From societal issues to internal psychological havoc, horror has historically painted our micro and macro humanistic torments on the big screen. It creates new thruways for an alternative method of confrontation with what troubles us. However, there’s a particularly sinister and damaging emotion that each and every one of us likely has to meet with at some point in our life: grief. And grief hasn’t always been effectively depicted in film. There are tremendously individualized intricacies associated with grief that make it difficult to depict the introspective experience of grief rather than a voyeuristic expression. However, the horror genre is certainly one that has the capability to do so. While the complexities of grief stray far outside of fear, there are plenty who argue that horror should be defined by much more than how much it scares viewers.
Horror has, for decades, meticulously dissected psychological and social issues; grief is no exception to the list of psychosocial mysteries that are widely experienced yet universally misunderstood. So utilizing this new wave of interest in deeper analytical themes within horror, how can we better put grief as it is represented in horror under the microscope?
Perhaps with a little more sensibility and grace than Herbert West
What is Grief?
Well to start, what are some universal qualities that can be attributed to grief? I know, ‘But you said it’s individualized!’ True. Grief doesn’t have a stable set of details that are consistent from person to person. Grief is vague; conceptualizing it requires a loose set of rules for what it looks like or does to you. In that sense it’s tailor-made, perfectly sculpted to hurt you in whichever way is best. Painting the particular personal manifestation that fits our protagonist doesn’t do justice to the viewers experiencing their own demons: relatability is lost and hopes of resonating with the character’s pain is reduced to sympathy. Our task in cinema is to figure out how to create something that can be representative of the fear, anxiety, and dread that grief brings without breaking the tether that can immerse viewers.
Grief and Horror
Perhaps one commonality of the genre can be just the thing to do this: monsters. But before we can rent out a room in our haunted house, the characteristics of grief must be fitted to the components of what makes a monster.
Luckily, Noël Carroll has already provided a beautiful elaboration for the criteria of a monster in The Philosophy of Horror[1]. The most important details are that monsters are indescribable, inconceivable, and mixed with what is normally distinct. He goes on to cite Stephen King’s It as an example. King’s monster, an indescribable shapeshifter, has some interesting characteristics for the purpose of personifying grief. A beast with multiplicity, it tailors itself to whoever it preys on by using their trauma against them. Sounds a lot like what I described earlier. The main issue is that those fears are specific to the characters. Pennywise feeds on specific memories that left an impression of terror on the characters as children. It’s often seen taking the form of pop horror icons such as the werewolf or mummy, figures that are now so associated with media that they’ve lost any attribution to being inhabitants of an imaginative augmentation of reality. This is where the terror Pennywise creates fails to harmonize with that of grief. Most viewers are left unable to relate the scares and atmospheric dread in the movie to their own experiences.
Beep beep Richie, nobody’s afraid of werewolves in letterman jackets anymore
However this means that there are certainly some applicable features already present in film, right? I would say so, but filmmakers haven’t quite seemed to hit that sweet spot; none of the examples that involve an abstraction of grief have pulled off the complete package of characteristics that are required to craft a masterpiece that might truly establish grief horror as a subgenre.
It Follows
I propose looking at another shapeshifting “It,” the monster of endless pursuit from David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows (2014). It’s an entity that can shape itself however it wants, appearing anywhere from sublimely horrific to discreetly camouflaged. Since it can appear so typical as to go unnoticed by its victim, it’s able to fully and effectively blend itself with what is distinctly normal. That two-pronged threat is under the same category of grief: something so ambiguous it can immobilize us with a terrible visage, or be so ingrained into what’s experienced every day that we’re in its grasp before we can act. “It” ingeniously combines an aggressive evocation of primal fight-or-flight fear with the more psychological effect of paranoia, which slowly erodes our psyche.
Left: Jay’s friend Yara, as the monster approaches in its terrifying “Tall Man” form.
Right: The monster now appearing as Yara to casually approach an unsuspecting Jay.
