The Fundamental Issues of Modern Horror Films
Adrenaline is a strange thing. It syncs your mind with your body in unusual ways and gets your heart beating like a gazelle. It makes us feel more alive than we do at any other time. Human beings shell out millions, if not billions, of dollars every year just to get their adrenaline pumping. We have amusement parks and haunted houses that people flock to because for some sick reason we like to scare ourselves silly. Movies have always cashed in on this craze too. Every year horror movies make millions of dollars for Hollywood, and that trend isn’t slowing down. But they’re not getting any better.
Before I get into this, let me explain my stance on horror movies. In short, I’m not crazy about them. On average I go to the movies upwards of 50 times a year. Maybe three of those times are to see a horror movie. The horror genre in general isn’t too interesting to me. It’s important that I establish this now, because a lot of what I’m going to discuss here is based in opinion.
To begin with, let’s take a look at some of the highest profile horror releases of the past year. The Conjuring 2, Don’t Breathe, The Purge: Election Year, Blair Witch, and Lights Out were all major releases that each received a massive marketing campaign. They all have flaws, with some having quite a few more than others (I’m looking at YOU, Blair Witch). Even newer releases, such as The Bye Bye Man, are more flawed than you typical summer action blockbuster. The thing is all of these movies share the same flaw; they value the concept more than the execution.
That’s not to say that all of these movies were poorly executed. Conjuring 2 was definitely a major improvement over the original, and Don’t Breath certainly received its fair share of acclaim when it was released. The rest of these were pretty much all duds. But their concepts were fantastic. A dystopian America where once a year people can legally forsake the law for 12 hours? That should be an amazing movie. A vengeful phantom haunts the lives of everyone that thinks about him? That should be terrifying. A murderous spirit appears every time you shut the lights off? The audience members should want every light in their house on all night long. So why are some of these movies so disappointing? The answer is actually quite simple, and it comes from before the movie is even given the green light.
There’s a certain formula when an idea for a movie is pitched to the people that matter. That pitch becomes, “here’s the concept, and it’s basically like X movie meets Y movie.” The titles of successful movies are usually substituted in for X and Y. For example, one could conceivably pitch the movie It Follows as a combination of The Terminator and Friday the 13th, because it features a girl that is relentlessly pursued by a seemingly unstoppable entity (like in The Terminator) after a sexual encounter (like Friday the 13th). From this point on the movie would be pushed by its concept. The marketing team pushes the concept in its advertisement campaign, rather than the plot. They explain the concept and finish by basically saying that you’ll need to see the movie for yourself just to find out what happens. But a lot of the time you don’t need to see it because the plot doesn’t stray far from the core concept. This is a fundamental issue with horror movies. They try to stretch a frightening and intriguing concept that is generally effective for 20 minutes out for the better part of two hours. Many of these movies become predictable well before the final act. Oftentimes they’ll try to throw in a deus ex machina to surprise the audience, but even these are becoming predictable. I can think of no better example than an occurrence that actually happened to me while seeing The Purge: Anarchy with some friends. This happened during the big action set piece at the end of the movie. SPOILERS.
Me: (jokingly, to a friend) I bet that guy from the first movie saves the day.
Friend: I didn’t see it.
*30 seconds pass, guy from the first movie shows up and saves the day*
Me: You’ve got to be f**king kidding me.
Audience members shouldn’t be able to do that. By all means, keep them guessing. But when the ending to the movie they’re watching has more to do with an earlier entry in the series, and the audience can figure that out before it happens, you’ve got some problems. The execution is lackluster. There are, in many of these cases, easy remedies to these issues.
The monster movies, such as Blair Witch and The Bye Bye Man, are easier to fix than the others. The first order of business is to make the monster the main character. In the past, films have gotten away with making the monster the least present character. But these were when those characters were more compelling. We know why Jason Voorhees is killing those campers. Comparatively, we know almost nothing about the Bye Bye Man. He’s allegedly a vengeful spirit and there’s some sort of story involving a train and his mutant dog thing that will most likely be explored more in an inevitable future installment. The most intriguing scene comes at the very beginning of the movie and follows a man, whom we later find out was a journalist, executing everyone that knew about the Bye Bye Man. It’s an exciting and suspenseful scene that fails to be outdone by the rest of the movie. It’s a scene that succinctly and expertly explains the concept without telling you what it is outright.
