Ok so I had this thought the second time I watched the movie, and I’d love your opinion on it:
From what I could tell, most if not all the times Simon is put in immediate danger or presented with a threat he doesn’t know how to handle, his gut instinct is freeze, not fight or flight. Excluding the hangar scene where he tries to run the station crew over with the sub because I’m assuming he kind of knew that was going to happen, but my examples would be: the very first proximity alarms when the sub first gets swarmed at the beginning, and he just stands there unsure of what to do. The very first photo he takes of the eel, realizing the radio is broken and he’s hearing voices, realizing after that that he was wrong when Eva talks to him. Despite this possibly being unreliable with the eel’s manipulations, his memory of the Filament incident where one of his brothers quite literally yells at him to “don’t just stand there, do something!” Before it all goes up in flames. Freezing at the computer terminal with the ctrl alt shift 9 command (that one is flimsy I know, but it stuck with me for some reason despite all the myriad health things he’s probably got going on by that point). I would even argue his reaction after taking a photo of the crew in the hanger was a freeze response too after he’s faced with the consequences of what he did and that split second satisfaction of lashing out wears off.
If that’s not what you observed then I’d be really curious to know what you think! You’ve got some of the best character analysis I’ve seen from a lot of blogs thus far and I just wanted to share. Thank you!
You are 100% on the money.
This is an incredibly astute observation and it takes a trained eye to dig up those mannerisms from little repeated moments like that, so, well done on that. Simon is an absolute textbook example of the freeze response, and looking at the film while knowing this makes a shit ton of stuff start making sense really fast.
In trauma psychology, freezing happens when the brain looks at 'Fight' or 'Flight' and realizes both options equal "certain death". For Simon, flight is physically impossible (he’s welded into a hemorover), and fight is useless against a deep-sea cosmic horror or a massive entity like the COI/Eden. What is there left to do but freeze?
That Filament memory you mentioned is the smoking gun, my friend. "Don't just stand there, do something!" tells us that his instinct to lock up isn't new, and that it's a lifelong behavioral pattern that likely feeds his massive survivor's guilt. Every time he freezes in the sub, he isn't only terrified of his own situation! He's terrified of his own inability to move! He's trapped both by the metal walls around him and the wiring of his own brain.
Such a great mirroring theme, there. Love it, love it. I'm wondering if Simon started falling heavily on "Fight" because it was the fastest way to override "Freeze". They told him not to just stand there, but do something. So... he started to do just that. Take action. Intriguing...
