Sometimes, the most unsettling stories aren’t those that simply scare us, but those that make us interrogate the very nature of what we’re watching. Bigas Luna’s 1987 film, Anguish, does that, burrowing its way into your psyche with a meta-horror narrative that’s as bold as it is bonkers. It’s a commentary on how cinema itself can be a form of hypnosis, a shared delusion we participate in willingly. Dummies.
Anguish presents a film-within-a-film, The Mommy, where a mother (Zelda Rubinstein) uses hypnosis to control her myopic son, John (Michael Lerner), compelling him to commit gruesome murders and collect eyeballs. Up to this point I wondered if I could start watching the movie on 2x. But just as we settle into this thing, Luna jukes. We’re not watching The Mommy; we’re watching an audience watching The Mommy. And within that audience, a man begins to mirror the on-screen violence, turning the theater into a terrifying reflection of the film itself.
Now, I’ll admit, Zelda Rubinstein’s performance didn’t resonate with me, but I understood her casting. She certainly has a unique appeal that adds to the film’s unsettling atmosphere. However, Michael Lerner truly shines as John, capturing a disturbing mix of vulnerability and menace. It’s a testament to his skill that he can elicit both sympathy and revulsion, and still go on to do Barton Fink.
Once the film reveals its layers, I was completely invested. Luna is dissecting the act of watching a horror movie. And he’s doing it in a way I’ve never seen. The film taps into primal fears, not just of violence, but of losing control, of being manipulated, of becoming voyeurs in our own lives. The eyes, so central to the plot, become a symbol of our own gaze, implicating us in the spectacle.
Some of the pacing is uneven, and at times, it feels like Luna is juggling too many ideas at once. But its ambition and originality are undeniable. It’s a film that dares to ask: what happens when the line between reality and fiction blurs? What happens when the monsters on the screen step out of the frame and into our world?