The Bye Bye Man himself makes very few appearances in this movie. At the movie’s best he can be creepy. At its worst, he’s downright comical. He never inspires the fear that similar characters in pop culture inspire. He never feels truly present until the final few scenes of the movie, in which he doesn’t really do anything. The main character just reacts to him, and therefore is not a compelling main character because all he does is react to those around him. And because the Bye Bye Man doesn’t really do anything throughout the movie, he’s not a compelling character either. The viewer is left just waiting for the inevitable events of the film to play out. A good movie doesn’t let you just wait for the end. It engages you all the way through. The same is true for Blair Witch, which is marred by a longstanding problem with horror movies.
People don’t go to movies to for spectacle. Spectacle is certainly part of the appeal with a lot of movies, but it’s not what draws an audience. People go to the movies for the characters, whether it be because the characters are from a prior work in the world of media ora beloved actor is portraying them doesn’t matter so much in the end. People remember characters for being compelling and well written. Think back to some of the most memorable characters in movies. Darth Vader in Star Wars. The Joker in The Dark Knight. Hans Gruber in Die Hard. HAL-9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Norman Bates in Psycho. The list goes on, and as you’ll notice, many of the most memorable characters in cinema are the villains of their respective pieces. That’s just how it happens. The villain is always more interesting than the hero, and there’s a very simple reason for that.
In most movies, and indeed in most stories in general, the hero is not an active character. At least not to begin with. Everything the character does is in reaction to the events occurring around him or her. Oftentimes, the character that sets these events in motion is the villain. The villain is the only one taking action and making plans from the very beginning of the story. Obviously, there are going to be exceptions, but this is a trend throughout much of modern storytelling. It’s part of what makes the hero a hero. If the villain didn’t take action initially the hero would remain whatever he or she was to begin with, be it a waitress or farmboy or what have you. The villain is the one that makes it possible for the hero to have a character arch. This is what’s referred to as the Hero’s Journey, a concept which Joseph Campbell introduced to the world and you should read about. However, recent horror movies have had some difficulty with this basic idea. Very few of them have compelling villains, which makes it extremely difficult for the hero to be compelling. Which, as we’ve already discussed, leads the audience to feel bored.
Of all of the movies listed here, The Purge series probably makes the most interesting case for not being boring (even if it’s still predictable) and having some sort of character development. That’s because it doesn’t identify any singular villain. In some cases the villain here could be identified as the powerful 1% of the population that use the purge to get rid of a large percentage of the lower class population. However, the main villain in these films is something I identify as PHB, or Primitive Human Behavior. People in this series commit horrible atrocities against each other for the basest of reasons. In the first film, the neighbors attack the POV family because they’re jealous of the wealth Ethan Hawke’s character has accumulated from selling advanced security systems throughout the neighborhood. The wealthy neighbors are jealous of a slightly wealthier family. That sounds like a horror movie in itself. While antagonists being jealous of the protagonists is nothing new, it is an intriguing approach to a horror movie. However, there is a bit of a disconnect from the audience. We see the neighbors as being wealthy in their own right and therefore can’t really get behind them attacking a family that has a little more money than everyone else. It’s not something that we the viewers can really pick up on because every other house in the neighborhood looks just as good as Ethan Hawke’s. They’re not the most compelling villains, but at least they tried.
The primary villains in the second movie are even more compelling in that they are similarly motivated by money, but it’s coming from a different place that expands and develops the lore of that world. The primary villains are paid off to capture people and bring them in to be hunted by upper class members of society. It’s an admittedly chilling twist, and I’ve always appreciated the political statements made by The Purge series. This second one earns bonus points with its protagonist as played by Frank Grillo. Grillo plays a cop that sets out on the night of the purge to kill the man responsible for the death of his son. Along the way he is faced with conflicts of his conscience by people in need. He is torn between helping them out and moving on so he can accomplish his goal. He’s a refreshing antihero in an era of cinema filled with heroes wearing capes and spandex.
