She just wanted to be in the show...
Requiem for a Dream is about the horrifying after-effects of drugs on a person, so naturally there are plenty of terrifying or Squicky moments seen throughout this film. open/close all folders
The Film
- Sara's descent into madness over the course of Fall and Winter gives us such gems as her POV of the world, which is menacing in every possible aspect. It includes a refrigerator coming to life to eat her complete with loud, startling banging sounds, a TV personality emerging from the TV as a bizarre being made of static and mocking her, and the simple, horrific image of a completely fucked up Sara walking down a sidewalk in broad daylight as people pass by so quickly they are blurred and look like ghosts. That last one also serves as the first image seen during the Winter segment, just to make sure you knew what the last third of the movie was about to be like.
- The climactic Madness Montage is absolutely brutal for both the characters and the audience; the rapid cutting back and forth between the four main characters reaching terminal velocity on their journeys to rock bottom is disorienting enough, especially when it accelerates as the characters' fates worsen, but then there are the individual hells they have created for themselves:
- Because Tyrone is able to answer "yes" to the questions "Can you hear me?" and "Can you see me?", he is deemed fit for prison work detail, where he is subjected to brutal physical labor and a few N-bombs from the openly racist guards for good measure. We finally see him lying on his prison bed, curled up in silent anguish as drug withdrawal takes its toll on him.
- But compared to Harry, Tyrone is fortunate; the gangrene in Harry's infected arm — shown in lovingly gory detail throughout the Winter segment (Tyrone echoes the viewer's horror when Harry shoots heroin into the wound) — has progressed to the point that he has to have it amputated just below the shoulder, and we are treated to numerous shots of him writhing in agony as he is taken away and prepped for surgery, culminating in a surgical saw splattering blood against his plastic face mask as it cuts into his upper arm. The scene
where Harry and Tyrone are both crying out and screaming for help, Tyrone in jail and Harry writhing from the pain in his arm, accompanied by harsh camera shaking and grating distortion noises that intensify as their screams get louder, is especially harrowing.Harry: Oh, Jesus Christ!
Tyrone: Can somebody help us?
Harry: Oh, I need a doctor, man.
Tyrone: My friend is sick...I need some help, please.
Harry: I can't take it, man! My arm! My FUCKING ARM!
Tyrone: Just hang in fucking tight...
Harry: OH, MAN!
Tyrone: HELP US! SOMEBODY FUCKING HELP US, PLEASE! - Marion has resigned herself to prostitution as a source of drugs, and Big Tim "invites" her to participate in a horrifying sex show in front of a raucous crowd of paying spectators. There's something succinctly horrible about a barely-conscious woman being gruesomely violated by a stranger, for a crowd of jeering strangers, and being fed a single dollar from an anonymous, sweaty hand. It's a hell of an image to express how worthless her addiction has made her. And then there's this scene:Marion: So what do you want us to do now?
Uncle Hank: Ass to ass.
(Someone holds up a greased-up double dildo)
Crowd: (ad nauseam) ASS TO ASS! - Finally, as if seeing Sara strapped to a hospital chair as two orderlies try and fail to force feed her spoonfuls of potato and later try a nasal tube, all accompanied by the absolutely savage "Meltdown" (which, as it motors onward as if leading the characters on a death march, starts to sound less like the Kronos Quartet and more like the music of Hell itself), isn't bad enough, her doctor gets her to "sign" a consent form for electroconvulsive therapy (translation: she puts a vague scribble on a form she can't even read). The shock therapy and the sounds accompanying the scene, especially the way the score pauses for a second of soul-chilling silence just before each shock sent into Sara's brain and then blasts back in as she convulses uncontrollably from the current, are played as Electric Torture, and it is absolutely agonizing to watch.
- In the scene where Marion has sex with her psychologist for money, he grabs and kisses her so violently it almost feels like a rape scene. The whole idea of that part of Marion's arc is horrible. This is a man who has an education for the express purpose of understanding, analyzing, and learning how to treat mental illness. The "You smug fuck!" scene drives it home; the entire reason for his getting involved with Marion in the first place is because he knows that she's a weak-willed dreamer. He knows damn well that she's at risk for addiction. He's violent with her because he's been waiting the entire time for her to whore herself out to him, because he knew that's what she'd eventually end up doing... and like most abusers, once he knows he's got her once, he knows he's got her for good.
- "Lux Aeterna" may be one of the most incredibly powerful pieces of movie soundtrack music of all time, but it's also incredibly dark. (Except in the "Requiem for a Tower" orchestration.) It's the kind of music you can imagine playing as the whole world burns and the entire human race screams as one in hopeless, helpless despair. There is not a single uplifting or hopeful note in the entire piece.
The Website
- The beginning of the Flash website intentionally redirects viewers from Tappy Tibbon's website to Harry and Marion sleeping together.
- The website in general makes the viewers think that their computer is damaged.
- In the Sara Fall segment, if you click on the red meat, you get a Jump Scare from the fridge.
- For the Sara Winter segment, once she says "Everything's all mixed up," the words "mixed up" gets echoed a lot.
- For the Harry/Marion Fall segment, their phone call from the film gets slowly distorted like the static is obscuring the calls.
- In the Harry Winter segment, once you click on Marion, you hear him yelling out her name, much more nightmarish than in the film.
