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FEAR IS AT the heart of a lot of Christopher Nolan’s stories. In Batman Begins, Scarecrow’s (Cillian Murphy) fear toxin drives his patients insane, as they're terrified out of their minds. In The Dark Knight, the anarchy of the Joker (Heath Ledger) pushes the city to the brink out of horror for what he might do next. In Interstellar, the concern and handwringing about the end of the world is what kickstarts Coop’s (Matthew McConaughey) journey to the stars. While it’s not horror in the traditional theatrical sense—i.e., we’re not seeing a Michael Myers-esque figure run through his work—dread often lingers around the edges of Nolan’s work.
That is, until The Odyssey, wherein that terror stops lurking outside the door and walks right into your home. Perhaps literally, if you’re Circe (Samantha Morton). Nolan’s latest and greatest film is an epic (in every sense of the word) adaptation of Homer’s poem, a totemic work—and a project that feels like a culmination of Nolan’s career in many respects. There are so many unique flourishes up his sleeve throughout The Odyssey, almost as if we’re seeing an entirely new side to him. And that includes a sequence with the aforementioned Circe, which is basically Nolan’s version of an outright horror movie.
Roughly halfway through the film’s nearly three-hour runtime, Odysseus (Matt Damon, doing some of the best work of his career), second-in-command Eurylochus (Himesh Patel), and his crew stumble upon an island. Tired, hungry, and their numbers diminished after a fatal encounter with the giant Laestrygonians, the crew commits a soft mutiny against Odysseus, sending him away while they travel up to a cabin. From the moment everyone’s feet touch the ground, the sequence has an overwhelming sense of dread, bolstered by Ludwig Göransson’s score, which features a loud chime and the unsettling repetition of a scraping noise from a guiro-like instrument. As if an abandoned and otherwise smashed scattering of boats across the shoreline weren’t enough, Nolan, cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, and editor Jennifer Lame pull out all the stops to ratchet up the tension as the cadre of troops climb. There are some Tenet-inspired shots where the camera seems to push in, pull back, or almost even reverse on a series of animals, most notably a lion, all of which are surprisingly included on this island.
Finally, the troops arrive in Circe’s shack, wherein they’re provided food, cross-cutting between their meal and Odysseus hunting an animal. Upon shooting it, the deer reverts back to a human, finally giving up the ghost on what Circe’s scheme is. But it’s too late for the rest of the crew; as they consume their stew, the slurping gives way to what sounds like choking, as Circe begins to encircle the men, folding and weaving their bodies into pigs.
The whole sequence is the most direct way Nolan has approached something akin to a horror movie, certainly since the fear toxin moments in Batman Begins, and maybe ever. “I’ve always been interested in doing a horror film,” the director told the Empire Podcast. “...you’re trying to make people literally feel something in their bones about what’s going on on-screen.” The bone-chilling sensation is made all the more impressive by the fact that the transformation is accomplished with practical effects. “I didn’t know quite what to expect, but I can tell you there’s no CGI in that sequence,” Himesh Patel told Men’s Health. “I think people won’t quite believe it, but there’s none.” The touchpoints for the sequence, as confirmed by Nolan to Empire, included classic body/transformation horror films of the ’80s like John Carpenter’s The Thing and John Landis’s An American Werewolf in London, stating, “We wanted to get back to that era of tactility in visual effects, and try and add something to it.”
In that regard, mission accomplished. The Circe sequence is not only an immediate standout in a film full of instantly memorable moments, but also ostensibly functions as a horror short film. The whole bit is what I always like most in horror films, where there’s an increasing sense of tension and dread. What and how Nolan renders the sequence is far, far more effective than a cheap jump scare; I, for one, cannot get the slurping/choking sounds out of my head.
The benefit of doing a story like The Odyssey is that most of its narrative is inherently episodic, which allows Nolan to change up the tenor and tone of his film at the drop of a hat. Under most other directors, the shifting narrative and tonal winds may feel disjointed, but with Nolan, it’s an important part of a large, cohesive whole. Furthermore, it’s an evolution of the director’s relationship to and exploration of fear and terror, and how those relationships can inform the decisions that bring out the best or worst of Nolan’s characters. It’s a surprisingly chilling result, and one that we can only hope is the start of a more dedicated dance between this storied director and a genre that’s in the midst of quite a revival.
Can you imagine the notion of someone with Nolan’s oeuvre and pedigree diving into an original horror story? The possibilities are endlessly exciting. And, if The Odyssey is any indication, most likely endlessly horrifying, too.
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