Eraserhead (1977)

Eraserhead (1977)

Dir. David Lynch

Lynch is renowned for being weird and making complicated, non-linear narratives appear to work effortlessly in his favour. Eraserhead is possibly his most unhinged and surreal feature.

It sets the tone early on with a slow zoom into what appears to be some kind of landscape, but why is it terrifying? Is it because it also manages to make us feel like we're travelling through a diseased artery? Or is that just me? Whatever the case may be, it's pure nightmare fuel.

A constant industrial murmur fills the empty spaces. It plays a vital role in both making and keeping us uncomfortable, not unlike the dwarfing effect that the concrete world has on the film's main character, Henry Spencer.

Lynch makes separate things visually similar, encouraging the viewer to make the visual connection and subsequently strengthen it with emotional or intellectual additions. That way, the message that may or may not have existed in the first place is made more real and uncomfortably unique for each person.

The way he furnished the living spaces, making them purposefully devoid of the 'lived-in' feeling that most directors strive for, is one of the many things that came to define him and is as striking the fiftieth time you see it as it was the first. His use of lamps as more than just lighting is even more apparent in Eraserhead's black and white world than in his colour films.

-A carpet design for the ages.-

Jack Nance plays Henry. I'm being nothing other than complimentary when I say that Nance has the perfect balance of awkwardness and mouse-like shyness to make the character stand out. He delivers his mundane dialogue in a memorable way, as do the rest of the oddball cast. 

I've labelled it as 'Horror' simply because it's frequently unsettling and occasionally disturbing, which can be translated as being horrifying. But it's not a 'Horror Movie' in the traditional sense. It's an experience that can't be defined as anything other than categorically Lynchian.

If you've yet to experience the film and are willing to do so, I urge you to wait until nightfall before you begin because it needs a chilly midnight ambience to properly work its magic. A viewing in the daytime seems inappropriate for all the wrong reasons.