The Scariest Monsters Are The Ones We Can’t See

The first time I watched the movie Safe, it was for six minutes, and it was an emergency. I’d written a novel that opens with an invitation to a baby shower. The baby shower was my Chekov’s gun. It had to go off—but it didn’t. The clock was running out. My manuscript needed to be copyedited and sent to the printer ASAP. I was afraid to pull the trigger I knew I needed to pull, because I’ve never been to a baby shower. 

I googled baby shower games and took notes. My search for iconic baby shower scenes turned up movies that were either too sappy or too cheery for what I had in mind. Once I watched a short clip from a 1995 psychological horror film I’d never heard of, I knew I had everything I needed. After my book was published, I finally watched the rest of the movie. 

Safe is about a sick woman. Julianne Moore stars as Carol White, an unrelentingly soft-spoken homemaker suffering from something. At first glance, it seems like a banal case of having it all and still not being happy. In bed, her body is a stiff receptacle for her husband’s random thrusting. In the garden of their lavish Los Angeles home, her flowers are dying. In the locker room after aerobics class, she lingers on the fringes of the other women’s conversation.

When she speaks to her mother on the phone, she’s barely in the frame. The camera dotes on the sharp angles of her living room while Carol, a far-off sliver, tells her mother that everything is “fine…fine…fine.” Tall glasses of bright white milk (often served by her housekeeper, Fulvia) are the light of Carol’s life. I hesitate to call Carol miserable. That word feels too impassioned for someone so subdued, too aggressive for this gorgeously muted, slow-moving film. Then, finally, Carol raises her voice. Sort of. Her new couch arrives…in the wrong color. “Oh my god! Is this what they delivered? Fulvia? We did not order the black!”

It’d be easy to mock her, a superficial woman who doesn’t have to work inside or outside of the home, and whose son is so rarely on screen that it’s hard to remember he exists. But her exasperation isn’t played for laughs. There’s an eerie depth to her emptiness. So why doesn’t it bother me? Maybe I can’t feel for Carol because I’m judging her woes against everyone else’s. Her best friend’s brother recently died. A background news report tells of a woman fighting for the right to die in the face of extensive paralysis and severe arthritis. I’m sure Fulvia is going through something. Their stories, while sidelined, feel more palpable. I wonder if that’s the point. Then Carol starts to cough. 

She’s driving behind a truck that’s leaving miasma in its wake. Carol coughs gently. But she can’t clear her throat. She hacks more forcefully (but never very forcefully), turns off the road and swerves through a parking garage. Her long bob sways, her earrings and matching blouse stay perfectly in place as her lipsticked mouth fights to take a good breath. I brace for the crash. She’s going to lose control and slam into a concrete pole or another car. And then things are really going to pop off. She’s hyperventilating. She pulls the car into park, flings the door open, swings her legs out, and bends over like she’s about to vomit. She catches her breath. I’m disappointed. 

Her friend turns her on to a fruit diet. Her husband turns on her when her blank stare kills the vibe at a group dinner. Carol is sorry. She’s just been feeling very stressed. She sees a doctor, who can’t find anything wrong, but tells her to lay off the fruit and milk. “There’s nothing to worry about aside from being a little rundown,” she reports back to her deeply uninterested husband. The correct sofa arrives. It’s seafoam green. 

Are things looking up for Carol? She gets a perm, admires her reflection, and a little blood drips from her nose—a little. Enough to scare her, but not me. Her husband likes the hair, but he’s nearly ready to punch a wall when she tells him, barely above a whisper, “I still have this, um, head thing.” He cuts her off when she tries to say more. He never punches anything. Later, he comforts her, until she pulls away to cough up what looks like milk. Carol goes through more inconclusive doctor visits and strained social engagements (including the baby shower), all of which leave her panic stricken. 

Then she attends a seminar for people experiencing “strange, never-ending ailments.” From here, the movie tosses her back and forth between her old world—the one that posits it’s all psychosomatic—and her new world—the one that offers a somatic diagnosis: “Environmental Illness.” This revs Carol up, in a very Carol way. Her “beautiful new couch” is toxic. The ink from her husband’s newspaper poisons the peel of her orange. She studies some materials from her new doctor? cult? support group? and tries to calculate “the maximum amount of toxins her body can tolerate.” Chemically sensitive people like her must fast for up to five days, before attempting to transition back to a normal diet. 

