Synopsis
A man finds himself haunted by a mysterious black tower in London that appears to follow him wherever he goes.
The Black Tower
1987 Directed by John Smith
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I mean, if you know me, you know that "narrated structuralist architectural horror" is the most Evan Pincus shit in the world. Can't believe I'm only seeing this now.
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“At first I thought that I was in complete darkness but after a while I noticed a greyish speck which remained in the same place when I moved my eyes. I realised that I was facing a flat black wall. I got the feeling that the room was in fact brightly lit but I couldn’t be sure.”
A matt black shape of a house on the top of a tower. Is it actually there or is it cut out of the frame, of the world? The dullness of this black sucks you in. It’s not a surface, it is a deep void and a deep fullness at the same time. If you’d touch it, it would feel like raw cloth…
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the looming 5G steeple! seems islamophobic (despite being sampled by pro-palestine/dprk cloud rapper rubye femlee) but also sin-cere, men-acing, pro-phetic--remember being a kid, every tv a huge black cube? getting messages, texts, psy-groups, cell/GSM/PCS (aka DEATH DOR TOWERS), TETRA, HAARP, death grids, 6-sided power lines, saturn's columns & pillars-- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn%27s_hexagon
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"I resigned myself to my fate."
In parts…
Reality vs. Illusion, subjective perception, the neuroticism caused by modern life, overwhelming anxieties, depression, fear of the unknown, fear of death, thought as consuming us, the inescapable presence of the human Ego, retreating into ourselves as to avoid interacting with the world around us, the world’s absurdity — yet…
Endless human curiosity, embracing the absurdity, finding peace in the inevitability of death and the unknown — and finally…
An acceptance of all of the above.
The Black Tower is an unnerving and imaginative short film.
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Somewhere between this and Begotten exists the greatest, scariest horror movie of all time, and I hope one day I get to see it, although I fear it may drive me mad.
And for National Poetry Month:
On the edge of sight
Exists a lonely building
Far beyond the known. -
exactly my thing in that it predates creepypasta by two decades, and correctly identifies London as a lovecraftian waking nightmare
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Unbelievably good.
A masterpiece of existential horror.
Falls right into several niches that I deeply love.
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John Smith’s The Black Tower is one of those rare films that can be viewed equally as droll comedy or insidious horror. The speck in the eye of its narrator is a dark tower that begins appearing randomly around London. The narrator sees it one day and then it is gone the next, only to reappear in another location. Is it following him? It triggers his obsession and becomes a metaphor for madness, but what it’s really doing is exposing the banality of madness. It’s a form that’s particularly prevalent in England where it lingers amidst fried breakfasts, inconsequential routines and low expectations. The film also uncannily anticipates the madness of social isolation, as the narrator locks himself away in…
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With only a mass of b roll-esque footage and a few voiceovers, John Smith manages to create an oppressively strange and foreboding atmosphere reminiscent of today’s creepypastas.