David Lynch’s Blue Velvet – the film that turned an outsider auteur into something approaching a genuine cultural sensation – is, even after all these years, a hard watch.  

The film sets up its thesis almost immediately. A montage of quaint images of small-town life, all blue skies and white picket fences, is disrupted by tragedy – the father of the film’s hero, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) collapses in his yard, killed by a heart attack. The man’s dog laps at the hose clung in his dead, tight hands. And then Lynch’s camera, still exploring, does something both beautiful and terrible: it burrows under the soil, where a nightmarish cacophony of insects forage.

So there it is, Blue Velvet’s message – that beneath Americana, with its bright smiles and cups of coffee, lies horror. From that starting point, rape, torture and abuse abound, as Jeffrey’s voyeurism sends his path crashing into the orbit of Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper, in one of cinema’s most terrifying performances, all gritted teeth and mummy issues). We watch Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) get tortured in various ways; we see Jeffrey beaten and humiliated. And perhaps most unsettlingly of all, we come to realise that the likes of Frank, a personification of pure evil, are more plentiful than we might ever want to believe. Even, if not especially, here, where the skies are blue. 

The world is wild at heart and weird on top

Much has been made of this quality found in the films of Lynch, who died today after a battle with emphysema – the contrast between ethical virtue, and deep ethical horror. Throwing up these two disparate forces – good and evil – was the modus operandi of Lynch’s one-of-a-kind career.  

Twin Peaks, his hit television show, unraveled the angelic exterior of murdered teenager Laura Palmer, and pit her against another of Lynch’s satanic figures, the supernatural drifter Bob. Wild at Heart, one of the more underrated films he ever made, plunged a loving young couple, Sailor and Lula, into an impossibly evil world. And The Elephant Man, a black-and-white muted howl of pain, saw a man with disabilities try to find hope amongst objectification and cruelty. 

But what is not often discussed about Lynch is that he did find beauty, time and time again. Contrary to what some have written, Lynch’s veneer of smiles and blue skies wasn’t some ironic posturing, established merely to make the horror more horrifying. Other filmmakers have untangled the way that evil thrives in darkness, out of sight – that’s not what made Lynch special.

Lynch’s power – his genius, even – is that he believed fully in both of the forces that make the world what it is, the darkness and the light.

This is a rare sort of ethical dialectics: rare both in art, and in our personal lives. Believe too deeply in the evil of the world, and you will simply never get out of bed. Ignore that evil, and strive forward as though it isn’t there, and you will fall prey to an ignorance that will make you a poor ethical actor. The real trick in all things is to understand that truth, if we ever find it, exists in the middle of extremes. 

Hence the model of the archetypal Lynch hero: Dale Cooper (MacLachlan, again), the handsome, profoundly odd detective hero of Twin Peaks. Dale has a goofy, almost unrepentant enthusiasm. He loves coffee; he loves pie; he loves the town of Twin Peaks. He’s all broad smiles, and dorky thumbs up, perpetually grinning to the small town residents that come to love him. But this optimism doesn’t exist in spite of the darkness of the world – it exists because of it.  

That understanding is expressed through his deep affection for Laura Palmer, the dead young woman he never met. The more he learns about Laura, believed by the town to be the perfect all-American girl, the more he loves her, even as he comes to see the precise shape of her demons.  

Lynch’s lesson is contained here. Cooper doesn’t choose to believe in the goodness of people at the expense of acknowledging their capacity for great harm. He understands that the world is built, in many ways, for cruelty to flourish; for abusers to thrive, for casual unkindness to go unremarked upon. And he also understands that, surprisingly, time and time again, human beings will decide to love each other. 

The art life 

This complicated optimism was also at the heart of Lynch’s deeply inspiring life outside of filmmaking. Like Cooper, Lynch was a famous lover of little treats, the kind of tiny slithers of goodness that aren’t just a distraction from the world – they are the world. There are countless memes of Lynch expounding the beauty of a good cup of coffee; enjoying two cookies and a Coke in the back seat of a car; and, perhaps most movingly of all, speaking lovingly of the importance of what he called “the art life.” 

