Is there a “New Horror”?

Written by Josh French

Like most genre-fiction, horror is constantly changing, yet considered and discussed as if held at a position of consistency. Like all genre fiction, it has its main intent or aspect that stays constant throughout all of its respective works: that being to scare the audience in some capacity. To horrify them, hence the name. Not toomuch though, just enough for a quick jump or a long cringe followed by a clutching of the heart and a light-hearted gladness that it’s over. Like the rom-com has the polar opposite lead characters, and the superhero film has the mish-mash unintelligible, unimaginative fight scene where nobody gets hurt, horror has ‘the scare’. Of course, ‘the scare’ is a wide category though. To ‘scare the audience’ can mean anything from gross them out, make them tense up through in-film tension, make them feel nauseous through a range of sensory exercises (coupled with a nice epilepsy warning), force them into a slow anticipation of what they know is going to happen, shock them through graphic imagery or, just, well, make them jump.

The amount of criticism thrown towards that last part certainly outnumbers any other criticism thrown towards any area of horror that could be considered contentious. Jump-scares are cheap – I bet you haven’t heard that before. In fact, you’ve probably heard it a lot, too muchpossibly. We live in the age of the bootleg reviewer (me included), any asshole with a camera or keyboard can stand on the high pedestal of sophistry and declare blatantly obvious observations on movies with enough passion to seemsubversive (again, me included). Considering horror-movies are the punchbag of so much of this easily made criticism (bad acting, bad editing, bad “scares”, bad writing, bad, bad, bad), and in lieu of the fact horror movies are pretty much accepted as being ‘The Bad Genre’, it’s worth asking…are things changing?

Perhaps it’s worth giving some context. Over the last two years, I personally think it’s fair to say, a tendency has emerged within horror as a genre. This tendency can be explained in a few words: Horror movies are good now. Over the last two years multiple horror films have come out that have, bizarrely, rocketed to the status of household names in a genre where it takes a lot of effort and staying power over time do so. To become a household name in horror means to come up against some of not just the best horror, but some of the best films ever made (The Shining, Halloween, Rosemary’s Babyto name a few) and claim to be just as good as any of them, each which have been able to outlive the first scares they gave at their time of release. To focus on a few specific examples, we have Get Out, which in the space of one movie solidified Jordan Peele as a successor to the whole horror tradition (for fuck sake the guy made one movie and now he’s been given both Candyman and Twilight Zone), Hereditary (apparently the best horror movie of the last few years, it’s amazing, it’s on Netflix though so I’ll let you decide for yourself, mind you it’s not for the faint of heart), Suspiria (I already gushed about it before, so I’ll spare you the specifics) and Us, Jordan Peele’s second film. There are others (The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Witch, etc.) but the ones I’ve mentioned most exemplify this change, if you can call it a change. Because again, it’s still worth asking: Are things changing?

I word this as a question for two reasons. 1) The idea that Youtubers and internet reviewers have solved the time-old issue with horror-movies, completely undercutting the profit motive and forcing horror into a standstill where it is either artistically salvageable or gets the guillotine, is too ridiculous a point to make with a straight face. And 2) Are we just lucky?

Trends come and go, as anyone knows, and so wanes the quality of mainstream cinema. There honestly are times in which film, industrial and soul-wrenching in its management and manufacturing, just happens to put out a lot of good shit. Whole books and retrospectives have been written on how good a year 1999 was for cinema – 10 Things I hate About You, The Matrix, Eyes Wide Shut, The Blair Witch Projectand many more being released in the space of a year.

Is this all a fluke then? An industry wide coincidence of actually giving a shit about the filmed-picture for once, and horror as a mainstay of genre in film? Ha. No. This is the film industry you idiot, things aren’t made to be good they’re made to be profitable. Quality is only so good as to be a method to attaining profit, and there’s a hell of easier ways of attaining profit than putting a specific type and amount of effort into the commodity, especially when marketing practically makesthe product at this point. There are largely no refunds for watching movies, trailers can lie and do lie all the time. Hell, I talk-up all of those films while ignoring that both Usand Get Outare co-produced by Blumhouse Productions, a conveyer belt of cheap thrills that has a gargantuan monopoly on the genre. For every Get Out, we have the occasional bland sequel to a moderately successful horror movie James Wan made a few years ago, next to five identical films about ghosts or demons terrorising a group of 20-somethings.

Great, now I sound like the Youtubers. Thank you Blumhouse.

