Make a mental list of classic horror movies — of any decade.
What comes to mind? Psycho, The VVitch, Rosemary’s Baby, The Ring, Scream, It Follows, The Bababook, Hereditary, Alien, Get Out, Halloween, and Carrie are some of the ones that do for me.
Now think about what most of these—despite the wide range of subgenres they cover—have in common. The central characters in horror movies are almost always women.
Not only are the main characters in horror usually women—they are almost always girls coming of age, or mothers.
Why is it that, in the film world where men dominate most genres—whether deserving or not—that women are finally given center stage in horror?
Is it because we’ve been faced with centuries of being stereotyped as the weaker sex—always being in a prey fighting off the predator position? Is it because women are seen as having more to fear? Is it because we’re thought to be more intrinsically complex, facing deeper emotional turmoil? Is it because, with all the sh*t we go through, that we’re viewed more sympathetically by viewers than men are?
Take one of the horror movies you’ve conjured to mind that has a female lead and try to imagine the story being led by a male character instead. How would it change? Would it be less frightening? Would you feel less emotionally invested?
i. Don’t F*ck With Moms
Carrie, Goodnight Mommy, The Bababook, and Hereditary are just a few of many horror films that study complicated mothers.
Carrie tackles the horrors of coming-of-age without the support of a mother —while facing relentless shaming, abuse, and a toxic, fanatically religious mindset instead from her instead. Goodnight Mommy explores the fear of our ultimate protector, our mother, suddenly becoming unknown to us — and more broadly, the fear that our parents are not who we suspect them to be. The Babadook deals with the powerful and all-consuming effect that growing up with a single mother experiencing deep grief and depression can have on a child—and what happens when we feel that the one person we can trust and feel safe around is now a threat to us. Similarly, Hereditary delves into the impact that profound tragedy can have on a mother/child relationship and how irreparably damaging quieted resentment between a parent and child can be.
In all of these movies, instead of representing what we’ve come to expect from maternal figures—love, nurturing, and protection—these mothers become the source of danger to their children. These mothers shift from being the person that has given life to their child, to the person threatening to take it all away. They subvert traditional expectations of mothers and therefore are “dysfunctional.” These films featuring “dysfunctional mothers” give mothers the space to be imperfect—and challenge the pressure and guilt mothers deal with under the weight of crushing societal expectations. They also represent how often single mothers are demonized, and portray the deep turmoil a challenging maternal relationship can cause a child. On the flip-side, these movies can be seen as further stigmatizing women experiencing extreme mental stress—and implying that any mentally ill mother is crazy or hysterical. “Dysfunctional mother” movies explore what it’s like to deeply fear the one person we’re supposed to count on to protect us, but also pander to audiences’ fascination with mentally unstable women.
ii. The Universal Horror of Growing Up
Carrie, It Follows, Raw, and The VVitch are a few examples of horror movies (honorable mentions: Pan’s Labyrinth, Jennifer’s Body, Teeth) whose central character is a young woman coming of age. Not that puberty isn’t a deeply uncomfortable and confusing time for boys too, but there has always been greater stigma and shame forced upon girls at this stage in their lives around their bodies and their sexuality.
In Carrie, the downhill spiral begins when Carrie gets her period. Growing up with her aforementioned fanatically religious mother, Carrie has never learned what a period is — and is horrified at the sight of blood coming out of her. The other school girls mock Carrie for her obliviousness to menstruation, pelting her with tampons and humiliating her. After school that day, Carries mother tells her that menstruation is a result of sinful thoughts. Carrie is the poster child of what happens when girls aren’t educated and supported during this transformative time. Carrie’s struggle represents a bigger one of the shame and silence around menstruation that continues in many communities today.
Carrie, a woman scorned, develops telekinesis and ends up killing the near entirety of her school’s prom attendees. While it’s extreme, it’s still a metaphor for a radicalized woman, lashing out again the pain and humiliation that’s been wrongly forced upon her by her mother and her peers for her very normal coming-of-age experiences.
