Black Swan/Nightmare Fuel

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Nina has some issues.

Black Swan is considered a "live-action version of Perfect Blue". With the parallels and existence of the NF page on Perfect Blue, those words are truer than you might believe.

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• The entire "Night of Terror" sequence, as it's called on the score, which is basically 10 minutes of Nina going completely MENTAL the night before her performance. Unsurprisingly, that is director Darren Aronofsky's favorite part of the movie.
  • The major turning point is Beth (Winona Ryder) stabbing herself in the face with a nail file whilst screaming "I'm nothing! Nothing!" And then her face turns into Nina's, who runs for her life as Swan Lake music, the introduction to Swan Lake, BLARES over the soundtrack. And when she gets to the elevator, she discovers she is holding the nail file. All of the other hallucinations reveal themselves to be hoaxes shortly afterwards, but this one is so extreme, it fully confirms that we have reached the point where we can't trust ANYTHING about the movie. And consider that it may have actually been Nina who stabbed Beth.
  • When Nina gets home, someone whispers "sweet girl" from the darkness of the kitchen and there's a bloody figure standing in her kitchen when she turns the light on. And then the paintings start screaming at her.
  • Listen to the music from that scene and you'll probably never be able to listen to the introduction of Swan Lake again without hearing weird sounds in the background of the music.
• Nina herself. Thanks to being smothered by her Stage Mom for so long, Nina becomes insane and self-abusive.
  • Her heavily implied eating disorder doesn't help matters either.
  • One particularly disturbing thing was her scratching problem, especially to those who do the same thing. The fact that her mother thinks using scissors to cut her nails is a good idea, and the fact that she's done it in the past and might have injured Nina doing so isn't nice either.
• What about Thomas' approaches to Nina? That creepy bastard knows that Nina is emotionally unstable, so he takes advantage of her and uses her for his own pleasure.
  • When he calls her little Princess at the end, it was so slimy and icky...also when he nearly full on assaults her in the ballet studio, saying, "open your mouth..." erk.
  • He only gets shadier when Beth says she's going to stop by his house later, and the next we see of her she's in the hospital for "throwing herself" into traffic.
  • There's also the interpretation that he's abusing these women because he believes breaking them down will make them better performers. Which is in some ways more twisted than if it was only about sex.
• The movie doesn't shy away from the damage ballerinas do to their feet on a regular basis. Now, toes fusing on the other hand, that's usually not quite normal.
• Nina's final Black Swan wardrobe and makeup is more than a little frightening.
  • Her first appearance as the Black Swan, including with Nina's initial lunge to the camera, with that disturbing growl.
• Then there's the moment when, after noticing the blood on her fingers, she starts cutting her nails whilst looking in the mirror with a psychotic expression on her face, while disturbing laughter can be heard...
  • And now images of Nina's doppelgänger exist online. Behold, her blood-curdling smiles.
• Ballerina legs? Nice. Ballerina legs snapping into the shape of swan legs? AAAAAAAAAAAAA!
• The scene - featured at the end of the trailer - involving Nina plucking a tiny black feather out of the rash on her back... AND, her eyes are red.
• The entire idea of being too committed to a role. Nina COMPLETELY loses herself in her quest to become the Black Swan. Considering the process some actors actually go through to become their characters, like Heath Ledger, method acting suddenly becomes quite scary.
• The finger damage. The finger damage. Not much tends to squick me, but I had to look away from the screen when that happened.
• The part where Nina slammed the door with her mother's hand still on the doorframe. Her mother's screaming in pain only makes the scene even worse.
  • And then shortly afterwards when she twists her mother's injured hands. Did this movie have a thing against hands or what?
• The climax (pun not intended) of the sex scene. Lily stands up and whispers "Sweet girl" before suddenly transforming into Nina's doppelgänger and attempting to smother Nina with a pillow. The way sweet girl is said.
• The things that are obviously unreal are disturbing, of course...but the things that might be real are even more unsettling because by then you realize you can't trust anything about the movie.
• Nina peeling off the skin of her finger.
  • This troper can handle that scene. WE'RE BEING HONEST!!!
• Her "goosebumps" that turn out to be more literal than thought at first
  • And then later her neck freakishly elongating like a swan's.
• As a reclusive perfectionist, in more then a few departments, the pure fact of Nina's whole experience in the movie coming from her desire to be perfect...I just want to be perfect indeed.

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