In the desolate funhouse of the mind and the sealed-off island of privilege, two films strip away the illusions of connection, leaving only the raw terror of existence.

 

Herndon Harvey’s Carnival of Souls (1962) and Mark Mylod’s The Menu (2022) stand as haunting bookends to six decades of horror cinema, each wielding isolation as a scalpel to dissect the human condition. These works transcend mere scares, plunging viewers into existential abysses where societal facades crumble, revealing the void beneath.

 

  • Both films masterfully deploy physical and psychological isolation to amplify dread, turning empty spaces into mirrors of inner turmoil.
  • Existential horror pulses through their narratives, questioning purpose, identity, and the authenticity of lived experience.
  • From low-budget ingenuity to high-concept satire, they showcase evolving techniques in sound, visuals, and performance that cement their enduring chills.

 

Desolate Echoes: Mapping Isolation’s Grip

In Carnival of Souls, isolation strikes with brutal immediacy. Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) survives a drag race plunge off a bridge, only to wander a sun-bleached Kansas landscape that feels unnaturally hushed. The film’s opening sequence sets this tone: as her car tumbles into the river, silence engulfs the screen, broken only by faint echoes of water. She emerges unscathed, yet forever marked, drawn to an abandoned lakeside pavilion once a raucous carnival. This structure, with its peeling paint and shadowy arcades, becomes her prison, a physical manifestation of emotional detachment. Townsfolk stare blankly; her boarding house landlady chatters obliviously; even the organist she fancies recoils from her touch. Harvey crafts isolation not just through solitude but through failed connections, where every interaction underscores her otherworldliness.

The Menu flips this script to a claustrophobic elite enclave. On Hawthorne Island, twelve diners—including foodie Tyler (Nicholas Hoult), his date Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), and a roster of caricatured rich folk—arrive for Chef Julian Slowik’s (Ralph Fiennes) avant-garde meal. The ferry deposits them on a fog-shrouded shore, and the massive doors of the restaurant seal shut, trapping them with staff who morph from servile to sinister. Isolation here thrives on exclusivity: no escape by sea, no signal on phones, and a surrounding forest that mocks any flight. Mylod heightens this with wide-angle lenses capturing the group’s shrinking world, the ocean a indifferent barrier. Unlike Mary’s involuntary exile, these guests chose their gilded cage, amplifying irony as privilege curdles into peril.

Both films exploit liminal spaces—the pavilion’s faded grandeur echoing the restaurant’s sterile modernism—to blur boundaries between life and death, reality and unreality. Mary’s nocturnal drives lead to visions of ghoulish figures rising from the lake, their pallid faces pressing against car windows. Similarly, Slowik’s courses devolve from gourmet to grotesque, each plate a step toward annihilation. Isolation fosters paranoia: Mary questions her sanity as objects fade in mirrors; diners whisper suspicions amid escalating absurdities like a staff-performed reenactment of the chef’s life.

Void Staring Back: Existential Unraveling

Existential horror in Carnival of Souls manifests as a crisis of being. Mary, a church organist by trade, embodies Camus-like absurdity: her survival feels arbitrary, her existence provisional. She practices scales in empty halls, the organ’s wheeze underscoring her disconnection from faith and flesh. Harvey, drawing from his industrial film background, infuses Lutheran dread—echoes of Kierkegaard’s leap of faith amid despair. Mary’s ghouls demand her surrender, their silent balls in the pavilion a danse macabre mocking human rituals. Her final dissolution reveals the film as a ghost story in reverse: she was dead from the start, her “life” a futile resistance against oblivion.

The Menu updates this for consumerist ennui. Slowik rails against commodified cuisine, his menu a suicide pact critiquing hollow hedonism. Diners represent existential frauds: the celebrity investor, the faded actress, the smug critic—all chasing authenticity through excess, only to confront its absence. Fiennes delivers Slowik’s monologues with fervent precision, his eyes gleaming with Sartrean bad faith exposure. Margot, the sex worker outsider, pierces the facade, her cheeseburger plea a grounding in primal need amid intellectual posturing. Mylod layers Heideggerian thrownness: guests hurled into a ritual they cannot refuse, their deaths affirming life’s meaninglessness.

Parallels sharpen in denial’s grip. Mary ignores blackout episodes where she dances soullessly with ghouls; diners laugh off charred scallops as “performance art.” Both narratives culminate in acceptance: Mary’s embrace of the undead waltz mirrors the group’s fatal feast, where consumption literalizes existential nausea. Yet divergences highlight eras: Carnival‘s metaphysical chill contrasts The Menu‘s socio-satirical bite, the former pondering God’s silence, the latter capitalism’s devouring maw.

Spectral Visions: Cinematography and Mise-en-Scène

Harvey’s black-and-white cinematography in Carnival of Souls evokes film noir desolation, high-contrast shots rendering Mary’s world ghostly. The pavilion’s warped mirrors distort her reflection, symbolizing fractured selfhood; fog machines cheap but effective shroud nocturnal pursuits. John Clifford’s script, penned amid Kansas plains, leverages location authenticity—filmed in Lawrence over two weeks for $33,000—turning civic buildings into eerie voids. Organ motifs swell discordantly, a theremin-like pipe soundtracking her unraveling.

Mylod employs digital polish for The Menu, drone shots emphasizing island remove, candlelit tables casting elongated shadows. Production designer Mara LeFevre crafted the restaurant as a panopticon, glass walls exposing kitchens where horror brews. Slow-motion s’mores prep turns innocence macabre; blood-red sauces pool like existential wounds. Sound design layers clinking cutlery with ominous drones, crescendoing to screams swallowed by waves.

These aesthetics converge in hallucinatory sequences: Mary’s ghoul visions parallel Slowik’s hallucinatory staff theatrics, both using low angles to dwarf protagonists against inexorable forces. Isolation amplifies visual poetry—empty frames in Carnival echo vast dining expanses in The Menu, voids begging interpretation.

Performances that Pierce the Soul

Hilligoss’s Mary conveys quiet hysteria, her wide eyes and clipped speech betraying terror masked as composure. Sidney Berger’s leering organist adds sleazy menace, his advances repelled by her ethereal chill. Fiennes owns The Menu as Slowik, charisma curdling to zealotry; Taylor-Joy’s Margot shifts from cynicism to survivalist grit, her arc a beacon amid doom. Supporting turns—Hoult’s obsequious Tyler, Hong Chau’s icy Elsa—caricature while humanizing, their breakdowns raw.

Actors in both embody existential drift: Mary’s monotone dialogues mirror Slowik’s scripted fervor, performances underscoring scripted lives. Hilligoss, a one-film wonder, channels repressed Midwestern angst; Fiennes draws from culinary tyrants like Escoffier, blending charm with abyss.

Behind the Curtain: Production Shadows

Carnival of Souls emerged from Harvey’s Centron Corporation, a hub for educational shorts. Shot guerrilla-style, it bypassed Hollywood, premiering drive-ins before cult resurrection via Night of the Living Dead screenings. Censorship dodged, yet TV edits softened ghouls. The Menu, penned by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy, navigated COVID delays, filming Hawley Manor (actually Scotland’s Glenapp Castle) amid pandemic isolation ironies. Searchlight’s $30m budget enabled polish, Oscar buzz for screenplay underscoring satire’s bite.

Challenges mirrored themes: Harvey’s crew battled weather; Mylod managed cast immersion, Fiennes method-cooking courses. Both films’ low-escapist ethos—Carnival‘s piety, The Menu‘s class war—resonated culturally, the former post-Eisenhower malaise, latter post-#MeToo excess.

Legacy’s Phantom Dance

Carnival of Souls birthed atmospheric horror, influencing Jacob’s Ladder and The Others with “dead all along” twists. Remade in 1998, its visuals echo in Lynchian surrealism. The Menu joins elevated horror like Midsommar, memes of “chef’s kiss” demise proliferating. Both endure for probing isolation’s existential core, reminding viewers: true horror lurks in solitude’s stare.

In comparing these, we witness horror’s evolution—from analog dread to digital dissection—yet timeless truths persist. Isolation strips pretenses; existence demands reckoning. Carnival of Souls and The Menu feast on that dread, nourishing cinema’s darkest appetites.

Director in the Spotlight

Herk Harvey, born November 3, 1924, in Denver, Colorado, carved a unique niche in mid-century American cinema through his dual mastery of industrial films and genre experimentation. Raised in a modest family, he served in the Navy during World War II, where amateur filmmaking sparked his passion. Post-war, Harvey studied at the University of Denver, earning a degree in theater arts before relocating to Lawrence, Kansas, in 1950 to helm Centron Corporation, a prolific producer of educational shorts on topics from dental hygiene to drunk driving. Over two decades, he directed over 400 such films, honing a stark visual style suited to stark morals.

His sole narrative feature, Carnival of Souls (1962), marked a pivot to horror, born from a script by John Clifford during a Utah shoot. Self-financed at $33,000, it showcased Harvey’s resourcefulness—using Centron crew, Lawrence locations, and makeup artist Jack Pierce’s ghouls. Though initially overlooked, its 1989 VHS revival cemented cult status. Harvey returned to shorts, retiring in 1986 after Centron’s sale. He passed April 3, 1996, leaving a legacy of efficient storytelling influencing low-budget auteurs.

Harvey’s influences spanned Val Lewton’s suggestion-heavy horrors and Italian neorealism, evident in Carnival‘s psychological depth. Key works include What About Drinking? (1959), a hard-hitting sobriety plea; Why Vandalism? (1955), probing juvenile delinquency; Shake Hands with Danger (1970), industrial safety staple; Engine 99 (1965), fire prevention tale; and Operation: Second Chance (1970), rehabilitation narrative. His oeuvre blends moral urgency with cinematic craft, Carnival its poetic outlier.

Actor in the Spotlight

Ralph Fiennes, born December 22, 1962, in Suffolk, England, to a photographer mother and farmer father, emerged as one of Britain’s finest actors through rigorous drama training. At RADA from 1982-1985, he dazzled in Chekhov and Ibsen, joining the RSC in 1986 for Henry VI and Troilus and Cressida. West End triumphs like Hamlet (1995 Olivier winner) preceded film breakthroughs.

Nominated for Oscars for Schindler’s List (1993) as chilling Nazi Amon Göth and The English Patient (1996), Fiennes balanced villainy (Voldemort in Harry Potter series, 2005-2011) with nuance (The Grand Budapest Hotel, 2014). Stage returns include Antony and Cleopatra (1999) and Faith Healer (2006 Tony nominee). Knighted in 2013, he directed Coriolanus (2011) and The Invisible Woman (2013).

Key filmography: A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia (1990); Wuthering Heights (1992); Quiz Show (1994); Strange Days (1995); Oscar and Lucinda (1997); The End of the Affair (1999); Onegin (1999); Red Dragon (2002); Chromophobia (2005); Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005); The Constant Gardener (2005); Land of the Blind (2006); Bernard and Doris (2006); In Bruges (2008); The Duchess (2008); The Reader (2008); The Hurt Locker (2008); Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2010-2011); Coriolanus (2011); Page Eight (2011); Skyfall (2012); The Invisible Woman (2013); The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014); The Two Faces of January (2014); Spectre (2015); A Bigger Splash (2015); Hail, Caesar! (2016); Kubrick’s Odyssey (2016 doc); The White Crow (2018); The King (2019); Official Secrets (2019); The Menu (2022). His chameleon intensity thrives in The Menu‘s Slowik.

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