The Twilight Zone (1959-64) is not only one of the most acclaimed TV series but also one of the most influential on artists of all kinds, but especially on the creators of horror. The list below identifies five episodes that in my view powerfully shaped some of our best modern horror films. There are undoubtedly more, but this is a beginning.
George A. Romero’s 1978 film Martin stands as a brilliant early example of the metafictional film. The rise of the metafictional film is perhaps the most notable innovation within postmodern film, acknowledging itself as a film, accepting that it is a work of fiction, and making this an aspect of the plot. This can be brought about in a myriad of ways: characters addressing the camera and speaking to the audience, characters acknowledging cliches of the genre, as well as the insertion of the film process itself into the film.
The most popular metafictional films are often reactionary in nature, parodying a modern trend of filmmaking and exploring its shortcomings and repetitive structures. This is why so many metafictional films come out either when a genre is at its height, as in the case of Deadpool (2016) or Wayne’s World (1992), the former parodying the modern world-building superhero epic and the latter parodying the shoehorning of sketch comedy characters into a feature length cinematic world. Others, like Scream, come at a time when a genre or subgenre has reached something of a low point, as was happening in 1996 when the only slashers were either franchise sequels of diminishing quality and direct-to-video shlock. These metafictional films act almost like a friend sitting next to you in the theater, questioning the logic of what’s onscreen and saying things like, “haven’t we seen all this before?”
The temptation with meta-horror films is to assign a starting point- which was the first? Scream is commonly given the credit for starting the trend in mainstream cinema, while films like There’s Nothing Out There (1991) and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) are often cited as predecessors to Scream’s particular brand of metafiction. Additionally, one can point to 1980s classics like Friday The 13th Part 6: Jason Lives (1986) and Fright Night (1985) as paving the way for Scream by embracing and subverting horror tropes. One pivotal film that is often left out of the conversation, however, is George Romero’s classic 1978 vampire film Martin.
David Bruckner’s The Ritual is a wonderful film, which I review here, and which combines rich allusions to other horror films while also doing something quite distinctive. In my review, I mention some of the more obvious references of the film, but here’s a less obvious one: Karyn Kusama’s 2015 film, The Invitation.
The Doll, which was released in December 2017, is the second horror film written and directed by Susannah O’Brien, president of Sahara Vision Productions. O’Brien’s first horror film, Encounter, was released in May 2016, and she has a third film, Hallucinogen, due for release imminently.
The Doll is set in motion when two men, Andy (Anthony Del Negro) and his roommate Chris (Christopher Lenk) order a Russian escort from a distinctly shady website. This brilliant maneuver is supposed to make Andy’s girlfriend Shannon (Isabella Racco) jealous so she’ll come back to him. (The fact that Shannon walked out on Andy because he was making out with two women in their pool doesn’t seem to occur to Andy and Chris, who are immediately revealed as not the smartest tools in the toolbox.) Anyway, the Russian woman knocks at the door and Chris and Andy are suitably impressed by the looks of Natasha, played by the so-called “human Barbie,” Valeria Lukyano. Natasha doesn’t just look like a Barbie, she acts like one too, engaging in strictly minimal communication. And even though they supposedly think she is an actual human, Chris and Andy treat Natasha disconcertingly like a doll. “Where shall we put her?” asks Andy. And they proceed to put her in the attic–over and over. Happily (for this viewer at least), Natasha may not talk much, but she is handy with a knife. The plot thus follows her killing spree (which she engages in for reasons which are entirely obscure), intertwined with the much less interesting drama of Andy and Shannon’s love life.
With his classic suspense film Halloween from 1978, John Carpenter launched the slasher subgenre into the mainstream. The low-budget horror picture introduced iconic Michael Myers as an almost otherworldly force of evil, stalking and killing babysitters in otherwise peaceful Haddonfield. It featured a bare-bones plot, a simple, haunting musical score composed by Carpenter himself, some truly nerve-wracking editing and cinematography, and it spawned a deluge of sequels, prequels, rip-offs, and homages. There’d be no Scream films without Halloween, no Friday the 13th franchise, no “rules for surviving a horror film.” Cinema—suspense and horror cinema in particular—would be a lot poorer without Mr. Carpenter’s massive influence.
Halloween is now hailed as a masterpiece of horror, consistently showing up on “Best Horror Films” lists, but it has also sparked controversy over alleged misogyny and sadism. In this film, some critics argued, young women are punished for having premarital sex—all but the chaste “Final Girl.” Michael Myers, they claimed, was an agent of conservative morality, and viewers indulged misogynistic, sadistic pleasures by identifying with him. But that approach is misguided. Myers is an agent of pure, anti-social evil, and the characters who are killed are the ones who fail to be vigilant. The film does not invite us to identify with Myers—it invites us to identify with his victims. The pleasure of watching Halloween is the peculiar pleasure of vicarious immersion into a world torn apart by horror.
I spoke to Mr. Carpenter as research for my book, and the rest of this blog post is a transcription of that conversation.
taking horror seriously so you don't have to
