Titanic (1997) is a Horror Movie
It is finally that time: the 25th anniversary of the release of James Cameron’s epic historical feature Titanic (1997). The film has once again been re-released in theaters, this time in 4KHD 3D, so I thought it was time to make my own views about Titanic known. Though Titanic is rightfully advertised as a romance and disaster film, I am here to make the claim that Cameron makes use of another genre to really sell his feature: horror.
Upon texting a friend who saw Titanic in theaters for the first time in 10 years, she expressed being scared of the movie when she saw it as a child. With this, I realized that this was something I took great note of during my first screening of the re-release. I had seen Titanic multiple times before, but this was my first time seeing it in theaters, let alone in IMAX 4K 3D, and what became especially apparent was the terror of the Titanic disaster. Seeing the film on a larger-than-life screen with the sound and quality to accompany it makes it so much more realistic than it ever could be on television. Sure, the disaster is always terrifying, especially considering that it actually happened, but this viewing provided a new perspective and elevated the elements of horror filmmaking. You could even call Rose a final girl! That is the role that she plays!
If you have made it 25 years without seeing Titanic, first off, please go watch it immediately on the biggest screen you have access to, but if you need it: here’s a quick refresher summary.
Big spoiler alert: the ship sinks.
We open on a crew led by a very hot Bill Paxton who has an earring and plays Brock Lovett, a treasure hunter who is exploring the Titanic shipwreck. Lovett is in search of the Heart of the Ocean, a gigantic blue heart-shaped diamond necklace that supposedly went down with the ship. Cut to a very old Rose Dawson Calvert who sees a drawing of her nude younger self uncovered on a news report. Rose contacts Lovett and they end up in the room where Rose recounts her experience on the Titanic 84 years ago. Lower class Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) wins his way onto the ship in a game of poker and upper class Rose DeWitt Bukater is dragged onto the ship by her abusive fiance Cal Hockley (Billy Zane) and her abusive mother Ruth (Frances Fisher). Boy meets girl and they flourish in their secret love affair until the night of April 14, 1912, when the Titanic hits the iceberg and sinks to the bottom of the Atlantic. Rose survives, but loses her love to the freezing Atlantic ocean which “...hits you (him) like a thousand knives stabbing you (him) all over your (his) body.” The Carpathia ship rescues the slim number of survivors, docking them in NYC. The film closes with Rose ending her story; throwing the Heart of the Ocean (which was in the jacket which was on her) into the ocean; and falling into either sleep or death (we may never know which), meeting Jack at the clock for a smooch. Everyone else on the ship is still alive and cheers for them until the screen fades to the credits set to “My Heart Will Go On.” A perfect film, if you will.
To start with a blanket statement: this film is horrific. The disaster actually happened and around 1,500 people did die by drowning in frozen water. What Titanic really emphasizes is the nature of these deaths and just how scary this entire event was. Cameron establishes from the beginning that this ship was gigantic and even a glance over the side was enough to stir fear in a passenger. We as the audience know what is going to happen in this film, and we know how it is going to end, yet the tension and foreshadowing that Cameron uses heightens all of these feelings. This movie is not just depicting a disaster: it is depicting the fear and horror felt by the passengers, and in turn forcing the audience to feel the same. The first instance that we catch a glimpse of this technique is when Rose slips overboard after considering suicide. She falls and grabs onto the edge of the boat, screaming. Cameron shoots a major part of the scene from above, letting us into how high up Rose is hanging and alerting us to the severity of her potential fall. Jack is able to save her this time, but the events to come lead to other passengers jumping off of the ship and falling to their death as it sinks. The precursor of Rose’s fall is only a pregame, getting us prepared to experience this same fear in a much larger and more aggressive context in the following hours. Cameron zooms in so that when he zooms out, we are acquainted with what it feels like to jump 60 plus feet off of a giant ship.