Mitchell’s iteration of the “It” monster effectively translates the more overarching parts of grief without filtering them down to the individualized level of his characters. This, coupled with the characters’ constant experiences of nostalgia, all within a setting that’s exponentially distorted by the mise-en-scène, creates a foggy, yet oddly familiar atmosphere (the use of the setting as well as the background of several shots can easily take up its own post: this article provides some elaboration). It’s a mirroring of the way grief makes us feel lost, disoriented, and yearning for a time gone by when we still felt grounded and connected with the world. Where the analogy stutters is in the consequence of allowing the monster to finally catch you. You die. You become so exhausted and lose any hope of escape, so you give up and allow yourself to be gruesomely mangled. It’s not a bad parallel; grief certainly whittles you down until you can’t fight it anymore. What’s missing are the consuming qualities that creep into your mind and start shifting around the wires. The anxiety and paranoia are there, but on top of that should be some neurotic irrationality. Aside from some bad decisions, there isn’t a proper representation in It Follows of the disintegration of the characters’ actions and thoughts.
The Babadook
So let’s take a look at Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014). Popularly considered a fantastic addition to the horror genre, it’s widely acclaimed for the ways it so accurately addresses grief on the big screen. Except it kind of doesn’t. Kent really hit the mark on some of the key aspects, but there are other pieces to the puzzle that seemed to have gotten lost. There is however, an absolutely vital development in the character of Amelia. Over the course of the film, she turns away from confronting her grief, allowing the titular Babadook to consume her, shaping her personality and behavior. Her disorientation and confusion with what’s happening to her and her son grows, withering her affect as the stressors around her inhibit her ability to sleep. This is precisely how grief operates: turning away and leaving it unaddressed only tightens its grip. Much like the Babadook, it always stays with you and lurks in the corners of your thoughts, waiting for when you’re most vulnerable to its torture. Kent’s major “miss,” though, is in how Amelia changes. She becomes aggressive, hateful, and eventually violent as it is apparent that the Babadook has taken her over. If the monster itself is a symbol of grief, Kent has grossly misrepresented it with a dangerous use of hyperbole to heighten the tension and drama of the film’s climax.
Amelia overcome by rage
Hostility is common in those losing their battle with grief, but the degree to which Amelia starts lashing out isn’t even uncommon: it’s downright rare to the point of being anomalous, and reinforces the stigma that someone who is emotionally struggling is dangerous. Amelia is an overwhelmingly empowering character who should serve as an inspiration to those who feel they’re losing the fight with their demons — even if they’re of a demographic supposed to be fragile or incapable by societal stigmas and stereotypes. It’s an important subversion of cinematic patterns that I was disappointed to see somewhat spoiled by using malevolent irrationality in place of one more fitting to the neuroses of grief. The symbolism for something more commonly linked with self-destructive behavior is crashed by outward violence, and there’s damage to the potential it has to reach viewers that are looking for something to resonate with their struggle. The Babadook ends up effectively hitting only some of the right notes, ultimately falling short of tying everything together.
Hope is not lost. There continues to be an influx of horror films that find acclaim while touching on our subject of grief. If there continues to be an interest in the subgenre, we can begin to tie together the successes of not just It Follows and The Babadook, but hopefully many more works to come. Applying what we know about the grief that almost all of us must combat at one point in life, horror film contains an enormous potential to help us work out the range of difficulties in human life. Being able to criticize society and confront hardship while getting the shit scared out of you, well, that rules.
1 Carroll, Noël. The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart. Routledge, 1990.
Steve Covitz has been a persistently devoted fan of horror for over 20 years, since the ripe old age of five. He is largely interested in all discussion pertaining to genre, particularly with how films are attributed to horror and its sub-genres. Intrigued by psychological themes and commentary, he has a special interest in the slow-paced and harshly bleak story progression in Asian horror cinema. He is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Nursing at Stony Brook University in New York.
Related: Our podcast on grief in Pet Sematary (1989) and posts on grief in Hereditary and grief in folk horror, specifically Wake Wood and The Other Side of the Door.
It Follows is streaming on Amazon:
As is The Babadook
