Friday Film Review-The Shrine (2010)

Friday, 25 November 2011


Look, I'll be the first to admit that I love horror movies. I do. However, whenever I invariably reach the end of the movie I find myself asking-why do I watch this? Is there something wrong with me? Why did I just enjoy 2 hours of fear, blood and gore. Evidently I am not alone since movie-goers flock to horror films. But why? Why do we watch these? I just finished reading an article which said that it is because our brains can experience pain and pleasure at the same time ie: one part of your brain is scared, while the other is like "whoa, it's just a movie, don't worry, you are safe in your living room". I'm sure this is true but I do wonder to what extent horror movies explain things that we don't understand. Take The Shrine for example, a film that, like many other horror films  deals with demons. Many cultures still talk about demons or good or bad spirits and use them to explain occurrences in their lives. These beliefs have largely been eradicated from Western culture and yet we make and watch films about demons all the time. I'm not trying to make an argument about spirits or anything like that but I do wonder if horror films are another way of explaining why bad things happen. (SPOILERS AHEAD)  The Shrine is about 3 young Americans who travel to a remote village in Poland in search of a young American back packer who has gone missing.  There they find a bunch of creepy villagers who threaten them and tell them to leave. They, however, do not, since this is a horror movie and if people did sensible things in horror movies it wouldn't be a horror movie. Instead they go investigate some smoke cloud where they encounter an evil gargoyle. When they get out of the smoke, they are attacked the local villagers, who look  alarmingly like the Backstreet Boys if I do say so myself. They villagers have some ritual where they strap down the unsuspecting American, torture them and then slap a weird iron mask on and pound it in with a sledge hammer. Gross. However, by the end of the film we realise that the villagers are actually the good guys, and that looking at the gargoyle is baaaad news as it turns you into a demon. Like Dracula before them, the premise of a movie like this is that the Polish villagers who seem like simple farmers, know all along that the smoke thing is evil and they alone know what to do to keep an evil demon from escaping. The 'enlightened' Americans are actually the ignorant ones and their demise is of their own doing. If they had listened to the villagers they could have survived. I wonder, without wanting to get to philosophical  to what extent, a film like this is an attempt to explain why bad things happen. Ie: they wouldn't have gotten tortured/killed if they had obeyed the villagers. Maybe evil things happen because we don't believe in evil? I don't know, I am rambling on now but I do think it's interesting to think about. Anyway, let's review the rest of the film. The Shrine is a Canadian horror film and as such we must accept that there is some bad dialogue and awkward acting. However, even though it gets off to a rough start, once the film gets going it is actually quite well done. The tense scenes were tense and, the actors really give it their all. The final showdown is quite frightening, and, at the very least well crafted with the tension rising. Overall, I recommend this The Shrine, if for no other reason than to prove that Canadian movies don't have to be terrible.