The Shrine (2010) - 3/4

The Shrine , the latest film from Canadian filmmaker Jon Knautz (Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer) centers on two curious, headstrong women. Carmen (Cindy Simpson), a journalist, and her assistant Sara (Meghan Heffern), defy their editor's orders and, with Carmen's boyfriend Marcus (Aaron Ashmore) tagging along, decide to investigate a series of disappearances centered in a Polish hamlet. The investigation leads them to a barn/church in the middle of a field where thugs chase them off, and to a mysterious fog over a stretch of woods. After both women enter the woods, one after the other, and stare at the demonic statue at the center, they must run for their lives from a local cult.

What makes The Shrine work so well is that it continues to evade anticipation throughout and does so without cheating. From beginning to end, it's difficult to predict just where the film is going. The fog, the statue, and the cult are obviously all linked in some fashion; but since all three are equally mysterious, there's no guessing just what's going on. Many films rely on some form of cheating to keep the viewer confused. The most infamous example of this may be High Tension. The Shrine pulls some sleight-of-hand, particularly in its use of subjective camera-work, but it never cheats; it earns our continued absorption in its mysteries and this interest is paid off as the mysteries are sufficiently dealt with.

If there's any major problem with The Shrine, it's an over-reliance upon these mysteries. The characters seem to spend the majority of the film walking or running from one location to another. The intervening confrontations and/or set-pieces are either non-events or very brief. As a result, there is more atmosphere than suspense. This isn't necessarily a problem, of course. Many great horror films, like Mario Bava's or Peter Weir's, are almost all atmosphere and mystery. The problem for The Shrine is that it does appear to strive for suspense, moments of tension, and when they work--and occasionally work quite well--they just aren't sustained long enough. For suspense to work patience is required.

To get deeper into The Shrine, though, I want to talk a little about about theory. Particularly, Linda Williams's famous article, "When the Woman Looks." The basic thesis of the article is twofold. The first point is that "In the classical narrative cinema, to see is to desire" and "The woman’s gaze is punished...by narrative processes that transform curiosity and desire into masochistic fantasy. " Any time a woman in a horror film grants herself the privilege of fulfilling her desire to see, to know, what she shouldn't--like Eve eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil--she is punished. The second point is that the reason female curiosity must be so punished is that "the woman’s look at the monster offers at least a potentially subversive recognition of the power and potency of a non-phallic sexuality," namely the monster's. The woman sees herself in the monster, or the monster in herself: both are an alternative to male sovereignty and thus both must be oppressed by males to retain that sovereignty. Horror films are a way of representing the eruption and repression of these threats (monsters and women), however subconsciously, to the satisfaction of male viewers.

This is where I find The Shrine most interesting. Because, if Williams is right, The Shrine should be extraordinarily satisfying to male viewers--and as a male viewer, I confess it sort of is. The character of Carmen, firstly, is a strong, defiant, stubborn, and curious woman. There's no question that she's the leader of her little group. Whatever objections her boyfriend brings up, she doesn't just disagree with him in discussion, she totally plows over him and speaks for everyone: "We're going!" This character trait, in fact, makes her rather annoying. It would be just as annoying in a man. Dictatorships are never really pleasant. This only makes it all the more satisfying when she's finally broken and forced to realize all the wrong she's done. But first, let's look at the wrong.

What Carmen and Sara do is enter the fog and gaze upon the demon statue. It's telling that Knautz has only the female characters do this. The man stays outside. In the Williams paradigm, what the women are doing is (1) becoming curious, (2) satisfying their curiosity by taking control of the gaze and (3) finding in the gaze the monstrous alternative to phallic sexual power. And most importantly, (4) they are punished for satisfying their curiosity in this way. Both emerge from the fog traumatized and disoriented. Then the subsequent events of the film befall them.

Spoilers Begin Here

The 'subsequent' events of the film are also very telling, and even suggest Knautz intentionally rather than subconsciously pursued this theme. The first is Sara's death, which occurs at the hands of the cult. The cult, which struggles to subdue those possessed by the demon statue, holds her down and pounds a mask onto her face. As the mask comes down, we see on the inside of the mask two spikes that will pierce her eyes. What's important about this is that the eyes are particularly being punished, the eyes that were used in the gaze upon the demon. In the fate of Carmen, we see what the all-male cult is frightened of: the powers of the demon overcoming the powers of men. Carmen slaughters (1) a traditional family of father, mother, and child and (2) the priest of the cult. The demonic power is a non-phallic potency that threatens to destroy male power just as Carmen herself bulldozed over her boyfriend's part in decision-making. Carmen, then, is given the same treatment as Sara, with the participation of her boyfriend.

There are a lot of other details in The Shrine that can be explored in relation to this theme. For one, the demonic statue doesn't stay still when the women gaze upon it. As Carmen moves to the side of the statue to take a second photograph (and photography is a fitting motif) she's startled to find the statue's head has moved and the hollow sockets are staring right at her. She gazes into its eyes for a long time, in the film's most haunting and frightening moment, and it gazes back, like a hypnotism sequence from a Dracula or Svengali film, until its eyes bleed. Also of interest is the masculinity of the demon statue. Its body is large and muscular, its brow heavy. Also noteworthy is that the editor Carmen works for is male. It all amounts to a statement, however intentional or not, against the modern, liberated woman who presumes to know too much and, even worse, to take charge.

Spoilers End Here

While this aspect of The Shrine is interesting, it's not a message I can entirely get behind. A less pronounced idea is a statement against idle tourists, male or female. Ever since I saw a picture of Newgrange and spotted a stainless steel handrail installed into the stone for accessibility I've marveled at how tourism can totally exploit a region and its history for idle curiosity: "just to see." The tourists who happen by the demon statue in the fog are aptly punished for their idle curiosity. Had they taken the time to consult some locals, get to know and respect the area, they'd have saved themselves the trouble of dying.

Whatever Knautz's intention in making The Shrine so misogynistic, his efforts resulted in a fascinating and unique film with a good share of surprising moments. A little shy on the gore, this is just some smart and effective atmospheric horror--an increasingly rare approach. In fact, The Shrine is one of the best atmospheric horror films of the last few years.