Gerald’s Game and the colour Red.
Before I start, let me preface this article (or blog) by issuing a spoiler alert for the 2017 film Gerald’s Game and a trigger warning because this film deals with a lot of heavy issues.
Gerald’s Game is a 2017 psychological horror film directed by an auteur I admire, Mike Flanagan. This film is about a woman whose husband dies during sex. Handcuffed to her bed with no hope of rescue, she begins hearing voices and seeing strange visions.
Personally, I think this is one of the best films from 2017 as it perfectly balances visceral horror with psychological horror. The reason this is possible is because of the masterful use of colour and a colour motif to tell a story. The best way Gerald’s Game uses Associative Colour is the use of the colour Red. Associative Colours in film means that the writer, director, or artist associates a colour with a character, emotion, or theme.
Jessie, our protagonist is a troubled lady. She has a childhood trauma that has always haunted her. This has created a hindrance to her present relationships as well as her personal relationship with herself. In other words, her troubled past has not only haunted her, it’s trapped her. And Flanagan expertly shows her being trapped by the use of the colour red. To further explain this, I’ll have to show examples of various scenes throughout the film.
At the beginning of the film, we see Jessie and Gerald, her husband on their way to a weekend getaway. Now the marriage between these two is in trouble. Gerald’s been distant and the love that once was has fizzled away. In fact, this getaway is to spice up this bland relationship. However, Jessie, from the beginning, is uncomfortable. She doesn’t want to be there. She is trapped in a loveless marriage.
And Flanagan here shows us that through the colour of the car. The car is red, and her husband is driving. There is nowhere for her to go rather than to the cabin with him.
Now as Gerald and Jessie ease into the house. Gerald playfully takes Jessie inside the cabin and then we see the front door which again, is red. This symbolizes that Jessie is trapped in this house. It’s not like she doesn’t want to salvage what’s left of this marriage however, she still feels ‘trapped’ and unable to process the traumatic childhood event that she’s always been buried in, which has led to her being invisible in this marriage and hence be ‘trapped’.
Later in the film, we finally see the painful trauma Jessie suffered when she was young. It’s during a solar eclipse. Her family’s on their way to an island to watch the event. The whole place is red. Stylistically, Flanagan chooses the colour red for this particular solar event. He could’ve chosen the realistic solar eclipse colour, but he chooses red because what’s about to happen is going to leave Jessie trapped forever.
Jessie’s mother and her siblings get on the boat however the boat is too small for the whole family, so Jessie and her father opt to stay behind and watch from the shore. They wait at the bench and that’s when we see one of the most disturbing things to ever happen in this film, which traumatizes Jessie forever. Her dad, to put it in vague terms, abuses her. This event forever scars Jessie. This whole scene takes place during the solar eclipse event and the whole scene is bathed in red symbolizing how Jessie can’t run away. She is forever trapped in this disturbing event, this disturbing revelation. The more her dad continues, the redder the sky gets.
As Jessie is stuck in the bed, handcuffed to the post, literally trapped, she’s haunted by her past as well as some external physical demons. Every time, she’s confronted by her past (visions and past self), the light changes to red to symbolize that day. She’s always going to be stuck in that day unless she learns to break through.
And later, she learns to live with the trauma. She embraces the pain to help others. This is symbolized by showing her young self, sitting with her present self on the same bench, looking at the red sky which they call ‘embracing the sun’.
There are other factors which uses red as a means to trap her. I won’t go into details but just mention it here. A stray dog enters the cabin and feeds on her husband’s dead body and later sits by the door, trapping her in the room (as if she could be more trapped). The dog’s eyes are red (although it’s unclear but one can notice sometimes in the darkness).
A scary entity also starts to haunt her inside the house, he’s called the ‘Bone Collector’ and here, you can see his eyes are red. The red in his eyes almost looks like the solar eclipse. Jessie sees the solar eclipse in his eyes.
Conclusively, I have to say “Gerald’s Game” expertly uses the associative colour technique. Flanagan uses red to establish Jessie being trapped in her past. Something that she can’t break out of. A red that follows her everywhere she goes.
