British film

• Artistic influences of Stanley Kubrick (UTS)

  • The unique soundtrack compares to the unsettling soundtracks in Kubrick's The Shining and 2001 A Space Odyssey.
  • Kubrick's bold, technical and precise visual style directly influenced the film's highly technical sequences
• Nicolas Roeg influences (UTS)

  • UTS's narrative is reminiscent of Roeg's cult science fiction film The Man Who Fell to Earth.
  • Both are British science fiction films about an alien who inhibits human form and both are notable for their surreal imagery
  • Johansson's costume and hairstyle is homage to Mick Jagger in Roeg's cult classic performance.
• Ken Loach influences (UTS)

  • The scenes that are shot on the street of Glasgow are in the style of the British auteur, Ken Loach.
  • Loach's films explore working-class characters shot in real city locations in a documentary style.
  • Loach uses natural light and shoots characters as though they are
  • being observed, something that is evoked in parts of the film.
• The monstrous feminine (UTS)

  • "All human societies have a conception of monstrous-feminine, of what it is about woman that is shocking, terrifying, horrific, abject"
• Abject(UTS)


  Something that disturbs the self and provokes disgust and repulsion
• Abject(UTS)

  • Bodily wastes - blood, vomit, saliva, faeces
  • Something that is simultaneously inside and outside of the body
  • Anything which crosses or threatens the 'border' is abject (e.g. human/inhuman, good/evil)
• Abjection(UTS)


  Profoundly ingrained within the horror genre and central to the construction of the monstrous
• Ideological function of horror(UTS)

  1. Confront the 'abject'

  2. Eject the abject

  3. Redraw the boundaries between the human and non-human
• Signifying horror involves a representation of, a reconciliation with, the maternal body
• Barbara Creed (UTS)

  • Creed argued that most critical analysis of horror conceptualised the woman as the victim
  • When a female monster was deconstructed academics often relied on Freud's argument that she terrifies because she is castrated.
• Barbara Creed (UTS)

  • Creed reveals Freud's patriarchal worldview that depicted women as 'incomplete' humans and argues that the female monster (who she calls the monstrous feminine) terrifies because she is a castrating other.
  • Creed argues that all definitions of female monstrosity are linked to woman's reproductive body.
• Creeds seven complex stereotypes (UTS)

  • The Archaic Mother (e.g. Alien)
  • Woman as a possessed monster (e.g. the Exorcist)
  • Woman as monstrous Womb (e.g. The Brood)
  • Woman as the vampire (e.g. The Hunger)
  • Woman as a witch (e.g. Carrie)
  • The femme catratrice (e.g. Sisters)
  • The castrating mother (e.g. Psycho)
• The monstrous womb (UTS)

  • "The womb represents the utmost abjection for it contains a new life form which will pass from inside to outside, bringing with it new traces of contamination..." (Creed)
  • "A woman's womb - as with her other reproductive organ - signifies sexual difference such as the power to horrify woman's sexual other!"
• Horror films represent the womb in two ways (UTS)

  1. Symbolically - through intra-uterine settings (e.g. the monster commits dreadful acts in a setting resembling the womb - dark narrow winding passages that lead to a central room or symbolic place of birth)
  2. Literally - in relation to the female body
• Male gaze role in film (FT)

  • Active
  • The one who looks 'the barer of looks'
  • Advances the narrative (makes things happen)
  • Controls the film fantasy (projects the fantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly
  • Barer of the look of the spectator
• The female role in film (FT)

  • Passive
  • Erotic object
  • Freezes the narrative (stalls or flows the action)
  • Figures as spectacle within this fantasy
  • Erotic object for the spectator
• Broken Britain (FT)

  • Term used by the press to describe a perceived widespread state of social decay. It referred to issues such as: Single mothers, poor education, anti-social behaviour, alcohol abuse, teenage sex and lack of employment
  • David Cameron pledged to 'fix' Broken Britain during the Conservative campaign for the 2010 general election
• Production context (FT)

  • Budget: £1.8 million
  • Funding: BBC Films and the UK Film Council
  • Setting: Essex, East London
  • Production: Filmed over six weeks and shot in chronological order
  • Script: Actors were not given a script beforehand and instead were given a few pages every weekend during filming. There were no rehearsals
  • Was a social realist film - genre originating from the British New Wave movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s