Even if the name doesn’t immediately ring a bell, most horror fans are likely aware of the work of Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel. The director, who made films from 1929 all the way until 1977, is responsible for one of horror’s most iconic sequences: In his 1929 short Un chien andalou (The Andalusian Dog), a woman’s eyeball is graphically sliced open. While his collaborator, Salvador Dalí, often gets credit, as its director, Buñuel played a major role in creating the film that would inspire over a century of transgressive filmmaking.
Un chien andalou wasn’t Buñuel’s sole influence on horror. In fact, his whole career is tinged with horror influences, and many of his films use the lens of surreality to depict the grotesque, transgressive, and provocative. His 1930 film, L’Age d’Or, takes imagery from Marquis de Sade’s “The 120 Days of Sodom.” We see only the aftermath as the survivors of a vile libertine orgy are summarily executed. Although Buñuel gives just a glimpse of this profanity, Pier Paolo Pasolini later adapted de Sade’s book into Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, which is celebrated and reviled as one of the most shocking films ever made.
Un chien andalou and L’Age d’Or aren’t alone in their horrific imagery; Buñuel flirted with the macabre for his entire career. His 1933 pseudo-documentary Land Without Bread amps up the brutality of the primitive Las Hurdes region of Spain, adding in staged animal deaths, and the partially staged funeral of an infant. Other films such as El Bruto, The Young and the Damned, and Viridiana waltz with themes of murder, incest, rape, and other depravities. While any one of his films is worthy of examination through the lens of horror, I believe his most persistent is his 1962 film, The Exterminating Angel (El ángel exterminador).
The Exterminating Angel is a surreal satire that tracks a group of wealthy socialites who become trapped in a room by an invisible force. That force is never explained, nothing blocks their egress, but any attempts to leave are denied by anxiety, distraction, and terror. As their imprisonment drags on, the film’s bourgeois protagonists are taunted by the open doors to the dining room and the food within, just out of reach. Instead, they’re forced to tear apart walls to find water, slaughter animals for food, and burn furniture for heat, and eventually plot murder, all while their confinement drives them further and further into madness.
Of course, every horror fan is already aware of the thin line between normal, day-to-day life and complete and utter brutality. Just look to virtually every final girl and the violent comeuppance they inflict on their slasher. Although there’s plenty in The Exterminating Angel for horror fans to love, some may think it doesn’t go far enough. It stops before it reaches downright cabin-fever-fueled carnage. If you’re in that camp, you’re not alone. Buñuel himself called the film a failure, and had he been able to remake it, he would have liked to show the imprisoned aristocrats descend into cannibalism.
Within the film’s already fascinating plot, there’s plenty of poignant social commentary that will be just as familiar to horror fans. Though the film can be interpreted a number of ways, many of its themes are undeniable and as relevant today as they ever were. We see isolation drive madness. We see tribes form in times of strife. We see murder become more and more appealing. More than anything, however, The Exterminating Angel explores the hypocrisy of the social elite and the thin strands of society that keep them from utter depravity.
While the rift between rich and poor was as alive-and-well when The Exterminating Angel was made as it is today, Buñuel instead depicted a somewhat different gap. The Exterminating Angel shows the moral disintegration of the elite when left to their own devices, regardless of their relationship with the lower class. The central figures in his film are miles above its other characters, in their wealth, power, and social standing. The servants, the military, the politicians, all have the good sense to flee before things go bad. The protagonists on the other-hand, dig in, entrenching themselves in their situation. Buñuel even hammers the point home by showing their initial entrance to the film’s central dinner party twice. Ultimately, for the audience, prosperity makes their Icarian plunge into degradation, depravity, and death all-the-more entertaining.
There’s a good reason for this. To the layman, unfathomable wealth and the power that it brings is, well, unfathomable. The elite commit crimes with impunity while the layman takes a lousy plea deal. The elite own yachts, private jets, and sports teams while the layman makes monthly payments on a 2006 Mazda Miata (on a salvage title, no less). The elite buy politicians while the layman struggles to make rent. This divide breeds resentment and envy, and their position makes it oh-so-satisfying to watch fall. Seeing monsters like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby brought to justice will be celebrated for years. Who doesn’t like rooting against Jeff Bezos, Martin Shkreli, and Mark Zuckerberg and other CEOs who put their own profits ahead of people’s lives?
