Cinema Cemetery

Horror is the Salvation of Film

In my view, the single most important genre of film has been largely ignored.

Since you are capable of reading video titles it would be silly of me to pretend I haven’t already given the game away. That’s right folks, we’re here to discuss why Horror is the salvation of film as an art form. I’m going to tackle this topic by discussing the invaluable impact the genre has had on four fronts: Artistic, Economic, Societal, and Industrial.

The Artistic Argument

Right off the bat, you know it and I know it, there are SO (Jaws) MANY(A Tale of Two Sisters) INCREDIBLE (Dawn of the Dead) HORROR (The Exorcist) FILMS (Halloween) OUT (Carrie) THERE (Suspiria). That’s not what this section is about. Those who are the most dismissive of Horror as a genre are typically people who have never given the genre a fair shake and probably never will.

When discussing basic narrative genres, a good way to determine the health of genre is to see how many other genres it can encompass without losing itself in the mashup. Often mistakenly thought of as a niche genre, Horror easily surpasses many main genres with its ease of adaptability when combined with other kinds of movies. Now this would mean absolutely nothing if the results were hot garbage, however, this is where Horror shines. Here’s a quick overview of just how high quality and in-depth this “plays-nice-with-others” mentality goes when it comes to Horror. I’ll show the films rottentomatoes score in question, I’m doing this to give stark contrast to another score. The average rottentomatoes score for all the best picture academy award nominees for 2020 which is 88.7%. You’ll find that there are many examples near or exceeding that score.

Horror-Action

• Aliens 99%

• Train to Busan 95%

• 28 Days Later 86%

• The Raid: Redemption 86%

• They Live 85%

Horror-Adventure

• Us 94%

• Annihilation 88%

• IT 85%

• The Descent 85%

• Creature From The Black Lagoon 84%

Horror-Comedy

• Evil Dead 2 98%

• Housebound 97%

• What we do in the shadows 96%

• Young Frankenstein 93%

• Shaun of the Dead 92%

Horror-Crime/Gangster

• The Silence of the Lambs 96%

• Green Room 90%

• Misery 90%

• Don’t Breathe 88%

• I Saw the Devil 80%

Horror-Drama

• The Wailing 99%

• The Babadook 98%

• A Dark Song 92%

• 10 Cloverfield Lane 90%

• The Girl with all the Gifts 86%

Horror-Romance

• Let the Right One In 98%

• The Shape of Water 92%

• Spring 88%

• Only Lovers Left Alive 84%

• Warm Bodies 81%

Horror-Historical

• The Devil’s Backbone 92%

• The Witch 91%

• The Conjuring 85%

• The Others 83%

• I sell the dead 73%

Horror-Musical

• Little Shop of Horrors 90%

• The Lure 87%

• Sweeney Todd 85%

• The Rocky Horror Picture Show 80%

• Anna and the Apocalypse 78%

Horror-SciFi

• Alien 97%

• A Quiet Place 95%

• The Host 93%

• The Fly 92%

• The Thing 84%

Horror-War

• Deathdream 83%

• Overlord 81%

• Predator 80%

• The Bunker 80%

• Jacob’s Ladder 71%

Horror-Western

• Bone Tomahawk 91%

• Near Dark 88%

• Mohawk 83%

• The Wind 80%

• The Burrowers 73%

I wasn’t kidding when I said that the horror genre really CAN be successfully melded with any other genre, it’s the secret spice of narrative risk-taking! When we get into the economic and entertainment industry sections of this discussion, you’ll see WHY such experimentation is cultivated within this genre in specific; for now though it’s important to appreciate just how wide the range has been pushed by various filmmakers over the years. Now this begs the question, how is horror able to master genre shapeshifting when other more established genres have not? This, as with everything in the film industry, ties directly to the economics of getting a movie made.

The Economic Argument

Why do so many megabudget blockbuster tentpole movies feel so safe and unimaginative? A large part of it is that they’re trying to include everything they think every demographic wants to see without including anything they think will rub one demographic the wrong way. Marvel wants you to see the 40th movie in their unending series of movies with your kid brother, your parents, your grandmother, and the weird uncle who thinks he’s cooler than he is.

This lack of creative exploration isn’t necessarily an artistic failing on behalf of the filmmaker, it’s a financial choice on behalf of the production company making the film. Their motive when risking so much money isn’t one borne of creativity or a desire to make Art. These gigantic movies aren’t greenlit because of the story they can tell, they’re greenlit because they can get as many butts in seats as possible. A gigantic budget is a massive gamble, on a 150 million to 200+ million dollar budget you need to be SURE that you’re going to make a minimum of triple that money back in order to make a nice profit, pay for the movie, and cover all marketing costs. This is why it’s rare to see a blockbuster with a unique voice, an unusual story structure, boundary-pushing themes, or a compelling and fresh aesthetic. 

In contrast, horror films are generally low budget affairs. There’s very little on the line for the studio so they can afford to be a bit more hands off when it comes to the director’s vision. This results in more risks being taken which results in one of two things. Something really special or something really terrible. A dud is easy for the studio to accept since they spent very little to begin with, but a success...on such a small budget a success is a much bigger deal!

