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By Robert Scucci
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Head cutting begins to become a problem in high horror, and I don’t know how much further the concept can be explored before it becomes an old hat. It is fast becoming a new leap, as seen in movies like Hereditary, long -olleg, and most recently, Weapon.
On one hand, I get it. Watching someone is dome cave with an unprecedented object -a way is such a visual way to illustrate the destruction of on -screen thinking so that it is an easy way for filmmakers to convey their point across when amazing their audience to the core.
But like jump intimidations, we start to be unsensitified them. Personally, I’ve had my filling because the sound of gray matter and bone splatting against the floor triggers the same kind of discomfort that people pretend to feel when they hear the word “damp.”
Funny enough, the damp and crushed word is not independent of each other.
Literally Destroying Mind
Motoring a self-valued head in high horror fulfills a very specific purpose: showing the audience that character has lost control of their faculties. This happens twice in 2018 Hereditary.
The first place includes Peter Graham almost catatonic, who begins a face floping on his desk and screams in the middle of a philosophy class. There may be a one percent chance for him to take the message “Penalty brings wisdom” on the blackboard too literally, or he was just hungry and protesting the only way he knew how while waiting for the lunch bell. But by this point, the film has already established that the demon pimon is slowly taking over it.
Did Peter’s mind need to be broken, or could Peter’s mind have broken down in a less literal way? The most likely reason has been established for the final sequence of the film, when his mother Annie, fully, possesses Jackhammers her skull against the attic door is one of the film’s biggest sequences.
Llonglegs and weapons
Similar to Peter Graham, Longregs’ The character of a title meets a more final fate during the questioning scene, when he reveals that he works for “the man downstairs” before crushing his face to the table until he achieved the fatal, self-privileged shot. After being a medium for a Satanic force since the 1970s, Dale Ferdinand Kobble may have been releasing himself from the mental torment that emptied his mind decades earlier.
Think Longregs’ A question room sequence was the cinematic top for cutting a head in high horror because it was so ungodly that I still talk about it. That is, until I see Weapon. Play with our fear of the unknown in similar ways, Weapon saves his stunned for his third act. This time, not one person who slams against a table, but two heads repeatedly conflicts on the kitchen floor until one of them stops screaming.
Population of head cutting
If I had to note when a head splash became a plotting device, I would look at The Walking Dead’s Premiere Season 7, “The day will come when you are not.” This is the episode when Negan kills Abraham and Glenn with his slugger Louisville wrapped with a barbed wire called Lucille. Not exactly high horror, but its impact on audiences was huge.
“The Day comes when you are not” is one of the highest score episodes of the series, and the end of Grisly Glenn remains one of the most polarized moments in modern TV horror. I never watched one chapter of The walking deadBut I heard still chatting the second that the episode was broadcast because of how distress it was to her fanbase back in 2016. When I finally looked at it to see for myself, a spaghetti night ruined for a week.
Finally Glenn gets his flowers (kind of)
It makes sense that filmmakers would want to go after the same response that Glenn’s death had. The whole sequel is horrific and lodges itself to our collective consciousness, one wet Splat at a time. High horror thrives on those responses; Head cutting is a reliable way to get them.
I don’t see the trope going away anytime soon. It does too good work to drop mouth, even if the effect always weakens. At some point, he will lose his edge, but until then, Glenn, I’m sorry this is what you remember.
