Salvage (2009) - 3.5/4

During and just after the Second World War we had nearly infinite confidence in our governments. Well, those who weren't living in Germany did, at any rate. Victory inspired optimism. That optimism quickly soured, however. In America HUAC, the Cold War, the assassination of Kennedy, the Vietnam War, and amongst other things, inspired a lack of confidence in their own government to administer justly. Conspiracy theories began to arise. Curiously, those elected to office began to decrease in quality, almost as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Programs like The X-Files and similarly-themed films were possible in an atmosphere of accepted distrust. It had become more acceptible to believe one's own government as the enemy, to believe it had nothing of its own people's interests in its agenda, but was operating on a purely exploitational schema; it had become obliviously conservative to genuinely believe one's government is honest and working for the greater good. Then 9/11 happened and President Obama was elected. America setting the lead, it has once again become acceptible to hold the view that the enemy is on the outside.

There are still many who don't subscribe to that discourse and Lawrence Gough, who wrote and directed Salvage, is apparently one of them. Salvage is not necessarily a political film; but it uses a horror structure that is essentially political. It's a hysteria-enforce movie. A dad drops off his reluctant teenage daughter at her estranged mother's home on Christmas Eve. Enraged by her finding her mother mid-coitus, she hides at the neighbour's home. Before her mother, Beth (Neve McIntosh), can do anything about it, soldiers swarm the neighbourhood, shoot a knife-wielding neighbour, and force everyone to stay in their homes. While the neighbourhood is being torn apart, Beth struggles against the military forces and the anomalous Threat to get to her daughter and protect her

The first glimpse of a hysteria-enforce movie is the finale of The Night of the Living Dead, when the zombie panic is settled by mindless enforcement, in the guise of militia, of the standard order. Warning Sign (1985), Rabid (1977), Shivers (1975), and The Happening (2008) are all roughly hysteria-enforce movies. And the recently remade Romero film The Crazies (1973) is perhaps the ultimate hysteria-enforce movie. The structure of the hysteria-enforce movie begins with mass-panic and violence. Some virus or supernatural force is making normal people in a normal community dangerous to one another. The military, or some form of official security force, storms in to take control and ends up doing more harm than good. Usually the point of view for the story is a few chosen protagonists who become victims of both the Threat and the enforcement. Hysteria-enforce movies rarely have happy endings. It's a structure that derives from and perverts that of '50s science fiction monster movies like 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), where a monster causes terror and must be destroyed by the military. Of course, this structure goes back to King Kong (1933) and even the peasants-with-pitchforks trope found in Frankenstein (1931). In those '50s movies, the monster is from outside the (human) community and the military is always justified, if callous, in their actions. They're optimistic movies. Hysteria-enforce movies are not optimistic. They're profoundly cynical. The Threat is now not from outside the community, but from inside. We ourselves can become the Threat and by the same token the enforcers who were once our heroes become our enemies and thus also the Threat. These films thus naturally critique official operations, such as the military, law enforcement, and the political institutions that govern them. They are sceptical of both the competence and integrity of those who are supposed to protect and govern us.

Gough is clearly aware of the political implications in the structure of Salvage and uses them to great effect. The film plays with the expectations of the audience and the characters. The military presence in Salvage is without doubt a dubious one. They're there to protect in some sense, but somewhat as an afterthought; their real purpose is control, not just of the threat but of civilians as well. They are clearly very willing to kill civilians to maintain their control, making them as much if not more of a threat than the Threat. A neat microcosm of political distrust occurs when a soldier tries to convince the hysterical civilians that he's protecting them from Al Qaeda. The use of a moment of hysteria to misrepresent one's intentions positively is just how governments operate. Salvage thus seems to be both a '50s monster movie and a modern hysteria-panic movie at once. It took me to midway through the film before I figured out whether Salvage is more The Crazies or more 20 Million Miles to Earth. I won't tell you which it is or if it's a clever hybrid. Gough works hard to manipulate the tropes of the structure and create ambiguity. Either way, Salvage exhibits the cynicism of hysteria-enforce movies.

The strongest and most powerful aspect to Salvage, however, is how Gough tapers the cynicism. He offers an antidote to the military intervention and cynicism: love. In total contrast to the harsh paternalism of the military is the love a mother feels for her child. Once the Threat asserts itself and the military arrives, we are with Beth from beginning to end. We see her struggles to get to her daughter, her unrelenting courage in the face of danger. She and the man she was found in bed with, Kieran (Shaun Dooley) are both parents and are both carved out as emotionally real beings. As Kieran's children aren't in danger, his main goal is to survive. Beth's goal is to reach her daughter and protect her at all costs. By presenting the film entirely from Beth's perspective, Salvage mounts a powerful indictment against ungrateful children. Parents, especially mothers, sacrifice so much of their lives, energy, and being for their children and only ask for a little love in return. When we're teens we recognize this so little, enrapt in a sinister ecstasy of egocentrism that permits no perspective outside our own chemical self-importance. And when we're adults and the chemicals have receded, has the egocentrism? Time is short and lives fleeting. The light of clear perception rarely shines through the clouds of hardened self-love. Take the time to tell your mother you love her; let her know those sacrifices have been appreciated before it's too late. Why not do it now? Happy Mother's Day, Mom: I appreciate it all, what I know and what I don't. Happy Mother's Day to all mothers.

To return to the review, Beth is nevertheless not presented in an entirely flattering light. She was screwing some guy when her daughter arrived on Christmas Eve. She moreover seems to exhibit no maternal extinct for a distressed girl who isn't her daughter, leaving her behind to die. Beth's moral complexity is one of the most interesting aspects of the film. She is at once admirable and contemptible, a hero and a very selfish woman. Some of her vices can perhaps be attributed to Patriarchal expectations of how women, especially mothers, should be. She's a woman who has chosen a career over family life, casual sex over a husband. But some of her vices are pure moral failings. Neve McIntosh, well-known to UK horror fans from her performance as Fuschia in the Gormenghast miniseries, is able to carry those ambiguities extraordinarily well.

With Salvage, Gough has achieved with Romero couldn't in The Crazies. Romero is a director of ideas and his characters enact his satirical ideas as well can be expected. But Romero has difficulty humanizing, reaching the emotional. Gough clearly does not share this difficulty. His satire isn't as relentless or as clever as Romero's, but Salvage is still a clever film and, most of all, an emotionally powerful film.