Newsletter #115
This weekend we watched Disappear Completely, a horror flick currently streaming on Netflix that carries the distinction of having a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. I’m not much for letting reviews make my viewing choices just because I like to see things and make up my own mind about them, but there’s value in maintaining knowledge of the discourse and that value only increases when you engage with the discourse.
Mexican writer/director Luis Javier Henaine, with whom this is my first experience, brings us Disappear Completely, an ostensible horror movie that’s light on scares and long on creepiness, and that plays more like a noir narrative with a supernatural overlay. Without spoiling too much, the movie centers on a talented photographer stuck in the cycle of taking sensational and salacious crime scene for the tabloid where he’s employed. Despite a half-hearted gesture at his disdain for the nature of his work, it’s clear that Santiago - played by the excellent Harold Torres - is not only good at what he does, but also enjoys it, particularly when the police he bribes to access the scenes are too squeamish to stick around for his photo shoots. As with all horror, the supernatural intrudes upon the story and sends the narrative off on a different trajectory into more metaphorical land. Santiago’s longterm girlfriend tells him she’s pregnant right around the time a mysterious condition begins to rob him of all his senses. Up until the plot’s answers are revealed, the viewer suspects Santiago’s condition could indeed be psychosomatic, but that hand is only ever subtly played; the movie doesn’t spend much time with its characters lingering on decisions, and focuses instead on telling its story with a character cut from a much more proactive, noirish cloth than a typical horror protagonist.
To begin with, Santiago is a crime scene photographer with the seediest of jobs: bribing cops to get access to the worst and most sensationally newsworthy crime scenes. When Santiago inadvertently photographs something he shouldn’t where a politician was murdered, his life begins to spiral out of control to such a degree that it sets him off on a path towards answers, answers he may wish he’d never found. If you remove the supernatural elements to the movie, you’ve got the summary for quite literally hundreds of noir stories where instead of a photographer, you could substitute any number of crime-adjacent characters. Therein lies Disappear Completely’s strength: it exists at the overlap between two thematically similar genres and it does both of those genres pretty darn well. That being said, I’m not sure this is going to entirely scratch the itch if you’re looking for a horror movie. The supernatural elements to the plot are integral, but ultimately serve as devices to move the story forward more than they serve as the story’s raison d’être.
This isn’t a bad thing, that the horror in Disappear Completely takes a backseat while the human drama does the heavy lifting. It’s why frightfests like The Babadook, It Follows, The Witch, and their ilk are so affecting. That being said, caveat emptor: there are many shades, many facets, many moods from which the horror afficianado must choose. Save Disappear Completely for that evening when you want a fable that glistens darkly around its edges, like something told around a campfire, but with an ultimately uplifting statement, a lesson to be learned.
Y’all have a good week this week! Be kind to yourself and others, and I’ll see you Wednesday!
Wado!