Rating: 4/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2017 | 25/52 | Horror Anthology
The whole world is dying of panicky fright.
The film contains three intertwining narratives, each telling a distinct story. Gay author Jean Genet’s novels inspire the three stories.
Each segment has its own film style or set of styles. Hero has a tabloid TV style. Homo feels like a prison film when in the present and like an old Technicolor movie when in memory. Horror looks like a ’60s horror film. It’s not mere pastiche, however — the cinematography and storytelling itself exceed these frames.
What ties them all together is their gay themes: a boy bullied and beaten for being gay, unrequited love because both carry deep toxic masculinity, and the leperous treatment gay men receive as perceived “disease carriers.” None of it is subtle; the way it plays with the very troupes that other gay men is hella camp.
Out of the gate, Haynes tells us that he is not married to any one style and that he is unafraid of taboo topics. The result is brilliant and hints at how Haynes eschews genre throughout his career.
A child is born, and he is given a name. Suddenly, he can see himself. He recognizes his position in the world. For many, this experience, like that of being born, is one of horror.
Hero
On June 3rd, 1985, at approximately 5:58 AM, Richard Beacon, a seven-year-old Long Island boy, shot and killed his father in a heated family argument. Felicia Beacon, the boy's mother, astonishingly claims she then saw her son take off in flight from the patio balcony. What really happened the night of June 3rd? Who was Richie Beacon, and where is he now?
The news report continues its hunt for Richie Beacon and the truth.
Homo The child’s hands run along jewelry pieces, fabric, a deck of playing cards, etc. Adult hands catch the child as they reach into a drawer and chastise him.
In '44, I was sent to Fontenal Prison on several counts of theft. Prison was not new to me. I'd lived in them all my life [— various foster homes]. In submitting to prison life and embracing it, I could reject the world that had rejected me.
John Broom, 31 years old, goes through the Fontenal Prison intake process, answering questions about his life, including confessing, under an order, to practicing acts of homosexuality. He remembers himself as a teenage boy in a wedding veil, with someone putting flowers behind his ears. John has an informal wedding with another teenage boy named Jack Bolton, and they are both in juvenile hall.
So, John is surprised when Jack Bolton arrives at the same prison as him.
Horror The police knock on the door. Our POV hides in the study behind the bookshelf. The police barge in to find a dead body. They see our POV, who jumps out of the adjoining bathroom window.
Thomas Graves had been hungry for knowledge. Hungry to discover all the secrets of the universe. Science, man's sacred quest for truth, was his first and only love. Years of hard work and research led him to the mysteries of the sex drive and its potential for the betterment of mankind. At the age of 32, Dr. Thomas Graves was called upon to present his theories to experts in his field...
Of course, no one believes his wild theories, and they demand that he be reexamined. So, he does the work to prove it and can isolate human sexuality. But when he drinks it, it has disastrous effects.