Jen Gerson's Halloween Confession: Horror is the last hope for cinema
Jen Gerson's Halloween Confession: Horror is the last hope for cinema
As long as nobody takes horror too seriously, it will remain a genre in which filmmakers can take risks.
Normally we at The Line have to write about a lot of really serious, grim stuff. But we also like to have some fun. In recent weeks, both Line editors realized they were planning to write about horror films. So we decided to save our columns and turn them into a Halloween double-feature. So grab your popcorn, pour a tall glass of Coke and settle in for a brief break from the news. Happy Halloween!
Up now: Jen Gerson. Check out Matt Gurney’s offering for the double-feature here.
By: Jen Gerson
I don't know if this is a sign of cultural malaise, or of my own pending entry into the realms of the middle aged, but it is now very rare that I actually look forward to watching a movie.
This was not always the case.
It wasn’t all that long ago that, being old enough to remember these things, that I’d look up the movie theatre listings and find at least one film that I would be excited to watch. I love the theatre; a giant Coke, popcorn slathered with salt-and-vinegar powder, the lights dimming, and two hours of just blissful release from whatever petty nonsense is consuming my brain.
But lately, heck for the last several years, it feels there just hasn't been enough worth watching at the local Cineplex to be worth the effort.
I mean, let's look at this week's offerings.
Ticket to Paradise? Surely, I'm not that old yet. Don't Worry Darling? Florence Pugh, but, honestly, I'll catch it on a streaming service, probably on my phone. The Woman King? Could be good. Till? Seems Vitally Important and, I'm sorry, I just haven't been able to watch anything that involves child murder since I had my kids.
So what else we got? Call Jane? Triangle of Sadness? Amsterdam? The Bad Guys?
I haven’t even heard of these films.
Every week, I would happily escape into Movieland, but every week feels just like this; a few films that seem interesting, but just not interesting enough.
As has been noted elsewhere, the most popular films are now overwhelmingly remakes, soft reboots, sequels, or bloated extensions of now soulless corporate franchises: Marvel, Star Wars, DC, now Tolkien. Much has already been written on what this says about the state of our culture; that there is such a dearth of solid, original content that the increasingly monopolistic entertainment corporations are now simply re-mixing nostalgia. Dumbed-down versions of some dead man’s genius. It’s as if we're no longer capable of creating truly interesting and compelling art anymore.
Yes, yes, I know that many film nerds will take umbrage at this analysis: What about Amazing Indy ArtHouse Film Shot on a Digital Hasselblad? Or that Urgently Important Film Filled with Necessary Commentary About the State of Our Society That Won an Oscar. Fine, fine. I’m no connoisseur. I’m just an ordinary suburban mom. I'll happily concede that there have probably been lots of genuinely great and original films released over the past decade, it's just that none of them have been able to make me care about them. So many modern movies now come across as too pious, too grim, or too self-indulgent.
I can't be the only one to feel this way.
To get a bead on the sentiment, I checked out Rolling Stone's Top 50 Movies of the Past Decade; to be sure, there are some amazing flicks on it. Moonlight was stunning, I'm told. But if I'm being dead honest, while scrolling through, I couldn't help but spot a trend: I had not heard about most of these films, and of the films I had watched, I had forgotten they existed until I read the list.
Look at the same magazine's list of the top 35 of all time; only one has been made in the last decade. Avengers: Endgame, 2019. I don’t put a lot of faith that that one is going to stick around next to Casablanca for the next 50 years.
As for the state of the industry, a glance at Box Office Mojo was revealing. Let’s discount everything since 2019 — the pandemic obviously threw the industry into chaos, and it’s too soon to say whether it will recover. But check out the annual box office hauls over the last few decades. There was a surge starting around 1998, and that lasted until about 2009. But things got really slow after that. Before 2009, years in which the annual haul dropped year-over-year were rare. It only happened four times from 1977 to 2008. But since 2009, and excluding the pandemic years, the market has contracted as often as it’s grown — five out of the ten years have been losing ones for Hollywood.
And then look closer. Look at the top-grossing film in those 10 years. See what I mean?
We could blame the rise of streaming services for this, I suppose. So much filmmaking talent has been sapped by the big-money expansion of Disney+, Netflix, and Prime, seeking serialized drama and romance, that of course there just isn't the same kind of capital to be allocated to the quaint notion of a two-hour movie. In 10 years, wouldn't it be an ironic reversal if the A-list talent prioritizes original streaming series, while old-fashioned movies are relegated to a lesser form for the true auteur; the B-leagues, the place to break out of?
We are, indeed, in the golden age of streaming — or at least we were. Is it just me, or is even this field starting to feel cookie cutter and derivative?
Anyway, I'm not here solely to bemoan the state of current culture, per se. Because there is one genre that, I think, defies a bleak era in cinema.
It's horror.
After a brutal segue into pure gore a la the Saw series — a subgenre I happily avoided — horror films are absolutely killing it lately. Get Out and Us managed to pack deeply poignant social commentary into a film experience that didn't feel like force feeding children beans and broccoli. And then we have just about everything made by A24; Hereditary, Midsommar, The Green Knight (not technically horror, I guess?), X and Pearl. Not only are these films genuinely scary, they're also beautifully crafted, richly layered with foreshadowing and dense psychological subtext. It's as if horror remains the last refuge of creative liberation in a culture that otherwise feels increasingly puritanical, slave to focus groups and decision-by-committee. It’s a culture of creativity bound by an unhealthy dose of Won’t Somebody Think of the Shareholders? And What Will Twitter Think?
As long as nobody takes horror too seriously, it will remain a genre in which filmmakers can take risks.
A24, I will also note, is the film production company behind Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Lady Bird — so perhaps it's A24 that is the refuge. But it's horror that has put the independent company on the map, as it were.
Perhaps my opinion, my disillusionment, with modern film is a minority one. Perhaps it's just a figment of my age and stage of life. It's not as if I can often get out to movies that don't feature talking cars anymore, so I'm open to the possibility that parenthood has sapped the joy of film for me.
But if not, if you share my melancholy, might I recommend that you spend this Halloween Eve sitting down and watching a good horror flick. There are plenty of great new ones to choose.
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