Review #238: Repulsion (1965)

This review was originally written in October 2022.

Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #92: Repulsion (1965)

I'm gonna get this right out there: I did not like this movie. Not at all. I'd be very comfortable placing this in the bottom five out of all of the movies I've watched this year, and that's saying something. At no point in this entire movie did I feel like I was enjoying myself, and reading some of the other reviews people have written about this just makes it all sound like pretentious nonsense.

Repulsion is a film about Carol, a Belgian manicurist living in London with her sister Helen. Carol has some sort of serious cognitive disorder that causes her to hyper-focus and obsess over certain things to the great detriment of her social and professional life, and (possibly related) she also has some sort of underlying discomfort with sexuality and men in general. Her sister goes out of town leaving her on her own, and her cognitive disorder gets so bad that she loses her job, and then proceeds to kill her boyfriend and then their landlord. During all of this she starts having hallucinations of cracks appearing all over her apartment and also nightmares of being sexually assaulted by an unknown figure. Then the movie is over.

I have a LOT of problems with this movie. First and foremost, the protagonist. Carol SUCKS. She sucks as a person, she sucks as a friend, she sucks as an employee, she sucks as a roommate, and most importantly, she sucks as the protagonist of a story! For the entire film she spends half of her screentime staring blankly and not reacting to the world around her. When her sister gives her the rent money to give to the landlord, and urges her to please go pay it, you as the viewer know with 100% certainty that she isn't going to pay the rent, and you know it's not going to be for a good reason- she's just not going to do it. (Did she forget? I don't know. All I know is she was reminded at least once and she still didn't do it.) I get that the whole point of the story is supposed to be about whatever this cognitive disorder is that she's suffering from, but hey Mr. Polanski, if the whole point of your story is about a protagonist who spends half her screentime staring blankly and not reacting, YOUR STORY SUCKS.

Like I get that there's supposed to be some sort of underlying fear or something that's causing Carol to act this way, but the movie sure as hell doesn't go into detail about it. I keep referring to it as a "cognitive disorder" because nowadays that's how we would refer to someone's behavior if they acted the way Carol does- the movie simply calls her "sensitive", and that's supposed to be that. I would have LOVED for it to turn out some kind of a demon or ghost or something was causing this disorder- yes it would have been stupid and would have destroyed any and all nuance the director was going for, BUT AT LEAST SOMETHING WOULD BE HAPPENING ON SCREEN. I haven't even mentioned: this movie is ALMOST TWO HOURS and roughly ten minutes are spent with anything actually happening.

And Carol is by far the worst character in the movie, but the other characters suck too. Her boyfriend (I say "boyfriend" but like everything in this film it has no input whatsoever from Carol: there's a guy that likes her and keeps trying to take her on dates and she doesn't rebuff him, she just passively goes along with most of what he wants without any visible reaction) her boyfriend is obviously smitten by her, but WHY? She has nothing resembling a character trait except "passive". What could he possibly see in her? She eventually murders him while he's trying to pester her to figure out what her deal is and why she keeps flaking on him, but like, why did she murder him? Did she finally develop a personality and that personality is murder? I'd be down for that, except after he's dead and she dumps his body in the bathtub she goes right back to being an unmoving slab of granite. Carol's sister sees fit to put her in charge of the apartment while she goes out of town, but like, nothing in this movie gives me the viewer any indication Carol could be in charge of a bag of potatoes, let alone an apartment. At NO point does she seem like she has ever been a normal human being, yet her sister doesn't seem to get that, so she seems equally at fault. And then the landlord- after several days of Carol being in a stupor and not paying the rent- he comes into the apartment ready to kick the sisters out on their duffs, but once he's paid, he immediately starts trying to have sex with this unmoving slab of granite that is Carol. He's flirting with her, he's getting handsy with her- all the while she is saying and doing NOTHING. I can't imagine a person possibly being turned on by someone who is so clearly suffering from some kind of cognitive break right in front of them. NOBODY IN THIS FILM FEELS LIKE A PERSON, they all feel like a stereotype cranked up high enough to bounce off of this flat wall of a protagonist.

This movie sucks. There's like two genuinely good sequences in the entire film but they're drowned out by the sea of NOTHING that the rest of the film is sinking into.

Overall Rating: 1/10 Overflowing Bathtubs

Spot-On IMDB Trivia: According to IMDB, "Catherine Deneuve claimed that in actuality, she and Carol have very different personalities." OH YOU DON'T SAY? You're telling me this living, breathing person DOESN'T have the personality of an empty glass of water? What a surprise!