Creature 2013

The poor child was now all alone in the great forest, and she was so afraid that she just looked at all the leaves on the trees and did not know what to do. Then she began to run. She ran over sharp stones and through thorns, and wild animals jumped at her, but they did her no harm. She ran as far as her feet could carry her, and just as evening was about to fall she saw a little house and went inside in order to rest.

~ The Brothers Grimm, 1812.

The human mind is an amazing thing. We do not control it; it controls us. It hides memories; distorts events; lays a warm, fuzzy patina over recollections, making them seem much more idyllic than they really were. And when provoked, it can and will turn on you faster than a wasps’ nest into which you have stupidly stuck your bare hand. The brain is a machine, always vigilant, without emotion, doing its damned best to protect us from ourselves by burying the worst things deep into the black soil of our subconscious. Sometimes they stay buried. But it is human nature to go digging around in the forbidden zone, poking with sticks the bloated, maggoty remains of a memory that was better off left alone.

Such a person is Natalya (Daniela Melin), an innocent, pixie-faced maiden dressed in white, a 21st century Schneewittchen if ever there was one. Driven into the woods by the shattered kaleidoscope of her childhood memories, she stumbles upon a little house, standing forlorn and forgotten amongst the sinister overgrowth. But there are no dwarves within to shield her from harm, and there sure as hell ain’t no prince scheduled to pass by and save her. Within the house – little more than a weed-strangled shed, truth be told – are the rotting memories that should have been left for the flies.

Rejecting the sound, sane advice of her big sister – who fears that Natalya is being slowly consumed by the insanity that lurks within their bloodline – Natalya exiles herself to the dark woods, imprisoning herself within the dilapidated shed and seemingly offering herself as a sacrifice to whatever may lurk within. But although there are poison apples aplenty in this morbid fairy tale, there is no savior prince. And the Creature in the shadows, rising up from the putrid depths of her buried memories, cannot be slain once awoken.

Shot entirely on a camera phone (and still awaiting some post-production touches at the time of writing) Creature 2013 is the kind of horror that Ronny Carlsson does best: subtle, nauseating and deeply traumatizing. Carlsson knows that true horror does not exist within a cheap jump scare or a splatter of guts. True horror lurks, and never shows its face. It’s the opening of a door, the snap of a branch, the lightbulb that flickers and threatens to extinguish itself at any given second. True horror is the promise of death, but not Death Itself. Horror comes in the advancing illness, the encroaching putrefaction, in the expectation of pain. Saying that Creature 2013 is horrible to watch may not sound like a compliment, but it well and truly is. It’s an experience on par with eating a burger, finding out only afterwards that it was infected with E.coli, and awaiting the eventual misery of cramped guts and violent retching that you know must follow. This film sits in your stomach, gurgling most unpleasantly, and threatening to rip a ragged hole through your belly at any moment.

The soundtrack – warped, distorted industrial noise – underlines the sense of growing dread, grinding mercilessly into your head like a botched lobotomy. The film skips and stutters, blurs and contorts. Through it all, only Natalya remains pure, her sweet, pale face not unlike a lotus growing out of a charnel ground. But she’s no weak, sniveling little Disney princess, waiting around to be saved. The girl has got some solid backbone and goes straight into the darkness without casting a single backward glance. If she’s Snow White’s dark twin, then Carlsson is the woodsman who released her into the wild.

Okay, enough with the Grimm metaphors.

I’ve been watching Carlsson’s films from the beginning, and each one grows a little more, becomes more intricate, emerges slowly from its decaying chrysalis to show black butterfly wings, still dripping with birthgore. Creature 2013 is his best yet, but I’m fairly positive that I’ll say the same thing about his next film.

Seriously, you want to be a real horror fan? Put down the Blu-ray copy of World War Z, don’t even think about clicking anything by James Wan into your Netflix queue and for the love of god, stop pretending that the Evil Dead remake was a high water mark for horror films. It wasn’t. It sucked. Go watch a real horror movie, made by people who understand what horror really is. It’s inside of you. It needs no external stimuli. The longer you go without acknowledging it, the bigger and more powerful it becomes. It cannot be slain. But it can be captured on celluloid. Creature 2013 is the visual proof.

~See for Yourself~

hor•ror (ˈhɔr ər, ˈhɒr-)
n.
1. an overwhelming and painful feeling caused by something shocking, terrifying, or revolting; a shuddering fear: to shrink back in horror.
2. anything that causes such a feeling.
3. a strong aversion; abhorrence.