that it would be a feat in itself to take it seriously. I mean, there are actual monsters and interstellar travel thrown in for good mix.
The visual style of Father’s Day is something that I can only describe as…Winnipegian? So not a word, but have you ever seen a Guy Maddin film? He is also from Winnipeg, and you will find that some of his films (see “The Saddest Music in the World”) also employee this colorful, expressionistic, untraditional approach. There’s something about this otherworldly filmmaking that keeps us so distanced from the nauseating subject matter that it allows us to keep watching. Well, some of us I should say. Because I’m not sure that I know more than a handful of people that I could imagine getting through this film.
Charlotte and I found ourselves turning to each other every other five minutes with eyes wide open and jaws falling towards the ground, absolutely unable to believe what we were witnessing. I mean, seriously, there is some shit in this film that will never leave your memory, no matter how badly you might want it to. And there’s something to this kind of effect in the world of fiction cinema, not always good to be sure, but I can’t think about this film without grinning, or mention anything about it to Charlotte, without us both laughing and shaking our heads.
Now, onto to a wholly different kind of jaw-dropping horror movie, and this one with not a single guilty laugh to be found. In My Skin, written, directed and starring French artist Marina de Van, is dark, confrontational and alarmingly realistic film. de Van (how does one go about starting a sentence with a lower case ‘de’?) plays Esther, a young woman with a growingly successful job, a handsome and devoted boyfriend and a host of friends.
One night at one of her colleagues house parties, Esther finds herself meandering out in the unlit backyard, seemingly bored with the goings on inside, and stumbles and falls to the ground, cutting her leg on a jagged piece of scrap metal. Based on her reaction, we’re led to believe that it couldn’t possibly have been that bad of injury, but when she heads back inside the house and walks up to the bathroom we see blood dripping down rather fluidly from her leg. When she lifts her pant leg, a giant gash is revealed, yes she still seems nonplussed by it.
After heading out to a bar, completely ignoring her injury, Esther eventually finds herself at the doctor. We get the sense that she is only there because she thinks she probably ‘should’ be there, not because she’s in any pain or fears an infection. Up until this point in the movie (still very early on), I was confounded by this woman’s non-reaction to this gruesome wound, thinking perhaps it was just really bad acting and that she was supposed to be in pain. But after a series of tests rendered the doctor equally as confused as to why she was having little to no reaction, I had my ‘ahhh’ moment.
The next day, soaking in a bath, we see how fascinated Esther becomes not only with her wound, but all of her skin, touching it, playing with it, experimenting with it. Now, if you find your grossed out at this point in the film, wondering if you can take any more, I highly suggest you stop watching, because what follows is without question the most stomach churning experience I’ve ever had watching a film. Let me put it this way, it makes the body horror of Raw (2017), the brilliant first feature by French filmmaker Julia Ducournau, look like a fucking Disney film.
de Van (again! I feel it would be wrong to capitalize) strips away almost every aspect of filmmaking that tells the viewer they are watching a film, score, fast edits, fish eye lenses, stylized sets or costumes, leaving us with nothing but a voyeuristic view through a glass window of Esther’s slow decent, and the results are almost unwatchable. I literally felt sick for the first time in my life watching a horror film, and Charlotte adopted a face of disgust on numerous occasions, even turning away from the screen, an act I’ve never seen her perform.
So, why on earth would I recommend either of these films to you? Because out of the thousands and thousands of films I’ve seen in my life, and the deep sea diving into the world of horror cinema Charlotte and I have been doing for years, both films offered me an experience I have never had before. The fact that I watched both Father’s Day and In My Skin in the same month is just fluke chance.
If you decide to watch both movies in the same evening (best of luck with that), I implore you to watch In My Skin first. Because no matter how guilty the laughs may be, you’re gonna need them.
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