The horror portion of the film begins almost immediately after the ship hits, and scrapes, the iceberg. The innards of the ship begin to burst, shocking the crew into retreat as massive amounts of water force their way in. The sound of the disaster is loud and booming and is accompanied by a drone of moans from the ship’s movement that continue in the background until the ship is fully underwater. These moans and groans are heard most when Rose is on her search for Jack with the lights flickering all around her.
The entire great search scene is right out of a monster chase sequence, with the monster in this case being the water. As soon as Rose steps out of the elevator, the ship is tilting; the hallway lights are reflecting off of the water, casting murky glowing areas all around Rose, serving as the primary light source as the lights pulse in and out; desolate hallways with no direction and Rose’s voice echoing her calls top Jack; and finally, the groans of the creaking ship. This atmosphere was crafted by Cameron to relay the seriousness of Rose’s situation and the timeliness in which she must find and rescue Jack. The sequence is a haunted house where the ghosts occupying the space will be Rose and Jack if they can’t make it out in time.
As Rose and Jack successfully make their escape, crowds of passengers are on the deck making desperate attempts to find their way to a lifeboat as the water surrounds them. The screams and desperate pleas indicate the panic of everyone aboard, and as was foreshadowed by ship designer Mr. Andrews (Victor Garber) before, there are not enough lifeboats to hold every passenger. As the audience, we understand this, but this is a fact that only the crew, Rose, and Jack know. This dramatic irony heightens our perception of the desperation of these people, only making the scene more disturbing and upsetting. What is hiding behind this horrific disaster is the knowledge that it could have been prevented by everyone involved in creating the ship. The water may be one monster, but class warfare is another hiding around the corner.
Circling back to Rose’s accident and near suicide at the beginning, we begin to see passengers jumping off the side of the ship as it sinks. The intentions behind the jumping could be varied, but they were most likely in an attempt to swim and save themselves, or to face their inevitable doom. The number of falls we see is another reminder that this event is one of mass death. We are watching these passengers die in real time and there is nothing that we can do to save them.
We pick up following Rose and Jack as the Titanic splits in half; the camera watching them from behind as they make the final plunge holding onto the back of the ship. Jack informs Rose that the water is going to suck them down, yet another hurdle in this seemingly endless event. Another tragedy follows another tragedy, follows another tragedy. The ship is so massive, and the direction of this scene makes sure that we remember this as we recognize just how up Rose and Jack are before the plummet. As the audience, we feel like we are at the top of a 90 degree roller coaster, the tension of the disaster at its highest before the end.
Once the remaining passengers have made it to paddling around the ocean, we are once again met with chaos, particularly in the realm of sound. All of these passengers continue to desperately fight for their lives, paddling to find anything to cling to. We see how freezing the water is, a payoff from Jack’s warning to Rose at their meeting. Every passenger can see their breath, every passenger screams to find their loved ones, and every passenger pleads for the lifeboats that we know will not come back.
Cut to the most horrifying sequence of the film: the graveyard of frozen corpses. A lifeboat has finally made its way to the long span of floating bodies that were living passengers mere hours ago. As the captain of the boat calls out looking for survivors, the boat and oars hit completely frozen bodies with pale white faces and wide open eyes. The camera pans out as we see that the bodies litter what feels like miles of water. All of these passengers that we spent the last few hours of our lives with have become ghosts that haunt their watery grave, a fate we know about going into the film, but that is still unfathomable during each viewing.
Titanic is often remembered for how sad it is, but in my opinion, that feeling is well matched with the feelings of fear and dread that are conveyed by Cameron’s masterwork. All of these emotions work in tandem and are paired with Cameron’s command of tension in the film to create an experience for the audience unlike anything else in cinema history. Titanic makes us feel like we know what it was like to live through the sinking of Titanic, and though we know we never will, this embodiment helps us to understand the weight of the event and the trauma of those who lived or died on the night of April 14, 1912.
Titanic is such a special and grand moment in the history of film and part of that legacy is due to Cameron dipping his toes into the water of the horror genre. And I thank him for that.