Why Everyone’s Calling Spencer A Secret Horror Movie
Spencer is a biopic that feels like a horror movie, despite being based on the real-life story of Princess Diana, because of her isolation.
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Since the release of Spencer, many critics have been comparing the biopic to a horror movie. Steering away from tropes found in a typical biographical drama, Spencer instead borrows from the genres of psychological horror and thriller, mainly through a delusional heroine and an overwhelming sense of “cabin fever.” Rather than relying only on fact, Spencer separates itself from other films and TV shows that tell the story of the late Princess Diana, and instead reframes her life as that of a ghost story.
Starring Kristen Stewart as the titular Diana, and directed by Pablo Larraín, Spencer follows the Princess during the last days of her cold, stilted marriage to Prince Charles. Though rumors of extramarital affairs and divorce had made their way through the British press, Diana was nevertheless given a peace offering: a weekend of Christmas festivities at the Queen’s isolated Sandringham Estate. The film’s timeline covers the three days which comprised this holiday weekend and was mostly confined to the grounds of the estate, leaving Diana trapped in a household populated by an enemy coterie.
It’s this sense of captivity, coupled with Diana’s crippling isolation and delusions, that makes Spencer feel more like a secret horror film than a biopic. Diana’s confinement to the grounds of the Sandringham Estate feels reminiscent of the maddening isolation found in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Meanwhile, the Princess’s paranoia and descent into delusion harken back to archetypes of tortured heroines found in psychological thrillers like Black Swan.
Beginning with the film’s first frames, which label the film via title card a “fable from a true tragedy,” Spencer establishes its disinterest in sticking only to fact; instead, the movie offers psychoanalysis to threaten the wellbeing of its protagonist, who faces grave danger in the presence of her in-laws and their country home. Upon Diana’s arrival, the Sandringham Estate is covered with armed guards sworn to protect the grounds, a clear sign to Diana that she is a captive, and behind enemy lines. In the confines of the estate, Diana is under near-constant scrutiny from the royal family, with the threat of paparazzi lurking nearby. In this way, Diana is portrayed in Spencer as the victim of unrelenting isolation and captivity, much like Jack Torrance in the Overlook Hotel. Both characters’ isolation are presented throughout both films as deeply terrifying, with Spencer’s unnerving cinematography mirroring The Shining’s long tracking shots through the hallways of the labyrinthine Overlook.
This sense of isolation reaches its peak as Diana began to see visions of a specter haunting the estate’s grounds: the ghost of Anne Boleyn, whose equally lethal marriage to a member of the royal family paralleled Diana’s. These manifestations are eerily evocative of another horror protagonist: Black Swan’s Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman, another Larraí alum) and her delusional episodes. Both Nina and Diana’s delusions serve as portents of their untimely demises, and as representations of each characters’ declining mental health. This device found also in Black Swan further placed Spencer within the genre of psychological horror and thriller.
Overall, Spencer, which equates the plight of its heroine to the terrors of isolation, captivity, and delusion, feels like more of a horror film than a biopic. There is no preoccupation or focus on presentation of fact. Rather, its constrained, distressing cinematography, combined with its characterization of its protagonist has critics and viewers alike reexamining Spencer (and the real story of its iconic protagonist Princess Diana) as that of pure horror.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/spencer-diana-biopic-horror-movie-explained/