“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster. And when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

Happy Halloween!

If you’re looking for a good horror movie, I’ve got a doozy. It’s so bloody, so gory, so violent, so relentlessly, unspeakably horrifying, that most people dare not watch it. Are you brave enough to stomach it, boys and girls?

The film’s unusual yet familiar monster is of neither supernatural nor extraterrestrial origin. No, this monster sprang from the earth itself. It slithered out of the oozing primordial sludge many millennia ago and mutated over the blood-soaked eons into its present form. Today, it infests nearly every square inch of the earth’s habitable surface. It tramples the ground, pollutes the sea, and toxifies the air, ravaging everything in its path like a deadly virus devouring its host. The monster lurks in all places, at all times – in your city, your workplace, your school, your neighborhood, in the house next door. It even lurks within the secure confines of your own home. Look in the mirror and you’ll see it there too.

A TV ad currently airing tells us that “we don’t have to worry about predators like our ancestors did. No sabre tooth tigers stalking from the brush. No dire wolves circling the camp. There are no more monsters to fear. And so we have to build [invent] our own.”

But we don’t have to create our own monsters. We *are* the monster. Once you see the world through vegan eyes, through the eyes of the animals upon whom we visit such merciless ultra-violence, it’s easy to spot the real monster. Earthlings forces you to see the world through their frightened and defeated eyes, and in so doing, it also holds a mirror up to us so that we can gaze long into the eyes of the monster reflected back. Wanna take a look?

I can’t believe that any sane person, after having watched Earthlings, would want to continue to participate in this ongoing horror.

Posted on October 31st, 2018 by Mat Viola
Filed under: Reviews