The Night of the Demon

One of the main aspects of the horror genre as defined by Carroll is that it must be a work with a monster that has supernatural aspects and that is both threatening and disgusting to the characters in the story. Not surprisingly, The Night of the Demon, features a supernatural monster in the form of a demon. It is definitely threatening, as it kills the only people who can see it, and disgusting in its ugly, brutish facial features and gigantic and abnormal body. Although the demon is only Karswell’s tool, I still think the demon, and not Karswell is the main monster in this film. Karswell is portrayed as very human in the film. Very flawed, but very human. He feels guilt and maybe even remorse and the movie gives reasons for his actions. He uses supernatural forces to do his bidding but he is not of supernatural origin himself. The demon, however is definitely supernatural. The demon is menacing of his own account and not just because Karswell is using him. I got the feeling throughout the whole movie that Karswell was getting too far over his head, and at any time the demon might decide to just go ahead and do whatever he wants. At the end, when the demon kills Karswell, we see that the demon has all the power and Karswell was simply dabbling in a power much greater than himself.
Since the demon was both threatening and disgusting, I think the movie is at least trying to be art-horrifying. It didn’t particularly work for me, because I agree with Tourneur—seeing the monster means that it’s really not scary anymore. However, scenes where the characters are talking about the possibility of the supernatural did evoke in me a sense of dread and even cosmic-horror. I was most scared, I think, like Holden is, by the very idea of there being a whole bunch of evil things out there that we know nothing about and are unable to control. I am horrified in a cosmic kind of way by the idea of a mere human, Karswell, bringing these forces out of the dark unknown and using them for his own gain. In the end, what is truly horrifying is not the thought that the runes worked and that it means that there really is a demon who Karswell was controlling, it is the idea that sometime in the future, the runes might not work. That there will be no way to fight the demon.

The film has components of both the complex discovery plot and the overreacher plot. It is part complex discovery plot, even though the audience sees the monster at the beginning, because Holden refuses to believe it. Because Holden so adamantly refuses to believe in the existence of the monster, the plot is propelled by Holden trying to find a different explanation, and failing. It has elements of the overreacher plot as well, in that Karswell takes the role of a kind of ‘mad scientist’ in dabbling with the power of the runes. He evokes a power that he can’t control, and the plot in this way is propelled by the suspense this causes. (Seeing Karswell in the role as ‘mad scientist’ highlights the idea of Holden and Karswell as foils. They’re both stricken with incredible tunnel vision. Karswell is convinced that he can use and control the demon. Holden is convinced that his way of thinking will prevail and he can control the world through scientific study. In this way it’s kind of a double-overreacher plot. Neither of them is correct, and they’re refusal to understand the world in any other way drives the suspense of the plot.)
Suspense, as defined by Carroll, is the situation in which the undesired becomes increasingly likely to happen with time. To me, the most ‘undesired’ element of this movie are the supernatural forces (we only see the one demon—but the demon’s appearance means that there could be any number of things out there). When the audience sees the hand on the stairwell, the hand that Holden never sees nor knows is there, the suspense is greatest for me. In this scene, we realize, subtly, that Holden’s science is not enough to control and understand the world. We realize that Holden’s tunnel vision is so pronounced that he cannot even see the hand on the stairwell right next to him. And we realize that the same could be true for us. That when we’re scared in the middle of the night for no reason, there could really be a reason. That there could be a hand on the stairwell next to us and we just don’t see it.
The most prominent theme I saw addressed in the film is a social theme about many’s inability to see or even entertain the thought of views other than their own. As I talked about before with Holden and Karswell, they both have incredible tunnel vision. I think the film can be seen as a social commentary about the West’s misguided belief that it can control everything. The Indian professor believes openly in the existence of demons, but Holden refuses to believe. Holden thinks that his way of thinking is the only one that can possibly be right, and believes that his dogma of beliefs control the world. Karswell thinks that he, himself can control the world—even who lives and who dies. Britain believed that it had this power, as Karswell does in the movie, during colonialism when they treated the colonized countries however they wished. America has also been accused of trying to control everyone and imposing their way of thinking on the entire world. In the end, they both get their comeuppance, with Karswell’s death signaling that he does not have control of life and death, and Holden’s dogma of beliefs crashing around him when he cannot explain events with regular ideas about science.
I like how Jacques Tourneur distorts the film when we see things through Holden’s point of view, in order to show that we cannot trust Holden, or maybe we are seeing reality as Holden is gradually beginning to understand it: that everything is not clear as it once was. This technique heightened the suspense in the movie for me because it made it more likely that Holden’s scientific explanation for Harrington’s death and the other events of the film cannot really account for these events. Even though I didn’t find Holden’s character very likable, I tended to be on his side. I like when he talks about how he was a kid and he would always walk under the ladder, just to prove his silly, superstitious friends wrong. Maybe because both of my parents are scientists, I was always this kid. (I once chugged a can of pop and ate a whole packet of Pop Rocks in fourth grade just to prove to my friend that it would not explode my stomach.) I like this technique a lot because it’s emphasizing that Holden’s cozy belief that he knows exactly how the world works and sees it clearly. When his point of view is visually blurred and distorted, we start to believe that he’s not right, and if he’s not right, then we really don’t understand what’s going on.