Karen Strode's wardrobe confirms her inherited distaste for All Hallows' Eve.
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00:00 The sheer sensory assault of a movie can often present audiences from failing to pick up
00:04 on the wide importance that is basically hidden in plain sight. And this is certainly true
00:09 in the horror genre, which doesn't always suggest that it's got subtle storytelling
00:12 to offer, but that is absolutely not true. And that's what we're here to talk about
00:16 today as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 Horror Movie Moments More
00:20 Important Than You First Realized.
00:24 Number 10. The New Australian Flag - Event Horizon Now Paul W. Anderson's Event Horizon
00:30 is such a dizzying trip of a sci-fi horror movie that nobody could blame you for failing
00:34 to pick up on one of its more unexpectedly meaningful details. Case in point, you probably
00:39 didn't notice that the Australian flag on protagonist Dr. William's uniform is different
00:43 from the nation's current flag. The real flag is a blue field with six stars on it
00:48 and the British Union Jack flag situated in the top left corner. But in Event Horizon,
00:53 the flag on Dr. William's jacket contains a different flag altogether. This is actually
00:57 the Australian Aboriginal flag, and suggests that in the film's fast-approaching future
01:02 of 2047, that Australia reckoned with its colonial past by renouncing its status as
01:07 a British constitutional monarchy. It's a fascinating and weirdly wholesome piece of
01:11 low-key world-building in an otherwise horrific movie, and one that was apparently suggested
01:16 by Sam Neill himself, who wished to pay tribute to Australia's original settlers.
01:21 Considering that there have been increasing calls in recent years to change Australia's
01:24 flag in reality, it's entirely possible that Event Horizon ends up being totally on
01:28 the money.
01:29 9. The Date of Kevin's Last Memory - Split
01:34 In M. Night Shyamalan's terrific split, you might recall that Kevin Wendell Crumb,
01:38 played by James McAvoy, tells Casey that the last day that he remembers is September 18,
01:43 2014, which he believes to be the current date. Now, this may seem like a totally random
01:48 date at first glance, but it's actually a very specific choice that surreptitiously
01:52 nods to real-world events relevant to the movie's title. September 18, 2014 was also
01:57 the date of the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum, where Scotland voted on whether
02:02 or not to split from the United Kingdom. Given that James McAvoy is himself Scottish, it's
02:07 entirely possible that he suggested the date to Shyamalan as a reference to his home nation's
02:11 political situation. With that in mind, it is relatively surprising that not a single
02:15 one of Kevin's 23 other personalities ended up actually being Scottish.
02:20 8. The Changing Colour of Pennywise's Eyes - IT
02:25 Audiences en masse were so likely traumatised by the opening sequence of 2017's IT that
02:30 they likely didn't notice a vital character detail hiding in plain sight. You see, during
02:35 the movie's first scene, poor Georgie is preyed upon by Pennywise the dancing clown,
02:39 who ends up luring the young boy towards a drain and then devouring him. While Pennywise
02:43 cons Georgie by presenting a fun, appealing demeanour, he has one majorly insidious trick
02:49 up his sleeve, and that is changing the colour of his eyes. As we know from the rest of the
02:54 movie, Pennywise's natural eye colour is yellow. Yet, during this scene, his eyes are
02:58 blue whilst talking to Georgie. And the reason for this? Well, Georgie's brother Bill has
03:03 blue eyes, and so Pennywise changes his eyes to a colour that, on an unconscious level,
03:07 would help lower Georgie's guard and encourage him to trust Pennywise. This is actually explained
03:12 in Stephen King's original novel, and adds yet another disturbing layer to Pennywise's
03:17 predatory nature.
03:18 7. The Opening Mural - Midsommar
03:22 Ari Aster's unforgettable horror film Midsommar opens with a fleeting glimpse of a gorgeous,
03:27 yet disturbingly painted mural which contains a number of eerie and unsettling sights. While
03:31 viewers might initially assume that this is simply some garden-variety creepy shit intended
03:36 to throw them off balance from the movie's opening seconds, it's actually a veiled
03:40 breakdown of basically the film's entire plot. The most distinctive visuals in the
03:44 mural include Danny and Christian arguing, the Swedish cult elders jumping off a cliff,
03:48 the Pied Piper who leads the movie's American tourists to their doom, Mark wearing a jester's
03:53 outfit, and the presence of five skeletons representing the five outsiders that are killed
03:57 by the cultists. The mural also offers far more metaphorical imagery for audiences to
04:02 read into, but it's nevertheless fascinating that Aster included almost all of the movie's
04:07 major plot beats up front, even if their context wouldn't be made fully clear until the film's
04:11 end.
