FRIGHT NIGHT
They’re calling it prestige horror: scary movies so elegantly executed they’re like watching an Oscar-nominated drama. But why, in 2019, do we want to be shocked when we go to the cinema? By Hannah-Rose Yee.
They’re calling it prestige horror: scary movies so elegantly executed they’re like watching an Oscar-nominated drama. But why, in 2019, do we want to be shocked when we go to the cinema?
AT ONE POINT in the film Midsommar, Florence Pugh tips her head forward and screams. The actress is playing Dani, a woman struggling to process her sister’s mental illness, who is dragged by her boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) to the pine-fringed archipelago of Sweden for a sinister, once-every-90-years festival. Dani’s shriek is guttural, primal and deeply unsettling, yet makes it impossible to look away.
Such is the power of the horror genre, which has never been more popular than it is right now. Midsommar is the second scary movie from rising director Ari Aster, whose debut feature Hereditary, released last year, included a literally head-spinning performance by Toni Collette.
His horror films are just two of the many winning us over. In 2018, Get Out won Jordan Peele an Oscar for best screenplay and in 2019 he returned with the slick Lupita Nyong’o-led thriller Us. In September, It: Chapter II will remind everyone why clowns are so terrifying and with a cast that has attracted top-tier talent – Jessica Chastain, Bill Hader and James McAvoy – also proves there’s cachet in landing a role in a first-rate horror film. Next year continues the trend, with John Krasinski unleashing the sequel to the phenomenally successful A Quiet Place.
Also out of the US, horror movie impresario Jason Blum’s latest film, Ma, starring Octavia Spencer as Ma, the neighbour from hell, will chill you to the bone.
“One of the few types of movies left that are still working theatrically are horror movies,” says Blum. “We have great filmmakers like Jordan Peele, who are making astute observations about society and our time in the movies they make. As a result, filmmakers who might never have considered horror a few years ago are now interested in it. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy – because horror movies are attracting more and different filmmakers, they are getting better.”
Horror audiences are filling cinemas for the privilege of being utterly paralysed with fear for two and a bit hours. Film experts are calling it ‘prestige horror’, a new era for the genre critics previously associated with schlocky scripts, clunky visual effects and cheap, fake blood. “I hate [the term],” Blum says. “It’s a different way of saying: ‘I don’t like horror but I’m okay with elevated horror.’ Or: ‘I look down on you unless it’s artsy.’”
It’s not a new attitude. Even when horror movies like The Shining or Misery received rave reviews and awards, the genre was still something of a Hollywood joke. Before our current thrilling, chilling days, horror had a reputation for being cheap and nasty. The Blair Witch Project was famously made for just A$86,000 on a Camcorder. And while the genre is still more affordable to produce than say a superhero blockbuster, today’s versions are less jerky handheld footage and more slick production values and string quartet soundtracks. In the hands of directors like Aster, Peele and Luca Guadagnino, the latter of whom followed his sun-drenched romance Call Me By Your Name with the nightmarish Suspiria, the new wave of horror films is smart, stylish and sinister.
Modern horror movies still follow the tried-and-tested formula of jump scares and plateaus, shock and relief, but they want to say something more, too. Get Out tackled racism, the critically acclaimed It Follows explored paranoia, A Quiet Place was about communication and Ma is about loneliness. Aster’s two movies have both been about grief, anxiety and trauma in their own ways – Hereditary looked at PTSD, while Midsommar is about all the raw, rancid messiness when a codependent couple tries to untangle their lives.
In Ma, Oscar-winner Spencer sinks her teeth into the role of a woman so scarred by her own teenage experience of bullying that years later she exacts revenge upon some clueless youths. “We always want to scare and entertain people but I also think it’s sometimes important for our films to be reflective of the time,” Blum explains. Aside from being a good old-fashioned scary film, “Ma is also about just how horrifying the results of bullying can be”, he adds.
And then there’s Midsommar. Unlike some of its genre predecessors, there is nothing dark and dusty about this film. Set during one of Sweden’s endless nights, everything is washed out and sun-drenched. But don’t think that makes the movie any less threatening. There’s something deeply unsettling about all those maniacally smiling Swedes in their matching cult-like outfits. Dani is rightly concerned for her safety – just what have she and her boyfriend walked into? How can they escape? Or will they?
In 2019 audiences want to watch a movie that poses questions like that and makes them feel something when it answers them. Because that’s what watching horror is like, a disturbing, visceral, glue-you-to-your-seat experience, one that was made for the communal setting of a movie theatre. Horror films need to be watched with others who will gasp and tense alongside you, and will join in a collective sigh of relief when leaving the cinema unscathed.
“What I love about horror is that it’s accessible to so many and appreciated and loved by so many,” Blum says. “There is no shame in loving a scary movie or having fun while sitting in a dark room with strangers watching a scary film.”
The psychological power of the genre is scientifically proven, too: according to new research, people who visit ‘extreme’ haunted attractions are more likely to leave with an improved mood, particularly if they entered feeling tired, bored or stressed.
That’s why watching a horror movie, even though you are likely clenching your hands, feels like a such a release. It’s venting through entertainment. It’s a cinematic, mostly silent rage room. And given the state of the world right now, maybe that’s exactly the kind of thing we should all be watching. Maybe what we really need to do to release is sit in a dark room and scream. Midsommar is in cinemas now; Ma is out on home entertainment on November 27.
“We have great filmmakers like Jordan Peele, who are making astute observations about society and our time in the movies they make”