13 Nights of Shocktober: Black Swan

by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and, October becomes the month long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 9: "I just want to be perfect" Black Swan

The epilogue of Jason Zinoman’s book Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror, contains an interview with William Friedkin, the director of The Exorcist, in which Friedkin, even more than 30 years after the movie was made, will not call The Exorcist horror. He cites the 10 Academy Award nominations it received as proof. No one considers JAWS to be a horror movie, but no one will deny that it is one of the most frightening movies ever made. The Silence of the Lambs won the Academy Award for best picture and its plot is the stuff of horror movies. Any hint of prestige makes people drop the word “horror” and start using the word “thriller.”

Black Swan was nominated for 5 Academy Awards including best director for Darren Aronofsky and won for Natalie Portman for best actress. It is listed on IMDB.com as a drama/mystery/thriller, but I would only recommend it if you want to be unnerved by a film that is beautifully disturbing. Natalie Portman stars as Nina, a ballerina on the verge of stardom and madness as she prepares for the dual role of the Black and White Swan for a new production of Swan Lake.

Black Swan is shot in a handheld, stripped down style reminiscent of horror movies from the 1970’s like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Last House on the Left. Its semi documentary look contrasts Nina’s frightening visions and makes them more unsettling since this film takes place in a non-fantastic world. Blurring the lines between the real and unreal, the rational and the absurd, seems to be a hallmark of the great horror movies according to Zinoman’s book. Black Swan is no exception. There is nothing surreal or dreamlike about the scene in which Nina painfully pulls a feather from her flesh.

I’ve written about Black Swan before in a previous review so I will stop here to keep from repeating myself. The only thing I’ll add is that in 2010 Black Swan was near the top of my “best of” list, and I’ve only come to like it more since then.