10 shades of scary – Weekend
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Horror films are a fluid and fluid category: the secret to the eternal life of horror is that every decade it reinvents itself anew. In the 21st century, screen horror has changed with the new era – and while mainstream examples of the genre continue to scare the old fashioned way with screamers and jumpskare, independent projects explore new types of human fear. On the example of 10 films, one can trace what contemporary author’s horror films appeal to.
fear of loneliness
“February”. Oz Perkins, 2015
The debut film of Oz Perkins, the son of the same Anthony Perkins from Psycho. Girls Rose and Kat live in a Catholic boarding school and are bored because their parents do not take them for the winter holidays. The first one thinks that she is pregnant, and the second has terrible dreams about mom and dad. And in the boarding school, apparently, an evil spirit settled. This story echoes the adventures of lonely Joan, who catches passing cars on a snowy road. Perkins from the very first film showed himself to be a skilled director – firstly, a couple of unexpected plot twists are hidden here, and secondly, the finale leaves the territory of the pure genre somewhere in the direction of Bergman. “February” is not just the name and month of the year, but also the emotional state of the heroines who desperately need the Other, but do not always find it. Among other representatives of the genre, “February” is distinguished by the fact that in the finale it makes you empathize with the killer, in whom we see, first of all, an unfortunate person.
fear of life after death
“Ghost Story”. David Lowry, 2017
Man K and woman M live in a cozy small house and plan their future lives. Joint life is overshadowed only by strange noises that are periodically heard at night. One day, K will die in a car accident and turn into a ghost – the most classic, with a sheet and slits for eyes. He will watch over M, who will survive the tragedy, find a new man and even move somewhere from home. But K cannot leave this place, no matter how hard he tries. Strictly speaking, Ghost Story is not exactly horror, but a melancholy supernatural drama about a deeply unhappy man who is stuck between life and death. Actually, this is the innovation of the film – the ghost here is not a monster, but the main character, a tragic character, despite the comically draped sheet.
fear of puberty
“Raw”. Julie Ducournot, 2016
Vegetarian Justine enters a veterinary school and eats raw rabbit meat at the initiation into students. And then it rolls downhill, starting to look eagerly in the direction of human flesh. Of course, all screen horror turns out to be a metaphor for puberty. Frenchwoman Julie Ducourneau made her debut with a terribly detailed coming-of-age novel – and for many, this film was too tough, the meat on the screen looks painfully naturalistic. Raw is a compelling successor to the so-called new French extreme, in which critics list anyone from Gaspard Noé to Claire Denis and Virginie Despantes, while Titan, Ducourtnot’s second film to look back on David Cronenberg’s body horrors, received ” Palme d’Or at Cannes 2021.
fear of inheritance
“Reincarnation”. Ari Aster, 2018
The death of an old woman shakes the family. Her adult daughter Annie, who has not communicated with her mother for a long time, falls into a crisis. And grandchildren – teenager Peter and a strange girl Charlie, grandmother’s favorite – find themselves in the center of terrible events. The debut film of Ari Astaire, one of the main “newcomers” of the last decade, deftly mixes the atmosphere of gothic horror, the details of a family drama and the pathos of an ancient Greek tragedy. “Reincarnation” frightens not only with terrible images and uncomfortable sound design, but also with the inevitability of horror, which is inherent in the genes of the main characters. Perhaps, before Astaire, only Roman Polanski succeeded in such art horrors.
relationship fear
“Solstice”. Ari Aster, 2019
Traumatized by the tragic death of her parents and sister, Dani, a student, is sent to a closed Swedish commune. She goes there with a guy and his friends, but instead of a boring anthropological expedition or a fun student action, she encounters the cruel rituals of local residents. In his second film, Astaire again dissects relationships – this time not familial, but romantic. To do this, the director chooses the shell of Scandinavian folk horror, and, unlike the gloomy “Reincarnation”, all the action takes place not in the shadows, but under the deceptively bright rays of the sun: the real horror is lurking in plain sight here. Solstice continued the tradition of exotic folk horror and almost immediately became a classic along with Robin Hardy’s classic The Wicker Man (1973). But the “folk” here turns out to be not an end in itself, but a spectacular canvas for an equally frightening psychological horror.
