2011

Director: Mike Flanagan

Genre: Supernatural horror

A few days ago I took a walk. 

This walk led me around the block I live on, past businesses, honking cars, dying trees, and busy people. I moved alongside a highway, and I saw a shortcut to home. It was a tunnel.

I walked inside. There was a man sitting in the middle of the tunnel. And it was because of this movie that walking past this normal man became a terrifying experience. 

There are so many things in horror films that can scare us. People always talk about how Psycho made them afraid of showers, or how Jaws made everyone afraid of going into the ocean. But both of these examples end in deaths. Norman bates kills the girl in the shower. The shark eats people. 

I don't know what the hell the thing in the tunnel does to people. I don't know what it is. I don't know what the tunnel is. It just looks like a normal tunnel, nestled under a California freeway. According to this film's poster: there are fates worse than death. 

Absentia is one of the best films that deals with the fear of the unknown. It also turns that uncertainty and vague information on the viewer. 

There's a moment in this film where we are shown an event. Later, this event is described to a different character, and we see her perception of the event. First: we see a man dragged away from his house by an unseen creature. Secondly: we see a drugged out girl ignoring a man running away from his life. 

One of these is true, but when I saw the second version of the scene I began to doubt the truth. 

I feel like I'm just going to start gushing over this film. I really love it. The people in it feel so real. The horror elements are so vague and eerily that it makes my hands shake just thinking about it. The way the tunnel is shot makes it seem like some black hole that occasionally invades our reality. The two sisters go through arcs and make changes with their lives, but they live in a world so close to the tunnel that their suffering is an inevitability. 

The tunnel will never be understood. There is talking about an underground city that existed long before civilization came to this area. Are the humans trapped there meant to work for the creatures? Are they even creatures at all? The way we just barely see them in the corner of the screen reminds me of real life hallucinations. Flickers in the corner of your eye, something crawling, something on your shoulder. 

The story in Absentia feels so simple, but upon re-watching it I found new ways of thinking about it. You may find that after a first viewing the images blend together, but if you take the time to process them you'll find that this film is much more memorable than you first assumed. 

I think its just like daily life, and taking a walk around your block. Usually, things will be relatively the same, but just occasionally you'll see strange events that might feel like cracks in your own perceived reality. And maybe one time you walk through a dark tunnel, you won't walk out. 

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