My best friend Kayce's birthday was yesterday, the 28th. I have no classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Thus, I left Loyola on Wednesday for Baton Rouge to be with her at midnight. After eating some exquisite chicken at P.F. Chang's, we went to our friends' apartment to really "celebrate." This apartment is a mecca for imbibing, and Wednesday night was no different. We all had a great time, and eventually everybody returned home, including Kayce (not driving, praise Adonis).
At the end of the night I remained awake with two friends, Nick and Zach. Previously Nick had told us of a horror movie called the "Poughkeepsie Tapes." It is a horror film presented in the form of documentary, under the premise that the film is a true story with real video. The "real video" part is the interesting aspect: The plot says that after many murders and disappearances in an upstate NY/Pennsylvania area, the cops had no leads. Eventually they were led to an abandoned home, which happened to have ten bodies buried in the backyard. What's more, there are over 800 tapes in the house, in which the killer tapes all of his actions, from stalking his targets to abducting them to killing them and disposing of the bodies. This low-grade "real" film material is interspersed with interviews and sessions with the FBI and forensics departments.
Impressive acting makes the idea of serial killing and torture much more personal. There are only two murder scenes in the movie, but it is still a genuinely haunting film. Far more harrowing were the scenes involving poor Cheryl Dempsey, the girl abducted by the killer. He never killed her, but rather imprisoned her for eight years, brutally torturing and psychologically re-circuiting her. One cannot help but feel horrible as he or she watches this girl go from the screaming, terrified captive Cheryl to the timid, submissive and mentally obliterated servant named "Slave." When the cops raid the abandoned house they find Cheryl with her eerie porcelain mask on, lying in a wooden coffin in the living room, still alive. The officers brought Cheryl to the hospital to recover from her torture and eventually be returned to her mother. Her mother received Slave, though. Cheryl continued to proclaim her love for her master, who she said would come back for her. Shortly after an interview with the documentary, which only resulted in her constantly answering with "What do you want me to say?", she took her own life.
This Cheryl/Slave plot point is the creepiest part of the film, and the focus of this post. In this abduction and torture, the "Water Street Butcher" created existence. He took Cheryl's existence and destroyed it, replacing it with a being he wanted and specifically crafted. As the idea that he was her "master" implied, the guy likes power. With this in mind it is worth noting that he aimed to be a god, creating new life. This torture was his means of not only taking away life, but making it. He did not procreate, but tortured. New existence sprung not from new cells but from new mentality. When I begun this post I was going to write on Cheryl's fight to be something. I was going to say that Cheryl was so desperate to not be murdered and become nonexistent that she assumed the person that she could be. She took it and nurtured it, becoming Slave because she was being. Now that I consider it, however, I realize that the killer would never kill her. He would keep torturing her until she complied and until she knew nothing else except love for her master. Cheryl was going to get the brunt of vile sadism until she became what she had to be.
Though that point on Cheryl falls through, I still like to propose a thesis that we all seek to exist. We all want to be something. We will do whatever is necessary to be what we want to be, but in many circumstances people will settle with being something else, so long as they are in fact being.
I advise against watching this movie. It freaked me the hell out. I have been checking closets and making sure all doors are locked in my house every night. But I'm also a huge gash. The film is not on DVD/Netflix, but the entire thing is uploaded on Youtube. I tell you this so you can make the choice to watch it. Once again, I advise that you can and should go through life without watching it.
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