Nightmares of Contemporary Horror Cinema

American horror cinema in the new, current millennium is marked on the one hand by the emergence and proliferation of several new franchises and, on the other hand, by the rise of a handful of new directors achieving critical acclaim as well as commercial success.

The most prominent horror filmmaker of the past two decades is undoubtedly James Wan who is associated with the three most successful currently ongoing horror franchises. An Australian national, Wan had conceived of and developed the idea for the low-budget horror movie Saw (Wan, 2004) together with his compatriot Leigh Whannell and the duo had managed to get funding from an independent American production company. Debuting at the Sundance Film Festival, the Mecca of American independent cinema, Saw, scripted by Whannell and directed by Wan, caused a sensation, was picked up by Lions Gate, given a wide theatrical release and became a hit, spawning several sequels (none of which were directed by Wan). At the time of the writing of this foreword, tenth film in the series was in the post-production stage.

Saw was a very violent film and in that sense a forerunner of the so-called “torture porn” movies which proliferated in the second half of the 2010s even though this derogatory label was first coined for Hostel (Roth, 2005). The villain of the Saw series, whose personality and motivation were gradually fleshed out over the course of the sequels is Jigsaw, an initially enigmatic figure who obliges his captives to engage in brutal acts to test their will to survive. This Nietzschean orientation of Jigsaw endows him with some degree of an anti-hero attribute and contributes to Saw movies’ appeal.

On the other hand, Insidious (Wan, 2010), Wan’s next hit, again scripted by Whannell and again premiering at a prestigious festival, this time Toronto International Film Festival, was a chilling supernatural horror movie without any gore. While Insidious has spawned two sequels (the first of which was directed by Wan) as well as a prequel and a sequel to the prequel, it would be The Conjuring (Wan, 2013), an engaging haunting movie with effective thrills directed by Wan as a director for hire assigned by Warner Bros. on the basis of the success of Insidious, which would eventually give rise to “an extended cinematic universe” totaling, at the time of writing, eight movies consisting not only of sequels (once again, the first one also being directed by Wan) and/or prequels but also of spin-offs and their sequels/prequels. The Conjuring and the other core movies in this universe are based on allegedly genuine paranormal cases investigated by a pair of real-life ghost hunters and such a real-life connection, which was the focal point of The Conjuring’s prerelease marketing campaign, has undoubtedly helped the popularization of the series. The sympathetic portrayal of the protagonists in these movies differentiates them (the core Conjuring movies) from other American horror franchises in which the villains/monsters are the main attraction while the spin-offs in the Conjuring universe, the three Annabelle movies as well as The Nun (Hardy, 2018), on the other hand, lean toward more traditional monster horror movie conventions.

Apart from the emergence and flourishing of brand new franchises, which notably also included the low-budget Paranormal Activity series shot in the “found footage” format and the dystopian The Purge series as well as the above-mentioned three initiated by Wan, the vintage franchise deriving from Halloween (Carpenter, 1978) was given a new boost with Halloween (Green, 2018) which rebooted the series by providing a sequel to the original film, ignoring all the previous sequels including an earlier reboot continuity. However commercially successful Halloween (2018) might have been, the introduction of a second reboot puts this franchise in sharp contrast to the Conjuring universe where all parts are consistently linked to each other without negating any other part, even though they branch out considerably.

The Conjuring was a sizeable hit, and the ensuing franchise has been very profitable, but in the meantime a semi-independent post-apocalyptic horror movie distributed by Paramount also burst into the scene and promised the start of a yet new franchise, a promise whose fulfillment would be challenged by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Instigating an avalanche of traffic on social media after premiering as the opening-night film at the South by Southwest festival conglomeration, A Quiet Place (Krasinski, 2018) became a huge box-office hit as predicted by industry experts. The sequel A Quiet Place II had a gala premiere prior to its scheduled release early in 2020, but the outbreak of the pandemic delayed its release for more than a year and when it was finally theatrically released, it was under unfavorable conditions of distancing rules. Nevertheless, Paramount’s decision to release it exclusively on the theatrical market for 45 days rather than simultaneously offering it in streaming services was seen as a significant step in favor of theatrical releases and this strategy paid off as A Quiet Place II (Krasinski, 2020) became the highest-grossing movie of the pandemic era at the time. A prequel is scheduled to be released in 2024.

