#the ending was... unexpected

[dragonriding-archaeologist]

[sneklover]

I DID IT!!!! IM FINALLY DONE WITH OCTO EXPANSION!!! It was really HARD *chokes*

[madimargolishon394]

Challenge Post 15: Horrific Spaces

If horror films use spaces as characters, then the bunker in 10 Cloverfield Lane is simultaneously the enemy and the hero. After getting into a car crash, Michelle, the main character, wakes up in an underground bunker. Her captor, Howard, claims that some sort of apocalyptic event has rendered the outside atmosphere unlivable and that, for her own safety, he has brought her there and refuses to let her leave. Part of the horror comes from the ambiguity of the bunker. It represents both good and bad, safety and endangerment, freedom and captivity. However, Michelle doesn’t know which it truly is, and, unless she wants to test out the effects of radiation first-hand, it is seemingly impossible for her to find out.

On the one hand, the bunker is surprisingly homey. Howard has planned for comfort in the face of the apocalypse, which, to him, comes in the form of VHS tapes, board games, and an old juke box. The rec room is filled with books, the dining room is stocked with canned food and china dishes, and the entire bunker is equipped with ventilation and filtration. Wallpaper, of course, even covers the walls. However, what is supposed to be comforting about the bunker is at the same time unnerving—and this tension becomes a source of horror.

For all the outward comforts and amenities the bunker offers, it is still a prison. Michelle finds herself a captive, forced to call the bunker home against her will. In this film, the idea of the home becomes horrific. “Home” is a place you have to share with strangers and where you must stay forever. Even the wallpaper, for all its intended charm, is patterned with bars—a constant reminder of the bunker’s inescapability. Because of the bunker’s presentation, the viewer, like Michelle, must constantly weigh which is more horrific: inside or outside—the home that’s not a home or the risk of death by radiation.

By framing the bunker as inescapable and unknowable, the film roots the horror in the setting itself. The bunker acts as a physical manifestation of Michelle’s internal conflict, whether to trust Howard and everything he’s told her or not. With the alternative the risk of death, Michelle is forced to rely on the source of her horror, both Howard and the bunker, a dependence which is horrific in itself. As far as the film is concerned, Howard and the bunker are interchangeable in terms of their threat to her.

Overall, the bunker not only serves as the setting, but sets the stakes and echoes the conflict of the film. This horrific space actively works against Michelle, situating horror within the home. In the end, though, Michelle escapes the bunker and destroys it—only to find something worse waiting for her. In this sense, the horror that used to be contained to the bunker alone now extends to all the surrounding world. The same way Michelle was unable to feel at home in the bunker, she can no longer feel at home anywhere on earth. Once and for all, the setting of the film signals the inescapability of horror and the untenability of the home, communicating all of this through its horrific spaces.