Kiwi horror is coming out of the Basement
As the world becomes increasingly troubled and confused, more people are seeking escape via ‘‘recreational fear’’. Kate Robertson reports.
The horror genre hasn’t had an easy run in the worlds of film and television, but things look to be changing. For decades, frights and scares have been accused of brainwashing people, and slasher flicks and shows have been considered uncultured and low-brow.
In recent years, a wave of critically acclaimed movies such as Hereditary, Get Out and Midsommar have gained global recognition, prompting the world of high-brow arts and culture to start paying attention to a genre that has always had a passionate audience and consistently produced strong films.
However, this spike in the genre begs the question of why so many of us seek out scares.
Registered clinical psychologist Kyle Smith says when something scares us – be it a film, or something in real life – physiological changes happen ‘‘in the brain, inside the body and across the face’’.
‘‘A cascade of chemicals, including adrenaline and cortisol, are released in the brain in response to the emotions experienced, causing a pounding heart and fast breathing, as well as increased sweating.
‘‘All this might lead to behaviours, such as the startle reaction,’’ she says.
While viewer emotions are real, when we’re watching something scary, those feelings ‘‘are tempered by the knowledge and understanding that although viewers are witnesses to events happening in a fictional world, generally they are aware that their presence in that world is an illusion’’.
University of Canterbury lecturer Erin Harrington – who has researched the genre extensively – compares this kind of cinema thrillseeking to people who electively zipline through forests or engage in public performance. It all falls under the umbrella of ‘‘recreational fear’’, that uncomfortable, sticky place we’re often told we’ll find by stepping out of our comfort zone.
It’s a space where people ‘‘can enjoy the sense of anticipation or tension and then release’’, something she says horror shares with the comedy genre, where jokes have a setup and a punchline that results in laughter.
Harrington says horror can also act as a safe space where people – women in particular – can process wider societal problems or play around with fear ‘‘in a manner that is safe and contained, because at the end of two hours you can walk away’’.
TVNZ’s new web series, The Basement, promises to play into this desire to feel uncomfortable, fearful and like something isn’t quite right. The psychological horror follows Sam Taggart (Greta Gregory), a young woman who returns to her place of birth – a naturalist commune – where she hopes to uncover answers about the death of her mother, the cult’s enigmatic leader.
The show’s producer Hweiling Ow says it encourages people to debate whether the residents at the commune act strangely because they’re in a cult-like environment, or whether it’s because they have something to hide.
‘‘They’re a commune of awesome people who came together with this great idea of living off the land, so what’s wrong with that?’’ she says.
‘‘Maybe because they live that way, their thought processes are different and the way they talk to each other might be different because of that. If they’re just trying to do the best for themselves what’s wrong?’’
Ow’s fascination with cautionary tales and ‘‘what-ifs’’ is a part of the genre she finds fascinating. She describes it as showing people ‘‘what might happen in the future if we do not take care of ourselves’’.
Having worked on shows for YouTube and Facebook, Ow is grateful to have a series available to stream on TVNZ OnDemand, a platform that doesn’t host user-generated content.
‘‘The YouTube space is hard,’’ she says. ‘‘I don’t
envy those who have to choose the difference between a horror movie beheading and a real one. With TVNZ it’s guaranteed that it’s not real.’’
She does however note the series outcome ‘‘could be a version of our lives if we don’t ask the hard questions’’.
The Basement will stand as one of the few mainstream New Zealand horror productions to move away from the deadpan comedy-horror local film-makers love to produce.
‘‘There are some films that are weird and creepy and shocking in their own way, but we as a country have not done much really good serious horror,’’ Harrington says.
Having just finished writing about TVNZ2 series Wellington Paranormal and the 2014 film Housebound, Harrington says that in both cases she’s had to explain New Zealand’s ‘‘comic tradition’’, which stems from a love of the grotesque and can be traced back to Peter Jackson’s 1992 splatstick film Braindead.
She says that while ‘‘we’re really good at telling really dark stories elsewhere’’, we’re yet to do so ‘‘specifically within the horror genre’’.
The Basement excites Harrington, in the way it’s seeking to fill this gap and the way it tackles grief, a theme that’s emerged from a number of recent films (she notes the 2016 Irish-British horror A
Dark Song as a good example).
She believes horror is a useful way of looking at ‘‘how people deal with personal trauma, how people process things and how people under extreme duress try to survive and get by’’.
Ow – who never imagined she’d one day create horror film and television for a living – is determined to keep the more serious side of the genre on the up here in New Zealand.
Having grown up in Malaysia, she knows the dystopian lens through which she sees the world is ‘‘quite bleak’’.
‘‘It’s a society that is won on literal Chinese Whispers,’’ she says. ‘‘Now I understand what Chinese Whispers are – because there are no facts [in Malaysia]. It’s all just hearsay.’’
From a practical perspective, she’s also aware there’s money to be made in a genre few filmmakers occupy, but where people are hungry for content. ‘‘You have to think about the business side of film-making,’’ she says.
Sure, it might not be popular forever, but ‘‘it’s trendy at the moment’’, and that’s all that matters.
‘‘Some films are weird and creepy and shocking in their own way, but we as a country have not done much really good serious horror.’’
Erin Harrington