1983's Christine
tends to be one of the lesser-seen entries in John Carpenter's
classic-era filmography, as well as one of the lesser-seen major
theatrical Stephen King adaptations. I suspect the reason for this is
the same reason why I never bothered to see (or read) Christine
until just last year: the
concept of an evil car just sounds so silly that plenty of potential
viewers find themselves doubting whether even the combined talents of
King and Carpenter can pull it off. It turns out that you shouldn't
doubt two of the 1980s' greatest horror maestros when they pool their
resources: not only do they make the concept of an evil car
believable and not at all goofy, they even turn it into a
legitimately great film with a surprising amount of thematic depth.
The trick is that Carpenter doesn't approach the material as a
straightforward horror story. Instead, he approaches it as a highly
metaphorical tale about a high school kid self-destructing under the
toxic pressures and social cruelties that awkward teenage boys so
frequently endure. By making it a very relatable parable of teenage
angst and toxic masculinity, he takes a premise that could have
resulted in laughable cheese, and instead turns it into arguably one
of his best films.
Arnie
is a shy and awkward high school kid who just wants to be accepted:
to get a girlfriend, to be at least a little bit popular, to stop
getting picked on... in short, to be cool. He thinks he's found a way
to turn his isolated existence around when he gets a great deal on a
gorgeous vintage car which is the very epitome of coolness, and as he
fixes it up he finds a self-confidence and swagger that he never had
before... but it comes at a price. There's something very strange
about Christine (that's the car's name), and she has harsh demands in
return for the transformation she has allowed him. Christine exists
in the film as an antagonist who is every bit as major a character as
Arnie (Keith Gordon), his best friend (John Stockwell) or his
would-be girlfriend (Alexandra Paul); she is also a metaphor. She
symbolizes the dangerous Faustian bargain that many a teenage outcast
has contemplated: what would you give to be accepted, and to have the
ideal life that feels just out of your reach?
 |
| "What? I'm just sitting here behind the wheel of my metaphor." |
She
also symbolizes the reality of what this usually means, if you strip
away the deal-with-the-devil hyperboles: for a sensitive kid like
Arnie who is far from the stereotypical alpha-male asshole at the top
of the high school social hierarchy, it means sacrificing who you are
to try and live into a toxic standard of masculinity. The sort of
toxic masculinity where emotions are a weakness, where worth is
measured in toughness and the ability to bully those further down the
ladder, and where the only acceptable outlets for passion and love
are inanimate objects like cars that are themselves just further
symbols of cool-guy status. According to Christine,
compromising your identity and your values to run with the in-crowd
is pretty much the same as selling your soul to a demonic force; the
cost is just as high. As someone who has never been a stereotypically
masculine guy, who has always been most at home with the nerds and
the outcasts, and who has always had great disdain for the machismo
of car culture and the self-proclaimed “cool guys” who celebrate
it, the message of John Carpenter's film resonated with me in a way I
truly did not expect. Rather than just the literal “movie about a
killer car” that Christine is
always marketed as, the social commentary at the heart of the film is
on a similar topic to Heathers,
albeit with a totally different tone, and a view of the truly
reprehensible popular guys that is far more cynical than that movie's
Kurt and Ram. Or perhaps a better comparison would be that Christine
is, in a sense, the male
counterpart to Stephen King's other great horrors-of-high-school
tale, Carrie.
 |
| ...and just in case you weren't already sold on the film, here's Harry Dean Stanton! |
Carpenter's
direction, and the script by Bill Phillips, focus first and foremost
on creating a very natural portrayal of suburban high school
existence, allowing the film to work first as a drama so that the
horror elements have all the greater impact when they start to creep
in. Similarly the look of the film uses two contrasting styles. Its
daytime scenes are very naturalistic, steeped in the aesthetic of
suburban Americana in which Christine looks right at home as just
another cool car. The night scenes, on the other hand, are done in
the stylized horror aesthetic for which Carpenter is known: deep
shadows, blue light, lots of blackness punctuated by striking use of
color. This balance of daytime and nighttime visual styles is
strongly reminiscent of the original Halloween,
and it works just as effectively. Carpenter is clearly very much in
his element here, bringing horror back to suburbia once again. While
the villain this time is a car rather than a killer, he nonetheless
creates some very suspenseful and atmospheric horror set-pieces;
indeed, Michael Meyers was such a hulking, unstoppable machine that
swapping him out for a literal machine in a way scarcely makes a
difference.
Christine is
a somewhat rare thing: a horror film with an unexpected amount of
substance at its core, which gives it much more to chew on than just
an expendable cast of victims. Its premise may sound silly in theory,
but King and Carpenter use that premise as a springboard to go to
deeper places, and in doing so they have created a movie which is a
very memorable entry on both of their filmographies. Both of their
voices are highly evident in the film, and fans of each artists will
find much to enjoy. Particularly in the case of Carpenter, Christine
deserves more attention: it has all the elements of his filmmaking
style at its best, and is highly recommended for anyone who has seen
Halloween a few too
many times, and wants to watch something that recaptures a bit of
that magic, but has its own unique identity too.
-
Christopher S. Jordan