Since his career began, Christopher Nolan has crafted a cinematic environment where horror elements are present. But because his films are often gargantuan and unlike anything else in the cinematic canon, these influences have often not been fully realized until the release of “Oppenheimer” (2023). As Nolan himself has become more jaded about the state of the world, he has begun to use his status as a genre auteur to finally allow these horror influences to permeate the foundations of his most recent work. Nolan’s newest film, an adaptation of Homer’s “The Odyssey,” invokes horror motifs tenfold, forcing the audience to confront how this fantastical epic may not be so different from the slowly crumbling world from which its audience is watching the film.
The adaptation begins straightforwardly, alternating between the point of view of Telemachus (Tom Holland), son of Odysseus (Matt Damon), and the missing leader himself. But once things focus on the journey home of Odysseus and his crew, all hell breaks loose.
In the first major horror setpiece, Odysseus and his men find what they believe to be solitude on an island. But once they follow sheep into a cave and try to capture some of them for food, they encounter the flock’s shepherd, the Cyclops Polyphemus. Polyphemus devours some of the soldiers and traps them. They answer this with their own violence, even poking his lone eye with a burning piece of wood. Shrouded in darkness, with only the light of fire gleaming through the cave, Polyphemus shrieks and cries in pain, sounds so garish that it seems as if the theater speakers are about to shatter. The soundscape is unrelenting, ricocheting off the walls of the Cyclops’ cave.
After their escape, the men seek refuge on Telepylos, where they face the Laestrygonian giants. Their pursuit of Odysseus and his men is backed by Ludwig Göransson’s score, which bleats out synths unlike those commonly heard in a film set in the time of the ancient Greeks. Nolan and Göransson use the film’s soundscape to shape these first two terrifying encounters to suggest to the audience that Polyphemus and the Laestrygonians aren’t simply villains, but defenders attempting to stop Odysseus and his men from invading and desecrating their way of life as they did to the people of Troy.
The cruelty that is exposed slowly throughout “The Odyssey” becomes more prevalent in its second act, when the men arrive at Aeaea, looking for provisions and shelter. Separated from his men because they believe him to be cursed, Odysseus goes hunting, while his men slink up a hill to a lone shack that resides at the top. This is the home of Circe (Samantha Morton), who feeds them stew that turns them into pigs. This transformation isn’t done offscreen. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema’s camera zooms into closeups, focusing on the faces of Odysseus’ men as hairs sprout from their sweaty faces, their ears slowly become pointed, and their gasps for air slowly turn into garish snarls. Circe’s hands mold the faces of these men before our eyes, her fingers peeling back their eyelids and her fists plunging down their throats.
These stomach-turning images are unlike anything Nolan has ever put to screen, and are joined by Morton’s snarls once Odysseus enters her hut looking for his men. When asked why she turned them into pigs, Circe replies, “I didn’t turn your men into anything! Look at them. This is what they are.” Nolan uses Circe and her ire for the crew as a means for the audience to understand that the pillaging and assumed sexual violence Odysseus’ men have wreaked on innocents during their years-long war cannot be denied. The body horror applied as she turns them into animals is used to further signify just how horrific the acts they committed in Troy were, even though the sequences of what really happened there remain slightly bloodless.
Nolan’s penchant for not showcasing the intimate acts of violence as they are is not a ploy to shield the audience from the brutal reality of war, but rather to slowly expose viewers to the violence these characters are capable of. “The Odyssey” is comparable to “Oppenheimer” in this way, where the titular character envisions his fellow Americans with their skin frayed and peeling, but looks away from images of Hiroshima’s actual victims when they’re showcased to him.
Similarly, we watch as Odysseus’ men are eaten, stabbed, and drowned, yet during the sacking of Troy, we are only shown flashes of the havoc these men wreaked on their fellow man. This is not Nolan shying away from the bloodless nature of the crimes his protagonists committed, but instead a reflection of how they are unable to see their victims as actual casualties until the horrors they’ve committed begin to shape the unraveling of the world around them.
The audio and visual motifs used by Nolan, van Hoytema, and Göransson force their audience, which is undeniably made up of cinephiles and average moviegoers alike, to confront how this adaptation of “The Odyssey” stands not as a hero’s journey, but a swan song for a world on the brink of collapse. This intensifies each time we see the city of Troy, first as Menelaus (Jon Bernthal) is retelling it, and later, as Odysseus witnesses it. In Menelaus’ version, the invasion of the city was a righteous thing, yet once again, Göransson’s score and van Hoytema’s lens undercut this fact. The music penetrates the sequence with rhythmic clanging, intensifying drums, and dissonant hums that increase in speed as the scene unfolds.
With only the light of sparse lanterns lighting their way, Odysseus and his men scurry around the city like rats before finally welcoming Agamemnon (Benny Safdie), who hovers at the city’s entrance like a representation of death itself. Later, when Odysseus relays what actually happened that fateful night to his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway), Göransson’s score is largely absent as our protagonist paints a picture of men desecrating places of worship, slaughtering civilians, and brutalizing women.
Nolan’s films have long since resonated with the political climate in which they’re released, but rather than simply make it clear that these films are tied to his audience’s reality, “The Odyssey” pleads with its viewers to understand just what is at cost. In Nolan’s version of this tale, he weaves a sequence told by a triumphant man into a horrific act that has ushered in the unraveling not only of Zeus’ law, but the morality of civilization as Odysseus, his men, and Troy’s inhabitants knew it.
Rather than epic encounters that feel like sections of a sweeping epic, these setpieces instead feel like they belong in a horror film. Throughout the film’s nearly three-hour runtime, Nolan delivers elongated sequences of Odysseus and his men as they are confronted by various creatures, beings, and gods. Nolan, Van Hoytema, and Göransson combine their talents to create a film imbued with influences that the horror genre has long used to shock viewers and fill them with dread. These genre conventions aren’t employed as simple scare tactics but are instead tied to the idea that the customs and laws these men broke, and the violence they enacted in Troy, mirror instances of violence in humanity’s past, present, and future.
Whether moments in the film are bathed in darkness or accompanied by ominous bells and distorted gasps, Nolan makes it clear that this version of Odysseus’ story is a timely warning against the current age his audience exists in; one where civilians are more than happy to turn a blind eye to injustice, welcoming in a new age of violence and darkness. Although this version of “The Odyssey” begins as an epic fantasy, it slowly transforms into a film that binds itself to the realities and horrors of human nature, which can be traced through the director’s filmography from Ancient Greece to the creation of the atom bomb.
Like the Athena (Zendaya) who appears to Odysseus throughout his years of travel, Christopher Nolan has become a specter that haunts his audience, appearing every few years not to deliver a spectacle, but to remind us that the worlds he has created on screen are hauntingly similar to the one in which we live.
