The monotonous nature of modern Hollywood horrors

After the release of evil dead rise, famous auteur Lee Cronin says to the entertainment platform Polygon that his relationship with his own family inspired him to think about the story of Evil Dead Rise. And, after the reception from the audience, it gets clearer that the Evil Dead franchise has yet not gotten its first bad film while continuing a legacy of forty years. 

But could we also ask how it has been possible for the franchise to continue its legacy where repeatedly one theme appeared in all the films from 1981, which is 'motherhood'? The answer to that question might take us to a whole new discussion!

The repetitive features in the modern Hollywood horrors

In an attempt to find out some of the key features in most of the modern Hollywood horrors, there emergence traits like jump scares, loud sounds, increasing use of CGI (Computer-generated Images) with its detachment from the content of the story, the predictable nature of the characters and many others. 

But, the aspect that comes before all others mentioned above is the lack of deeper themes connected to the problem of the internal logic of the plotline. When there is no particular purpose for the ghost in a horror story, a superficial purpose arises. Why a ghost in a story would appear behind the protagonist for no reason and then dissolves into the air when the ghost can remain invisible? As an example, the 2012 film 'The Woman in Black' can be mentioned. 

The same situation comes about considering unnecessary jump scares, loud noise, and propulsive music. Without getting the audience the chance to get into the story and only then slowly increasing the tension, the bombardment of the audience with loud noise and jump scares are used to instil fear into the audience's minds. It's not the case that jump scares or propulsive music cannot be used in film, but there must be a specific purpose. Otherwise, the more there are high-budget versions of villains sneaking behind the villain for no reason, the more we will get film scenes like 'The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It'. 

The aspect concerning the improper usage of CGI is another issue worthy of being discussed. Modern Hollywood films constantly deny that a piece of art can only pass the test of time and gets remembered in the cultural arena when the horror doesn't end in the theatre but stays with the people watching it. 

That is why all monsters share some common denominations in films like The Host or A Quiet Place. Which are the tendencies to create fear and general uneasiness. But the only thing missing is the connection of all these steps to the story's theme. 

Thus the difference becomes apparent when we see the nightmarish visual in the film 'The Ritual' where the monster called 'Jotun' naturally resembles the folklore in the film and how the audience connects with that. Despite all these objections, the question remains of how the modern Hollywood horrors arrive in this situation. 

Hollywood horrors before the 2000s  

From the beginning of the studio system in Hollywood in the 1920s, horror films have always been considered a source of mass entertainment. Still, there were examples like 'Frankenstein (1931)' which was not only a box office success but also a film representing the cultural situation of the West with the warning of over-dependence on science leading to the demise of human values. 

During the period of the Golden Age of Hollywood, apart from Alfred Hitchcock's films like 'Rebecca (1940), Rear Window (1955), Vertigo (1958), The Birds (1963), and Psycho (1960), the potentiality of the horror films was not that much explored in Hollywood studio system. 

From the second half of the 1960s, with the counter-culture movement in the West, the Hollywood studio system had to compete with the films made outside the film industry. British director Michael Powel's 'Peeping Tom (1960)', Roman Polansky's 'Repulsion (1965)' and 'Rosemary's Baby (1968)', Mario Bava's Black Sabbath trilogy are the perfect examples of that. 

Thus, from the late 1960s to the 1980s, Hollywood horrors flourished as never before. Some of the films made during this time are William Freidkin's 'The Exorcist (1973), Tode Hopper 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976), Richard Donner's 'The Omen (1976), and lastly Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shinning (1980). 

When the historical context behind so many memorable horror films made in such a short period is taken into account, then it becomes obvious that the fear of a nuclear war was paramount in that era when the cold war was at its peak and after the trauma of the Vietnam war and the 'Counter culture' movement in America, there was this hunger in the audience for the horror films. 

These films also bred another Genre in Hollywood called 'Body Horror'. There came films like Philip Kaufman's 'Invasion of the bodily snatcher (1978)' David Cronenberg's 'The Fly (1986), Videodrome (1983), and John Carpenter's 'The Thing (1982). 

With all these films, the horror of scientific advancement destroying the human essence, the fear of a totalitarian society where people will be a slave of technology, and also, rightly or wrongly, the concern of the West with its encounter with other cultures were expressed. 

There were the usage of visual effects and later CGI in those films too. But as those visual effects were not that technologically sound, the directors at that time relied primarily on the contents of the film, and only then was the addition of visual effects in connection to the story's content. That is why the visual effect of the alien in the film 'Alien (1979)', still haunts the audience of the unknown other-worldly creatures from a different planet. 

Hollywood horrors after the 2000s

From the late 1990s, the technological revolution's effect started becoming more and more paramount in the Hollywood film industry. With the emergence of CGI technology, the movie industry started to depend more on the visual effect in the cinema. 

But even at that time, when we look at films like the Batman trilogy, which Christopher Nolan directed, we see that although not horror films, there was the usage of CGI but with its combination with real-time shooting, which made the action scenes more engaging. 

Evaluating these aspects from the lens of horror films, we have to say that after the 2000s, with the rise of CGI, Hollywood horror became more prone to using 'carnival horror logic which means that the horror in the film doesn't have to be generated by any sort of profound relationship between the characters but the scares just need to happen frequently. These tendencies bred the over usage of jump scares, loud noise, and the ultimate function of transferring the audience from one fear to the next. 

Examples of these films might be The Nun (2018), the remake of Friday the 13th (2009), Godzilla (2014), and many others. In all these films, the visual effects are done by several visual artists. Thus in most cases, their design gets blended, and, in the end, the only thing that remains untouched is the motive behind the characters because those things were not the priority in the first place. 

The only light of hope is that there has been an increase in case of the appreciation of horror films in Hollywood for the last couple of years which was never before. For example, although being successful at the box office, films like 'The exorcist', 'The Shinning' and even 'Psycho' never gained a single award in any important category at the Oscars. 

During the last decade, we have seen director Gordon Peele get Oscar as the best director for his horror film 'Get Out (2014), which portrayed the modern situation of race in America. There are films that really address the psychological situation of the modern audience in Hollywood and still capture some of the content that has always been in the discourse of the West, like the way the concept of whether an individual has a personal choice or not has been portrayed in the film 'Hereditary (2018)'. 

So, it's up to the future to decide whether Hollywood horrors will be able to address the deepest aspects of human fear in the steamroller of technological advancement in the modern cinematic universe.     

ahnafshafee1234@gmail.com