I finally finished watching my way through the 7 seasons of Supernatural that are up on Netflix.
There was a love/hate reaction to it all the way through for me... but I want to focus on what I liked about it... what I took away from it and wanted more of.
My favorite moments were when the show evoked the desperate, lonely, tragic world of its 'heroes', the hunters. Their slow descent into paranoid nutjobs or burned-out drunks. The crimes they were willing to commit to further their secret crusade. I loved it when the show went beyond mere melodrama into full-on tragedy.
It was at it's best when it was small and personal... less about a world-threatening apocalypse... more about hanging around at night waiting for something... anything to happen. When it was about obsession and delusion as much as it was about monster hunting.
In my mind I want to mash it up with movies like 'Frailty' and 'Bellflower' and 'Snowtown'... though I'm not sure what the similarity is. 'The Witch Who Came From The Sea' is another. None of these is precisely a 'horror' movie... though all feature horrors of some sort. Maybe because all of them create a setting of almost surreal loneliness and despair... and link that with a sort of casual madness. There's nothing epic or supernatural about any of them... and I think my favorite moments of Supernatural shared that.
I guess it means I'm more interested in the sort of people who would go monster hunting, their lives... their slow corrosion... than I am about the monsters. All my favorite characters on Supernatural have been the freaks and weirdos existing on the fringes... at the bar where the hunters meet or in lonely shit-holes where they've retired to drink away what's left of their life.
It seems like, given my tastes here, that I'd have more interest in movies about drug addicts and their descents into personal hells... but for whatever reason I'm not... maybe because I don't see that as 'romantic' compared to the idea of becoming obsessed with trying to save the world or at least get some revenge.
I'd hate to think I'm just wanting to watch movies depicting poor/desperate/doomed characters and sudden bursts of violence. Then again, I do like reading Mickey Spillane and that's how many of his stories seem to play out.
I don't think I have a real point here... I'm just grasping at an aesthetic... narrow down what attracted me to keep watching the show... hoping I can find my way to a purer source of it and wondering if I'd really want to do that.
