ZooScope

Tag: Psychological

  • The Shining. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Warner Brothers. 1980.

    A notoriously disturbing moment in The Shining (1980) is the ‘bear costume’ scene, which poses questions why Kubrick specifically chose this animal and its symbolic purpose in this bizarre shot. The cheap appearance, thus inauthenticity of the costume, intentionally reminds viewers of the human inside the outfit, removing its animality in favour of humanity and…

  • Oldboy. Dir. Park Chan-wook. Show East & Tartan Films. 2003.

    Park Chan-wook’s 2003 film Oldboy is at its core a thriller, a revenge story of Oh Dae-su (played by Choi Min-sik) imprisoned in a room for 15 years without any knowledge of the reasons why, and who is then suddenly released back into the world and told by his captor to try to work out…

  • Twelve Monkeys. Dir. Terry Gilliam. Universal Pictures . 1996.

    Twelve Monkeys begins: human beings whoop and rattle in cages, buried deep underground. Wild animals roam free in the streets; in the churches, on top of this underground prison. But who dug the hole? The animals or the human… …beings? The deadly virus which forced the survivors to flee underground came from the animals. But the…

  • Enemy. Dir. Denis Villeneuve. E1 Films. 2013.

    Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy follows Adam, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, a history professor, disillusioned with life and suffering from a feeling of social malaise, and Anthony, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, a wannabe actor who regularly cheats on his pregnant wife. Adam sees Anthony as an extra in a movie and becomes obsessed with him. Anthony is eventually killed…

  • Gone Girl. Dir. David Fincher. 20th Century Fox. 2014.

    On the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne receives an unexpected phone call from his neighbour, who has spotted his indoor pet cat wandering outside the house. When Nick returns, not only does he discover that his cat has been misplaced, but his wife, Amy has disappeared too. Leaving a staged crime scene…

  • Wuthering Heights. Dir. Andrea Arnold. Curzon Artificial Eye. 2011.

    Andrea Arnold’s 2011 adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic 1847 romance/tragedy novel Wuthering Heights highlights the desolate and savage nature of the moors in which the love story takes place, and the violent nature of those who live within them (notably Heathcliff). This wildness is conveyed to the audience through the use of animals, particularly violence against…

  • Enemy. Dir. Denis Villeneuve. E1 Films. 2013.

    Warning – Pictures of Spiders, if you hate spiders, stop reading now! Final Warning! The final scene of Enemy is the culmination of the spider motif that runs throughout the movie. Adam/Anthony has spent the whole film trying to resolve the two sides of himself, the cheat who only cares about himself and the man who tries…

  • Twelve Monkeys. Dir. Terry Gilliam. Universal Pictures . 1996.

    Do you want a second chance, Cole?” In other words – Do you want your body experimented upon to benefit our research again, Cole? The film cuts to a scene where Cole is injected and pinned to the time machine… or rather, torture machine. Cole never gets to answer the question – he has no…

  • Frozen. Dir. Adam Green. Anchor Bay Films. 2010.

    Adam Green’s dramatic thriller Frozen features the return of the wolf to terrorise three friends who become stranded on a ski lift in a New England ski resort. The wolf’s homecoming becomes symbolic, in light of Robin Wood’s definition of the horror film monster, of the ‘deadly return of all that a culture both represses and oppresses’[i].…

  • Gone Girl. Dir. David Fincher. 20th Century Fox. 2014.

    Stereotypically, cats are represented as sly, sexy, intelligent, manipulative and mysterious creatures, and all of these characteristics are embodied in Gone Girl’s (dir. David Fincher, 2014) complex anti-heroine Amy Dunne. In order to understand Amy’s immensely complicated character, who only exists in flashbacks during the film’s opening scene, the film projects Amy’s character onto her husband Nick’s…