When Buñuel made The Exterminating Angel, he was living in Mexico after being essentially exiled from Spain for his inflammatory filmmaking. While his early filmmaking elicited the wrath of Francisco Franco’s fascist regime, his later films, including The Exterminating Angel, were no less scathing in their critique of Spain’s ruling class. If Roger Ebert’s glowing review of the film is to be believed, the guests represent Spain’s ruling class, who’ve become trapped in a hell of their own creation, where their bestial nature is revealed.
This theme isn’t uncommon in films about social and economic divides. In 2019 and 2020 alone, at least half a dozen horror films explore similar themes, and dozens more have been made in the last decade. Though some are more overt than others, they all explore the savagery and evil that the powerful are capable of when left to their own devices.
Go watch The Exterminating Angel.
It’s a breezy 95 minutes, and doesn’t drag at all. I’d also encourage those interested in the surrealist filmmaker to check out his other films. Un chien andalou and L’Age d’Or are certainly fascinating films, but their plotless, meandering nature makes them more difficult to watch compared to his later films. His final three films, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoise (1972), The Phantom of Liberty (1974), and That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) are among his best.
If you’re more interested in some of the discrete parallels between The Exterminating Angel and more recent films, I’ve included a few examples below.
Ready or Not
In 2019’s Ready or Not, Samara Weaving plays Grace, a former foster child about to marry into the Le Domas gaming dynasty. On her wedding night, she’s subjected to a life-or-death game of hide-and-seek that the family plays to fulfill their end of a demonic pact.
For Grace and the audience, the rites of the Le Domas family are bizarre, cruel, and inhuman. They show an indifference towards human life that horrifies any observer with a hint of humanity. To the family, these events are part of life, and necessary to maintain their status. Every member takes it in stride, even the transplants — those not born into power, but who gained it through marriage — accept the murderous activity as worthwhile as long as it allows the family to maintain its power.
Much like The Exterminating Angel, Ready or Not shows the easy brutality of the ruling class. As we’ll see is a common theme, they consider the lower classes to be little more than animals, fit for hunting. They are, however, forced to go to these lengths to maintain power, with no option to give it up. Much like the dinner party in The Exterminating Angel, the family curse that granted them wealth demands their subservience. They’ve made their bed (albeit one with extremely high thread-count sheets) and they must sleep in it.
Satanic Panic
Satanic Panic follows Samantha Craft (Hayley Griffith) as she delivers pizza to a particularly wealthy neighborhood. Sam quickly learns that not only are these wealthy suburbanites poor tippers, they need her virgin womb for a Satanic ritual. Hilarity ensues.
The rites and ritual of the upper class are common themes in this style of film. In The Exterminating Angel, the dinner guests are bound by ritual. Theirs are the ritual of high-society: politeness, rigidity, obedience to hierarchy, and the like. Only when these rituals are broken, do the guests become trapped. In Satanic Panic rituals (albeit satanic ones) are essential to the film’s villains. Their central ethos of “Death to the weak. Wealth to the strong.” is central to nearly every film that explores these divides.
While Ready or Not and Satanic Panic are perhaps more “lowbrow” than much of Buñuel’s filmography, they share his view that the upper class are happy to sacrifice those below them for gain. They’ve given up a degree of humanity for power, and will sink to any depth to maintain it.
The Hunt
Much like Ready or Not, Craig Zobel’s 2020 political-splatter-satire (splattire?) focuses on a group of wealthy liberal elites hunting politically conservative human prey. Though The Hunt’s announcement in 2019 seemed to piss off nearly everyone, it was released in 2020 with little fanfare (the pre-pandemic timing certainly didn’t help either). While politics shrouded people’s early impressions, it became clear upon release that the film satirizes just about everyone, regardless of political leaning.
The film’s conservative stereotypes range from FloridaMan-incarnate to an unhinged conspiracy-vlogger, while its liberals are the most insufferable, tone-deaf coastal elites imaginable. Though The Hunt’s murderous liberals are a far cry from the fascists that Buñuel lampooned, the economic divide between the hunters and the hunted is as clear as night and day. The film’s victims, in particular its protagonist Crystal (Betty Gilpin), are all working-class people, while its villains are a slice of the absolute top tier of society, who can operate outside the law and hunt other humans on a relative whim.
Once again, extreme prosperity has driven the powerful to malicious boredom. Couple that with their juvenile temperaments and unlimited resources, and they have no problem chasing down their lessers like wild game.