04:12 6. Rose Challenges the Cop - Get Out
04:16 Jordan Peele's Get Out is one of the most dense and detail-packed horror films of the
04:20 last decade, a movie that hugely rewards repeated viewings by revealing the many secrets that
04:25 Peele had hidden in plain sight. And one such scene occurs early on in the movie, where
04:29 Chris and his girlfriend Rose hit a deer whilst driving and a police officer is then called
04:33 out to the scene. Despite Rose being the one driving, the cop asks to see Chris' ID,
04:38 at which point Rose stops Chris from handing over his ID, insisting that he doesn't need
04:42 to as he wasn't the one behind the wheel.
04:44 Now on the surface, it simply seems like Rose is sticking up for her black boyfriend against
04:48 a - suspect at best - police officer. But once Rose's true colours are revealed in
04:52 the film's third act, it's retrospectively clear that her intentions were far from benevolent.
04:57 With the knowledge that Rose is actually in on her family's deranged scheme to kidnap
05:01 black people and hijack their bodies, it's evident that Rose wanted to prevent the cop
05:05 from running Chris' ID and creating an electronic paper trail that would then throw suspicion
05:10 on her once Chris went missing. Even on a second viewing, this is easily missed, but
05:14 a seemingly typical - albeit racist - encounter with a cop is far more calculated than it
05:19 first seems.
05:21 5. The Rotten Corn - The Witch
05:24 Robert Eggers delivered a deliciously delirious folk horror film in The Witch, which is certainly
05:29 a piece that rewards those who pay close attention. Though you can be forgiven for failing to
05:33 appreciate the significance of all that rotten corn.
05:36 Now, early on in the film, New England settler William and his family are shown struggling
05:40 to grow enough crops to make it through the winter, with their corn appearing to have
05:44 rotted. Yet this rot is actually ergot, a fungus that grows on the rye and related plants
05:49 and can cause ergotism in humans who consume it, which is a form of fungal poisoning which
05:53 can - amongst other things - induce psychotic visions.
05:56 As such, this might tangibly explain the film's increasingly surreal events - that the family
06:01 were simply succumbing to ergotism, and none of this was actually real.
06:05 Now, given that ergot is often suggested as one of the potential causes of mass hysteria
06:09 during the Salem witch trials, it's certainly a fitting suggestion, and one that purposefully
06:13 is placed in the film by the director.
06:16 This doesn't mean that The Witch's supernatural happenings are 100% hallucinatory, but it
06:20 does lend fascinating meaning and context to the shots of inedible corn that otherwise
06:25 seem relatively standard and benign.
06:27 4. The Crazy Norwegian - The Thing
06:31 The iconic opening sequence of John Carpenter's sci-fi masterpiece The Thing sees a Norwegian
06:36 helicopter pilot chasing a sled dog towards the American outpost on Antarctica, where
06:41 it's greeted by R.J. McCready and the rest of the American team. Now, the pilot shouts
06:45 something in Norwegian before taking aim at the dog, wounding an American by accident
06:49 and then being killed by another in self-defense. For the audience, it's an intriguing yet
06:53 confusing opening, with viewers likely left to initially conclude that this man himself
06:58 has been overcome by the parasitic alien lifeform known as The Thing. Yet, as anyone who can
07:02 speak even a little Norwegian will tell you, his dialogue actually translates as "Get
07:06 the hell away from that thing. That's not a dog, it's some sort of thing. It's imitating
07:11 a dog. It isn't real. Get away, you idiots."
07:14 Needless to say, if McCready or any of his men understood what the pilot was saying,
07:17 it would have been considerably easier for them to deal with this alien entity straight
07:21 away.
07:22 3. Yara's Clamshell e-Reader - It Follows
07:26 Now It Follows is such a moody, dread-soaked piece of work that it's easy to forget that
07:31 the film never really fully commits to an explicit time period. Instead, it exists in
07:34 this eerily ambiguous point in time. Now, there are various touchstones throughout the
07:38 film that point to different eras. The TVs are always showing 1950s films and shows,
07:43 while Jay's home has a distinctly 1970s decor. And yet, flying totally counter to
07:48 all of this is the brief glimpse that we catch of Yara's e-reader device. Yara is reading
07:52 a book on what resembles a clamshell makeup compact, a piece of technology that seems
07:56 both extremely modern compared to the dated CRT TVs and corded phones throughout the film,
08:01 and yet so completely alien to our own present where smartphones and Kindles are ubiquitous.
