Madness (2010) - 3/4

Madness is a particular kind of horror film that has direct roots in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In the post-millennial era this particular horror film structure has become even more popular. I could tell Madness is this kind of horror film when the gas station appears in the first ten minutes of the film. At that moment I knew something creepy would happen at the gas station. I knew that the traveling protagonists would ignore the creepy event. I knew that they would run into a band of dangerous backwoods folk and some of them would die. I was correct in all these assumptions.

The foundation of this horror structure is the presumed autonomy of the travelers. In this case it is two young women. Usually the travelers are young, as youth is the age when we usually strive to express autonomy through adventure. The travelers get together and go on a road trip. They are totally free to chart out their own path in the world. They usually have a destination, but it is a destination of their choice. They choose their destiny. It never occurs to them that the world is not as pleased about their freedom as they are. They take for granted that the world is a safe place, that the rest of the world is similar to their home. These films are structured to punish this autonomy. The sense of security and freedom in the world that permits these young people to leave the 'nest' of their hometown and make their own destiny is destroyed. The destruction of security is always performed by an embodiment of savagery. In Christian-era folk stories, the vessel of danger is usually a pagan, as in Hansel and Gretel. Pagans were the perfect vessel for embodying all that is opposed to civilization, such as the security and freedom laws and morality ensure, because they were the people deemed spiritually backward in a spiritual society. In a socio-political society like ours the embodying vessel of anti-civilization is a socio-politically backward people, such as Nazis (Frontière(s)) or rednecks (The Hills Have Eyes, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre).

The presence of the gas station is thus highly significant. If the road and the car connote autonomy, then the gas station is a moment of dependence on society. Total independence from other people is not possible. The gas station scene always includes a warning of some sort. A local warns the youths not to go where they're planning to go or some creepy or startling event suggests there may be danger ahead. The gas station thus forms the bridge between venturing-too-far and thereby becoming lost-in-the-woods and a legitimate exercise of autonomy. The gas station is the moment the characters can realize that they've gone too far and must return home. They invariably never do return home and they are consequently punished for their wanderlust. The message of these films, then, is always that the wanderers should have been content to stay home. It's a dangerous place outside of home. More abstractly, these films also warn against excessive independence, particularly the independence found in choosing one's own destiny. Overstepping the bounds of personal freedom posits the individual outside of a sphere of security. Even in those films where a victim survives the ordeal, one wonders how that person will ever be able to leave her house again. She's seen and now she knows that it's a dangerous place out there, both physically (away from home) and psychologically (excess independence).

This structure receives its crystalization with Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It is a peculiarly American structure. In the Hansel and Gretel tale the children are sent from home. This is also true with Little Red Riding Hood. The traditional fairy tales with similar structures therefore aren't about autonomy expressed through travel. There is also a component of travel-unto-horror in films like The Old Dark House. But the Femm family is more civilized than their guests. That's a major point of The Old Dark House. The focus is on the decadent civilization rather than the travelers' freedom. It is only in the midst of the '70s, with the explosion of freedom in the USA, that the travel-punish structure arises. This is indeed odd for a nation that values independence so strongly. It is as though Americans have a need to see their urge for independence and autonomy punished on screen. Or perhaps, more subtly, the need is to see their own urge to punish autonomy cathartically presented and dealt with in the film, so they might return to being good Americans with their urges to enforce conformity repressed. There is also a spiritual aspect to this structure. America is unofficially a Christian country. But the total freedom to choose one's own destiny is a secular, humanist, or even existentialist notion. The clash of secular freedom with Christian conservativism in '60s and '70s America may go some way toward explaining the rise of this structure. The enemies of independence in this structure are represented as savage monsters, or monstrous savages.