In terms of return on investment, Documentaries lead the way with Horror films following...after that come recorded concerts. (graph from link 1) When it comes to returns, Horror is the best bet of all narrative genres and I strongly believe this is because there’s less at stake monetarily. It turns out, art flourishes when stockholders are muzzled.

“...if they fail, the studio doesn't have to get on an investors conference call and announce that it will lose as much as $190 million from one film. Don't expect Hollywood to give up on blockbusters any time soon though. As (ex) Disney CEO Bob Iger put it: ‘We still think the tentpole strategy is a good strategy. That one way to rise above the din and the competition is with a big film, not just big budget, but big story, big cast, big marketing behind it.’” (2)

This mentality fully explains Disney’s upcoming slate of movies, overwhelmingly jam-packed with high budget remakes, sequels, and cash-grab nostalgia pandering. They’re making a product, if it ends up being Art it is in spite of their initial intentions.

The Industry Argument

It’s an understatement to say that the film industry generally doesn’t have a lot of respect for horror as a genre. Heck, in order for a Horror film to get any major awards it needs to be marketed as a Thriller...a genre which is essentially just Horror in a tuxedo.

This lack of respect is based on the popular misconception that Hereditary and Friday the 13th are the same type of movie. They’re both horror right? The monocle crowd scoffs. While this is incredibly frustrating for fans of the genre, it does have its benefits. When you’re not competing with pandering nonsense like Green Book or Joker for best picture, you can really go nuts (Mandy/The Cell) with your movie. There’s nobody to please, no committees to butter up. This lack of expectation combined with the typically low budget creates perfect conditions for maintaining the purity of vision filmmaking requires as an artform. Some movies are terrible, some movies are incredible, but I would rather watch a terrible movie the filmmaker put his soul into rather than a mediocre yet soulless movie created by a committee. For example that’s why The Room is more fun than Justice League. It’s why Troll 2 is a crowd-pleasing delight while Ant-man has all the explosive flavor of a damp cardboard box. Good, bad, it doesn’t always matter. Unique is always better than bland. 

The Social Argument

Allowing filmmakers to experiment and push any boundary they see fit results in striking social progress decades before it was safe enough for blockbusters to even try a weak-sauce version of the same thing. Since the horror genre has so much freedom, there’s certainly a lot of regressive garbage out there but...not nearly as much as one might think. A lot of horror tropes are downright progressive, consider the following:

“Vampires being equated with the old world, wealth, wretched excess, sexual depravity, ... and colonialism.

Zombies/Cannibals equaling the third world rising up to devour the first world that has been built on the fruits of their labor.

The Frankenstein Monster being man's desire to procreate without the need for the female womb.

The Witch Hunter cycle from the 70's revealing witch trials to basically be an excuse to persecute attractive, unmarried, independent, or unmanageable women.

Backwoods and inbred clans like in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Just Before Dawn, and The Devil's Rejects representing the absolute perversion of the American Pioneer ideal.” (4)

“The '60s featured horrors that were Existential, like Hitchcock's ‘The Birds’, or Romero's ‘Night of the Living Dead’, where bad things happen just because they happen, and innocents suffer for no reason in an indifferent universe.

By the '80s, the Conservative movement had convinced Americans that all our problems stemmed from "alien" invaders who, like the Christian Devil, were inherently evil, bent on the destruction of home, hearth and family, against whom we must circle the wagons and defend our homeland- and be ever vigilant for traitors within our midst. But even in a film like ‘Alien’, the real villain was a Machiavellian corporate structure which placed no value on the individual beyond company profit.“ (4)

From Night of the Living Dead to Get Out, horror as a genre wraps difficult conversations into the non confrontational package of thrills and chills. Anything BRAVE or CONTROVERSIAL in a blockbuster has already been done to death in the horror circle. While people were tripping over themselves on social media to bless DC and Marvel for being so BRAVE for making Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel, fans of Ellen Ripley were sitting in the back wondering why it took those studios so long to capitalize something already established as a good idea in the 70s and 80s.

Long story short, anyone who scoffs at the “lack of morality” in horror movies probably hasn’t seen many horror movies. Artistically, horror is the last true playground for filmmakers. Economically, horror has the highest return on investment when it comes to fiction films. Within film Industry circles, the general lack of respect from awards shows keep the genre in a concentrated bubble, free from external distraction. Socially, the horror genre has always had a wealth of insightful, meditative, and substantive points of view to offer any audience brave enough to dig a little deeper.

Horror IS the salvation of film.

This has been Cinema Cemetery, digging six feet deeper into film and culture.

-Josh Evans

Bibliography:

1. https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/09/hollywoods-biggest-bang-for-its-buck/

2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/dorothypomerantz/2013/08/07/from-the-purge-to-r-i-p-d-the-summer-in-hits-and-misses/#653b49815c7c

3. https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/monsterkidclassichorrorforum/conservative-and-progressive-horror-t9326.html

4. https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/monsterkidclassichorrorforum/conservative-and-progressive-horror-t9326.html