After another big fit—seizing and a nosebleed at the chemical-filled dry cleaners—and an ER visit, she decides to leave her life behind. She moves to a compound—very new age, very new Carol—for chemically sensitive people. The rules are strict, but don’t seem oppressive or exploitative. The leader doesn’t seem to pose any active threat. There’s religious acoustic music that isn’t stark enough to be creepy. Carol is sallow, but mostly optimistic. Her mental disposition improves, thanks to her newfound community, and despite the new sores on her skin. She gets to experience isolation domes and use oxygen tanks and dance at birthday parties and do chores with her new friends. Will her body also get better? We last see Carol in her cold, clinical room, professing timid love to her reflection. The credits roll, and I’m still waiting for danger to strike. 

Safe is often seen as a commentary on the AIDS crisis. I think that interpretation is valid, but it still doesn’t make Safe move me. Others see it as a warning about the hidden dangers lurking in our environment. With climate change hanging over our heads and microplastics hanging out in our bloodstreams, I get how that could send a shiver up someone’s spine. I mostly see Carol as a poor woman’s Gwenyth Paltrow. I feel bad for not feeling bad, or feeling anything, for her. Perhaps the tragedy is that even someone with access to many resources can still be doomed to suffer. Suffering with no explanation is undeniably scary. But Carol does get an explanation. Why should I be unsatisfied with it when she isn’t? If she believes she’s a chemically sensitive person and that she’s found a way to treat her condition, where’s the horror in that?

Carol’s story makes me hungry for something junkier, for something I haven’t seen since I was a teenager. Unlike Safe, Sam Rami’s 2009 movie Drag Me to Hell doesn’t purport to be about illness at all—but it presents a narrative that’s easy to read illness into. I don’t remember when I first came across the theory (which is so popular that it’s mentioned on the film’s Wikipedia page) that Drag Me to Hell is not actually about a supernatural curse, and most certainly not a commentary on the subprime mortgage crisis, but a commentary on eating disorders, specifically bulimia or the purging subtype of anorexia. I’ve always believed that theory. I believe it even more now that I’ve had an eating disorder.

Drag Me To Hell—set, like Safe, in Los Angeles—opens with a frantic couple bringing their sick child to Dena, a medium who diagnoses him as cursed for stealing a necklace from a Roma wagon. Dena can’t save him; an invisible force drags the poor kid to hell. Decades later, Christine, a former “farm girl” from humble beginnings, drives to the bank where she works. She and her coworker are both vying to get promoted to assistant manager. So when Sylvia, an elderly Roma woman, begs Christine for a third extension on an overdue mortgage payment, Christine refuses, hoping it will put her ahead in her boss’ eyes. 

Sylvia, on her knees, begs for Christine’s mercy. Christine calls security. Sylvia lunges at Christine as the guards drag her away. The boss assures Christine she handled the strange situation perfectly. But as Christine walks through the parking garage after work, things don’t bode well for her. Sylvia’s handkerchief floats through the air. Sylvia, who’s been waiting in the backseat of Christine’s car, attacks. The no holds barred fight scene—a stapler, a ruler, flying fists—is a victory for Christine. Sylvia, seemingly defeated, curses a button from Christine’s coat and disappears. 

With the curse on her mind, Christine visits a medium, despite her boyfriend’s gentle mocking. The medium confirms that a dark spirit has cursed Christine. Clay, the boyfriend, tells her not to take it seriously, but what else is she supposed to do? When she’s at home alone, malevolent winds and shadows sweep through the place and throttle her into a row of cabinets. When Clay comes over to comfort her, she explains that it wasn’t Sylvia this time. No one was there. They chalk her “misinterpretation” up to PTSD. When Sylvia attacks Christine again in the middle of the night, it’s probably just a nightmare. 

