The Pen in Hand Guide to Horror Films: The Next Generation

Damian Gadal, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Geoff Carter

(Originally posted October 31, 2020)

The days are getting shorter, the nights are getting longer, and there’s a chill in the air. Frost is on the pumpkin. The leaves are turning color. All this means one thing—Halloween is just around the corner. And that means horror movies. Lots of them.

This year, cable offered nearly every brand of horror film, including everything from Bucket of Blood to Son of Godzilla to Suspiria (the original) to Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Other stations will be airing traditional holiday favorites like the ubiquitous Hocus Pocus, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, and the never-ending Friday the 13^thincarnations. While these original classics, including James Whale’s Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, are still good for a thrill and a chill, there is some newer and more sophisticated spine-tingling fare to choose from.

Horror movies have been undergoing a renaissance. Independent filmmakers like Ari Aster, Robert Eggers, James Wan, Bong Joon-Ho, Jordan Peele, and Guillermo del Toro have been revitalizing and reinventing the genre, pushing this area of film into previously underexplored areas of existentialism, social awareness, and alienation. Not that social awareness is new to cinematic horror. Monster movies of the fifties like Them, The Amazing Colossal Man, and Godzilla underlined fears about unfettered nuclear technology while The Invasion of the Body Snatchers was a not-so-subtle condemnation of American paranoia of communism. Jaws explored the devaluation of human life when balanced against keeping the local tourist economy thriving (sound familiar?)

Traditional conventions of the horror genre have been stretched by these auteurs despite the reluctance of some of the studios and distributors to recognize horror as a legitimate genre. Producers want predictable money-makers, especially horror franchises that can generate sequels ad nauseum. While slasher films and monster movies have always been reliable moneymakers that studios return to again and again (Friday the 13^th part what?), producers have recently had to pay attention to the earning power of independent films like Get Out!, It, Us, The Conjuring series, and The Witch. And this, my fellow potatoes, is partly because of the ready availability of these films on streaming services. Distributors no longer decide which film gets exposure in theatres, so the audience actually decides what they want to see, not the studios.

In the past, a film like Get Out! would probably have scared the bejesus out of studio executives (for all the wrong reasons) because, as well as being a harrowing horror movie, it also dealt with sensitive issues of racism and white privilege. But because of its unexpected popularity, the studios had to take a step back and re-examine their priorities. Us, Jordan Peele’s follow-up to Get Out!, while not being quite as successful as the latter, proved Peele’s vision of horror as viewed through a racially-tinged lens was no fluke. Audiences loved it.

Horror films that offered sophisticated plotting and characterizations like Hereditary and Midsommar also showed surprisingly good profits. The Conjuring franchise—including Annabelle—is just as compelling for its lead characters, the married ghost-hunting team of Ed and Lorraine Warren, as it is for its content. The Babadook, The Witch, and The Lighthouse explore extremes of human grief, repression, and isolation through the lens of the macabre and horrific. Pan’s Labyrinth explores a young girl’s emotional turmoil through fantastic and terrible imaginings. We can’t forget other new-generation visionaries like M. Night Shyamalan, Bong Joon-Ho, Michael Chaves, and many others. We are living in a golden age of cinematic horror that is stretching the boundaries of the genre. Are Us or Parasite just horror films, or are they also social satires? Is The Witch about social repression or the devil?

Don’t get me wrong. I still love watching Freddy, Jason, Michael Meyers, and Chucky as much as anyone. Slasher movies are predictable, but that’s part of the fun. Even Scream, which self-consciously poked fun at the genre, is thrilling in and of itself. Giant ants, crabs, shrews, spiders, fifty-foot women, and rabbits are fun, too, but cinematic horror is no longer just for kids. It’s all grown up.

If you haven’t yet, The Pen in Hand respectfully suggests that this Halloween, you take in some of the work from the new writers and directors working in the horror genre. These aren’t just scary movies anymore; they’ve grown into something else…