If pornography and violence are unreservedly revealed in the first episode, then there are a lot fewer scenes like this in the second episode, and it can almost achieve the perfect combination of glamour and violence. This is what the first episode lacks. . Of course, this has a certain relationship with the sex swap of the protagonist in the film.
In the last episode, the surviving Parix finally did not get rid of the arrangements of fate and had a different head. The shot showing this fact was extremely shocking. The headless deceased was sitting at the table with a kitten. Silently foraging at the neck of the deceased, there was no loud yelling, no plasma gushing, what was left was silence, but in this static picture, a strange and terrifying atmosphere was completely created. It can be said that this scene takes violence to a higher level, namely the invisibility of violence, the silence of violence and any possibility of violence. Compared with Western movies, the static horror images of the East are very obvious, and what this lens shows is basically this style. The docile kitten is in sharp contrast with the scene after the brutal slaughter. And does the symbolic meaning of kittens indicate that the film will tap the potential of women's violence? I'm afraid this is somewhat implied. The death of Parix has already destined the film to reduce blood and blood, and from the bottom of my heart, it will give the audience a brutal and bloody stimulus.
The three girls are almost a copy of the three boys, the clumsy Lorna wants to be a writer (why does anyone who want to be a writer seem a little out of place?), the confident and coquettish Whitney, and the low-key Beth, the protagonist of the film. The three girls went to the dead inn under the lure of a sexy model. Due to the change of gender, the mirror image of the plot has also undergone a major change in the opening part. The first is the decline of pornographic scenes. The sexual pursuit in the eyes of boys has become sexual harassment in girls. There is an important scene on the train. Three girls After being insulted and intimidated by a group of rascals, we can also see the focus of the film on women.
In comparison, the three girls have huge differences in their views of men. Lorna is shy but longs for love, so of course she is the most vulnerable person to temptation or deception. Whitney is coquettish and slutty, so she is The unique charm of women hopes to be completely recognized by others, which is actually a manifestation of unconfidence. But Beth is different. She is more masculine. First of all, she inherits property and supports her father. From this point of view, she is a strong woman, so she has a natural resistance to men. Therefore, Beth's love initiative is by no means that strong, and in the face of Whitney, Beth has a natural protective desire, in fact, there is a kind of same-sex tendency in it. The most important role is the model Axel. Although the film did not directly use the lens to show, but through the eyes of a few girls, it is not difficult to guess that this model is actually a transgender person. For such a person, Beth has shown trust and goodwill. Undoubtedly, Beth has accepted the model’s intersex identity, thus disproving that Beth’s sexual awareness is actually bisexual. Psychologically, she is It is a female desire and a male desire to conquer.
Compared with the first episode, Xiangyan has lost her true power and replaced it with a female psychology, which is obviously sexually aware. Therefore, the pornographic scenes are hidden and no longer go through the male's perspective. Show, this is in line with the plot.
After arriving at the inn, the three girls were immediately started bidding, and then two characters appeared, Todd and Stuart. The appearance of these two characters can be said to completely abandon the pure slaughter in the first episode, and instead introduce some metaphysical thinking. Why kill? There are still some places in this world where there is no law. It is dominated by money, and people can do whatever they want. On the one hand, Todd and Stuart represent the authority that controls money. On the other hand, their dialogue began to discuss the act of killing. As the timid Stuart said, whether our behavior is abnormal, But Todd explained that this is a process of being able to recognize oneself again. Where there is no law, the process of re-recognizing yourself is power, relying on money to kill is just a form, or a ritual, a ritual that can strengthen oneself.
It is very interesting. For two men, their prey is three girls, so the strengthening of money, power and sex is almost completely reflected in the relationship between hunting and being hunted.
Lorna's death is a scene where the film unifies eroticism and violence to the extreme. The client turned out to be a woman, and she killed Lorna for a blood bath. In all the texts in the world, the hatred of women against women is far more terrible than the hatred of men against women. When the candle is lit, and when the struggling Lorna is cut off from her life a little bit, the easy client is enjoying a female body feast. Not only does blood become a hobby, but also the cruelty among women. Behaved vividly and vividly. Women can unscrupulously kill other women for their own enjoyment or nobility. This is the violent manifestation of reality in the film.
Lorna fell into a trap because of her extreme hope of love, while Whitney had forgotten to be vigilant because she tried her best to show her feminine charm. Whitney's death more prominently shows Todd's change. When he was full of confidence and wanted to be a superman, he showed weakness in the face of life and death, so he flinched. This is not only the need for fullness of the characters in the plot, but more importantly, the idea of gaining self-confidence by killing people to gain powerful strength is discarded here. The director uses Todd's transformation to make the cold and powerful theory. The negation is gone, this is the obvious point of the director's consciousness.
The contest between Beth and Stuart is the focus of the film. Beth’s arrest still has a certain inevitability, because she believes in the model, so although the three girls were arrested in different ways, they are all based on the perception of women themselves, but this perception is somewhat Time becomes less warm. Then there was Stuart's transformation. Stuart was not a pervert or a powerist, so he tried to let Bess go, but Bess accidentally changed him. Being oppressed by his wife, killing has become a kind of vent, and the purpose of venting is actually to make yourself stronger. Although his strong roots are ridiculous, it is only in the victory over his wife, but there is no doubt that this gender contest put Stuart in a state of madness. There is a hostility towards women. But can men really leave women? When Beth seduce Stuart with fancy words, the man failed again, and he was finally tied to the chair by Beth. Beth was free because of her strong financial resources. More importantly, she cut off Stuart's genitals. This behavior itself is very sexually symbolic. Stuart has nowhere to vent because of being oppressed by his wife. This timid behavior is more like a castrate, so Beth's behavior only beats Stuart back to his original form, and from another perspective , Beth has also completed the transformation of her own female identity, that is, from the initial gender vagueness to a pure male identity, rich and will use money, this is a representative characteristic of a social person, killing a male itself is to replace it. The meaning of surpassing men, especially the act of killing the model in the end, has completely become a strong power person both psychologically and physically.
The film is undoubtedly successful in completely transforming the pornography in the first episode into the manifestation of female consciousness, but we must never judge that this film has the so-called feminist color, because the biggest winner in the film is by no means the woman herself, and It is money, a kind of power. The confrontation between women and men and the implementation of violence are all vulnerable to money. The reason Beth is able to save herself is not because of her female identity, but because of more money. So, returning to what Todd said, where there is no law, it is money that allows people to do whatever they want, and allows people to give full play to their potential violence and crimes.
Both the hunted and the hunters in the film, as well as the people who watch the movie, are suffering from the torture of money. Therefore, pornography and violence in this episode clearly no longer dominate, and only become a product of money. That's all, this is a social problem, a social problem that has been concealed by various manifestations and then summarized. The behavior of the street children in the film who refused candy and asked for money also illustrates this point.
Finally, although the plot of the movie to kill the child shows the coldness and cruelty of the people behind the scenes, it seems to be at odds with the theme, and this kind of lens in American movies is generally not used, so the killing of the child lens is undoubtedly the movie. A big taboo, I don't know how it passed the U.S. electric review.
Han Xi
2007-6-21 in Tongzhou
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