[The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!]
Michael Powell's Peeping Tom opens with an extreme closeup of an eye—a striking image that immediately establishes the story's central theme. The film revolves entirely around voyeurism: the power of the observer versus the vulnerability of the observed; the conflict between blindness (both figurative and literal) and perception (e.g., recognizing that a seemingly unassuming neighbor is, in actuality, suspiciously stealthy, rather than innocuously shy); and the overwhelming anxiety of being seen.
The protagonist is a (reluctant) serial killer that meticulously, obsessively records his violent activities, wielding his camera as though it’s an extension of his body and soul—a distorted manifestation of his fractured psyche and repressed libido. His weapon of choice is the spiked leg of a tripod; whenever he brandishes the makeshift blade, preparing to deliver the gruesome coup de grace, he forces his victims to gaze into a mirror—confronting the warped reflection of their own terror, trauma, and anguish. To paraphrase the playful description of his modus operandi that he provides in one particularly unnerving scene: he watches them watching him watching themselves.
Ultimately, Peeping Tom's immaculate craftsmanship and harmonious marriage of style and substance perfectly encapsulate why I find the relatively recent term “elevated horror” so utterly infuriating. It’s an egregiously reductive, misleading label, implying that the “traditional” version of the genre (which is too often conflated with the deliberately trashy slasher flicks of the ‘80s) is artistically inferior by its very nature—that critically acclaimed works like Jordan Peele’s Get Out or Ari Aster’s Hereditary are rare exceptions to some unwritten rule. But rich, profound, meaningful "scary movies" predate those comparatively modern examples by decades; such compellingly chilling masterpieces (including Psycho, M, and—to name a slightly more obscure title—Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets) have always existed in the medium of cinema.
You simply need to know where and how to look.
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