Horror is Us?

Stuart Lenig

Professor of Media Studies

Columbia State Community College

People forget that in an age where big budget thrillers, Nicholas Sparks weepies,

Pixar cartoons, and superheroes dominate the movie market that horror films have

quietly become one of the remaining potent forces in our understanding of people’s

fears and anxieties. This is nothing new, horror has always examined the inner workings

of our psyches, but often the contemporary mirror rejects our contemporary image. We

want to believe we are what we were, not what we are now. Horror movies hold that

face out to us, and desperately we try to reject the ugly, unkind face for the one we

remember, or at least a face we like. The New York Times’ Sheila Dewan argued that

horror movies succeed because they ride below the surface. She wrote that, “some film

scholars and filmmakers say that horror films serve another purpose: they penetrate the

defenses of even the most jaded viewer in a way that straight historical dramas can't.”

(Dewan)

Horror was always about more than horror, particularly in the nineteenth

century. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein parodied the promethean myth, unwrapped the

rapture with scientific experimentation, and in the end, comically stranded it’s god-

emulating doctor. Dracula was rooted in a fear of foreigners, a response to the irrational

sadistic murders of Jack the Ripper, and the rampant spread of venereal disease in
chaste Victorian times. Greg Buzwell, writing for the British Library offered that, “the act

of vampirism itself, with its notion of tainted blood, suggests the fear of sexually

transmitted diseases such as syphilis and, more generally, the fear of physical and

moral decay that was believed by many commentators to be afflicting society.” (Buzwell)

Today a new generation of post-millennial horror films have captured the

imagination of a generation that fears even the supposed benefits that society

offers. Rolling Stone wrote about the new millennium zombie epic, 28 Days Later

(2002) that. “in the wake of 9/11's jolting tragedy, this prescient horror film also spoke to

unconscious anxieties about a world in which simmering tensions and seething

paranoia felt like a terrible new normal.” The Japanese and American versions of The

Ring express a fear of video technology and phone messages and ultimately things

emerging from television itself. The Purge argues that for society to function, a little

bloodletting is essential, and maybe the occasional bacchanal bloodbath is necessary.

Cloverfield, Blair Witch, and Paranormal Activity all emulate the shaky cam style of the

iphone-produced, low quality, quick and on the go youtube video format. Cabin in the

Woods mocks the conventions of slasher horror and torture porn films and critiques the

very media that makes such debauched and dissipating spectacles. Takami’s Battle

Royale and Collins’ The Hunger Games unpacked our fascination with the emerging

genre of reality television so we could witness young students murder each other in a

competition that combined Roman gladiatorial sports, games shows, survivalist

torture/death training, and worst of all, competition to get into a good university.
 Unlike the fifties science fiction films like Howard Hawks’ The Thing that urged us

to ‘watch the skies’ to discover the truth, horror films tell us to keep watching that

crazed, zombie, vampire, teen, psycho-killer that lives down the block to discover the

real horror all around us.

 Works Cited

Buzwell, Greg. “Dracula: Vampires, Perversity and Victorian Anxieties.” The

BritishLibrary Web site.

Dewan, Shiela. “Do Horror Films Filter the Horrors of History?” The New York Times.

October 14, 2000.

Grierson, Tim. “Fifty Greatest Horror Movies of the 21st Century.” Rolling Stone.

October 17, 2016.