DAN WEBSTER:
As I write this, Halloween is just a couple of weeks away. As such, this would be a perfect opportunity run down a list of holiday-themed scary movies, especially those that focus on ogres and goblins and murderous pumpkins among the other All Hallows' Eve threats—their main theme, horror, having been the focus of popular filmmaking for more than a century.
Instead, though, let’s talk about fear itself. As any psychology text can tell you, fear is a natural emotional response to some perceived threat. If for example you find yourself walking through a remote landscape—say, a hiking trail in Glacier National Park—and you come upon a steaming pile of bear scat, fear would be a reasonable response.
But what about that feeling you get when you hear a strange noise coming from a dark room? A cellar, for example… a room you haven’t been in since the closing days of summer when you put away your kids’ inflatable swimming pool. And as you stand at the top of the stairs, you hesitate because, one, you can’t see anything beyond the first couple of steps and, two, nothing happens when you flip the light switch.
And again, you hear that strange noise.
Now, some people aren’t affected by such situations. They’d simply grab a flashlight (or their iPhone) and head on down. Others of us, though—we who still carry the trauma of being young and scared and convinced that monsters lurked under our beds—might freeze. Maybe we’d continue on, maybe not. Either way, our nervous system no doubt would be working overtime.
Much the same thing happens when we watch scary movies. Besides appealing to our intellect, the essence of all art is to take advantage of human emotion. And it’s especially true of movies. Since the very first time horror was depicted on screen—often cited as the 1915 German silent effort Der Golem—moviemakers have done everything they can to evoke the total range of what humans feel, from anger and sadness to joy and, yes, fear.
And in terms of fear, they do so by subjecting sympathetic characters to threats by everything from zombies to great white sharks, devil-possessed dolls to murderous supernatural forces and even simple serial murderers.
James Kendrick, a professor of film and digital media at Baylor University, puts it succinctly. “The monsters,” he says, “are more often than not simply an extension or elaboration of what we fear due to our mortal condition. At the heart of horror is always the fear of death—physical or spiritual.”
A good example of the physical can be found in an eight-episode 2023 Danish miniseries titled Fatal Crossing. Directed by Magnus Berggren, based on the 2015 novel by the Danish mystery writer Lone Theils and streaming on Amazon Prime, Fatal Crossing is, in many ways, standard Nordic Noir.
Said to be based on an actual case, the series focuses on Nora Sand (played by Marie Sandø Jondal), a disgraced Danish journalist who is doing penance by going back to work for a small-town newspaper owned by her uncle. Soon, though, Nora becomes intrigued by a long-unsolved mystery involving two missing girls. Both, it seems, had disappeared while traveling on a ferry, and the police investigation went nowhere.
But then, strangely enough, photos of the girls show up one day in Nora’s mailbox, and this sets her off on a quest to solve the case. Much of what occurs in Fatal Crossing is familiar: Nora’s character flaws, her prickly relationship with her father, the introduction of a love interest (a police officer no less), a look at the dark underbelly of society… and so on.
What sets the series apart is the introduction of the villain, a character who’s been there all along but who, when identified, comes across as chilling as, yet even more believable than, Hannibal Lecter eating a human liver with fava beans… definitely not someone I would care to meet in a shadowy cellar.
Then again that’s what movies, or in this case a miniseries, are for: creating scary situations just so we can experience the fright and, afterward, live to laugh about it. Which is a good feeling. I’m just glad that I never found anything lurking under my bed—especially if monsters actually were there.
For Spokane Public Radio, I’m Dan Webster.
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Movies 101 host Dan Webster is the senior film critic for Spokane Public Radio and a blogger for spokesman.com.