The biggest horror hits of the past 20 years have been It (Muschietti, 2017) and It Chapter Two (Muschietti, 2019), the combined screen adaptation of Stephen King’s bestseller novel It (1986) spread over two movies. It has been designated as allegedly being the “highest-grossing horror film of all time,” a claim which actually amounts to publicity ballyhoo as it is based on raw figures not taking inflation into account. In truth, It’s inflation-adjusted box-office performance pales into nothing when compared to that of The Exorcist (Friedkin, 1973), which is one of the top ten highest-grossing movies (of any genre) of all time, and lags much behind those of House of Wax (DeToth, 1953) and Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960). Nevertheless, It is the biggest horror hit not of all times but of the new millennium (if one doesn’t count Night Shyamalan’s alien invasion thriller Signs [Shyamalan, 2002] as pure horror). Produced by Warner Bros. affiliate New Line and distributed by Warner Bros., It was directed by Argentinian national Andy Muschietti who had earlier helmed the laudable independent supernatural horror film Mama (Muschietti, 2013) and Muschietti staged some terrifying set pieces in It. The movie is also notable for portraying a very dark social landscape of rural America with rampant racism, teen bullying and incestuous sexual abuse.

Besides franchises and the It duo, there have naturally also been significant stand-alone horror movies coming from American cinema in the new millennium. A shared pattern can be observed in this category. Just like Saw, Insidious, and A Quiet Place, these movies have also premiered at prestigious festivals and initially attracted attention by the stir they made at the festival circuits. Of these movies, especially Get Out (Peele, 2017) stands out as it was eventually nominated for four Academy Awards, a very rare feat for a horror movie, and won the Oscar in the Best Original Screenplay category. Written and directed by former comedian Jordan Peele in his directorial debut, Get Out, which has an intriguing (and spoiler-risky) plot and contains several passages where a very strong sense of uneasiness is created, was produced by Blumhouse (which had also been involved in Paranormal Activity [Peli, 2007], Insidious and The Purge [DeMonaco, 2013] among others) and distributed by Universal after its premiere at Sundance. Peele’s next film was Us (Peele, 2019) which premiered at South by Southwest and was again distributed by Universal and became a big hit at the box office just like Get Out had been. Both films received almost universal high acclaim from critics and came to be regarded as some of the most prominent titles in the new pantheon of so-called “elevated horror” along with, for instance, Ari Aster’s Hereditary (Aster, 2018) and Midsommar (Aster, 2019), both produced and distributed by A24, Aster being the other most distinguished new horror director besides Peele and A24 being one of the pioneer companies current behind American “independent” horror cinema along with Blumhouse. Horror films of Peele and Aster are held in high regard not only for the masterful craftsmanship on display but also for having narratives that open up for intricate analysis of various underlining philosophical and/or social themes.

Getting into whether Peele’s and Aster’s films have been overrated or not within the overall “big picture” of horror cinema in general and if so, to what degree and why, would stretch the limits of a foreword. Nevertheless, regarding Us as an example at least, I would like to point that general fascination and awe at this well-crafted movie, which admittedly starts with one of the most chilling openings in horror movie history with a very uncanny mise en scene, seems to have largely excluded pointing out that the movie not only reflects on the divide between the privileged and their “others,” but does so by sharing, by way of magnifying it, the millenniums-old (as old as the dawn of social classes) fear of the privileged that the “others” will “butcher us one day because they envy us” and legitimizing such fears, rather than questioning the divide, as there does not seem to be any avenue of empathy for the non-privileged in this diegesis, in contrast to, for example, George A. Romero’s Land of The Dead (Romero, 2005).

In any case, even such a reservation as above testifies that the recent American horror films of the new millennium provide fertile grounds for rich debates which the following chapters in this volume will certainly contribute to.

References

Aster, A. (Director). (2018). Hereditary [Feature-length movie]. A24 and PalmStar Media.

Aster, A. (Director). (2019). Midsommar [Feature-length movie]. Square Peg and A24.

Carpenter, J. (Director). (1978). Halloween [Feature-length movie]. Compass International Pictures.

DeMonaco, J. (Director). (2013). The Purge [Feature-length movie]. Blumhouse Productions and Platinum Dunes.

DeToth, A. (Director). (1953). House of Wax [Feature-length movie]. Warner Bros. Pictures (As distributor).

Friedkin, W. (Director). (1973). The Exorcist [Feature-length movie]. Hoya Productions.

Green, G. D. (Director). (2018). Halloween [Feature-length movie]. Miramax and Blumhouse Productions.

Hardy, C. (Director). (2018). The Nun [Feature-length movie]. New Line Cinema, Atomic Monster, and The Safran Company.