The Purge series and the Conjuring movies have so far done a good job of staying away with the next issue with horror movies: invincible villains. I’d like to refer to an idea introduced by Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight: the idea of an unstoppable force meeting an unmovable object. It’s the idea of two evenly matched foes combating each other in various ways and neither party ever really comes out on top. It’s an idea of balance that applies to many stories of good vs. evil, including Star Wars, Die Hard, and pretty much every superhero movie of the past ten years. It’s a template that’s used by pretty much every movie series that never really wants to end. In small doses it’s a compelling concept that can play out in a wide variety of ways, but if it’s overdone audiences will grow exhausted from it. This is why there’s been so much fatigue for comic book movies in recent years. Audiences are tired of never-ending conflicts. Some stories need closure. There’s a similar problem with horror movies.
Horror movies aren’t plagued by the prospect of an unstoppable force meeting an unmovable object. Instead they’re faced with the problem meeting a very lightweight, highly movable object. There are a wealth of horror movies, such as The Bye Bye Man and Blair Witch, where the cast of characters is utterly helpless and the viewer is left with nothing to do but watch them get picked off one by one. Often times the only solution is something that’s so nonsensical that it doesn’t work and the characters still get killed, with each one biting it in an increasingly gruesome fashion. At a certain point it just becomes an expensive version of torture porn. More importantly, it’s lazy storytelling. The creator invents a force so powerful that no one can do anything about it. This creates a disconnect from the viewer. Why should the viewer feel anything for a character that nothing can be done to change? It’s the same reason why Superman isn’t the most compelling superhero.
The only way to stop the Bye Bye Man is to make sure there’s no one thinking about him. So, naturally, all the characters that are thinking about him have to stop. Unfortunately, as soon as you start thinking about him it’s impossible to stop. The only way to solve this problem is to kill everyone that knows his name. Similarly, the only way to survive the Blair Witch is to…stand in the corner and never face her? She kills you if you face her. I think it’s explained as some sort of sacrifice thing. I don’t get it either. I’m sure it makes sense to some people, but it’s just bad character design.
Let’s bring it all together with a look at Blair Witch:
Concept
A group of college-aged kids go into the forest where the legendary Blair Witch is said to reside. One of them has a film class, so she decides to bring along a bunch of camera equipment to film the adventure. And another one had an older sister that disappeared in this same forest 15 years ago (in The Blair Witch Project).
Execution: It’s the same basic concept as the first one, except now one of them has a dramatic purpose. I get that the first one really invented the found-footage style of films, but this one uses it too much to the point that it’s almost making the viewer nauseous. That creates another disconnect for the viewer. They won’t care about your movie if they literally can’t bear to watch it. The actors are talented, but they’re not really given much to work with. There are better horror scripts out there. The sound quality is pretty good. The howls of the witch before people start to disappear are genuinely unnerving.
Character Development
The story follows four college students. Two of them are a couple (Peter and Ashley), and the other two are on their way to becoming a couple (Lisa and James). Two locals who believe in the legend of the Blair Witch join them. The main four think the locals are crazy and don’t trust them. That’s pretty much it as far as character development goes. These characters are extremely shallow. They only make bad decisions and they deal with the consequences poorly. Obviously they all die, and the only one you’re sad to see go is Lisa because you realize the guy she liked had some pretty heavy baggage and she got roped into this because she wanted him to like her. I’m pretty sure that’s how it went. I fell asleep halfway through the movie. At that point the plot was over with and we had just moved on to killing everyone. The characters do try to take action at first, but only in a way that serves the plot in putting them in deeper trouble.
