How Stalker (1979) Influenced Brightwood (2023)

Horror Obsessive Radio

Dane Elcar’s Brightwood was one of the highlights for Sean at Salem Horror Fest this year, sticking out as an off-the-beaten-path original that excels thematically while also being a genuinely disturbing horror portrait of a doomed relationship. It’s sort of the opposite of an anti-rom-com, trapping two people at a pond where infinite versions of themselves begin to populate. Elcar’s snapshot of these people at the worst point in their marriage, eviscerating and cannibalizing each other through vicious rhetoric, may not seem it, but it was very much inspired by a few classic films that both reside in The Criterion Collection’s catalog: Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker.

If you’ve never seen Stalker, the movie is currently ranked number forty-three on BFI’s greatest films of all time. It’s an exceptionally grounded science fiction film with a haunting history. The story of the Stalker character taking a writer and a professor through the contaminated “zone” is as atmospheric and ambient as films get and bolsters many underlying themes about religion and life in the U.S.S.R. at the time it was made in 1979. It becomes even more metaphorical when they arrive at “the room,” a place that reputationally has the power to grant wishes.

Elcar and company clue us in on some funny on-set Brightwood stories, from garden snakes to the amount of bug spray needed to shoot in the woods, a typo in the credits that nearly caused a conniption, and why Dana’s character calls Max’s character “Buzzy,” seemingly out of nowhere at one point.

Staff writer Brendan Jesus joins the podcast this week, filling in for JP Nunez, who will return next episode. Brendan and I lead into the show by letting you know a little more about our writer, who recently published a Larry Fessenden icons piece we discuss, as well as the rabbit hole obsession both of us went through with Bruce Campbell. And discuss Horror Obsessive’s two new weekly features, Slasher Saturdays and Trash Cinema (aka So Bad it’s Good) Thursdays.

Please join us in getting lost in the (Bright)woods on this episode. It’s an absolute blast. And join JP Nunez and me in two weeks for the debate of the century: Conjuring vs. Insidious.

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