Pessimistic films, part II

Philosophical or cosmic pessimism revolves around the conclusion that the phenomenon of life is not special to the universe, that suffering is intrinsic to sentient existence, and therefore, our ethical response should be to reject existence. The films I will present here show a universe that doesn't care about our suffering, our struggles, or our desires for improvement. These films can be interpreted from this perspective from beginning to end, or at least have striking passages that touch on this idea. While I will provide a synopsis of each film, I will not go into detail or analyze each character or scene. What I will provide is merely a general overview. This list is not exhaustive, and I plan to add new films in the future.

Warning: this list contains spoilers.

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Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1978, directed by Philip Kaufman

Elizabeth is a scientist working for the San Francisco Health Department. She discovers unusual flowers in the woods and brings one home. What she doesn't know is that the flowers were produced by an alien pod that bonded with the local flora after arriving from space, fleeing its planet, which was about to die. She returns to the apartment she shares with her boyfriend, places the flower in a vase, and they go to sleep. The next day, she notices that her boyfriend is acting strangely, distant and emotionless. She goes to Matthew, her coworker, and he slowly realizes that something terrible is happening: people are being killed and replicated by the alien plants. The replicas have the appearance and memories of the original humans, but are devoid of emotion. Elizabeth, Matthew, and a couple of friends, Jack and Nancy, try to escape the city but are pursued. Jack is duplicated, then Elizabeth, much to Matthew's dismay. Days later, we see Matthew walking through the city. He observes children being taken away in trucks to be duplicated. Virtually all adults have been duplicated and are, in fact, aliens. Nancy, disguising her emotions to avoid being caught, sees Matthew in the middle of a square and tries to whisper that she is still human. He turns to her and lets out an alien scream, alerting everyone around to capture Nancy.

Martyrs, 2008, directed by Pascal Laugier

Lucie escapes from captivity where she was subjected to torture. She is rescued and ends up in an orphanage. There, she befriends Anna, who realizes that Lucie believes she is being attacked by an apparition. Fifteen years later, Lucie breaks into a family's home and kills everyone. Anna goes to the house and is horrified by what her friend has done. Lucie believes the family was responsible for the torture she endured as a child. She believed she would free herself from the apparition after killing them, but she was wrong. The apparition attacks her again, and Lucie commits suicide. Anna, shocked, discovers a secret passage to a complex in the house basement. There, Anna finds a young woman imprisoned with signs of torture and realizes Lucie was right. At that moment, however, a group appears, kills the young woman, and imprisons Anna. A woman named Mademoiselle comes to Anna and explains everything: the group is an ancient philosophical organization that seeks to discover what exists after death. To achieve this, they torture young women to the brink of death, believing that this way these martyrs can see the other side. Anna is then tortured for months. In the end, she is skinned alive and, dying, enters a spiritual trance. Mademoiselle is called to listen to her final whispers. The organization holds an event to finally reveal the secret of the afterlife. While everyone is gathering in the living room of a mansion, Mademoiselle speaks to one of her lackeys through the bathroom door. She asks him if he can imagine what happens after death. He replies no, to which she replies, “Keep doubting.” She then shoots herself in the mouth with a revolver.

The Road, 2009, directed by John Hillcoat

Based on a book by Cormac McCarthy, the film takes place after an unspecified global apocalypse. We follow a father and his young son on a journey on foot to the coast of the United States. They seek hope in a completely grey world, devoid of food, where the soil no longer yields anything. There is total famine, to the point where there are almost no other animals to eat, which causes many men to roam in groups, capturing weaker people with the goal of slowly cannibalizing them. We see flashbacks that show the father's attempt to convince the mother to stay with him in the house, caring for their son. However, the mother loses hope. She tries to convince the father to kill their son and then commit suicide with her, something many neighbors have already done. The reason she gives for this extreme act is that the world has ended, there is no longer any order, and there is no food and no hope of a return to normal. She mentions the gangs of men who are taking advantage of this situation to rape women and children and then eat them to survive. In one of the flashbacks, we see that the mother abandoned them both. The only thing keeping the man's hope alive is saving the boy, to whom he says we must always keep the “flame” of humanity burning.

