Steve Rose ruffled some feathers earlier this month when he proclaimed the emergence of a new genre in cinema: Post-Horror. This phenomenon, according to Rose, was marked by a new breed of horror films that shied away from the tired conventions that have come to define the genre: Gone were the cheap jump scares and gratuitous amounts of blood, in their place came social commentary and allegories for real world problems such as racism, grief and motherhood.
Horror fans, and anybody with a passing knowledge of film history, were quick to point out Rose’s new genre for what it really was: Nothing new. Horror has always had something to say about society and has never limited itself to purely scaring its audience with blood and gore. Who can forget the brilliant social commentary of the late, great George A. Romero who used his films to tackle subjects such as racism, consumerism, militarism and class inequalities? Romero was doing this as early as 1968 yet Rose wants us to pretend that this is a new development.
Rose may be on to something though, call it what you want but there is no denying that we are currently living through a golden age of horror. The last couple of years have given birth to a string of critically and commercially successful films that have challenged the idea that horror is nothing more than low-brow entrainment designed to appeal to our baser instincts (not that there isn’t a place for that type of film).
A new generation of film makers have been providing us with some of the best scares in years, not by reinventing the wheel, but by taking inspiration from some of the classics that defined the genre over thirty years ago.
Get Out was the surprise hit of the year. Turning over an impressive $252.4m at the box office on a budget of only $4.5m début director Jordan Peele’s brilliant satire of liberal values struck a chord with audiences across the country. Peele’s scary tale brought a breath of fresh air to the horror genre but it also brought to mind such classics as The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1977) with its similar themes about the loss of identity.
Jordan Peele © Vanity Fair
Jodan Peele himself has cited Ira Levin (author of Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives, both of which were turned in to critically acclaimed horrors in 1968 and 1975, respectively) as a major source of inspiration on Get Out: “I set myself the goal of doing a thriller in the mold of Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives, something with an overarching satirical commentary,” Peele told Andrew Chan in an interview with Criterion.
Another début feature to be included in Steve Rose’s canon of “post-horror” films was The Witch. The passion project of writer-director Robert Eggers The Witch was beloved by critics but didn’t go down as well with casual genre fans. The Witch was a prime example of slow-burn tension building that could only have been learned from the master himself, Stanley Kubrick.
Robert Eggers © Chicago Tribune
“The Shining is one of the few classic horror movies that always scared me and really always worked,” Eggers said in an interview with Slash Film. “When I first started making films, short films, it was a film that I watched a lot and tried to dissect until it wasn’t scary anymore. It took a lot of watchings to do do that. When I watch The Witch, sometimes I’m a little disgusted by how much of my film flagrantly reeks of The Shining.”
It should come as no surprise that The Witch isn’t the only film to be inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece. It Comes At Night is another film that exists in the shadow of the Overlook Hotel: “If you look at The Shining, for example, it’s so open to repeat viewings,” director Trey Edward Shults revealed to Entertainment Weekly. “You can always find new things. It’s about the unraveling of a family and the child’s experience of that. And this terrible outside force that tears everybody apart. Such a huge influence for me.”
It Comes At Night received a mixed reception upon its release earlier this year. As is so often the case with many of the films deemed “post-horror” by Rose it was lauded by critics while casual movie goers were less-than-impressed with its perceived lack of genuine scares. None-the-less It Comes At Night is a remarkable piece of cinema that owes a massive debt to those who came before it.
Trey Edward Shults © AZCentral
Those who saw It Comes At Night wouldn’t be amiss to draw comparisons between Shults’ tense thriller and George A. Romero’s original Night of the Living Dead (1968). Both films show us what happens when you lock a group of people in a house while an outside force besieges them from all sides. Neither Shults nor Romero spend too long focusing on the external threat, however, instead choosing to focus on the real horrors that happen inside.
Night of the Living Dead would go on to inspire countless film makers and give rise to a genre in-of-itself. Among those to be influenced by Romero’s classic was David Robert Mitchell, writer-director of It Follows, the 2014 chiller about a young girl who is stalked by a relentless attacker after contracting a sexually transmitted disease from a one night stand: “It’s a similar thing in the sense of being trapped, knowing that something is out there coming for you. You can try to run away, but at some point it will overwhelm you,” Mitchell told IndieWire. “You have to sleep, you have to rest; these things are always there. And that’s terrible.”
The creature from It Follows is eerily reminiscent of Romero’s zombies but it was far from the only film to inspire Mitchell. It Follows has been celebrated for its “throwback” aesthetic often cited as a trend-setter when it comes to the current crop of nostalgia-laden horror films. The film received positive reviews and has often been included in various lists of the top horror films of the 21st century.
David Robert Mitchell © Dread Central
Many people have noted similarities between the film and John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), everything from the synthesizer soundtrack to the suburban setting. It is not something Mitchell isn’t aware of: “I’m a huge fan of Carpenter; I’ve seen Halloween a million times, and I love his version of The Thing as well. I’ve definitely studied his framing and his blocking, his staging of actors; I’ve literally watched his movies with just an eye on his composition.”
But Mitchell refuses to let himself be defined by a single director or influence: “But there are many filmmakers I did that with, certainly Hitchcock and De Palma, so there is a genuine love there for that work. I was not necessarily framing shots thinking, “This is my Carpenter shot”—I don’t believe I’ve ever thought that.”
Despite being told that they are breaking new ground the current generation of horror film makers understand that they stand on the shoulders of giants. While their films might feel fresh to modern audiences and are deserving of all the praise they receive none of them are bringing anything to the horror genre that we haven’t seen before. Horror has always and will continue to be a smart genre with lots to say about the world around us.
As long as there are film makers with original ideas who understand their place in the history of horror there will always be great horror films. There is no need for a new label to easily categorize this generation of films. Let’s call them what they really are: Horror films.
The Cinema Punk 