Christine keeps hallucinating. Back at work, her rival’s fingers take on the appearances of Sylvia’s. “Get your filthy pig knuckle off my desk!” Christine yells. (Christine, unlike Carol, can be funny.) Her nose and mouth spew enough blood to make you wonder if a major artery has been cut. It drenches her boss, and she hightails it out the office. She heads to Sylvia’s home and meets the granddaughter who, understandably, resents her. Christine explains that she needs Sylvia’s forgiveness. She’ll even give them the house back, bank rules be damned. She ventures into the house and finds herself at Sylvia’s open casket funeral. Christine stumbles into the casket, really into it: she lands lying on top of Sylvia’s corpse. The table beneath them snaps apart, they roll over, and when they land, Sylvia’s on top.

Rattled, Christine goes back to the medium. Now he realizes they’re dealing with a demonic entity called Lamia, which has been working via Sylvia’s body this whole time. Lamia torments victims for three days, then drags them to hell. A small blood sacrifice should stave Lamia off. “No way! I’m a vegetarian,” Christine whines, “I volunteer at the puppy shelter.” But after another tornado-like attack, she kills her pet kitten. Lamia isn’t sated. The whooshing entity strikes again at a dinner with Clay’s parents. Christine sees Sylvia’s eyeball on her plate, coughs up a fly, and throws a wine glass at her invisible tormentor. At work, the assistant manager position threatens to slip out of reach. She returns to the medium. For $10,000, he helps her team up with Dena, the medium from the movie’s opening scene. Their dramatic seance summons Lamia, but it’s not enough to break the curse. Christine’s last resort is to pass her coat button—and the curse itself—on to someone else. 

Sweet Christine can’t bring herself to hurt anyone. But when an obituary confirms that Sylvia is dead, and the medium confirms that her soul/Lamia is still alive, Christine knows who to curse. She digs up Sylvia’s grave and shoves an envelope holding the cursed button down Sylvia’s throat. Finally, Christine gets back on her feet at work, before heading out for a romantic, relaxing trip with Clay. As they wait for the train that will deliver them to bliss, he hands her an unmarked envelope that she left in his car the other day. There’s something small and round inside. Shit. Christine didn’t leave the button with Sylvia’s corpse. She absentmindedly mixed the button envelope up with one containing a very not-cursed coin from Clay’s coin collection. Time’s up. Christine falls onto the train tracks. The ground opens up. Down to hell she goes. 

That’s the text. Here’s the subtext, the story that screams out to those of us who are well-acquainted with: toilet bowls, slippery plastic bags, shoeboxes shoved in the backs of closets, our calloused, cupped palms, any place that can catch our vomit. Here’s what we see: Christine passes by a bakery on her way to the office, looks longingly at the desserts in the window, shakes her head, and hurries along. We see the salad she ostensibly eats for lunch. We never see her take a bite. We see her sip coffee and water. We see her crumple a picture of her (younger, fatter) self while she cooks a dinner that she never gets to eat, because an attack from Sylvia interrupts, rattling the stainless steel pans hanging from hooks in the kitchen. We hear Sylvia’s granddaughter—who looks more like the inaccurate stereotype of an eating disorder sufferer (read: is thinner) than Christine—take one look at Christine and say, “You used to be a fat girl, didn’t you?”

We see Christine, neither skeletal nor fat, almost take a bite of cake at dinner. We see everyone at every meal eating while she abstains. We see the flies that haunt her, because she is rotting and they can’t resist. We see her binge eat ice cream and know exactly what it will feel like when she throws it up. We see her spy Sylvia’s cracked yellow nails, ten little neon signs that say, I’m malnourished. We see Sylvia’s spittle-drenched dentures, a recurring nexus of disgust. We see them slop onto a handkerchief after Sylvia gleefully removes them to suck on the candies that sit on the edge of Christine’s desk. We hope our stomach acid hasn’t worn our teeth down too much. We see Sylvia rip out Christine’s hair again and again and try not to check our own scalps for similar damage. We see all the money Christine and Clay spend to treat Christine’s curse, to no avail. We feel Christine’s exasperation and her shame. 

