HORROR FILMS FOR ARCHITECTURE/URBAN DESIGN ENTHUSIASTS
Happy Halloween 2021, folks :-). I’ve made a few annual additions to the list, as per usual.
1. PARASITE (2019) A tale of two families, two classes, and two residences.The architecture makes it a must-see for design enthusiasts, but it’s also an effective lens through which to understand the movie as a whole.
2. SQUID GAME (2021) Ok, not a movie, but if you’re really committed to a Halloween all-nighter this TV show might be manageable. Extremely violent, but equally well-crafted and entertaining. One of its most compelling aspects is a dark throwback to childhood games, and the production design follows suit, with mostly minimal, candy-coloured sets. Some seem heavily inspired by Ricardo Bofill’s postmodern housing estate La Muralla Roja.
3. US (2019) As in Parasite, social themes are manifested architecturally, as a world of ‘above’ and ‘below’. In both films the central argument has enormous relevance to design: that in large part it is not who we are intrinsically, but rather the dignity or depravation of our environment, that can shape our behaviour, and even our character.
4. SWALLOW (2019) This movie is so compelling and stylish that it’s worth persevering with, even if, like me, you find the premise horrifying. In keeping with the film’s themes, the setting and production design are a contemporary take on a pristine Mid Century Modern aesthetic.
5. MIDSOMMAR (2019) Ari Aster’s follow-up to Hereditary, set at a remote Swedish Folk Festival, is as disturbing and stylish as you’d expect. Again, unsettling and meticulously- crafted buildings play a central role.
6. THE SHINING (1980) Stanley Kubrick deliberately created an impossible floor plan for the Overlook Hotel, so that architectural discontinuity would subtly unnerve the audience. He also added a maze to the resort (and to Stephen King’s story). The interior style of the Overlook was based on the 1927 Ahwahnee Hotel, while exterior shots featured the 1939 Timberline lodge.
7. THE GIFT (2015) and THE INVITATION (2015) Ideal for a double-feature on the theme of Creepy Social Thrillers Set in Modernist Houses. Both of these critically-acclaimed indies confine their characters (and audience) to a covetable piece of Mid Century Modernism, and exploit the way that style of architecture juxtaposes domestic cosiness with a sense of exposure (and incumbent vulnerability.) .
8. HEREDITARY (2018) This grisly and disturbing film features architectural miniatures as both a storytelling and conceptual tool. Often the actual family home and its woodland setting are also deliberately shot and lit to appear as if part of an scale model, emphasising the fact that the inhabitants are manipulated by forces outside their control.
9. DARK WATER (2002) Few movie settings have been as sinister as Yoshimi and Ikuko’s haunted, waterlogged, concrete apartment. The film was later remade in the US, but the original Japanese version, and the Brutalist building in which it is set, are far more atmospheric and chilling.
10. DON’T LOOK NOW (1973) One of the most unsettling of all ‘city’ films. After their daughter drowns, Laura and John Baxter travel to a wintry Venice to work on an architectural restoration. The city becomes a spatial manifestation of their grief and confusion, as the water which embodies that initial tragedy winds insidiously around them.
11. DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) George Romero critiques and satirises consumeristic mall culture in this influential zombie flick, which is set in an out-of-town shopping centre. “Why do (the zombies) come here?” “Instinct… this was an important place in their lives”…
12. 28 DAYS LATER (2001) There are few cinematic entities more compelling and unsettling than a familiar city stripped of its residents. For the sequence in this clip (in which Cillian Murphy wanders through a deserted London to the strains of Godspeed You! Black Emperor) Danny Boyle took advantage of the fact the the sun rises at about 4.30am in British Midsummer.
13. CUBE (1997) This cult Canadian film was inventively shot on a low budget within a single small cube. Lighting was changed to simulate the myriad booby-trapped spaces through which the characters move as they attempt to escape their mysterious imprisonment. A simple and effective bit of 90′s indie minimalism.
14. POLTERGEIST (1982) The theme of greed and insensitivity within suburban property development is addressed directly (and none too subtly :-)) in this Spielberg classic. A tract of housing is laid right over a cemetery, and the unwitting residents of one property find themselves besieged by its restive spirits.
15. ALIEN (1979) The film may be first and foremost a sci fi rather than a horror, but this spectacular extra terrestrial remains one of the greatest monsters in movie history.
16. ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968) This film stars the 19th Century Dakota Building, on Central Park West. Obviously, legendary resident Adrain Marcato was never actually attacked out front, because he was fictional, but in a tragic coincidence, a real-life occupant of the building was: John Lennon.
17. THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959) Frank Lloyd Wright’s oft-filmed Ennis House replaces the more genre-traditional gothic mansion in this classic horror film. Unfortunately the interior sets bear little resemblance to the rooms found in Wright’s actual building.
18. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1972) This genre-busting opus may be many additional things, but if doesn’t qualify as a horror movie, I don’t know what does. Visually spectacular, it was filmed mostly around London, and featured examples of Brutalism at both it’s best and worst. The stylish dystopia capitalised on the more negative connotations of a monolithic concrete environment-namely its potential to feel bleak, authoritarian, and indifferent to human suffering.
19. CLOVERFIELD (2008) A group of young New Yorkers navigate Manhattan, and its subway tunnels, after a monster attack. The towers of Skidmore Owings and Merrill’s Time Warner Centre provide a central post - apocalyptic set piece.
20. HIGH RISE (2016) “How’s the high life?” “Prone to fits of narcissism, mania, and power failure”… Tom Hiddleston moves into a luxury 70′s apartment tower, and faces some grim and gory consequences, in this adaptation of J G Ballard’s dystopian novel.
And let’s not forget: SUSPIRIA (2018), SUSPIRIA (1977), MOTHER! (2017), BERLIN SYNDROME (2017), CANDYMAN (1992), REPULSION (1965), WHEN A STRANGER CALLS (2007), THE OTHERS (2001), CRIMSON PEAK (2016), THE ORPHANAGE (2007), PAN’S LABYRINTH (2006). Image: Squid Game via pinterest
