The green abyss

In September 2015, at the press conference that followed the world premiere of Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk at the New York Film Festival, both film critics and audience members reported that they experienced unpleasant sensations while watching the film or got physically sick shortly after. Indeed, the 20-minute-long finale showing Philippe Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt)'s tightrope walk between the digitally restored Twin Towers offers a vertiginous view that caused nausea, anxiety, dizziness, tingling, and drowsiness. Newspapers reported excited testimonies: ‘It felt very real. I felt a knot in my stomach. It's like my head was reeling but I was not dizzy. The audience got a fear of him falling. It's like actually picturing in your mind him falling. You really get a sense of depth’; ‘The last 20 minutes of the film I had to look away a couple of times because of the sensation of the height. I felt a little bit queasy. I felt nervous. It was a tingling sensation and some anxiety’ (Child 2015) The director intentionally used computer-generated imagery and special 3D-effects to evoke such visceral responses from the audience: ‘[the goal] was to evoke the feeling of vertigo.