Primal Screen Review (Short Film, 2017) #31DaysofHorror
Rodney Ascher is one of my favorite documentarians. When he wants to, he can turn reality into a horror film. His breakout feature Room 237 is a documentary and psychological horror film about conspiracy theorists identifying the “true” meaning of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. My favorite of his films is The Nightmare, a haunted house/alien hybrid documentary about sleep paralysis.
Ascher uses a combination of voiceover interviews, reenactments, and clips from media to explore his topics. He will allow his subjects to tell their story in their own words. He just supports what they’re saying with terrifying minimalist horror reenactments and clips from films and TV shows.
This is especially effective in the short horror documentary “Primal Screen.” This takes a look at the developmental psychology of fears and phobias that manifest in early childhood. Young children see something that scares them. They don’t fully understand it, so they develop a fascination with it. As they enter early adolescence, they want to discover the why and how of their biggest fear. The experience differs in every child, with some choosing to explore that inciting moment head on while others will avoid it for life. The typical resolution does not guarantee the person no longer has the fear, but is at peace with its existence in the world.
“Primal Screen” explores this with the uncanny valley and the fear of dolls and puppets. The shared inciting incident for the interview subjects is one of my favorite films, 1978’s Magic. This is the evil ventriloquist dummy film starring Anthony Hopkins and it is terrifying. I never saw the trailer for the film before this documentary and I can see how an entire generation of people are still scarred by it.
Children’s television is filled with shows featuring puppets. The standards for what could or could not be advertised during children’s programming at that time were almost non-existent. Children saw commercials for alcohol, cigarettes, and straight up horror films while watching The Muppet Show and The Banana Splits. Now imagine a particularly serious looking ventriloquist doll staring straight into the camera and reciting a poem about who is really in charge. I know I had to leave the room when trailers for Child’s Play or Leprechaun came on in early childhood; I can’t imagine what I would’ve done with the Magic trailer.
The reenactments of the childhood stories are among Ascher’s best work yet. They’re styled like the bedroom sets in The Nightmare—open studios with beds, carpets, doors, and relevant props—with more and more dolls and dummies filling the screen. The child actors do a great job selling the shifting curiosity and fear connected to these dolls.
“Primal Screen” is just under 30 minutes long and worth the watch. It’s not Ascher’s scariest documentary, but the variety of experiences all connected to children being exposed to that Magic trailer way too young is just unnerving.
"Primal Screen” is streaming on Shudder.