And then there’s the vomit. This movie loves the mouth and throat, and making them revolting. When Sylvia attacks Christine in the parking garage, Sylvia vomits into her mouth. Christine shoves a ruler into her throat in retaliation, and when Sylvia spits it out, its trajectory is projectile. Later, Christine yanks Sylvia’s handkerchief out of her own throat. The two of them are caught in a cycle of swallowing, choking, and expelling. When Sylvia attacks Christine in her sleep, Sylvia vomits a torrent of bugs into her mouth. When Sylvia’s corpse falls on top of Christine, she vomits, you guessed it, into Christine’s mouth. You’d think Christine would learn to keep her mouth shut by now, but in the face of all this, it’s impossible not to open wide and scream.

We see Christine dig up Sylvia’s grave and know she’s the woman for the job. Forget (assistant) managing a bank, Christine is more than qualified to purge a corpse from the earth. Yes, Sylvia puts up a fight and doles out some damage in return, but Christine prevails. “Choke on it, bitch,” she taunts her, and we try not to see ourselves choking on all the food that Sylvia, or Lamia, or we made ourselves un-eat.

In the final minutes of Drag Me To Hell, Christine thanks Clay for never failing to believe in her. He marvels at her, “You have such a good heart.” He doesn’t know that moments before, she waved off a free food sample in the train hall, and instead indulged in a brand new coat. He doesn’t know that she’s had nothing but ice cream to eat for days, and that she probably purged herself of it, so really, she hasn’t had anything to eat for days. Her death—he doesn’t see it coming.

There’s a Reddit thread proclaiming, “Christine Brown from ‘Drag me to hell’ suffered the single worst fate in a horror movie I’ve ever seen.”¹ Yes, what happens to her feels outrageously unjust. She tries to be good. She dies anyway. It’s affecting because we don’t expect it. How do we not expect it? In college, we had to watch a video about a former student who, at age nineteen “died tragically after thirteen months of bulimic behaviors.” The loss turned her parents into tireless advocates who wrote about her, made this film about her, passed her story around from school to school, desperate for us to learn its lesson. I didn’t, and I’m sorry. I only learned her timeline. Thirteen months of her roughly 228-month lifetime. That’s 5.7%. I’m sure she was lovely. I’m sure she had such a good heart. It stopped while she was sleeping.

I was sick for much longer than 5.7% of my life. I was sure I was too strong to die and sure that I was living on borrowed time. Part of me wanted to be good. I couldn’t. Why not? I had enough “willpower” (read: fear) to not eat enough. I had enough “discipline” (read: fear) to “compensate” when I did. My willpower and my discipline had nothing on my eating disorder. Christine’s good intentions when it came time to pass on the curse had nothing on Lamia’s determination to damn her.

So yes, hell is an eating disorder, and an eating disorder is hell. The allegory is so obvious it’s brilliant, actually. This particular kind of suffering feels so very eternal. Many people don’t seek help for their eating disorders—immediately, or ever. A Yale University study of over 36,000 adults with eating disorders found that “only about half of people reported seeking any form of help” and “men and members of ethnic and racial minority groups were even less likely to seek help.”² Unfortunately, recovery often has to be measured in near decades, if not in longer swaths of time. A 2018 study found that nine years after having received treatment, “31.4% of participants with anorexia nervosa and 68.2% of participants with bulimia nervosa” recovered. After twenty-two years, “62.8% of participants with anorexia nervosa and 68.2% of participants with bulimia nervosa recovered.”³ Even then, there’s not even a consensus on what constitutes recovery. It’s common to break free from one eating disorder by coming down with a different one. “Definitions of recovery in empirical studies […] are not only variable and arbitrary, but they are limited by having been determined by medical professionals and researchers, but not by people with personal experience of EDs.” ⁴

I don’t know if Sam Rami has any personal experience with eating disorders. I just know the scariest monsters are the ones you can’t see. By that metric, Safe’s ambiguity and restraint should have gotten under my skin. Drag Me to Hell, with its swells of eerie music, its jump scares, and unsubtle zoom-ins, and borderline goofy reaction shots, should be easy for me to shake off. But its cheap tricks haunt me. I don’t care what the man who directed and co-wrote the movie says it’s about. I know what the real monster tormenting Christine is. And I’m terrified that not everyone can see it.