Unstoppable Villain
She’s unstoppable, that’s for sure. The most the characters can do is run away and even that’s just delaying the inevitable, considering it’s established early on that there’s no escape from this forest. Then, once they’re in her lair, the only way to survive is stand in the corner and not look at her when she comes through. Otherwise they’ll get killed. So yeah, pretty unstoppable.
I encourage you to take a look at every horror movie like this. Identify the concept, explore the characters, and determine the power of the villain. Is the concept interesting and executed well? Are the characters compelling? Can the villain be stopped? If you can answer “yes” to two out of three of these questions, you’ve got a decent to solid horror movie. Let’s do another one quickly. This time we’ll focus on It Follows.
Concept
A girl is relentlessly followed by a monster after having sex with a relative stranger. She learns the monster can take the shape of anyone and that the only way to pass it on is to have sex with someone else and hope they continue the chain.
Execution: It’s an interesting exploration into the world of casual sex and STD’s. Everything that happens makes sense given the context of the world that’s been created here. The style of cinematography keeps you on the lookout for the monster, because the music won’t always cue you into its presence. This movie doesn’t count on jump scares but rather slow buildups that lead to satisfying moments. It’s genuinely unnerving all the way through. It helps that the script is smart.
Character Development
All of the main characters have interesting quirks about them. Like most good stories, the juiciest parts of the plot lie in the subtext. That holds true here. Every character can visibly be seen working something out on their own. It helps that the friends of the main character, Jay, don’t really believe her when they hear about this monster. They all have their own reasons for helping her. One lusts after her, one’s her sister, one has a childhood crush on her, and Yara’s is reading Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot throughout the movie, which explains why she’s along for the ride. Add to this the fact that every character is seemingly neglected by their mothers and have absent (or dead) fathers, and you’ve got some multilayered, compelling characters. And one of the poor kids has to see his mom’s boob before he dies. That really makes you feel for him.
Unstoppable Villain
This movie still has a seemingly unstoppable villain, but that doesn’t stop the characters from actually trying to stop it. They might even manage to kill it, depending on whether or not you think the kid on the sidewalk at the end of the movie is some incarnation of the monster. This movie is similar to The Bye Bye Man in that the continued existence of the monster is ultimately left to the people. If people stop spreading the monster around and just accept their fate then the monster should eventually cease to exist. So this monster is theoretically stoppable but not realistically.
Lastly, I will address the one argument that I know some of you have been waiting to make throughout this entire read. That argument is: none of these movies are about people being haunted or hunted by monsters. Rather, they are about how people treat other people and how they’ll do anything to ensure their own survival, even if it brings about the death of someone else they know. That these are character studies meant to explore the limits of humanity. Here’s why that’s a bad argument: it applies to literally every genre of film. Every movie is about, or should be about, the characters. If horror movies were intended to be character studies then they would feature more interesting characters. Television is taking strides to remedy this.
For a long time The Walking Dead (being television’s most straightforward “horror” show) has focused on the conflicts between living humans rather than the impending threat of zombies, but even here character development takes a backseat to spectacle. But the format of television does allow for viewers to follow characters for years and connect with them on a deeper level. This is why fans of the show tend to have strong reactions when a beloved character dies. Movies aren’t afforded this luxury so they have to make sure they make the most of the time that is given to them. Many of them don’t, and that’s not just horror movies. But horror movies have the distinction of being almost regularly disappointing. I would like to stress here that there is a major difference between “bad” and “disappointing.”
I still have a lot of research (i.e. watching movies) to do on this subject, and I do expect to update this at some point in the future. Most of these films that I’ve discussed are just the major horror releases of the past few years. There are a number of independent horror films and horror subgenres that I still have to dive into. The issues I’ve discussed here are mainly in relation to the fundamentals of compelling storytelling that I just happened to think about while watching these horror movies. I encourage you to look for these same issues in other major genres of film as well. I do believe that most horror movies have a good concept. They have to. These are generally expensive movies and studios won’t invest in them unless they believe they’ll draw a crowd. Every movie, horror or otherwise, could be better. I’d just like to see the horror genre take more strides to be a place for quality stories as well as scare-fests.
Give us nightmares again.
