Rooting you in the physical experiences of another person, one who isn’t even real, is one of the great magic tricks cinema is able to pull off. It’s especially hard when those experiences are unpleasant, enormously so when those unpleasant experiences drag on and on for an episode or a movie. Yet the Ordeal draws us in, because there’s catharsis to be found in physically connecting with someone who is suffering — the profound catharsis of empathy, which requires us to get out of our own heads just as the Ordeal itself requires its harried heroes to leave the comforts of the familiar world behind for parts unknown. As for Manousos, he’s still got a long way to go if he survives the spines. (The arrival of a hivemind helicopter is a good sign, right?) With any luck — ours, not his — his grueling, stunning Ordeal will continue. 

In honor of this week’s Pluribus I wrote about the Ordeal, one of my favorite cinematic subgenres. Deliverance, Sorcerer, The Revenant, Stalker, Gravity, The Descent, Aguirre – The Wrath of God, Annihilation, Children of Men, Fitzcarraldo, Valhalla Rising, The Terror, American Primeval — if a movie or TV show is about someone killing themselves to get from Point A to Point B, I’m going to make a Point of C-ing it.