"I have a room on Divisadero": A meta on the shots in "Don't Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape" and the female horror of Louis' apartment
So, I made a graphic comprised of some haunting shots from season 2 episode 5 of IWTV, and it accidentally helped me realise why I've not been able to get the episode out of my head, specifically the scenes between Armand and Daniel. I'm going to try to explain my thinking here.
From the moment we go from the Loumand scene in the bedroom, we're forced into Daniel's point of view. And the first thing we see? A "cellophane corpse on the floor", to use Daniel's own words:
It's right next to him, facing him, mirroring his own position lying on his side. As Daniel himself says, "Surely, I'm next". And this is then followed by a panning shot of what he can see, all filmed from this dizzying sideways angle where he's lying on the floor. And we're hearing Daniel in the present day list what he can see. "There's a TV in the corner near the corpse. Some kind of sock or shoe commercial? There's sheets of plastic tarp, some duct tape, bleach."
What does this call to mind? Well, obviously, body disposal, making people disappear, but specifically, for me, it brings to mind the monstrous serial killers of the 70s, specifically Ted Bundy, and Jeffrey Dahmer, the cannibalistic serial killer of teenage boys. The most (in)famous serial killers of the modern imagination operated in the 60s and 70s, and these shots immediately bring that to mind. We're in the point of view of a victim.
I'm convinced this is not an accident on the part of Stuart Howell, the DP (Director of Photography, in charge of cinematography) for this episode. These shots are jarring, dizzying, and disorientating. And when Armand walks in, we stay in Daniel's point of view. Armand casually walks past Daniel, not even looking at him, and we're still on the floor, looking up at him. It's honestly the most frightening he looks in the whole season, in my opinion. Just look at these shots.
The blurriness? The low-angled framing, making Armand look taller and imposing? He's looking down at Daniel, but we can't see him properly. Obviously, this is down to show how confused and injured Daniel is, having been attacked and lost a lot of blood. But it's also what happens when you've been drugged or hit over the head or otherwise impaired.
Also to note very briefly, that this whole scene takes place during the day. I can't go into the Daylight Horror subgenre in too much detail here because this is already going to be a long post, but basically it highlights the mundanity of horror, the fact that acts of violence and horror don't always happen in the middle of the night. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a classic example of the Daylight Horror subgenre, and so is this scene. Just to go back to Daniel's quote:
There's a TV in the corner near the corpse. Some kind of sock or shoe commercial? There's sheets of plastic tarp, some duct tape, bleach.
It's the middle of the day, the TV is on, there's a shoe commercial on. All ordinary, daily, things. But there's also plastic tarp, duct tape, bleach, and a corpse right next to the TV. In this apartment. In the middle of the day. The mundane juxtaposed with the unimaginably horrific.
Anyway, let's move onto the next interaction, the torture scene. A lot happens, but I'm going to focus on certain aspects, otherwise this meta will be too long. The most important thing here is this horrific exchange:
Daniel: I can't move —
Armand: Move your body?
Daniel: Yeah. Yeah.
Again, this is bringing to mind being drugged or handcuffed, both common forms of restraint that serial killers use for their victims. Armand has "commandeered [Daniel's] body". It's mind control, but for all intents and purposes, it's basically possession. I've made a gifset on this here, but to summarise, possession is often a female experience in horror movies. The loss of bodily autonomy, being moved by forces outside your control, being bent to someone else's will. It's very feminine horror coded.
Daniel looks to the corpse on the floor beside him, and Armand follows his gaze slowly, and then they have this exchange:
Daniel: I don't want...
Armand: To die? On that item, I think I know something you don't.
Throughout this whole conversation, Assad Zaman is truly giving The Performance of A Lifetime. He's barely blinked, and his pupils are pinpricks, and there's just nothing behind eyes. He's got this slight smile when he says "On that item, I think I know something you don't." He's saying here, "I actually know you do secretly want to die". It's such a frightening thing to say. There's just this insane gleam in his eyes. Words don't do it justice, just go and watch it again. You know what I mean.