For Lynch, the art life was painting, thinking, and making things with your hands. “I had this idea that you drink coffee, you smoke cigarettes, and you paint, and that’s it”, Lynch said once, happily. There is horror in this world, but being an artist isn’t just an aesthetic choice – it’s an ethical one. Being an artist means being curious; looking; creating.

Rather than being swamped by the inexorable downward slide of humanity, the artistic life allows one to see the things that make us, at the end of the day, so blessed. So loved.

Blue Velvet contains that hope in its final scene. After taking a long drive through hell, the film wraps up not with an image of suffering or pain. Instead, one of its last shots is a robin sitting on a branch. A robin – that most ordinary of birds, so small as to be invisible, but a symbol, built up over the course of the film, representing love itself. “Maybe the robins are here,” Jeffrey says, cautiously. But, despite it all, they are. 

In 1968, the dead walked the Earth. George A. Romero’s The Night of The Living Dead, shot on a shoestring budget in black and white and film stock, was the movie that popularised zombies as we now know them.

In the film, a ragtag group of survivors must band together, as corpses rise from the grave in a desperate search for human flesh.

Night of the Living Dead was a smash hit. It made more than 250 times its budget, becoming a cultural talking point, and scarring an entire generation. Taken on face value, its success is surprising. The film is unremittingly bleak, even for a horror movie – aside from the blood and guts, it also ends with one of cinema’s great downers, as the film’s hero, Ben (Duane Jones), is murdered not by the zombies, but instead an armed posse dispatched to kill the zombies, who confuse him for a reanimated corpse.

Given Ben is African-American, the film’s final image – his dead body set alight, burning to ash on top of a pile of zombie corpses – had powerful, painful symbolism for audiences in the late sixties. It was a time of huge social upheaval; of struggle, pain, and change. America was still in the midst of the Vietnam war, and the Civil Rights movement was continuing to gather steam.

Indeed, that collective social suffering is precisely the means of explaining Night of the Living Dead’s great success. Mired in images of real-life suffering, beamed into their homes via their TV sets, American audiences flocked to see a film that gave a voice to the feeling of the times – its ambient horror. To borrow a quote from horror director Wes Craven, Night of the Living Dead didn’t “create” fear – it released it.

Naming the unnamable

Horror’s persistent success – slashers almost always make money, and are a go-to for indie directors precisely because they’re almost guaranteed to make a financial return – speaks to the genre’s ability to address the unnamed. Each generation has its trauma, and each generation has a horror film that speaks to that trauma.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, released in 1960, was a reaction to a spate of serial murders – chiefly the killings committed by Ed Gein. Rosemary’s Baby, released the same year as Night of the Living Dead, bottled the collective anxiety that came from modern urbanisation: set in a sprawling apartment block, it posits that you can never truly know your neighbours. Carrie channeled first wave feminism, and the oppression conducted by both men and the church; Clive Barker’s Hellraiser explored queerness and kink, and the violent reaction to it; Hostel and Saw, the forerunners of the “torture porn” movement, were birthed by images of violence released out of Abu Ghraib; and Get Out compressed years of racist oppression into one shocking tale.

In this way, horror films tap into what philosopher and psychologist Carl Jung referred to as the “collective unconsciousness”. Jung believed that we all have both personal unconsciousness, and an unconsciousness shared by all. This deeper, shared unconsciousness is populated by “instincts”, “primal fears”, and “archetypes.” These archetypes directly tie us back to our ancestors – they are as old as human beings are. They are core figures, images, and stories, that, given they are located deep inside us, are frequently “strange” and disturbing. Jung gave these archetypes names, from “eternity” to “the profane”.

