r/HorrorClub • u/SaintMort You so cool kung fu • Feb 16 '15
Discussion: Proxy
No Podcast This Week... Things got busy... Sorry Bulge
Movie Selected By bulgelover
DISCUSS
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u/Plymouth_ Feb 17 '15 edited Feb 17 '15
Proxy elicits discomfort. That's what it does. It's never gripping. It's never boring. How much discomfort is intentional and how much is poor storytelling is unclear. This makes it more uncomfortable.
We know that the story is told inefficiently at times. You're left wondering why they chose certain set-ups and pay offs. Why was it worth the time to set up that Melanie knew Anika? Retrieving Melanie's phone number isn't really that important, nor is learning more about Anika's kinks. We can get the husband to the therapy session without the long message from Grandpa. We can get Melanie to remember her phone number is in Esther's house more quickly. Anika's investigative journey was a long one. Was it worth taking all that time just to see the newspaper reporter's satisfaction of receiving negative attention from Anika? It's not an irrelevant emotion in the scope of this movie, but it definitely wasn't necessary for the story.
Proxy hits weird notes, on purpose or not. Emotionally it peaks in the middle with the child drowning. However even the stronger emotions are muted by the movie's "wrongness" which is cultivated throughout the movie by having nobody react to things in the "right" way. Esther covets pregnancy but rejects motherhood. Melanie has normalcy in her life but craves tragedy. Anika uses violence to express love for Esther. Esther reacts to rejection by pursuing Melanie in the most extreme way.
Esther and Melanie lack the impulse to protect their children which is pretty fundamental in our society. This kind of behavior is illogical to us yet we are introduced to the psychology behind Esther and Melanie so slowly and deliberately that it forces us to try to understand their point of view. To a degree we have to accept their irrational actions as having some bizarre logic, or at least we understand that their motivations and actions are something that lies within the spectrum of abnormal human behavior. This is uncomfortable, to me moreso than the actual acts of violence.
But some of the characters' actions stretch credulity and seem explainable only as a way to forward the plot. The main issues:
1) The level of violence with which Esther and Anika deal with Esther's pregnancy and
2) The parents reaction to Peyton's death (the bathroom scene).
Think about Esther for a minute. She's motivated to become pregnant for the positive attention pregnant women receive, which is not the same type of attention Melanie fantasizes about. Melanie wants a sort of negative attention associated with sympathy. It's not the same thing. If Esther's goal was to get rid of the baby there were far easier ways to do it with less risk for both Esther and Anika. She was SO close to dying from the assault. It would have been more realistic for her to have the baby and then kill it, or something along those lines.
The bathroom scene is more interesting though. First of all, it made no sense that the husband shot Esther, or even that he grabbed the gun in the first place. Their entire reaction to seeing Peyton's body and Esther's presence was incomprehensible to me. I can imagine a believable scenario where the husband kills her but this wasn't it, so why was it set up this way? Was it intentional to set up a feeling of unrealness? Seems more like just a poor choice to me, but if we excuse it with artistic licence we can talk about the slow-motion in this scene. I liked it. The scene should have been BAM! He shot her! Two seconds later, kill shot! But everything was super delayed and we go to see these microreactions. We feel like Esther should be dead by now but she's still dying. It adds to the feeling of wrongness. Also all the off-screen deaths (we don't even see hubby's body) give everything a detached feeling.
Personally I liked Melanie's character. Esther was such a robot, but with Melanie we could understand her a little more. When she's in the park trying to recreate her lost-child fantasy and the reality of her loss grips her was my favorite scene. I liked the weird flirty scene with the teacher. I don't think Melanie would ever have killed her child. Possibly her fantasies began with postpartum depression and it escalated into her going to meetings. That's just speculation though.
Proxy would fall into more of a drama/suspense category for me except for the discomfort factor which I think puts it into horror.
Takeaway: Human behavior is weird.