Unpacking the Psychological Horror of Cats (2019)
Twisted moonlight floods an abandoned alleyway with a sickly green-blue tint. Silhouetted humanoid figures crawl along the brick roads and piles of oversized trash, following a massive car. They watch as a pulsating white bag is discarded by its unseen driver. A nauseating chord progression, played in blaring synth, repeats and grows louder as the figures draw closer to the bag, revealing disturbingly realistic human faces, digitally stitched onto furry animated bodies. The entire scene begins to spin as the creatures circle their target. Hissing sounds fill the air. The dance becomes chaotic. The closest figure raises a feline claw. The music swells to a climax. With one swift motion, he tears the bag open.
Silence.
Take a deep breath. Acknowledge your surroundings. You’re in the real world, ordinary and mundane as it ever was. Yes, I know, you’ve seen terrible things recently. You’ve been exposed to the shadowy depths of a sinister world that the human mind was not meant to comprehend. But it’s over now. It can’t hurt you, not anymore.
As you know, we are here because you recently endured the 2019 film adaptation of the Broadway musical Cats. It’s a film that leaves you different from how it found you. Few walk out of the theater with their minds intact. Luckily, I am here to help you recover from this experience. By the time we are done, we will have made sense of the whole thing, and you will be able to move on.
Though some may consider this a futile effort, I will try to put into perspective why this movie exists and is the way it is. A film adaptation of the classic Andrew Lloyd Webber musical had actually been planned decades before this version was released. The film was teased several times from the ‘90s through the 2000s but did not see notable development until the late 2010s, likely in response to recent movie musicals, like 2016’s La La Land and 2017’s The Greatest Showman, which were well-received by audiences and during awards season.
Indeed, Cats (2019) was not produced as a mere cash-grab or blockbuster spectacle, but an all-out Oscar darling meant to sweep the Academy Awards. Universal Pictures went so far as to include the film as part of their For Your Consideration campaign alongside acclaimed films they deemed worthy of recognition during 2019’s award season. And who better to direct the film than Tom Hooper, who took the Academy by storm in 2012 with his adaptation of Les Misérables? With a popular intellectual property, an award-winning director, and a budget of $95 million, all the ingredients were in place for what would surely be a global phenomenon.
Needless to say, it all went downhill from there. Get ready. We’re about to dive back in.
From the moment we are unceremoniously dumped into the uncomfortably huge and empty streets in which the film takes place, one thing becomes painfully clear: Hooper’s gritty, down-to-earth style of filming may have been effective for a dramatic period piece like Les Misérables, but it doesn’t exactly mesh well with the whimsical nature of Cats. The bizarre imagery of the original show is recreated with visceral realism. Rather than contribute to the charm, the oversized digital backgrounds and props add a dizzying, surreal quality to each scene. Have you ever wished to see a fur-covered Ian McKellen lick milk out of a giant dish in a dimly lit room? Apparently, director Tom Hooper did.
By contrast, the original stage play invited audiences into the world of Cats with an appropriately inviting tone. Though it may have been overwhelming, the upbeat music, colorful sets, and charismatic actors made the audience feel welcome throughout the bizarre ride. There was no need for realism in the theater; rather, the infectious energy of the production made you want to buy into its premise.
The 2019 film appears to have missed this quality of the show, or ignored it. Its realism often does more to distract you from the narrative than to help you believe it. Translating moments written for the stage into this style results in surreal and upsetting imagery. Several examples of this come up during the musical number titled The Old Gumbie Cat. Rather than take off her coat during her song, Rebel Wilson’s Jennyanydots appears to unzip her own skin to reveal her new outfit. Having the characters climb around the film’s vast backdrops requires animating them in a way that feels too exaggerated for their otherwise rotoscoped movements. The mice and beetles, which were portrayed onstage by fellow cat-actors wearing quaint costumes made of trash bags and traffic cones, have in the film been cursed to take the form of shrunken human-rodent and human-insect hybrids. I know, you don’t want to remember this. I promise it’s for your own good.
The movie preserves the show’s music, characters, and energy, but none of its appeal. As a result, this version does little to make you want to immerse yourself in its setting, but instead traps you in its twisted universe against your will. The imposing feeling of those opening moments is a fitting way to set the stage for the next two hours. The frantic camera movement during its musical numbers repeatedly tears your attention from one uncanny monstrosity to the next, making it impossible to fully process what is going on at any given moment. Dialogue serves only to confuse you further as it strips away your grasp on the English language by bombarding you with terms like “Jellicle” and “Gumbie.” Even the familiar faces of its all-star cast offer no comfort, as recognizing the face of Judi Dench or Idris Elba superimposed onto a poorly synchronized, nude cat body inspires only feelings of pity for the talented actors.
The bad trip never lets up, never lets you think about what’s happening, only continues on and on until you’ve been beaten into submission by its all-encompassing nonsense and have no more will to fight it. That is when the film has succeeded: when time has lost all meaning, when everything becomes too much to resist, and you give up any attempt to rationalize the imagery presented before you.
That, my friend, is the key to all of this. It is at that point when your endurance has hit its limit that your suffering will have ceased. Only by giving in and realizing the truth—that you have left the rational world for good, that Cats is all that is, has, and will be, and that you can never escape—can you reach acceptance. You can look at the whiskered faces in front of you and smile knowing that everything is alright.
You are a jellicle cat.
Written by: Yanni Spanolios
Art by: Judah Bachmann