Now let's return to the film. Madness is a good instance of the travel-punish film. Two cheerleaders are on their way to a cheerleading competition. They stop at a gas station. There they meet and collect two men whose car broke down. One of the men sees the gas-station warning in the form of a creepy, masked man, but he ignores it. They are soon driven off the road and taken prisoner by brutish rednecks. Sadistic cat-and-mouse games ensue as the protagonists struggle to escape and the rednecks struggle to torture and kill their prisoners.

What makes Madness a good instance of the travel-punish film is the way it goes beyond the formula. Most travel-punish films are doggedly formulaic. There are usually around four victims and a killer or two. The killer(s) catch and torture the victims. One victim either gets away or all the victims die. That's all. Not so with Madness. There's a certain ineptitude to Madness that suggests the filmmakers, that is the three writer-directors (Sonny Laguna, David Liljeblad, Tommy Wiklund), weren't so much aware that they were transcending the formula. There are certainly some good creative decisions on display, but also a lot of creative and fortunate errors. In their amateur enthusiasm for the subject they stumble into transcendence. They manage more brutality and more realism than most other films of this kind. Living up to the title, there's just a certain madness to Madness that makes it all work. For instance, instead of sticking to the four protagonists, they throw in another victim who appears to be decomposing while alive. There was no need to include this character. His inclusion makes the narrative untidy. But there's a certain reality to that. It shows the inventiveness of the filmmakers and their eagerness to create more horror situations. Similarly, there's an extraneous villain who does little more than wander around in a bathrobe with a lantern. His inclusion is totally unnecessary. Yet his unexplained addition enriches the situation if only by its sheer mysteriousness. The inclusion of extraneous characters left me with the sense that we're not aware how 'big' this operation is. We're sure neither of how many killers nor of how many victims there are.

The camerawork is another instance of blessed ineptitude. That's not to say the compositions are bad; they aren't. However, the directors seemed to think shooting the whole film without a single tripod would be a good idea. And against all odds, it is a good idea. The camera is always wiggling at least a little as though we're seeing through someone's eyes. Add to this the filmmakers' knack for creative angles and the result is a strong paranoia. One senses the victims are always being watched no matter where they are. Their vulnerability is always thrust against us. They're babes in the woods.

Then there's the ineptitude of the characters. Despite being apparently prolific murderers, these rednecks are disorganized beyond anything I've seen in a film of this sort. They use weak duct tape to tie up some victims, fail to search their pockets for knives and matches, and leave weapons everywhere. There's one amusing scene that emphasizes this as a protagonist keeps exchanging his weapon for a better one. As silly as this seems, it allows for more creative scenes on the one hand and heightened realism on the other. Why must all backwoods murderers be extremely organized and efficient?

This realism extends beyond the ineptitude into brutality. The protagonists cry often. All the actors are Swedish and their struggles with English leave the acting occasionally stilted. But crying is universal. I had trouble deciding whether the crying is mean-spirited or humanizing. Ultimately, I found it to be humanizing, as I did start to sympathize with these characters. It could be seen either way, though, as it can be jarring to have characters suddenly humanized in a film of this sort.

There is another interesting feature of Madness. I couldn't help but notice that all the villains have eye problems. One wears thick glasses, another has a discoloured eye, and another has extremely sleepy eyes. They also spend their spare time watching rape films on VHS. They watch Cannibal Holocaust for sure. If I identified the dialogue correctly, they also watch Deliverance at some point. I won't go so far as to say there's a deliberate theme. There is nevertheless an interesting symbolic connection between watching violent films, damage to the eyes, and inflicting harm on others. That is the notion that the uncivilized eye sees and enacts what it sees, while the civilized eye can be assimilate violent imagery without making its owner violent.

So Madness may alienate some viewers due to its obvious flaws. There is, after all, a grammatical error in the first frame of the film. For those willing to see past the language barrier, however, Madness delivers a brutal, suspenseful horror experience. It has the sort of foolhardy inventiveness one can only get from amateurs. And I mean 'amateur' in the purest sense of the term: those who do it for the love of it.