First published in Rue Morgue #39 May/June 2004
My friend Douglas Buck once said something that struck me as very profound. We were cruising the streets of Montreal in the summer, talking about horror movies (what do you know), and it came out at some point that our mutual attraction to the genre had to do with its proclivity to address some very unpopular truths. It seemed to us (and still does) that horror films are uniquely suited to bear those kinds of harsh truths that never make us feel very good, but are nevertheless there. We all know that people die, for example, or go insane or feel painfully, pitifully lonely, but to anatomize how this happens is something that is particularly suited to the horror film.
Anyway, it was something else that Doug said that got me thinking and eventually bringing the discussion into this column: he mentioned that horror films are also the place for the greatest lies. Man, isn’t that the truth.
In fact, horror films are most often understood by the general public – and even by some genre junkies – as especially fulfilling the role of tasteless, unintelligent entertainment. Horror movies in this sense not only do not get at any truth, they provide the opposite; crassly dumb escapism from any kind of insight, cultural or otherwise. Looking over the massive amount of junk that passes for a horror movie or a horror story or even a horror comic these days, it’s hard not to see that the nobility of the horror genre has been drowned in a tide of inane self-referencing pop trivia.
Of course, entertainment – and even mindless entertainment – can also be a good thing. Not every movie has to have a thesis on the possibility that we live in a cruel, nihilistic universe. Hell, bring on the popcorn and throw on a copy of Fright Night or Riki Oh, just two reasons why a lot of people – Doug and I included – love horror movies.
The point of contention is that the exception has become the rule. Once a bastion for new ideas and new ways of seeing things, the horror genre – in its infancy – managed to capture the burgeoning anxieties of an anxious age: the twentieth century. Throughout the past hundred years we’ve cavorted with the boogeyman in two world wars, witnessed the reality of biochemical terror, felt religious angst, succumbed to diseases of all kinds, discovered the inner monster of xenophobia, and realized that, despite our greatest efforts, death still triumphs. The horrors of the movie theatre, in contrast, have increasingly become the horrors of a good time had by all, like Universal’s Dawn of the Dead remake or Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, and I want to be perfectly clear in saying that I believe that fun, carefree horror movies have a cherished place in film history. It’s just that the genre’s ability to convey the harsh realities that other genres are unwilling or unable to address is, more often than not, lost in a shower of popcorn and candy confetti. It’s the subtle difference between the hint of social satire in George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, and the good time gangbusters of Universal’s remake.
Anyway, I do understand that some of you out there like watching horror movies strictly for the good time. That’s cool; I like that too. But you should never lose sight of the fact that horror has a unique advantage – extreme subject matter. As such, it has a piercing ability to gaze into the abyss and make the kinds of observations that are largely avoided by other filmmaking genres. And the one it reiterates most is the most unpopular truth of all: that we all must succumb to the great indignity of death.
Maybe not many people want to think about that when they go out for the weekend. And so horror films play with the idea, disguise it and render it impotent in the glare of a deliciously spooky good time. But the skeleton is still there, just underneath the simmering flesh. The question is: when you look, what are you seeing?