Although it has been the recipient of many negative critical reviews -- not to mention negative ratings on the Internet Movie Database -- the 2012 horror film ATMis precisely the kind of stream-lined, provocative genre film that I enjoy writing about here on the blog.
In broad strokes, this horror film from director David Brooks re-invents many 1980s slasher-film tropes for our 21st century age, and features a commendably lean premise which encourages both suspense and terror. As a scary movie first and foremost, the film succeeds entirely as general audiences would hope.
But ATMis a film truly worth championing, in my opinion, because of the powerful sub-textual metaphor it diagrams so ably.
In short, the film actually serves as a caustic social critique of Wall Street in the post-Great Recession Age. Without ever being overtly preachy or even heavy-handed about it, the movie expertly and knowingly compares a seemingly unstoppable, mysterious killer at an urban ATM enclosure to the faceless Wall St. “players” who terrorized the nation and lost many families their retirements and life-savings.
The film’s central location -- a standalone ATM after midnight -- allows for symbols of the financial sector to bleed into the film visualization, and make certain that ATM’s form and content operate on parallel tracks of meaning.
The best way to describe ATM’s metaphor is to adopt an image from the film itself.
There’s blood on your bank deposit slips…
“One bad decision can ruin every good decision you’ve ever made.”
ATM opens at Starkweather Financial Company’s Christmas party. A conscientious young worker, David (Brian Geraghty) is upset when gets off the phone with an angry client. It’s just three days before the holiday, and David’s has lost the client’s pension and life savings. His obnoxious friend Corey (Josh Peck) tries to make David feel better by noting that “everyone is screwed” in the new economy, so he shouldn’t blame himself.
David soon learns that a co-worker, Emily (Alice Eve) is leaving the company, and decides, finally, to ask her out. She accepts his invitation to drive her home, but the obnoxious Corey also needs a ride home, and insists that he tag along. On the trip to his house, however, Corey decides that he wants to stop at a pizzeria and get something to eat. But he has no money, and suggests that they stop at an ATM enclosure in the middle of a big, empty parking lot.
An irritated David agrees. As the temperature drops below freezing, and the midnight hour passes, the three young friends go inside the (heated) ATM enclosure and retrieve cash for dinner.
But, blocking their exit is a strange figure: an unmovable, fearsome man whose face is hidden by a furry parka.
This figure persistently blocks egress, and then bloodily murders a bystander who is out walking his dog.
David attempts to buy off the killer with five hundred dollars and Emily’s earrings, but the man doesn’t want money. Their offer doesn’t satisfy him.
Instead, he seems obsessed with the threesome in the ATM. David fears that the figure might be the very client whose money he lost three days before Christmas…
The temperature drops precipitously as the hours pass, and frost forms on the ATM enclosure’s windows. David is aware that the group will freeze to death if it remains there until morning.
And worse, the killer soon attaches a fire hose to the ATM vent system, meaning that freezing water begins pouring into the enclosure…
“Why is he doing this to us?”
As an unapologetic lover of horror movies, my basic benchmark in terms of success involves whether or not a film is actually scary. ATM succeeds on that front, and thus paves the way for a more in-depth discussion of its aesthetic qualities and its canny use of symbols.
But on the pure, basic level of “fear,” ATM is splendidly minimalist and splendidly effective too. There are essentially three protagonists and one villain in the film. And the majority of the movie occurs in one night, at one location: the ATM.
The ATM is positioned in the middle of a vast, empty urban parking lot, and distant neon lights shine like beacons on the horizon. There’s little opportunity for David, Corey and Emily to reach help because it is after midnight, and the world at large is asleep. They face peril not only from the killer, but from the frigid environment. The temperature keeps dropping, and the situation grows increasingly dire.
I have read some critics and viewers complain that three people could do more to escape from a single killer, but the situation is not nearly so clear-cut. For two lucky souls to escape from the killer, one must sacrifice him or herself, and in a situation like that, who do you ask to be the sacrificial lamb?
Secondly, as Corey learns the hard way, making a run for it is not precisely the answer. The killer has erected booby traps that preclude an easy escape.
Also, I always find it amusing that some horror fans ask for characters to -- in a moment of heightened terror -- think not only rationally, but to do so instantly. David, Corey and Emily attempt pretty much everything you would try in a similar circumstance, merely not on your schedule. But of course, that’s precisely what dramatic license is: the “space” necessary for artists and creators to make their points while still telling a story of reasonable verisimilitude.
Besides, who can honestly deny that screaming at behind-the-eight-ball characters in a horror movie is part of the fun of this movie form? Critical to the artistry of the horror format is the filmmaker’s ability to gain emotional investment from the audience, and make the characters on screen function as “surrogates” for audience fears and concerns. There’s a threshold of acceptability, to be certain. Characters that are too stupid don’t evince sympathy, and don’t project the reality necessary.
But again, I would submit that ATM readily crosses such a threshold rather easily.
In the tradition of the original Halloween -- a film which establishes no motive for Michael Myers’ murder spree and leaves open numerous possibilities about what it all “means” -- ATM ultimately provides no reason behind the killer’s monstrous and murderous actions against David, Corey and Emily.
Occasionally, we see the killer’s eyes, but they are virtually expressionless, showing no surprise, no enjoyment, no bemusement…nothing.
