Saturday, October 8, 2022

October Horror Challenge 2022 #38: "The Black Swan (2010)"

When I watched the movie Requiem for a Dream when I was in college it MESSED with my head. Like there are images from that movie that still haunt my dreams even today. it's messed up, is what I'm saying, so I've been a big baby wimp about watching anything else this director has made, because I'm afraid of being haunted again by one of his movies. there was a lot of negative hype that surrounded this movie when it first came out, with a lot of people accusing it of being "Queer Bait" because it features a kiss between Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman, but I'm all for watching two hot girls kiss, so I finally decided to watch this movie today. let's hope it doesn't scare me for life.

In this movie, Natalie Portman plays a ballerina who is so passionate about ballet that she's obsessed with it, and this obsession rules every aspect of her life. The director of the production of "Swan Lake" decides he wants to replace the primary ballerina and cast a new girl in the role, and Portman's Nina is his first choice for the role. She has competition for the role, however, in newcomer Lily played by Mila Kunis. Nina is the innocent white swan while Lily personifies the black swan. Soon the rivalry between the two girls forms into a twisted friendship and Lily's dark side starts to bring out the dark side in Nina. Bring on the hot girl-on-girl action!

This movie is very trippy. that's one thing that I was warned about that ended up being very true. Nina has these visions and it's hard to tell what's true and what's not from what she sees in her head. Her mother is overbearing and barely gives her any privacy, constantly saying that she loves her daughter while at the same time bringing her down and saying she can't handle the role and that alone would mess with my head. We see Nina throwing up a lot and it's clear she isn't getting much food which would further bring her to the brink of sanity (she's not sleeping either, preferring to spend most of her time practicing long after everyone else has gone home, so no sleep plus no food plus crazy mother equals a breakdown just waiting to happen. And we have to watch it happen and there's nothing we can do to stop it.

The aforementioned girl-on-girl action scene is pretty hot, and i think it fits with what's swirling in Nina's head at the time it happens, so I hereby declare that it is not Queer-bait, just extra motivation to watch the movie if you want to see hot girls make out (I personally never thought of Natalie Portman as hot, but seeing her let her hair down in this movie has me feeling some type of way, so I'm willing to admit I was wrong). I'm being silly here to take myself down a notch because the movie really did disturb me. I wasn't so sure this would count as a horror movie but Hulu has it listed among their horror movies, and after watching it I have to agree with them, it definitely falls on the horror side of the spectrum for me. I'm glad I finally checked it out, but it's definitely messing with my head, so I need to go hug a puppy or something to get my mind off it. Well done, Darren Aronofsky. You did it again.

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