Horror draws on these archetypes. In fact, given how common archetypes are – we cannot help, Jung thought, coming back to them – sometimes, these archetypes can be described as “cliches.” Just as the collective unconsciousness keeps returning to specific images and figures, so too does horror have its tropes: the masked murderer; the demon child; the haunted house; the animal that appears as a harbinger of doom.

This is why horror movies tap us in a deep, powerful way. They apply images and stories to things that live deep inside us; that are innate. Indeed, the philosopher William James thought that fear was key to the unconscious – he argued that if you dropped an Eskimo into the African savannah, they would know to be afraid of a lion, even if they had never encountered one before. Whether we like it or not, terror lives somewhere deep inside us; an unavoidable vein of anxiety, running through the human condition. By engaging with that, horror movies hit us on a primal level – and bring us closer to each other.

The release of fear

This releasing quality of horror films has been proven to have personally therapeutic benefits. Horror movies allow us to confront our fears directly; to expose ourselves to them. But more than that, they allow us to do so in a controlled, calm setting.

When we’re terrified by a horror movie, we’re not terrified in the same way we would be if we were literally in the situation outlined. Our brains know, on some level, that we are safe; protected; sitting at home, or in a movie theatre. A recent study showed that horror movies can provide “stress release, managing real-life fears, and gradually reducing the impact of stressors through exposure to danger and fear in a controlled environment.”

But horror movies don’t just help individuals expose themselves to fear. Their hugely beneficial ethical dimension is their ability to help societies to understand their fears.

We cannot solve or change something that we cannot name. Without proper language – without images – we cannot hope to confront the sick or ailing parts of our society. Horror movies funnel collective anxieties into precise ones. And with their image as a kind of vocabulary, we can start talking about these issues, and in that way, move to change them.

Indeed, stories of horror and evil have historically served as a way of forming and reinforcing moral judgement. We tell ourselves stories of what taboos look like when they are broken in order to remind ourselves of the importance of those taboos. Using these narratives, we can come together in order to decide what is permissible and what is not – the shock of anti-social, violent behaviour moving us towards a place of steadfast moral judgement. The horror movie only scares us because it shows us what we shouldn’t do, what we don’t want, what we, collectively, will work to avoid.

This quality of sharing is important. The success of a film like Get Out brought people together. It cut across class, gender and racial divides. In cinemas across the world, people sat in the dark, and discovered that they were afraid of the same thing as the person in the seat next to them. And it is from that base of solidarity – provided by cinematic nightmares, no less – that special things can happen.

Image: Get Out, Universal Pictures

Love Lies Bleeding, the new film by director Rose Glass, is a simple girl-meets-girl noir story. At least, for about half of its running time.

Set in a nowhere town populated by gun nuts and ne’er-do-wells, it opens with a chance encounter between Lou (Kristen Stewart) and Jackie (Katy O’Brian). The former’s trapped in this dump because she needs to protect her sister, and the latter has sailed in to try and pursue her dreams of becoming a bodybuilding superstar. They shoot each other up with steroids, make food for each other, and fall in love. 

They are, from the outset, different. They don’t fit into this place, with its villains and deadbeats. Not just because they are queer – but because they want for more, and desire something bigger than the diners and gun ranges on offer.  

Which is the impetus for Love Lies Bleeding’s sudden, mid-film shift. The more Lou and Jackie fall out of step with the town, the more they begin to literally change. Jackie, always strong, starts to become superhumanly so. Her body expands outrageously, until, before the audience has really noticed what is going on, she is a giant, dwarfing the town and its denizens. 

In this way, Love Lives Bleeding owes more to the cinematic genre of body horror than it does to the noir trappings it initially flirts with. And more than that, it investigates one of body horror’s key themes – the way that difference can manifest not just in our minds, but on our skin. 