Late in the film, Emily realizes that she may die, and that there is no explanation or reason for the specifics of her demise, or the acts of her killer. She exposes a fallacy in their thinking: “Because we didn’t do anything wrong, we’re supposed to be protected,” she explains to David, thus giving us a hint as to the film’s central metaphor.
Indeed, so many families lost their fortunes to the irresponsible financial managers on Wall Street in 2008…for absolutely no reason. These investors -- teachers, plumbers, custodians, policeman etc. -- did nothing wrong, except to trust in the system, and trust the experts.
Throughout ATM,we witness David, Emily and Corey similarly make unwarranted assumptions about how the system will protect them. They suspect a police man will show up in time and arrest the killer. Or that they can type in a special code on the ATM’s keyboard that will alert authorities as to the crisis.
They expect that because they have done nothing wrong, they won’t be victimized.
And yet they are victimized, ruthlessly, by the film’s killer. And ATM’s end, there’s every suggestion that their lives mean absolutely nothing to him, and that, if given the opportunity, he would take more victims, at another setting. Human suffering doesn’t enter the equation for him.
The critical point, however, is that the filmmakers make dramatic note of the world David, Corey and Emily hail from. It is the financial sector, of course, and as the film commences, we watch at the Christmas party as young, wealth, well-dressed, would-be masters of the universe joke and laugh about their actions. These actions explicitly involve managing -- and losing -- the fortunes of other people. But importantly, the “experts” at Starkweather don’t suffer when their clients do. Instead, they just move on to the next client, the next fortune to invest.
These opening moments -- with men behaving very badly – may call up for you visions of In The Company of Men (1995) by Neil Labute. These cavalier guys shoot the shit about women, guzzle alcohol, and smart-mouth each other, all blissfully ignorant of the pain they cause to real people. Even the Christmas holiday, in Corey’s terminology, is reduced to “streamers and bitches,” which, of course, suggests a particular world view. Everything is here for Corey’s pleasure, to be used, misused, or even thrown away.
At the ATM where their lives are endangered, Corey, David and Emily are not able to recognize that the killer is doing to them precisely what Starkweather Financial did to so many other innocent people.
Certainly, those who lost 401Ks and pensions wondered “why is this happening to us?” (as the main characters wonder here), and attempted to gain some solace from the fact that they had done nothing wrong, and the system would eventually protect them.
But the system didn’t protect them.
And the system doesn’t protect Corey, David and Emily, either.
When there is a predator at loose, it doesn’t matter that the prey has done nothing to deserve death, does it?
At another point in the film, Emily notes that “there’s nothing wrong with having a little faith,” but this is an ironic comment on the part of the filmmakers. It does matter tremendously, indeed, where faith is placed. If you placed your faith -- as well as your hard-earned money -- on Wall Street in 2008, there was indeed something “wrong” with that act. Many financiers did not act responsibly, and their actions terrorized taxpayers and nearly sunk the American economy. “Faith” is not a Christmas gift you can give to Wall Street, at least an under-regulated Wall Street.
What I appreciate so much about ATM is the trenchant way it utilizes images from the financial world to convey its tale of terror. Above, in my introduction, I mentioned the bloody bank deposits. They are used to stem a gushing wound, at one point.
At another point, the same slips are set on fire in an attempt to activate a sprinkler system.
You can gaze at this symbol of the bank slip as suggestive of the fact that in the recession, investors’ money (and taxpayer money) goes up in smoke, or is used to attempt to stop “the bleeding” of an injured economy.
Similarly, the cloaked killer, at film’s end, is not held to legal account for his actions. Business resumes as normal, without an arrest of the guilty party. This is precisely what happened on Wall Street, isn’t it? The banks took our bailout money, and then were back to awarding bonuses for executives and charging customers exorbitant fees in no time at all. The faceless culprits simply disappeared back into the mass of Armani suits, continuing their campaign of terror on the public.
At one point in the film, David, Corey and Emily even attack the wrong man, and that too has been a part of the financial crisis.
Somehow, our government has been made the hated fall guy, accused of “socialism” for trying to prop up a failing capitalist system and actually prevent nationalization of the banks.
Somehow, the poor and middle class have become the fall guys for the financial industry too, asked to pay more and more of their vanishing wealth… so that the rich millionaires, the financial gurus, can keep their tax cuts. Apparently, we paeans should give up Social Security and Medicare, so that the rich don’t have to pay the rates they did in the Clinton years…when the economy boomed for everyone.
ATM’s tale of terror is absolutely and determinedly a microcosm for the financial crisis, and for the treatment of the innocent by the predatory financial sector. And once you understand that fact, you can absolutely discern how clever the movie is, and how fully the comparison works.
If the film strikes any wrong or unnecessary note, it happens in the final moments. Those valedictory scenes seem like a set-up for a sequel, and overly Saw-ish…even if they do complete the film’s central metaphor: the idea that the guilty go unpunished and continue to hurt innocent people.
At one point in this well-made horror film, the ATM’s security camera goes out with a warning that reads: “connection lost.”
I tend to think that those who don’t appreciate this particular horror film suffer from the same malady. The film’s metaphorical connection to “real life” is somehow lost on them.
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