Anyway, back to the mind control. What does Armand do to Daniel, with this power? Forces him to his knees. So, we have this truly nightmarish shot of the door closing on them both as Louis yells at Armand to leave Daniel alone:
As @molloyboi said in this post, "the horror of a door closing and unknowable violence occuring behind that closed door never ceases to horrify me". It's such a horrifying shot because of everything it implies. Daniel on his knees, his head bent, Armand leaning forwards with his legs spread, his hands clasped together. "You're going to teach me to be fascinating", he says, with that manic shine in his eyes. Truly the stuff of nightmares.
Very briefly on the torture scene itself. Armand puts Daniel in a stress position often used to extract information from the person being tortured. Only Armand didn't need to extract information from Daniel this way. He put him in this position and just pulled the information from Daniel's head anyway. And we have Daniel constantly trying to make it stop: "My legs are starting to cramp", he says, "I have Charlie Horse, left leg." But Armand doesn't listen. This isn't torture to extract information, this is torture for the sake of sadism.
And when Armand is done with him, he just leaves Daniel there, like that, crying and in pain, while he goes to dispose of the corpse. How long is he gone for? We don't know, because the next time we see the apartment, it's four days later. So, let's move onto that.
We've immediately lost time. We don't know what happened in this gap, or what Armand did to Daniel. And putting aside the Devil's Minion goggles for a second, this is objectively terrifying.
Daniel is obviously out of it. He looks like he's in shock, exhausted and vacant and just staring at the TV, with that disgusting bite mark on his neck, all crusted over. He hasn't showered in four days. We don't know how much he's slept or eaten.
(By the way, it is so interesting that Daniel in the present day tunes back in on this news report. "Spiro Agnew", he says in the present day, and then we smash cut to this TV report. Of course Daniel, a journalist, would be brought back to himself by this huge historical event.)
But anyway. He's not completely gone yet. The fight isn't completely gone out of him. How do we know? Because he's moving his fingers slightly, as he watches TV. This tiny, fragile, reminder that he's in control of his own body right now, that he can move his hand right now. That he's not being possessed.
And he nervously turns to look at Armand, as you can see here in this gifset by @loo-nuh-tik. It's the way you would watch your torturer, your jailer, the man who is probably going to kill you. But as soon as Daniel thinks Armand is going to turn to him, he turns away quickly and stares at the TV. You can see so much in his posture, in his slightly lowered head. Perhaps he's learned, in those four days, that if he just sits and stares at the TV, Armand leaves him alone.
So, he tries to escape the moment Armand leaves to go check on Louis, and even from the other room, Armand calls, "Rest", and Daniel collapses and hits his face on the wall. A pathetic escape attempt, but at least he tried something.
So we come to the "rest" scene. I could talk forever about the "rest" scene. I will probably meta about the "rest" scene. But, for now, I'll keep it very short, because this is already way too long and rambling. In the context of the Female Horror of the Divisadero apartment, I want to talk about two shots. Firstly, this one:
Again, we're in Daniel's point of view, staring at Armand in this creepy close-up shot. He's whispering, "Shhhh", and he's not blinking, and we're trapped in Daniel's point of view again, staring at the creature that's been torturing him for days.
Obviously, this parallels the first torture scene, where we were in Daniel's point of view, looking at Armand, who wasn't blinking and just pulling information out of Daniel's head like spools of tape, forcing him to relive these humiliating sexual experiences (by the way, I am not excusing the "paper bag" thing, but I don't have time to go into it here).
And the last shots I want to discuss are these ones:
Why? Because of the Feminine Horror of it, of course. Firstly, it reminded me of Hannibal Lecter cleaning and bandaging Will's knuckles in season 2 episode 10 of Hannibal (screencaps from here):
The horror of blood blooming in water, the intimacy of cleaning an open wound, the homoeroticism of it all. That's all there, but it also calls to mind an abuser taking care of their victim. Yes, they hit you, but they patch you up, afterwards. The hand that hits you is the same one that gives you a necklace to say sorry.
There's so much Feminine Horror in these shots of Armand and Daniel. It's finally here, the end of these several days of torture. And Armand is taking care of him, in the end. Cleaning his wound tenderly, leading him into this gentle, easeful death.
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