The Entity

There's a lot on my mind after my fresh and initial viewing of this loose adaptation of what is known as the most extraordinary phenomenon to ever occur in parapsychology. It's starts off as simple as this, when I was a child I thrived off of books of the occult, paranormal, and plain horror. When I was around ten years old, I received two things from a box in the attic - 1) Complete set of Man, Myth, and Magic and 2) A dusty hardback copy of The Entity. Excited more for the paranormal and plain weird rituals that exist within the pages of Man. Myth, and Magic, I gleefully opened the first volume I grabbed to find this insidious photograph of a doll stuffed with human blood and possibly innards. Needless to say, I opted for The Entity at the time, at least until I grew a pair.


Now before I get started, Know that I never actually read the novel and only skimmed through it. No matter the charges, what I read still stayed with me for some time. Not terror, no, but a prepubescent arousal of the strange. This feeling of wrong dominated by lust has only been felt twice, once while "reading" the book and the other while watching the film based on the same perpetrating book. During the scene of the first attack, while you watch a wonderfully aged Barbara Hershey apply lotion to her legs, that stare as if she knew she wasn't alone. It ripped, the smack too. Her frail body then flew back on the bed and a pillow applied over her head. While she writhed in agony, I felt for the first time, deliriously turned on and terrified at the same time. Such a weird intake of emotions kind of left me in a daze that only grew with each attack. It's hard to pinpoint what it is about the events. Maybe it's how helpless Carol Moran was. Maybe it's the fact that her true-to-life character still experiences these attacks. Whatever it was, It turned me on for all the wrong reasons.



Much of The Entity's power comes from all directions. The complacent family at the beginning. The degradation of a perky single mother. The riveting and intense score created by Charles Bernstein. Watching her sweaty and defeated face stare off, Barbara Hershey's lifeless stare scorching through your soul. Watching invisible fingers knead her breasts.


It's all there - The Entity is the perfect mix of both supernatural and erotica and it's a shame that a tasteless taboo-cracking version hasn't been released. Instead we get a Bollywood remake entitled Hawa and I'm still not too happy about that. What the remake tries to do is to keep the attacks, lessen up the intensity, and in general, dumb down the fear-provoking process of watching The Entity in the first place. The Entity did one thing for me that so many have failed to do before - terrify me beyond any explicable explanation. For the duration of this film I had tears in my eyes from the chills shooting up my spine constantly. This is the effect of a great scene set up and a masterful score of pounding guitar.



I haven't too incredibly much to say about a story that has existed since the late seventies. My connection with this tale goes for me in such a ludicrous and drawn out manner that I'm surprised I never cared to watch this sooner. In part, I blame The Nest for that - such an incredible novel and such a sub par film. The Entity excels at showing the horrors and delights of rape without all the awkward male grunting and obtrusive fingers and hands getting in the way of the real prize - repulsive perversions. This, quite frankly, is a horror movie for most but a porno for sociopaths. I lie somewhere in between on what to think of this film but I can state one thing for certain, this is a film I will never show my fiancé lest I want her to never sleep with me as I can imagine this being the harbinger of "I'm not in the mood." The Entity is a cruel film of bold horror and sexuality and within that lies the essence of something shocking. Now that I have pinpointed it, It should be much easier to find something truly nerve-shredding. To keep it short, the best ghost film I've seen.

-mAQ