Ladies of Horror May-hem

Ladies of Horror May-hem: India Stoker

~ lobablanca

indiastoker

I honestly couldn’t be happier with the first name I’ve drawn to kick off this month of May-hem. She’s new to the block here at the lair and she just so happens to be one of my favorite recent horror movie discoveries from one of my favorite recent horror director discoveries.

Meet India Stoker, star of Korean director Chan-wook Park’s English-language debut Stoker. Now, mind you, I’m not going to give reviews of the movies from which these characters derive, nor am I going to reveal any spoilers in what I write about them. I’ve chosen these characters for reasons that I believe make them worth discovering on your own, denizens. It’s up to you to find out if you agree with my choices.

That being said, I will let you know that this film definitely falls into the “coming of age” category. Every genre has them. Horror just makes them more enjoyable (putting the “fun” in “dysfunctional” never felt so right…if by “right,” you mean traumatizing and wrong). The movie starts out with a life-altering event for India that introduces an even more powerful altering agent into her rather staid, controlled world. However, there’s a reason why those in India’s life maintained such standards of control and ritual over her up to this point. Now that those standards have vanished…well, India’s got a whole world of opportunity ahead of her that she never considered before.

To his credit, Park directed a brilliant first entry into English-language horror. Best known among genre fans for his “Vengeance” trilogy, he once again shows his affinity for exploring humanity’s bleakness in visually stunning ways. Here, he shows us a steadily, carefully paced story wrapped in the finery of beautifully crafted shots.

He also did quite well by casting Mia Wasikowska as India. Probably most familiar to American audiences as Alice from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, she possesses features of porcelain delicacy, a gaze of ethereal inscrutability, and the ability to slip in and out of indifference as easily as one slips into a pair of shoes (and, mind you, shoes play quite a role in this movie).

India is a complexity that urges understanding, but be careful of the reward for your curiosity.

Unleashing the May-hem…

~ lobablanca

So here’s the deal: Last month, I came across this list of “50 Most Bad-Ass Female Horror Leads.” You all know me. I love horror. I also love bad-ass women.

That being said, I have to say that this list sorely misses the mark in many ways. First, the originators of the list need a lesson in the difference between horror, science fiction, and fantasy. Second, they need to make a good list rather than a list littered with characters added just to rile people rather than provide a satisfying user experience. This is the only reason I can come up with as to why Buffy is listed as third on this list. Also, they need to learn a little respect. Some of the characters they placed high on the list wouldn’t have existed without some of the characters they ranked embarrassingly low (or not at all).

That all being said, I decided that I would come up with my own list. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that a true list wouldn’t really be fair. Sometimes, a character is really awesome because of what she’s doing throughout the movie. Sometimes, she’s awesome simply because she’s the lead and holding her own for the most part. One character is a hell raiser and one is a ground breaker. One might not have existed without the other, even though the latter might be stronger than the former. Basically, it’s apples and blood oranges.

But never fear, denizens! I have come up with a solution. I have created a list (I love lists) of all the female characters I think deserve the title of “Horror Bad Ass.” That means that the women on my list come from actual horror movies (sorry, Selene, Alice, and Buffy). They come from modern movies and classics. They come from American movies and foreign films. I even collected recommendations, just to make sure that I wasn’t missing any main characters. My only rules for considering these characters is that I have to have seen the movie from which they came and they have to have played a central proactive role in said movie.

Next step? I cut up the list, folded each name, and put all the slips of paper into a box. Now, every day throughout the month of May, I’m going to shake up these names and draw a random one to feature here. See? Random chance will be my ranking tool. Also, there are more than 31 names in this box, so that means that not every character I’ve chosen will make the cut. But the bottom line is that every character I put up here throughout May is going to be a character I think deserves to be included in my “Ladies of Horror May-hem” series.

Yes, this is how my brain works. Welcome to the horror show, denizens…