In:
Horror Studies, Intellect, Vol. 3, No. 1 ( 2012-04-30), p. 87-103
Abstract:
With their elaborate twist endings and blurred character identities, Haute Tension/ High Tension (Alexandre Aja, 2003/2005) and Janghwa, Hongryeon/A Tale of Two Sisters (Kim Ji-woon 2003) exemplify what Thomas Elsaesser calls the ‘mind game film’. At the same time, they
embody the raw physicality of horror cinema. As in many Gothic stories, the state of bodies (missing, wounded, corrupted) and of minds (frightened, paranoid, psychotic) is made manifest in the ‘body’ of the text itself. Thus, the greenish hues of High Tension suggest a body in decay, while in A Tale of Two Sisters the artful combination of red and green tones inflects otherwise restrained scenes with a fleshy physicality. Colour operates at a heightened level in these films, both as an affective trigger and a narrative code. It embodies ‘bad feeling’
but also offers a key to ‘reading’ the unstable relationship between the actual and the virtual. It also tells us, finally, about genre, orchestrating a fluid movement between the restrained atmospherics of what Cynthia Freeland refers to as ‘art-dread’, and the raw power of graphic horror, between psychological anxiety and visceral embodiment.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
2040-3275
,
2040-3283
DOI:
10.1386/host.3.1.87_1
Language:
English
Publisher:
Intellect
Publication Date:
2012
SSG:
7,12
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