Afflicted, Or Change is Never Easy

Change is never easy. In fact, it can be downright painful. That pain is at the heart of the 2013 “found footage” horror film “Afflicted,” written, directed, and acted by Canadian filmmakers Derek Lee and Cliff Prowse (as themselves). It is an agony that swiftly becomes astonishment before descending toward misery for the viewer, or at least it would if only the primary victim of all this agony were more demanding of our sympathy. That victim is Derek, whose diagnosis of AVM (a venous/brain disorder that leaves him open to a potential stroke) inspires him to resist fear by enlisting his best friend Cliff for an around-the-world adventure tour that the two will document as an amateur online video series they call “Ends of the Earth.” The mixed bag of uploaded video and live-streaming offers segments of edited video that rival the quality of whatever cable television’s Travel Channel has to offer, starting with a visit to Barcelona where the pair meet up with college buddies who make up an indie rock band at the tail end of their European tour. From Barcelona to Paris with a rock band: hardly the stuff that could qualify for the “ends of the earth” moniker, but then this is supposed to be a horror film, not a travel documentary.

The horror begins in Paris, when Derek meets a woman named Audrey and brings her back to the hotel. Cliff returns just an hour or two later to find Derek passed out alone in the room, bleeding from deep cuts to his head and chest. Audrey is nowhere to be found, although she has left behind her clothes and her cellphone, but in Derek’s mind she’s left no memory of what has happened to him. Of course, Derek refuses to go to hospital, and the journey continues with Derek asleep on the train and throughout much of the next day. Here is the film’s most advanced moment of discordance, as the upbeat travel program style is imposed upon video of Derek looking listless and ill. At this point we don’t know where the story is headed, although it seems to be advancing toward the “zombie” end zone as Derek grows increasingly ill and the cinematic grossouts—including a very effective moment of projectile vomiting—begin adding up.

But wait, Derek makes a strange recovery. More than a recovery, actually. He experiences a metamorphosis. And that’s when it becomes obvious, both to Derek and Cliff as well as to the viewer, that Derek is becoming a vampire. Well, that makes sense. They were in that city of vampires, à la Anne Rice fame. These are two naïve Canadian lads being victimized—vamped, literally—by old world monsters that lurk in the dark alleys of one of Europe’s oldest cities. Yes, or course. Derek was beset by a vampire, and now he’s becoming a creature of the night with the power to climb walls, lift trucks, see in the dark. But he’s hungry, oh so hungry.

The next hurdle then presents itself: how do you feed a vampire? Goodbye cute little dogs and farmyard friends. Lock the doors to the bloodbank. . But really, hijacking an ambulance? Throughout the escalation I can’t help but think how admirably Cliff is holding up, his loyalty to Derek leading him beyond the reach of common sense and courage into foolhardy self-endangerment. As the thirst increases, Derek’s control over himself decreases to the point of brutish animalism, and he kills his best friend.

What can a remorseful Derek possibly offer in atonement after having murdered the genuinely kindhearted and humorous Cliff? Here the answer becomes ridiculous in a very postmodern fashion, with a satiated and newly rational Derek picking up Cliff’s fallen camera and promising to keep the camera rolling, to document everything as he endeavors to find Audrey, his maker, and get the answers to all his questions. From this point forward the film is pure “found footage” format, with shaky camera shots in dark places. At least the story becomes more interesting, as Interpol agents and SWAT teams intervene in failed attempts to capture Derek, the foreigner who attempted to rob a bloodbank and hijacked an ambulance. Is this fresh territory, the police searching for a killer who is searching for a killer?

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of “Afflicted” as concerns the zombie genre is the loss of control that comes from extreme hunger. When starved Derek cannot control himself, and changes not only physically but behaviorally. He is warned by Audrey that if he does not “feed” more frequently this change will become permanent. Starvation will lead him toward the vampire-zombie state in which he loses all rational control and becomes little more than a killing machine designed only for consumption.

Of course, there is much “food for thought” here. This notion that “starvation” can result in the loss of reason, and with reason absent whatever is human becomes bestial. Hasn’t liberal humanism long ago applied that to socioeconomic considerations to explain urban violence? Starve the human mind of intellectual challenge, even of nature and “beauty,” and will you also create a zombie-like consumer with a rage for destruction? Even starve a child of the pure love of family or the socialization of friend and neighbor, and won’t you be forming a cold and passionless creature that is neither human nor animal, but perhaps mere zombie in spirit?

The film’s conclusion (not it’s shock ending with its easy “come on, it’ll be fun” reference to slasher flicks) is distressingly neoliberal, as Audrey finally faces her creation Derek and tells him that like it or not he must kill. If originality is what you are looking for, forget it. “Afflicted” is afflicted through and through by the spirit of Anne Rice and her reluctant vampire Louise, Park Chan-wook’s Sang Hyung, or even Showtime television’s Dexter Morgan. You cannot choose not to kill, she tells Derek, but you can choose who to kill. 

And so Derek satisfies his hunger on a diet of Parisian child molesters, rapists, and other social pariahs. That Derek is shown “torturing” one of these meals, keeping a child killer tied up and hooded in a fashion reminiscent of the infamous Abu Ghraib Prison photograph. Perhaps this is the strongest horror of “Afflicted,” the film’s unconscious relaying of the neoliberal ideal of private violence as a replacement for social or communal rules of justice. Vampires and zombies may be frightening, but the principles of neoliberalism are truly terrifying.