Night of the Demon

I think The Night of the Demon is a horror film within Carroll’s definition. I believed the monster to be the demon because it was utterly disgusting looking and came from Hell which provokes the idea that this creature came from a grotesque and evil world. This is easily distinguishable because the monster is set in a normal world – a world that can be explained scientifically. Yes, there are weird occurrences happening like the wind storm and the hand on the banister, but Karswell is a magician and most likely was the source of these strange happenings. I think that the world in the movie can still be considered a “normal” world because weird occurrences happen in our world under the commands of magicians. The viewers do not sympathize with the character Holden for most of the movie, but they do feel the feelings of dread when Holden is in the woods near Karswell’s house and the demon sounds are heard along with the demon smoke appearing. In this scene the audience sympathizes with Holden’s fear. Also, the audience feels the dread that Karswell feels when he is about to be killed by the demon. I think the movie provoked the feeling of “art-horror” after Karswell had been desperately chasing and chasing the paper, and then suddenly the demon appears and you know that Karswell will be killed.

I think the film delivers the emotional affect that Carroll identifies as characteristic of the horror genre. There is cosmic fear in the sense that the movie emphasizes that runes have gone back to primordial times by beginning the movie with Stonehenge and later having Holden visit Stonehenge in a later scene when he is trying to understand what the runes mean. Also, images of old dated drawings of the demon are shown in the movie. These continuous references to the evil of the movie being very old allows the viewer to see that this fear of the demon is a cosmic fear that people have felt since the time Stonehenge was built. Also, as I explained in the previous paragraph there were instances of dread in the film.

The plot of the film was a complex discovery plot in that the onset appears in the beginning of the movie when Harrington is killed by the demon. Holden questions if the demon really exists throughout most of the movie. The discovery comes when the psychotic patient reveals to Holden what he must do with the runes. The confirmation is when Holden is desperately trying to give Karswell the runes and Karswell is scared to take anything from Holden. The confrontation is when the demon comes and kills Karswell at the end of the movie. The plot of the film is also an overreacher plot in that Karswell reaches out to evil sources that he does not have control over, and in the end he has to pay for his overreaching.

In my opinion, the most suspenseful scene in the movie was the scene with the hand on the banister. This event raises questions of: who does that hand belong to? Is there something of another realm following Holden? What is going to happen to Holden? There are then two outcomes set up: Holden can get out of the house without any encounters with supernatural beings or Holden will have some sort of supernatural occurrence happen to him. The odds are more stacked for the bad outcome that Holden will have a supernatural occurrence which is considered by the audience as the bad outcome of the two.

There is a moral theme addressed in this film. I felt there was a sense of Karma in the film in that “what goes around comes around.” Karswell is divvying out runes to whomever wants to investigate his beliefs, but then in the end of the movie good prevails over evil and Karswell has the runes given back to him. In the beginning scene, Tourneur incorporates shadows into his scene on the winding road which create a sense of dread of what is going to happen to this isolated man in the middle of nowhere. He also employed auditory cues for the demon. Once you started hearing the demon noise that is recognizable from the opening scene, dread sets in because it is an announcement that the demon is approaching.