Beyond plain old prosaic fear, there’s something else that happens when a film is so palpable that it drags you helplessly with it as it plummets into a pit of human darkness.
It’s a completely physical reaction to the shock (or repulsion) of what you’re witnessing on the screen. It first happened to me watching David Lynch’s now classic trip to suburban hell, Blue Velvet. Forty minutes in and my cheeks were drum-tight and pulsing – like a strange, delirious new drug had been pumped into my face.