Still, it’s worth asking if a distinction can be made between this possible trend of ‘New Horror’ and the punching-bag of criticism that is the horror tradition. What do these films have that others don’t? Perhaps this distinction lies instead in the notion of ‘the scare’ itself, where the fear comes from in each. For example, Get Outbeing labelled as a ‘horror movie’ by some has proven to be heavily contentious, cringe-inducing even, to seasoned fans of horror. Included in these fans is Jordan Peele himself, who in an interview with Rolling Stone stated that “I’m such a horror nut that the genre confusion of Get Out broke my heart a little. I set out to make a horror movie, and it’s kind of not a horror movie.” He would even go on to state, dryly, “Us is a horror movie” on his twitter – be that a statement of comparison or otherwise. Is there therefore a difference, a bold line that can be drawn between Get Outand Us, branding one as not-horror and the other as horror?

One case for drawing this line is that Get Outdoesn’t feature huge amounts of traditional ‘scare’ moments, be they gory or jumpy. Problem is, neither does Usreally. Perhaps the fact that Get Outdoesn’t have a conventional horror villain, be that a key ghost or slasher killer or otherwise, is the reason it should allegedly be put in the “not horror” category. However, this only opens up more problems. The Suspiriaremake I previously mentioned also has no cackling killer or spooky ghost to be feared, the same characters that could be considered antagonistic or harmful are at the same time protagonists in the story itself, the film treating them like protagonists in their own right. It’s as much the witch covens’ story in Suspiriaas it is Susie Bannion’s. If anything, the ‘villains’ of Suspiriaare more human, scarily so, than the Armitage family in Get Out, and yet no one thus far has come along to revoke the ‘horror’ label from Suspiria. Perhaps a difference, or possibly even a similarity, between these respective films lies in where ‘the scare’ comes from itself.

All of these movies, Get Out, Suspiria, Us,Hereditary, all shy away (to an extent) from the usual methods of ‘scaring’ the audience through single, momentary jolts of tension and violence. Instead, each establish a tone that holds a constant, but unique suspense throughout, a suspense achieved not only through a use of form but content as well, deriving their scare-factor from fears both incredibly personal and socially conscious opposed to the straight-forwardly supernatural. There is little suspense around when the next ‘scare’ is, rather a constant fear of something much more ingrained into the text. The ‘scare’ in Get Outis derived from the fear of the implicit racism that lies below the smiling face of an allegedly liberalised, “post-racial” society. The fear present in Usis the fear of the other, of the less-well-off finally rising out from the depths and violently lashing out towards a society that exists despite, or because of, their own subjugation. The fear present in Hereditaryis the fear of simmering abuse, of the familial tensions and despair that emerges after a family members death, especially in the instance of the family not being a loving person in life, and the conflicting emotions that arise because of that.

The suspense established comes not from anticipation of a thrill, but of a material, conscious fear the audience themselves engage with or understand on a thematic level. It is that which makes, for example, Hereditarytruly terrifying. Any other film with the same level of violence best evidenced in, uh, thatscene in the car, would instantly be deemed tryhard trash on the same level as the mindless “gore” subgenre of horror. But it is the use of form to create suspense through cinematic techniques within the context of the type of fear the movie sets out to convey, that makes the film truly scary to an audience. It’s that which elevates Hereditaryto the position of a brilliant film, and a brilliant piece of horror, opposed to just another extremely violent movie made to provoke audiences into walking out.

If this use of form to convey a social or psychological ‘fear’, is what distinguishes this ‘New Horror’ from the rest of the horror genre, then we run into more problems. Mainly, the fact that horror has been doing this for more than half a century, and all I have really done is just describe what makes the best of horror have its staying power. Similar observations to those movies I’ve just mentioned can equally be applied to The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby, Halloween, Nosferatu, and so on. Is there even any worth distinguishing between whatever this new influx of horror is and its predecessors? I still think so, simply because (I hope) these new films might signify a change in how horror is perceived, and be a sign of it being taken more seriously by the film industry. A look to the 2018 Oscars shows Get Outwinning Best Original Screenplay and being nominated in both Best Director and Best Actor. Fast-forward one year later and Lupita Nyong'o is, according to the denizens of film-twitter at least, a possible contender for 2020’s Best Actress Oscar. Regardless of if a distinction can be made between the oncoming wave of horror films that represents the best aspects of the genre and the previous mass-produced thrill-rides that dominated the early 2000’s (or even the rest of the horror tradition itself), my main hope for this ‘New Horror’ is  that it signifies a time in which horror as a genre and the use of its conventions can be taken seriously. No longer relegated to being the “bad” genre, but instead a valid and necessary category of art that can be used to communicate effectively and startingly the ills of ourselves, be they sociological or psychological.

Thumbnail Image by Andrei Lazarev on Unsplash

Photo by Simon Matzinger on Unsplash