On Modern American Horror

The Three Faces of Modern American Horror – A Reflection on Horror

 We have entered the spooky month of October and, to celebrate this scary season, I would like to reflect on the current state of the genre of cinematic horror. More specifically, I would like to reflect on Modern American Horror and its recent tendencies. Horror is, in my opinion, one of the most fascinating genres of cinema and this is because it’s the genre that reflects most directly the concerns of people in a determined time and culture. An example of this is the dominance of horror films in the ’50s and '60s that dealt, one way or the other, with issues related to the nuclear threat and the Red Scare, both associated with the Cold War – examples of this are The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Tarantula (1955), both tapping into the general paranoia of American society of the period. Horror films tap directly into people’s fears and that’s why they are so effective and interesting. In this sense, I want to look at modern horror films and try to understand how they reflect the anxieties of modern American society.

 But first, let’s start a bit further away in time. At the beginning of the 21^st Century, there was a change in the American horror genre. While the last two decades or so of the 20^th Century were dominated by slasher films – such as Halloween (1978), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), and Scream (1996) – there was a sudden shift in the genre. Suddenly, the genre was dominated by zombie films and torture porn horrors. This sudden shift reflected a sudden change in America’s fears, which was triggered by one event that shook the country to its core – 9/11. All these films deal with fears related to terrorism, the loss of the homeland as a safe place, and a growing distrust of anything foreign. Because of this, horror films started presenting characteristics such as deranged terrorists and extreme gore – characteristics present in films like Saw (2004), Hostel (2005), and Dawn of the Dead (2004).

 However, American society has changed in the meantime, with new events creating new anxieties. Intensified racial and class tensions, the War in the Middle East, Climate Change, immigration issues, gun control issues, etc. – these are new anxieties that dominate American society today and, therefore, modern horror has new tendencies. The genre has moved away from a dominance of an almost senseless extreme gore and moved into a more psychological horror, where this gore isn’t as central or is used for different purposes. Instead of themes of invasion and grotesque evil, Modern American Horror is dominated by themes related to isolation, racism, and emotional imbalance. Through these tendencies, I have divided the current state of American horror into three different categories that reflect American culture in different ways. I have done that by focusing on the filmography of three modern horror filmmakers, each representing a different tendency of modern horror. These tendencies are: Emotional Horror – which is represented by Ari Aster, director of Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019) – Isolation Horror – which is represented by Robert Eggers, director of The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019) – and Social Horror – which is represented by Jordan Peele, director of Get Out (2017) and Us (2019). They are the three faces of Modern American Horror, as in my opinion they are the most innovative American horror directors of our time, and I will explore what are the themes that each director explores in their films and how they reflect modern anxieties, in a more or less general way.

 Starting with the face of Emotional Horror, Ari Aster’s films are dominated by one thing – a serious emotional distress that generates horrifying situations and a descent into madness. He mixes disturbing imagery with an emotional power, making his films more powerful because of that. Because of this, Ari Aster’s horror – which is one of an emotional nature – is mixed with an unusual amount of drama. The gore and disturbance created by it aren’t central to the disturbing nature of his films – what is central is the emotions exuded by the characters that intervene in the story, creating a different distress in us as we witness the horror of his films unfold, unlike other horror films. In Hereditary, we follow a family dealing with the emotional baggage inherited after the death of the family’s matriarch, while, in Midsommar, we follow a young woman dealing with her grief after an enormous tragedy afflicts her family, all while also dealing with a dysfunctional relationship with her boyfriend. Both films are almost dramas with horror elements that invade the genre and create a disturbance in us through that – in Hereditary, supernatural horror elements invade a story that could be a traditional family drama, while, in Midsommar, pagan horror elements invade what could have been a traditional romantic drama. This is not only a symptom of genre fluidity that is pervasive in modern films, but it also is a reflection of the emotional imbalances in modern America, be it in family relationships or romantic relationships. They reflect a malfunction in modern relationships, a certain isolation and the yearning for a connection – in both films the character search for something that will give them comfort as they lack that in their own family and relationships. His characters are grief-stricken and searching for a connection, holding in us great emotional power and empathy, and it’s this emotional dimension in his films that leads me to label them as “emotional horror” because the horror in them lies precisely in the emotional disturbance of his characters. What his films reflect is the emotional horror lived by Americans every day. The grief present in his films reflect the grief felt by American society be it for people lost in the war, terrorist attacks, the opioid crisis, and other events. They show an emotional crisis of isolation in a digital age that afflicts America (and the world in general), reflecting existentialism and loneliness. It’s this isolation that leads me to the next face of Modern American Horror.

 Despite having seen only one of his films, it is possible to point out what is the theme that connects both films – a maddening and dreadful feeling of isolation. He puts his characters in an inescapable isolated environment and we witness their slow descent into madness. His horror comes from this isolation – but it’s a particular isolation. It’s an isolation where the characters themselves create the horror from their mind being driven into insanity. He envelops us in their environment masterfully and effectively strikes fear in our hearts by placing us in the same inescapable isolation as the characters. He analyses the growing distrust and paranoia that grows in his characters as they are driven more and more into madness from their isolated situation, cut off from the rest of the world. In the Witch, it’s almost as if we time travel into colonial New England, and we witness the psychological effect of an enormous fear for the unknown that surrounds a family, as tensions between family members grow. Even though I still haven’t seen The Lighthouse, it’s obvious that there is a similar theme to this in it, where we follow two lighthouse keepers on a remote island in the 1890s as their minds slowly break into spiraling hypnotic madness, as tensions and distrust between the two grow. They both portray people in isolation, with tensions between them in constant growth until those tensions reach a rupture. The fascinating thing about both films is how they reflect modern America – and they do this by telling stories set in the American past. In the past few years, America has moved more and more into an isolationist and nationalist stance in relation to the rest of the world. In a way, America is slowly cutting itself off from the outside world and growing more isolated, losing its hegemony in the world. At the same time as this happens, growing tensions are appearing in America – political distrust, racial distrust, xenophobic distrust. There is also a growing distrust of the general population of America of anything “too complicated to understand” - this is, technology and science. There is a growing movement of denialist and anti-science movements such as anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers, which stem from a self-imposed ignorance and a reactionary distrust. This isolation in itself creates new anxieties in American society, a fear of a societal descent into madness, and it’s precisely that that Robert Eggers’s films reflect – isolated people, fearful of the unknown, slowly descending into madness. But this national isolation isn’t the only thing that his films reflect. As mentioned before, Robert Eggers also reflects on emotional tensions between individuals. They reflect loneliness, social and emotional isolation, which afflicts many people nowadays almost like a plague. This is why I label his films as “isolation horror”. Isolation is his horror, and isolation is a mirror to an America growing more and more isolated, as society seems to be afflicted by crippling anxieties related to this isolation, which is reflected emotionally and socially. American isolation also translates itself into social tensions, which leads me to the third and final face of Modern American Horror.

 The aspect that permeates Jordan Peele’s films, which is done in a refreshingly innovating way, is a witty social commentary, melded with humor and eeriness. