SAFE (1995) Review
When thinking of horror films of recent years Safe is one currently at the front of my mind. There are no monsters, no villains of such at all really, just Carol; a bored housewife, convinced the environment is slowly killing her.
Carol, a privileged housewife, or ‘homemaker’ as she puts it stuttering to her therapist, spends her spare time decorating the house and attending 80s aerobics classes - where she doesn't even sweat. She chats to her wealthy friends about other suffocating topics and remains placid and timid throughout every interaction.
The first quarter of the film intends to set up just how mundane and smothering this life is. The first bit of conflict arrives when the new couch is delivered in the wrong colour. It’s the most strength Carol has displayed yet - expressing some anger to the maid, but even still she gets nowhere when attempting to complain on the phone, showing no real power.
Shortly after we get the first glimpse of the supposed evil of the film, as Carol chokes on engine fumes eventually having to pull over, desperately trying to catch her breath. This sets off a chain reaction and Carol starts displaying some strange behaviour that doesn’t fit into her boxed lifestyle and how she is supposed to act. The crux being when she fails to laugh at a joke at a group dinner, which prompts a trip to the doctors where she seems perfectly healthy.
The most memorable line of this exchange, “I don’t take drugs or drink, I don’t even like coffee very much, I’m just a total milk-o-holic.” In one line we see how careful and unremarkable Carol is. It’s this thoroughly ordinary lifestyle that leads Carol to believe that it is in fact the environment causing her to become ill. She finds this answer when she comes across a flyer - ‘ARE YOU ALLERGIC TO THE 20th CENTURY?” This concept alone is a terrifying one and would make a more typical horror movie, however it is not the route Haynes takes. He instead focuses on Carol’s lifestyle and her own suffocating environment, questioning just how serious or even real this illness is .
Haynes however shoots Safe much like a horror film. Often hiding Carol within a wide frame, shrunken by her sterile surroundings and during more obviously unsettling moments he uses a slow track eventually resting on Carol’s blank face.
The most interesting technique Haynes puts to use in Safe is in the sound design. You don’t always notice it but throughout the film there is a low level hum, something that you might put down to an audio flaw but it is very much deliberate. The noise echoes the fears of the film. It suggests something unnatural is at work polluting the environment and potentially bringing us harm, for example the air conditioning or plane engines. It’s a subtle effect that works extremely well, putting the audience in a similar headspace to Carol.
As we near the film’s second half Carol’s symptoms worsen, the most frightening when she suffers a panic attack at baby shower surrounded by her wealthy seemingly perfect friends, which puts drama into the most uncomfortably controlled situation. She becomes increasingly paranoid at the simplest everyday exposures - she flips out when a nurse sprays aerosol in her room, again this is one of the only glimpses to a more powerful Carol showing some dominance.
It's worth noting here how important this performance is in Julianne Moore’s career, before Boogie Nights, before Magnolia, in Safe we see what a force she truly is. Without such an impressive performance from Moore, one we have come to expect from pretty much anything she attaches her name to, this film may not have worked. For all Haynes skills as a director, Safe runs the risk of being another clichéd TV movie documenting the disease of the week, a film i’ve seen a dozen times over on outlets like Lifetime. It’s not surprising that this was the first of 3 collaborations between Haynes and Moore (with Wonderstruck announced for 2017).
Eventually Carol becomes so ill that she believes the only solution to be a treatment centre completely closed off from the environmental dangers of the city; a safe haven.
Here Haynes becomes a little more playful, it's almost as he is mocking new age self help groups as this. He presents them almost cult like and there is no improvement to Carol’s condition throughout her stay. This opens up the question as to what actually is it that is making Carol so ill? As you can see I believe Carol to be a victim of her own lifestyle. A life so remarkably uninteresting that something needs to happen to her, anything. This is a question Haynes leaves open to the viewer. During her stay at the treatment centre Carol is faced with the possibility that she may to blame for her illness. Leader of the facility, Peter, preaches self love and the need to take responsibility for allowing yourself to become ill. In a group talk one patient hints at abuse in her childhood that she believes eventually led to her environmental illness, Peter prompts, “the person who hurt you the most?” “me, for not forgiving him.” This is obviously an unhealthy rhetoric however hints at the possibility that this environmental illness isn’t actually affecting them, that these patients are all victims of themselves. That they really did just allow themselves to become ill. From what we've seen of Carol's life it is not surprising that she may have invented a bigger illness in her head as a sort of protest to the mundane.
The film ends on Carol’s desperate attempts at self love, a desperate attempt at health. We leave Carol as she repeats to herself, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
