“Everything is a Remix” and 90's Horror
Where does our creativity stem from? Is anything truly original? These are two questions Kirby Ferguson attempts to investigate and answer in his video essay, “Everything is a Remix.” Ferguson tells us how the musical group The Sugarhill Gang sampled the beat from Chic’s song Good Times before being sampled by dozens of other artists as time continued on before going on to show us how many similarities there are between every form of entertainment we enjoy. He argues that in today’s world, anybody can remix anything and post it directly to the Internet. No need for a distributor or any special tools, just a computer and internet connection. I believe everything has been remixed since the beginning of time.
Back in 1996, Dimension Films released Wes Craven’s Scream into cinemas during a quiet December weekend. The film was written by Kevin Williamson and is about a masked killer murdering teens at a local high school in a fictional town. The movie was critically lauded for breathing life into the dying horror genre at the time. Critics loved Williamson’s self-aware characters, intense chase scenes, and the who-dunnit mystery of who was doing the killing. The movie ended up being a financial success going on to become the highest grossing slasher film of all time ($173 million worldwide).
By 1997, another teen slasher was released, titled I Know What You Did Last Summer. This movie was also written by Kevin Williamson and also featured a masked killer murdering self-aware teens from a local high school of a fictional town, except this time the killer was getting revenge. In1998, a movie titled Urban Legend had been released. This movie also featured self-aware teens getting murdered by a masked killer except this time on a college campus. And by the year 2000, two sequels to the original Scream, a sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer, and a sequel to Urban Legend had all been released to lowering but somewhat successful box office returns. The costumes, screenplays and overall story continued to get worse with each film trying to recapture the magic of the original Scream. But when 2001 came along, the who-dunnit slasher movie was pretty much dead with the release of Valentine. A movie about a masked killer murdering an old group of high school friends one by one. The movie was both a financial and critical failure for the studio. What was once a fresh idea breathing new life into a genre had turned into the same tired old plot points and scares. The formula was even being spoofed by the films Scary Movie and I Know What You Did Last Friday the 13th both released in 2000. The horror genre was right back to where it started pre-Scream. But where exactly was that?
Before Ghostface was slicing and dicing through 90s grunge, Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees had been putting teens in their graves for years. Through the late 70s and all through the 80s, these were the faces of a couple of the biggest franchises in horror. Although being criticized for being stylistically similar to the works of Hitchcock and Brian de Palma, John Carpenter’s Halloween was released in 1978 and was instantly a hit with audiences sparking many sequels and copycat franchises to appear. Enter 1980’s Friday the 13th which was a direct result to the success of Halloween. Another tried and true slasher film, this time from the killer’s POV but even that was done first by Peeping Tom in 1960.
When the Jason’s and Michael’s of the horror genre became tired and boring, Ghostface brought a refreshing change of pace. When the Ghostface’s of the genre became a joke, the torture porn era of horror was born with the realse of Saw in 2004. But when that became stale, supernatural horror movies brought life back to the genre starting with Paranormal Activity largely. The genre is a never-ending loop of fresh ideas mixed with old ideas that eventually get remixed so often that they no longer seem fresh.
What all of these different eras within horror have in common is that they all borrow from the eras before them. The genre continues to build on itself, taking it to new and exciting places for audiences. Anything that someone creates, is created from things the creator knows. So therefore, everything being created is a remix. Where did the first horror movie ever made stem from? The idea probably borrowed elements from fables being shared since the dawn of time. Wouldn’t you consider that a remix?
