It would be impossible to discuss the development of the body horror genre without mentioning David Cronenberg, the brilliant Canadian director who has been crafting particularly grotesque and upsetting films for over five decades. While body horror itself has its origins in the classic Universal monster films from the Golden Age of Hollywood, Cronenberg was able to address more psychological themes relating to human tragedy and societal upheaval. There are many modern films that owe a lot to Cronenberg, as it is hard to imagine that studios like A24 or Neon would find audiences for their unusual horror projects without the audience that films like The Fly and Scanners cultivated. However, Cronenberg stated that the 1973 horror film Don’t Look Now left him “completely paralyzed and mesmerized” because of how haunting it was.
Why Did ‘Don’t Look Now’ Terrify David Cronenberg?
Loosely based on the short story of the same name by Daphne du Maurier, Don’t Look Now is a family-centric psychological drama that focuses on two parents who are coping with the recent death of young daughter Christine (Sharon Williams), who died in a tragic drowning accident in their English homestead. While still stricken with grief, the architect John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) and his wife Laura (Julie Christie) take a trip to Venice to do restorative work on a church. As they arrive in the city, the couple begins to hear whispers of mysterious strangers, which get them involved in a conspiracy that involves the Occult. Cronenberg found that the “bizarre anticipation” that the film had for each scary moment made it distinct from other horror films that he had seen, as it was “done in such an artful, offbeat, abstract way” that he still found to be “viscerally compelling.”
Despite the initially dismissive reviews that it received from film critics at the time, Don’t Look Now was a breakthrough in the horror genre for how it married genuine human emotion with supernatural qualities. The opening moments of the film are grounded in such stark realism that director Nicolas Roeg was able to get the audience to buy into the authenticity of the situation; as a result, the subsequent appearances by the psychics who hold a seance to connect with Christine feel all the more plausible. Audiences may have been used to having characters that made bad decisions in horror films for the sake of the plot, but every single thing that John and Laura do in Don’t Look Now is a result of their guilt for not saving Christine from her ghastly fate.
How Did Nicolas Roeg Inspire David Cronenberg?
There was a notable shift in Cronenberg’s filmography in the aftermath of Don’t Look Now, suggesting that Roeg’s masterpiece had a profound impact on what he perceived to be “scary.” Early Cronenberg films like Stereo and Crimes of the Future, while impressive as technical achievements, didn’t have the psychological depth of his later work. However, Cronenberg soon began drawing from more identifiable stories of human interest after seeing Don’t Look Now; The Fly was essentially a tragic romance trapped within a monster flick, Videodrome examined cult conspiracies and media violence, and The Dead Zone tapped into fears about nuclear annihilation that were at the forefront of viewers’ minds during the Ronald Reagan administration.
Cronenberg would later draw from Don’t Look Now in how he tackled grief and tragedy, themes that would become essential within the later half of his filmography. The notion of a family man reckoning with the world’s darkness, a central component of Don’t Look Now, is critical in Cronenberg’s 2005 adaptation of A History of Violence, which starred Viggo Mortensen as a former hitman who tries to conceal his past from his family. The concept of using conspiracies and the supernatural to cope with a very personal loss has become particularly relevant for Cronenberg in recent years, as his most recent film The Shrouds was dedicated to the memory of his late wife Carolyn.
Don’t Look Now is currently available to stream on Kanopy in the U.S.
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