The mind and the body, the body and the mind

Body horror as a genre is a continuation of the work of philosopher Baruch Spinoza. For Spinoza, the body and the mind are the same thing – the one substance. They are “numerically identical”, as in, there is no separation whatsoever between them. When you point to the mind, you are also pointing to the body. Indeed, Spinoza was a monist – as in, he believed that all things were made from one singular “entity.” Spinoza called this entity nature; some have called it God. 

Importantly, this monism means that for Spinoza, our emotions, thoughts, and desires are inherently embodied. On Spinoza’s view, we are not just a brain, controlling a fleshy automaton of a body. We are in our own skin. Or, more precisely, we are our own skin. Anything that we think or want expresses itself physically, because our brain is inherently physical. 

This view tells us interesting things about both body horror cinema, and about otherness. Namely, that if we are ‘other’ – if we step outside the mainstream of sexuality, gender, or ability – then that otherness will manifest ourselves in our body. There is no hiding our difference on this view; no successful way to “pass”, as though we are part of the established norm. Anything that we think and feel will make us physically different, and therefore will be able to be read by others. We will always be a square peg in a round hole, and everybody will always know it. 

Love Lies Bleeding takes the most extreme version of this perspective – Jackie’s gigantism is a physical manifestation of her difference that means she can’t fit through doorways, let alone pass as one of the town’s regular citizens. She is other, which means she doesn’t just occupy mental states that run against the mainstream. Her difference changes how she carries herself in the world – and how she is perceived. 

The othered body and its power

Body horror films do more than merely diagnose the physical manifestations of otherness, however. They also pass a sort of moral judgment on it. Many entries into the genre don’t see this otherness as something to be avoided, or stripped away. Indeed, they see it as something to be embraced – a source of considerable power. 

Take, for instance, Carrie, directed by Brian DePalma, in which a young alienated woman discovers that she has telekinetic powers. Carrie is the subject of relentless bullying – in the opening scene, we see her body shamed for its difference, as she has a period in the communal shower, much to the cruel glee of her schoolmates.  

But when she discovers that which makes her different is the same thing which makes her special, she becomes significantly stronger. The film’s bloodbath of an ending, in which Carrie decimates those who have humiliated her, is a strange sort of coronation – Carrie is literally wearing a crown while she murders a roomful of her enemies. She’s stopped trying to fit in. Instead, she has thoroughly, wholeheartedly embraced her otherness. 

This is point of view is also backed up in the literature about Spinoza. As many Spinoza scholars have noted, understanding is the key to Spinoza’s project – he believed in the ethical value of the accumulation of knowledge – and because of his monism, this understanding is one centred in the body. “For Spinoza the critical task is to formulate an ethics of knowing, which begins with an understanding that body and mind are two attributes of the same substance,” write Paul Stenner and Steven D. Brown. “Increasing the capacity of the body to both be affected and affect others is the means by which the knowing subject progresses.” 

In these body horror films, assimilation with the status quo is impossible – how could Carrie, with her telekinesis, ever be like others? How could Lou, the giant, ever pretend to be different? But more than that, however, assimilation is not even desirable. Instead, these films are a rallying cry to those who do not fit into boxes; to the outcasts. They say, “any changes will be noticeable on your skin, so you cannot hide them.” And they say, “any changes will be noticeable on your skin, so you should not hide them.” 

Baby Reindeer, the new Netflix miniseries based on a true story, opens with a simple act of kindness — Donny Dunn (Richard Gadd), a wannabe stand-up comedian, gives a customer a free cup of tea.

“I felt sorry for her,” Donny tells us in voiceover, as Martha (Jessica Gunning) wanders into the pub where he works. It is an action he will soon regret.  

The two begin conversing; as they do, Martha becomes increasingly obsessed with the comedian. Simple affection morphs into something obsessive and painful – Martha begins bombarding Donny with texts and emails. Quickly, it becomes clear: Martha is a stalker, and Donny is her victim. 