08:06 This very subtly places It Follows in its own distinct and unclear time period, or universe
08:11 even, which only further enhances the sheer strangeness of filmmaker David Robert Mitchell's
08:15 twisted vision.
08:17 2. Karen Wears a Christmas Sweater on Halloween
08:20 Halloween 2018
08:21 Now, here's something that you probably never thought about. Did you notice that in
08:26 the new Halloween movies, Laurie Strode's daughter Karen wears a Christmas sweater?
08:30 Now, given that the film is set on Halloween, it really makes no sense at all for anyone
08:34 to be wearing a Christmas garb almost an entire two months before the holiday. Even the most
08:39 eager Christmas fans know that's totally insane, right? Yet, there's actually a more
08:43 meaningful reason for this. Because Karen grew up as the daughter of Laurie, she shares
08:47 a disdain for Halloween and so decides to ignore it, instead skipping straight over
08:51 it to Christmas. Writer-director David Gordon Green even confirmed this himself in interviews.
08:56 He said, "There's that little sign of rebellion. On Halloween, she wears a Christmas sweater
09:00 so that she doesn't celebrate." And actress Judy Greer, meanwhile, added, "That was
09:04 David's idea, which I loved. We decided that Karen hates Halloween so much that she
09:08 just skips it and Thanksgiving and in her own head goes right to Christmas."
09:12 Like, as soon as the tiny little bite-sized candies come out at the drugstores for trick-or-treaters,
09:16 she pulls out her Christmas sweater and is like, "Nope, nope, I celebrate Christmas.
09:19 I'm just skipping right to Christmas." It's an intriguing character flourish that
09:23 slightly tells us a lot more about Karen's mindset than the film itself actually fully
09:27 lets on.
09:28 At number one, Hannibal Lecter's deliberate blinks. The Silence of the Lambs
09:34 One of the oft-repeated claims about Anthony Hopkins' Oscar-winning performance as Hannibal
09:38 Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs is that the actor never blinked on-screen whilst playing
09:42 the part, in an attempt to enhance the psychopath's inherently unsettling presence. It's a claim
09:47 that's even been perpetrated by Hopkins himself in interviews, despite the fact that
09:51 it's blatantly not true.
09:52 Even the most casual cursory examination of Hopkins' 20-ish minutes of screen time throughout
09:57 the masterful horror-thriller will confirm that he does indeed blink, albeit markedly
10:01 less so than your average person. It's clear from watching Hopkins' scenes that the actor
10:05 chose his blinks carefully, using them as exclamation marks to punctuate the meaning
10:10 of whatever's going on. As such, when we see Lecter blink emphatically after dropping
10:14 the iconic fava beans and a nice Chianti one-liner, he also blinks with a slow deliberation during
10:20 the quid pro quo scene as Clarice tells the story of her father's murder.
10:24 It's something you probably didn't consciously pick up on, but your brain likely did, that
10:28 Lecter blinked only in calculated, periodic ways that seem almost inhuman. And it adds
10:33 yet another level of creepiness to an already all-timer cinematic skin crawler.
10:37 And there we go my friends, those were 10 Horror Movie Moments More Important Than You
10:41 Realised. I hope that you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about
10:45 it down in the comments section below. As always, I've been Jules, you can go follow
10:48 me over on Twitter @RetroJay but the O is a zero, or you can follow me over on Instagram
10:53 where it's the same handle, RetroJay but the O is a zero, and I hope to see you over
10:56 there.
10:57 But before I go, I just want to say one thing. I want to end this video by reminding you
11:00 of something very, very important that you may have missed in your day to day life, and
11:03 that is just to be kind to yourself and to take a break every now and again, alright?
11:07 I know that we can be gunning for the finish line all the time at the moment, but it is
11:11 very, very healthy and definitely encouraged to take a break every once in a while. Relax,
11:15 recover, recharge, and then approach situations with fresh eyes and a fresh mentality. Hopefully
11:20 doing this will help you achieve the goal of living a healthy and happy life, and that
11:23 is all I want for you my friend. Now go out there and smash it after a cup of tea.
11:27 As always, I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak
11:30 to you soon.
11:31 [BLANK_AUDIO]