Alien, 1978, directed by Ridley Scott

The crew of the space freighter Nostromo has been in suspended animation pods for months whilst returning to Earth. The Nostromo's computer awakens the seven crew members after receiving a mysterious signal of intelligent life, a policy of the Weyland-Yutani corporation, the freighter's owner. The computer reports that the signal appears to be an SOS. The crew lands on the planetoid from which the signal originates and finds an alien ship that crashed thousands of years ago. Inside, they find a giant fossilized alien with a hole in its chest. Exploring further, one of the crew, Kane, finds hundreds of strange preserved eggs. One of the eggs hatches, and a parasite attaches itself to Kane's face. Ripley, one of Nostromo's officers, realizes that the signal wasn't an SOS, but a warning. After a while, back on the Nostromo, the parasite detaches itself from Kane, and he awakens. All seems well, but a creature, a xenomorph, emerges from Kane's chest, killing him. Throughout the film, the xenomorph grows rapidly and kills the crew one by one. We discover that one of the officers is a synthetic, and he, under Weyland-Yutani's command, is willing to sacrifice everyone in the ship because of the xenomorph's economic potential. Only Ripley escapes. The universe is malignantly indifferent to life.

The Thing, 1982, directed by John Carpenter

The Thing is based on the science fiction story Who Goes There? by writer John W. Campbell, Jr. In addition to Campbell's source material, John Carpenter was also influenced by the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft. The film is set on an isolated American base in Antarctica. The story begins with a helicopter from the Norwegian base chasing a dog, which runs toward the American base. From the helicopter, two Norwegians attempt to kill the dog and attack the Americans, who retaliate and kill the Norwegians. After bizarre events at the base, the Americans discover that the Norwegians had unearthed an alien ship that had been buried under the ice for 100,000 years. They also discover that there was an occupant and that this being has the ability to consume other life forms, absorbing and imitating them. Paranoia grips everyone at the base. The film conveys the message that the universe is extremely hostile and indifferent to our individuality and also to the collective desires of our species, since the creature consumes, absorbs and imitates all other forms of animal life that it can dominate, acquiring their memories and intelligence.

Alien 3, 1992, directed by David Fincher

Alien 3 was considered disappointing by fans, who felt betrayed by seeing such a sad ending for the characters of the previous film. However, Alien 3 is consistent with the universe in which the first films are set. In them, a mega-corporation called Weyland-Yutani tries at all costs to acquire the xenomorphs for its own benefit. To this end, the corporation sacrificed a space freighter crew and a space colony full of civilians. Alien 3 is no different. The film begins where the second one ends: Ripley and the survivors of the second film are in suspended animation pods inside the spaceship Sulaco, which is heading for Earth. A fire breaks out on the Sulaco while they sleep, and the ship's computer ejects the suspended animation pod, which crashes onto a prison planet run by Weyland-Yutani. Everyone dies on impact except Ripley. However, xenomorph eggs were hidden in the pod. One of them breaks open and releases its parasite, which attaches itself to a dog. The dog conceives a new xenomorph, which begins murdering the prisoners. Amidst the chaos, Ripley discovers she is pregnant with a queen xenomorph, having herself been parasitized while in suspended animation. Ripley's goal becomes to thwart the corporation's plans. Her victory means the corporation's defeat, and for that to happen, all the creatures must be incinerated, which means she, too, will have to die. However, in the end, the corporation remains all-powerful. Little changes, except that Weyland-Yutani can no longer use that extremely dangerous life form.

The Fly, 1986, directed by David Cronenberg

A brilliant scientist, Seth Brundle, invents teleportation between two pods. At first, he has difficulty teleporting living beings, who always emerge deformed and dead in the second pod. After Seth becomes involved with a reporter, Veronica, he finally solves the problem. Veronica witnesses Seth teleport a monkey, which emerges safely in the second pod. He then decides to test the teleportation himself, but doesn't realize that a fly also enters the first pod. His DNA is fused with the fly's, a process Seth is unable to reverse. As time passes, we see Seth slowly metamorphosing into a hybrid monster. To make matters worse, Veronica discovers she is pregnant. Unsure whether she conceived before or after Seth's genetic fusion with the fly, she decides to have an abortion. Crying, Seth begs her not to abort, as their child will be the only thing he will have left behind. When the metamorphosis is complete, the monster, now without human consciousness, tries to drag Veronica into the first pod, intending to fuse her and himself into a single organism. Veronica is saved by a friend. The monster, however, fails to escape the pod in time and is teleported away along with a piece of the door. Agonizing in pain after being fused with a piece of the door, the creature crawls towards Veronica, who now holds a shotgun brought by her friend. The monster uses one of its paws to point the shotgun at its own head. At first, Veronica cries and refuses to kill it, but the creature is in great pain. Veronica then blows out her lover's brains.

