Medium-wide: Why You Should Care About Richard Kelly

With our discussion of Kelly’s career, I want to separate these two words and focus solely on what makes a film a “nightmare.” None of Kelly’s films are explicitly horror films (heck, only one of them could even be considered such), but they supplant themselves in worlds that are wracked with anxieties and pressures that would sit nicely at home in the dark recesses of your mind; reconjuring themselves into nightmares when you lay down to sleep. The three films we will discuss today are not horror films; the topics they discuss and the worlds they create are nightmarish.