It Follows tells the story of a teenage girl, Jay, who is transmitted an entity through a sexual encounter — an entity that will follow her until it kills her. After it kills her, it will find the person who passed it to her, and then kill them, going back down the line to whoever started it. While some viewed this movie as being a metaphor for STIs and buying into the slasher movie trope of punishing sexually active teens—I think it’s much more a coming-of-age story and metaphor for sexual assault.
After the infamous sexual encounter—before being made aware of the entity now following her—Jay talks dreamily of how she used to fantasize about holding hands with a cute boy on a date. This jarring loss of innocence, a shattering of the romanticized notions that young girls and women often have about love and relationships—is a theme throughout the movie. Jay is suddenly forced to face a much darker reality—having to continually have sex to prolong the impending approach of the entity.
She becomes a vessel of sex—everything revolves around her continuing to use her body in a way she never intended to. Jay’s journey calls to mind what a survivor of sexual assault goes through during recovery—feeling that their body has been violated by an intruder, not being able to escape or forget what has happened no matter how far they run.
Raw tells the story of Justine, a mild-mannered vegetarian starting vet school. During a hazing ritual, she is forced to eat a raw rabbit’s kidney — and soon after, develops a taste for raw meat, and then, for human flesh.
As Justine’s cannibalistic cravings begin to consume her, her sexuality does too. Her desire for meat seems to be filled with just that — desire. Justine’s cannibalism is not just hunger: it’s lust and eroticism. Her taste for human flesh is tied to her development as a young woman. The girl we’ve seen so far as a “fly-under-the-radar” character becomes increasingly bold, powerful, and sexual.
Raw is one big, wild metaphor for a young woman coming to terms with her sexuality, and how out of control that can feel — as we try to understand, explore, and often repress our urges. Equating Justine’s sexuality with something as grotesque as cannibalism is an insightful way to depict how often sexually emboldened young women are made to think that their desires are dirty and shameful.
The VVitch follows a Puritan family living on an isolated farm by the woods. One day, the eldest daughter, Thomasin, is playing with the family’s baby, when it abruptly disappears — being revealed (to the audience only), that the baby has been stolen by a witch who lives in the woods. The family’s already bleak lives begin to unravel from here, and they grow steadily suspicious of Thomasin, who spends the movie having to bear the brunt of her family’s accusations about the evil that has permeated their lives.
Thomasin is the portrait of every girl and young woman who has had to carry the weight on their shoulders of parents who favor their male siblings over them, and who are so uncomfortable with their daughters growing up and becoming powerful and desirable—that they demonize them.
So, what would these movies be like if they featured a young man coming of age instead of a young woman?
Take Carrie—the mother/child dynamic would have taken on a whole different nature, and of course the whole period scene wouldn’t have happened, making the presence of blood at the end of the movie much less significant and effective. And imagine it was a man who killed everyone at his prom. I can’t speak to how this would’ve been received in the 70’s, but in today’s climate—with so much fear around mass shootings and almost all of them being committed by men—it’s unlikely that if Carrie’s character were played by a man, that he would’ve remained the true victim of the movie.
While It Follows would probably still be chilling if it featured a young man as the main character, the deeper themes of sexual assault are less likely to have emerged—given the difference in how many men versus women are victims of sexual assault in their lifetime.
If Raw were to follow the same storyline, but feature a young man instead of a woman—while the visuals and script surely would’ve remained compelling, it’s hard to imagine that the movie would’ve been as thematically thought-provoking (given that we tend to associate men more with aggression and barbarianism anyway).
And of course the plot of The VVitch hinges on having a female character—because of the time period, the history of the witch trials, and the way the conservative, religious ideals of the Puritan society viewed women.
The more I examine the experiences of these four young women: Carrie, Jay, Justine, and Thomasin, and these four mothers: Amelia, Margaret, Mutter, and Annie—the more fascinated by and appreciative I am of women in horror. But also—the more curious I am to see high quality horror films that DO feature complex and sympathetic male protagonists (Chris from Get Out is the only one I can think of in recent years), and horror movies that feature men in roles we would typically see women in.
