☕️ + the current horror movie landscape?
we’re in that really interesting halfway point of the decade where genre trends tend to become REALLY obvious, and we can start to kind of suss out what this decade’s horror is going to be mostly remembered for going forward!! which is both exciting as a horror academic and also, as a fan, a little bit frustrating, because that ALSO means we’re at the point where a lot of low-effort or bad horror movies are starting to just copy the big themes of the good ones without the same level of purpose or artistry, so it feels like the mainstream stuff is starting to get saturated with the same general ideas and themes.
from what i’ve seen of the horror films of the last few years, it seems like there’s been a really widespread focus on Films About Trauma. and this isn’t really unique in horror— i would argue the genre as a whole has ALWAYS been largely about trauma— but the way that it’s being articulated in 2020s horror film is new. it’s very unsubtle in these films; to give a couple somewhat recent examples, Talk To Me is very clearly drawing on the trauma of addiction and losing family members, and even Insidious: The Red Door tries to go beyond its legacy-sequel status by exploring the idea of generational, inherited family trauma.
i don’t hate these themes when they’re done well; i think both of the films i just mentioned do execute on the idea pretty nicely!! but it seems like almost EVERY horror film lately is really trying to pass itself off as “intellectual” or a thinking man’s horror movie by placing these trauma-based stories so front and center. and it can be really grating, too. M3GAN, as camp as it was, also centered on a family-loss-trauma story, as did the really underwhelming film Cuckoo. in my opinion, both of these movies could have been improved by abandoning their quest for “social relevance” and just leaning further into being silly and campy (for M3GAN) or unsettling psychological horror (for Cuckoo).
personally, i credit this trend to the converation that started happening around “elevated” horror films in the late 2010s when films like Hereditary and Get Out began to really pop off. i LOVE both of those films to be clear, and again, i think they do trauma-based storytelling and themes REALLY well! but they’re working on subtle levels as well as overt ones.
it shouldn’t come as a surprise when i say that we’re living in a moment of increasing cultural conservatism, and in light of that, it seems to me like a lot of the decade’s horror films are reaching to have Something To Say in order to justify their existence to the general public. think about how films like the Terrifier franchise, the X trilogy, or Evil Dead Rise are received by the public (so NOT just horror fans); there’s a TON of controversy about the violence, sexual content, and gore that these films focus on so heavily! and while they do all still have things to say about the society, politics, and culture in which they were made (as all films do), i would not say any of those examples were consciously trying to make any particular points about the world in which we live.
it seems to me like a lot of creators in the current horror scene have gotten the idea— correct or not— that, if they want their horror film to be popular and well-liked, then it needs to have an overt social message, no matter how clumsy or obvious the execution of that message is. and i kind of think that sucks to be honest! there have always been both highbrow and lowbrow horror films, and i think it speaks volumes about the cultural moment we’re in right now when a film has to justify its existence by aiming for some highbrow Societal Message when it probably would be a better piece of art if it could just remain as a mean-spirited, down and dirty lowbrow slasher. it’s damning! variety is the spice of life, and that’s even more true for horror films.