female fear
“Witch”. Robert Eggers, 2015
New England, first half of the 17th century. The Puritans expel William and his family from their settlement, who seem too proud to them. A man, his wife and four children end up on a farm next to a forest where something bad is going on. Soon, the newborn baby disappears without a trace, and William is sure that the evil witches and his daughter Thomasin are to blame for everything. The Witch is another bright horror debut of the 2010s. Its director, Robert Eggers, squeezed a simple but elegant story out of a whole layer of witchy and puritanical literature about how religious superstitions themselves nurtured sinful thoughts in girls. The Witch successfully fit into the trend of feminist horror and became the flagship of the genre update. A little later, Eggers dissects wounded masculinity in The Lighthouse (2019), which can be seen as the second part of the conceptual gender dilogy.
fear of loss of identity
“Away”. Jordan Peele, 2017
Black photographer Chris goes to meet the parents of his white girlfriend Rose. She assures that dad and mom are not rabid racists, but pleasant tolerant liberals. And yes, there is even a bit of truth in these words, but the trip will still turn into a real nightmare. Former comedian Jordan Peele’s political horror came out just in time for Donald Trump’s presidency, but Get Out’s virtues go beyond its sudden zeitgeist. The director tells an eternal story about how some trends replace others, and those who hold power in their hands are ready to do anything to keep it. “Get Out” makes you see enemies not only in conditional Republicans, but also in smiling Democrats. If earlier horror movies frightened us with conditional rednecks, then Peel suggests seeing enemies everywhere – regardless of political predilections. Especially in those who with a smile are trying to appropriate a foreign culture.
fear of sexuality
“It”. David Robert Mitchell, 2014
Strange things begin to happen to college student Jay after having sex with Hugh’s new boyfriend – wherever she goes, she is haunted by a figure that only she can see. Hugh admits that this bizarre curse is sexually transmitted, and he himself made love to her only to get rid of the otherworldly pursuer. David Robert Mitchell turned the classic slasher movie inside out and literalized the “sex kills” plot. Now there are no intermediary figures in the person of Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees – but the disturbing youth in the scenery of a quiet American suburb is even more frightening than the horrors of the 1980s. In many ways, just because the maniac is taken out of the brackets – and the heroes are pursued by a pure idea, Thanatos and Eros in one bottle.
fear of digital
“Webcam”. Daniel Goldhaber, 2018
Alice makes a living doing extraordinary webcam shows. In online sessions, for example, she very realistically imitates suicide in the frame. And she has her own rules – for example, no fake orgasms. But one day something terrible happens – Alice’s accounts are stolen by an unknown attacker, and soon it turns out that this is her digital double, who continues to perform in front of the webcam. The techno-thriller by Daniel Goldhaber re-actualizes the theme of doppelgangers, and the Dostoevsky-style plot plays with new colors in digital refraction.
fear of uncertainty
“Bastard”. Patrick Bryce, 2014
Videographer Aaron works on ads on the Internet. One day, his services are ordered by a certain Joseph, who lives in a hut in a deep forest. Aaron comes to visit him to film a man who allegedly suffers from an incurable disease. But everything will be much more confusing and scary. “Bastard” is very difficult to describe without spoilers: it’s a rather strange film with a foolish villain; in his role is Mark Duplass, an important figure in American mumblecore. Patrick Bryce’s film surprises with its intimacy, it is literally a film for two in the spirit of “My Dinner with Andre” by Louis Malle (1981), which stumbles upon the endless self-irony of the creators. To understand what is happening here (for starters, is it a comedy or a horror movie?), It does not work until the very end – and this is much more disturbing than if the most outright violence ruled the frame. The mockery of the viewer is a hallmark of The Bastard, which still remains a unique representative of the genre.
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