That’s not exactly a new story to be told onscreen. Fatal Attraction, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, and When A Stranger Calls have all dealt with the significant fear and anxiety that being stalked can create – when you’re the victim of a stalker, you live on a constant knife’s edge, forever expecting the next email, the next escalation. These films capture that tension. 

But what Baby Reindeer does additionally is depict – in a surprisingly complex way – the blend of emotions a victim can feel towards their stalker, not all of them strictly negative. And more than that, it explores the difficult histories that can make a stalking victim vulnerable to being harassed in the first place. 

Which is why it is fascinating – and troubling – that such a complicated, nuanced show has led some viewers to begin replicating Martha’s behaviour to find the real people behind the story. 

The complexity of the stalker/victim relationship

Stalking is, as philosopher Elizabeth Brake notes, composed of actions “which would normally be permissible; indeed, many stalking behaviors are protected liberties.” That makes it a complicated form of ethical wrong, one many stalkers take advantage of. There’s nothing bad about sending an email. There’s not even anything wrong with sending many emails – under specific circumstances. What makes stalking terrifying is the amount of communication, and, often, its intent. 

Additionally, some stalkers are themselves dealing with trauma, or have been victims of a serious harm. This is what Baby Reindeer captures – Martha is harming Donny, but she herself has been harmed. More than that, Donny’s traumatic past – he is the victim of sexual assault – makes him open to her affection initially. These are two people who have suffered, and are continuing to suffer. They find each other, amidst the chaos of traumatic flashbacks, and a deep sense of purposelessness.  

Perhaps if things were different, they might have become friends. After all, they are not so dissimilar, in some ways: Baby Reindeer ends with Donny finding himself in the exact position Martha was in when he first encountered her, relying on the random kindness of a bartender.  

In this way, Baby Reindeer does not condemn Martha. Nor does it condemn Donny, even though they have both made mistakes. Instead, it sees their actions as deeply tied to past harms, a continuation of the cycle of abuse.  

And a cycle that some viewers of the show are perpetuating. 

Viewer as stalker

Since Baby Reindeer became a smash hit, some viewers have begun attempting to track down the real humans that inspired the show. As The Guardian notes, “online sleuths” (those are the article’s words), believe they’ve found the real-life Martha. But so obsessive and dangerous has been the search, that innocent people have been caught up in the fray – one man was mistakenly believed to be the television writer who assaulted Donny, and received death threats as a result. 

But whether or not the “right” targets have been uncovered and attacked, such a response to the show is deeply unethical. Baby Reindeer itself doesn’t want to demonise Martha – so why are some viewers doing that themselves? Baby Reindeer is a cautionary story about letting passion overcome reason, and trying to track down people who don’t want to be tracked down. That stalking is being perpetuated in its name is a deep ethical wrong. 

It’s also a common ethical issue in our modern age. Increasingly, online vigilantes – better to call them that than “sleuths” – have come to behave in a way that shows they believe under certain circumstances, normal ethical rules are waved away. Think of the targeted harassment that was directed towards the real people that stans assumed Ariana Grande’s or Taylor Swift’s new records were about. Or Beyonce’s ‘Beyhive’ hounding a women off social media. In all of these cases, the abuse was “justified” in the mind of the perpetrators. They believed an ethical crime had been committed, and so gave themselves free rein to punish right back. 

So it goes in the case of Baby Reindeer. Martha wronged Donny; the TV writer assaulted him. In an increasingly punitive, carceral and old-school digital world, viewers are taking it on themselves to dole out their own justice, in order to reset wrongs. 

In actual fact, they are not moral arbiters. They are committing a wrong themselves. And it is a wrong that we must call out.

Baby Reindeer urges us to consider human beings as complex – not deserving of punishment, but of understanding, even if we condemn their actions.

We can want someone to be far away from us, given the harms they have committed. But we must attempt to collectively return to a place where retributive justice – so often confused as “activism” – does not cloud our understanding of complexity. After all, as that final scene of Baby Reindeer shows, we could all find ourselves in Martha’s shoes.