Us
The societal divide in Jordan Peele’s 2019 film is more symbolic than the previous films mentioned, but just as on the nose. The film sees a society of subterranean doppelgangers rise up to murder their terrestrial doubles. The film makes it obvious that, in part, the dichotomy between humanity and their doppelgangers is symbolic of the gap between the upper and lower class.
In Us, the doppelgangers physically exist below humanity, and the “upper class” perceives them as less than human. We learn, however, that they’re capable of human actions, and ultimately are solely capable of mimicking the rituals of humanity proper. This relationship is reminiscent of that between the upper and lower class, and while Us depicts the ritualization of the mundane, the alien-ness of those activities is not unlike the more blatant examples in Ready or Not or Satanic Panic. Ultimately, we’re reminded by the end of the film that in many ways, the divide between the two halves is artificial, and a product of environment, not the fundamental lack of humanity that’s initially implied.
Of course, social divides, and the depravity of the powerful aren’t the only themes explored in The Exterminating Angel. Confinement plays just as important a role. Single location films are commonplace in horror. Cube, Evil Dead, Saw, and dozens of others deliver scares on a low budget by confining their characters to a single room. Nearly every haunted house film takes a similar approach, confining the haunting to a single building. These films, however, follow the vein of The Exterminating Angel by trapping their characters with an invisible force….
Parasite
Although not strictly horror (though certainly possessing some horror tropes), Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite has more overt parallels to The Exterminating Angel than any film in recent memory. The film’s pitch-black humor, coupled with sudden bursts of surreal violence feels like a page straight from Buñuel’s repertoire.
Once again, the wealthy are still treated as alien compared to the lower-class family at the film’s center. Unlike this list’s other entries, the wealthy are targets. Their inability to interact normally with the working class makes them easy to fool, and perfect prey for the film’s family of grifters.
Both films are deeply interested in the confinement of their characters. Despite having the freedom to come and go, the servant-class family in Parasite effectively trap themselves in the world of the rich, and find themselves unable to escape figuratively and literally throughout the film. While Buñuel was obsessed with the wealthy, Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar-winning film is far more interested in how the lower class acts in the world of the wealthy.
Swallow
Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s film Swallow explores many similar themes to The Exterminating Angel. Swallow’s protagonist, Hunter, comes from a working-class background but has married into wealth, and in doing so has become trapped in home-maker life. Her emotionally abusive husband dictates nearly every facet of her life, and she’s left with little escape besides her compulsion to swallow increasingly dangerous objects.
Although played straight, Swallow seems constantly on the verge of surreality, if only because of the grotesque nature of Hunter’s compulsion. Rather than depict the objects as disgusting, the items she consumes are all shot to look as appetizing as possible. Marbles, thumbtacks, and even dirt are revealed through a loving lens, and look shockingly tantalizing as Hunter swallows them. The result is unsettling and somewhat fetishistic, and would fit right at home beside Bunuel, who’s no stranger to fetishistic filmmaking.
Mother!
I’ve saved Darren Aronofsky’s 2017 film as it’s overtly Buñuel-ian. A woman is tormented by an unending torrent of guests who her husband invites in and who refuse to leave. The film has all the surreality, impossible circumstances, and thick socio-political vibes of The Exterminating Angel, but wrapped in an anxiety-ridden horror shell.
I don’t think I’ve said it, at least not explicitly, but the first time I saw The Exterminating Angel it terrified me. I can’t quite explain why, but the purposelessness of the characters’ confinement plucked my existential dread nerve in just the right way. Mother! plucked that same nerve.
Both films evoke tiny, needling anxieties. Mother! deftly hits the “my neighbor is talking to me while I get the mail” or “I wish these dinner guests would leave” anxieties. The Exterminating Angel, similarly, hits the “can’t we leave this party?” and the “can’t I just end this conversation?” anxieties. Both films, at times, feel like cinematic panic attacks — downward spirals with no escape.
As you can see, despite a lack of significant mainstream recognition, Buñuel’s influence lives on in modern horror, as do the themes he explored. His blend of surrealism, pitch-black humor, transgressive imagery, and social commentary fits perfectly within the zeitgeist of contemporary horror.
Although these are a few obvious examples, they’re in no way alone. The wildly successful Purge series pits upper and lower classes against one another (and themselves) in an annual murder holiday. The Saw series has its Buñuel-ian moments as well, though it goes further and further off the rails as the series progresses. Other auteur and arthouse horrors evoke similar vibes. Hagazussa, The Witch, Santa Sangre, Jonathan Glazer’s Birth, and countless others all tread similar ground, and countless future films surely will as well.
