![]() ![]() It’s like Titanic, but if Rose had just scooched over and let Jack onto the door and they were able to live a lovely life together and flirt at parties. Oh, wow, you might think during this scene. April, an aspiring actress, and Frank, a longshoreman, meet at a party, locking eyes from across the room, and begin sexily dancing. Based on Richard Yates’s 1961 novel of the same name and directed by Sam Mendes, the movie follows the downward trajectory of 1950s East Coast couple April (Kate Winslet) and Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio). If you’re unfamiliar with Revolutionary Road, let’s unpack it together because you absolutely should not watch it unless you want to obliterate any remaining sense of joy (or unless it’s Halloween and you want to watch a horror movie, in which case, this is the only one). “I guess we will have a life devoid of art and culture and history,” I said, smoking 12 cigarettes at once as I sewed myself an apron with my other hand. Last night, I rewatched it for the first time since that fateful afternoon, and I immediately picked a fight with my boyfriend about whether or not we should subscribe to the Criterion Channel. Before the film ended, I was out in the hallway, experiencing my very first panic attack. The first time I saw Revolutionary Road, I was on winter break from college, and my mom and I went to a nice afternoon screening, just two gals excited to watch Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet reunited for the first time since Titanic. This film is Revolutionary Road, which came out on Christmas 2008, and was billed, incredibly, as a “romance.” Even thinking of it on a warm summer’s eve, I shudder, chilled to the bone, pulling my floral cardigan tightly around my shoulders, wondering if that long shadow on the driveway is just my imagination. It provides me with nightmare fuel to this day. It is the scariest movie I have ever seen. There is, however, one exception, one film that can still reach the recesses of my dilapidated brain. (Thank you, yes, I am in therapy.) I’ve seen a lot of good horror movies over the years ( The Descent, Goodnight Mommy, It Follows, Let the Right One In, and Hereditary are some of my favorites), but the hours upon hours of horror-viewing have mostly just served to slowly erode my pleasure centers and turn me into the kind of person who can watch The Strangers alone in my house in the bathtub and then get a great night’s sleep. I’ve since spent the past two decades trying to re-create that experience - i.e., find a movie so perfectly terrifying that it low-key destroys my life and completely ravages my worldview. I loved it, even as I could feel it permanently altering the wiring of my brain. When I was 10 years old, my dad showed me The Shining, which in some states would probably be considered reckless endangerment. ![]()
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