HAVE WE BECOME IMMUNE to horror?
As American Horror Story returns, we look at how TV has to ramp up the terror to keep us hooked
rom Murder
House to Roanoke, we have always looked forward to a new series of American Horror Story. Combining thrilling stories and a brilliant cast with a big dose of shock horror, we’ve revelled in the frisson of fear we got from everything from Lady Gaga’s blood-sucking antics to Twisty the Clown beating picnickers to death with juggling clubs. But things changed with last year’s Cult.
While a lot of the fear generated came from the show’s premise of Donald Trump being elected and how that allowed the rise of anti-social behaviour (hello, real-life American horror story), some scenes went beyond even what we’d come to expect from the grisly show. As well as a gang of killer clowns hacking up Emma Roberts’ news reporter, a scene in which Evan Peters’ cult leader encouraged his grim gang to take turns shooting nails into someone took things to a new level.
Something about this deliberate and prolonged cruelty made us feel a bit, well, sick, but it seems symptomatic of a growing trend towards portraying a level of violence and horror that wouldn’t have made it onto screens a few years ago.
UPPING THE STAKES
TV and film have steadily become more stomach-churning. Films such as the Saw franchise and Hostel incarnations invigorated a new “torture porn” genre, taking violence to extreme new levels and pushing the limits of what we could endure in the name of entertainment. Similarly, in 2009, The Human Centipede hit headlines for what was seen as its complete absence of desire for any other emotional response than to have us throwing up into our popcorn buckets. Two of the most popular TV shows of recent times are The Walking Dead and Game Of Thrones. What do they have in common? They both need an “adult content” klaxon before our screens are filled with decaying zombies chomping on heads and dragons incinerating hapless farmhands. But it isn’t the fantasy horrors that linger in the mind, but the very human
cruelty. Rick and co have come up against as many terrifying people as they have undead – Glen’s demise on the end of Negan’s baseball bat affected us way more than any number of flesh-chowing zombies. And it was Joffrey’s casual cruelty, such as shooting a woman with a crossbow, and the sheer delight Ramsay Bolton took in hunting women with dogs that made our flesh crawl. Still, we tune in in our millions, seemingly immune to what is flashing in front of our eyes. But, if we have become desensitised to this level of horror, where do we go next?
Doing it Differently
The answer seems to be back to the good old days of psychological, rather than physical, terror. As grim as it is to watch Jigsaw’s games with chainsaws and hypodermic needles, they don’t provide the sorts of scares that have us jumping in our seats. So, filmmakers are becoming less visceral and more inventive. One of the standout hits of last year was
Get Out, and although there was the odd moment of violence, most of the horror took place inside Daniel Kaluuya’s – and our – minds. It was the creeping dread of being completely under Missy’s hypnotic spell (quite literally), aware of what was happening and unable to do anything about it, that gave us the shudders. This year saw another knockout horror film in A Quiet Place. Again, the sheer terror of knowing just making a noise would see unearthly creature swoop down and devour you had us absolutely terrified in a way that Hostel and the like could only dream of.
Maybe AHS: Apocalypse, a mash-up of the Murder
House and Coven seasons, will dispense with the kind of disturbing ultra-violence seen in Cult, and give us back some wince-inducing but less cold-blooded shocks. We hope so. n Lisa Howells