The Empty Man, 2020, directed by David Prior

In 1995, friends Greg, Fiona, Ruthie, and Paul are hiking in the mountains of Bhutan. Paul falls into a crevasse and enters a trance, possessed by an entity, something the others don't understand. Days later, influenced by the entity within Paul, Ruthie kills Greg and Fiona and then herself. In 2018, we follow former police officer James Lasombra. His friend Nora asks him to find Amanda, her daughter, who has recently disappeared. He discovers that Amanda's friends have committed suicide in bizarre ways. At the police station, a detective tells James about a case of a mother who fed her baby to stray dogs. The detective says that even if she gets the death penalty, it won't solve the case, because, according to him, “we can't indict the cosmos.” James discovers that Amanda is part of a cult called the Pontifex Institute, which has existed for decades and aims to conjure an empty man, a tulpa, through the power of group meditation. James finds cultists worshipping Paul, who has been in a coma for decades in a hospital. Every few centuries, this cosmic entity possesses someone to deliver a message of nihilistic madness. Amanda reveals to James that he is a tulpa, a physical manifestation created just three days ago to serve as a new vessel for the entity. Since vessels enter a deep coma after some time, and since it takes a long time between one vessel and another, the Pontifex Institute decided to create him to serve as a vessel and accelerate the process. Desperate upon learning his life is a lie, James succumbs to the entity and shoots Paul in the head. Outside the hospital room, several cultists kneel before him.

Under the Skin, 2013, directed by Jonathan Glazer

The film follows an alien protagonist who disguises herself as a human to seduce men who are slowly killed and consumed by being submerged in a bizarre liquid. Alongside her, there's another alien, disguised as a man, who monitors her activities on a motorcycle. In one scene, the alien is on a deserted beach, talking to a surfer, trying to attract him. There's also a couple with a baby. The parents enter the water, leaving the baby on the sand, but are swept away by the rough seas. The surfer tries unsuccessfully to save them, and then lies exhausted on the sand. The alien picks up a rock and hits him hard on the head, knocking him out. She drags his body to the van, ignoring the baby crying alone on the beach, near the raging sea. However, she eventually develops a certain empathy toward humanity and her own human disguise. She abandons her mission and begins traveling through Scotland, experiencing different things. While walking alone on a trail, she passes a truck driver. When the weather worsens, she goes to a public shelter and sleeps. She wakes up to the truck driver trying to molest her and runs away. The trucker catches up with her and tries to rape her, but ends up ripping off her human skin. Terrified, he douses the alien with kerosene and sets it on fire, burning her alive.

The Autopsy (Cabinet of Curiosities), 2022, directed by David Prior

The story takes place in the 1978. In it, we follow pathologist Carl, who travels to a small town at the request of his friend, Sheriff Nathan, to perform autopsies on miners who died trapped after an explosion. The explosion occurred after Joe Allen, suspected of gruesome murders, entered the mine with a mysterious sphere in his arms. During the autopsies, which are being recorded on audiotape, Allen's body comes back to life and ties Carl to one of the stretchers. The creature inside Allen explains that it is an alien species that, over the ages, has adapted to parasitize other life forms. These beings are small and hideous, lacking most sensory abilities. They possess only small tentacles, which they use to pilot their ship, the sphere, and to penetrate the bodies of their victims. They use their hosts' bodies for pleasure and nourishment. Now that Allen's body is dead, the creature urgently needs a new host, as it has almost no internal blood left to feed on. However, upon performing the transfer, the creature becomes temporarily vulnerable. Carl manages to grab a scalpel, but because his hands are tied near his head, he can't stab the alien, which is slowly entering his body through a cut in his abdomen. Carl then stabs his own eyes, ears, vocal cords, and throat. He writes on his chest in blood: “Listen to tape, burn me.” The creature communicates internally with Carl, who laughs, saying he has vandalized the body. Carl bleeds to death, and Nathan finds him the next morning.

Moon, 2009, directed by Duncan Jones

In the future, after humanity ran out of oil, a Korean-American company mines helium-3 on the surface of the Moon to fuel Earth. The mining station, Sarang, is located on the far side of the Moon and is operated by a single astronaut named Sam Bell. The contract stipulates that each astronaut operates the station for 3 years. Throughout his stay, communication with Earth is very poor, with video delays of days, which depresses him and makes his relationship with his wife, who was pregnant when he left, very difficult. His body begins to deteriorate, and he has an accident while outside the base. After the accident, we discover that he is a clone of the original Sam Bell, since the base's AI automatically awakened a younger clone to perform his duties without realizing that the injured man survived. The two clones, one young and healthy, the other near death after almost 3 years of life, discover that their memories of being married and having left a daughter on Earth have been transplanted. They discover a hidden underground facility with hundreds of clones ready to be awakened, and also find out that the communication signal with Earth was intentionally blocked. To make matters worse, when they manage to contact Earth in secret, they receive the news that Sam's wife died many years ago, delivered by the original Sam Bell's daughter, now an adult. The company, realizing the mess it made, sends mercenaries to kill them both, but one of them, the new clone, escapes to Earth, while the other remains, already on the verge of death, having never even set foot on Earth.

by Fernando Olszewski