It’s Alive is a movie that
takes an absurd premise and infuses it with a strong sense of
psychological reality. In doing so, it creates something which
genuinely scares us as we fear for people who we feel could very well
be real, and also weep for the tragedy of the concept. While the
movie is dialogue heavy, all of the actors are good enough to sell
it.
It opens with one of the few
childbirths in film that consists of more than just screaming.
Lenore (Sharon Farrell), pregnant with her second child, wakes up and
tells her husband Frank (John Ryan) that it’s time for the baby to
come. Their preparations are quick but calculated. It’s made
clear that they’ve been through this with their first child, Chris
(Daniel Holzman). Even though the birth is difficult, Lenore is able
to talk to the doctors quite coherently through most of it. The
screaming doesn’t start until after the baby is out, and you can’t
really blame her for that.
The movie was inspired by director
Larry Cohen visiting a hospital and seeing a newborn crying. Seeing
the fury of that child made him imagine that if it was given any real
degree of power everyone in the room would likely be killed in blind
rage. The child of Frank and Lenore is that newborn, with fangs and
claws. It kills everyone in the room, except for its mother, and
escapes from the hospital.
From this point forward in the film,
Frank serves as our primary protagonist. He asserts no connection to
the child, claiming that his only concern is his wife’s well-being
and the safety of his family. I think the choice to make Frank the
protagonist likely comes from an unspoken doubt. Frank was down the
hall when the slaughter occurred. Lenore, being in the middle of the
room, was clearly spared by the child. So I imagine Frank is
wondering throughout this film that if, by coincidence, he had been
standing in the room, would the child have recognized him as its
father? And if it had, then would it have cared?
This isn’t a movie that gives you
easy answers. It’s not the child’s fault that it has so much
power. The scenes of violence are punctuated by its cries, reminding
us that its mind is no different from every other child ever born on
the planet. We realize that under these circumstances we, or our own
children, would have behaved in exactly the same manner.
The movie actually spends fairly little
time on the child, though. We periodically see cuts to it out in the
world, killing someone to remind us of the threat. The movie is more
focused on the suffering of the parents as a media circus surrounds
the birth. The single most disturbing scene in the film doesn’t
even have the child in it. And that is when Lenore discovers that a
nurse offering her “comfort” was concealing a tape recorder,
hoping to be able to sell some new aspect of the story to the press.
In general, this isn’t the most
positive portrayal of humanity. There’s ample discussion of what
to do with the child’s body after it’s inevitably killed. The
options are either study it, or destroy it so it can’t be used as
evidence in a lawsuit against a pharmaceutical company. Frank agrees
to sign the body over, but we see his conflict. He does it because
he’s afraid of being branded as the child’s father, and hopes
that giving it up will prevent that.
In the final act, Frank becomes
increasingly aggressive. The child finds it ways home, and both
Lenore and Chris attempt to protect it. Frank on the other hand is
determined to kill it personally, either to stop the rampage, or to
permanently remove a stain from his reputation. Notably, the child
never attacks a member of its own family, even when Frank is shooting
at it.
At the end, Frank is the one to locate
the now-wounded child, but finds he can’t kill it in such a state.
He attempts to flee with it, but is cornered, and asks them to take
it for study but to let it live. The police refuse, insisting that
he step out of the way so they can kill it immediately. Then, it
leaps from his arms, attacks another man and is shot dead, showing
that Frank overestimated the severity of its injuries.
Even the ending doesn’t make the
situation simple. Clearly, wounded or not, the child was still
dangerous. At best, it didn’t attack Frank because he approached
it gently, or more likely just didn’t attack him because it
recognized its father. Sure, that sounds appealing, but it doesn’t
change the fundamental fact that this child, malicious or not, simply
could not be controlled or contained.
This is a movie I’d recommend to
anyone. The opening is much stronger than the rest of the film, but
it still stays solid throughout. It’s a movie that leaves a lot
unsaid, because it doesn’t need to be. It’s a movie that makes
you afraid of the monster, but also makes you cry for it. I know
Cohen eventually directed two sequels, dealing with the birth of more
mutated children, and I’m actually interested to see them. This is
a concept good enough to be the basis of more than one movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment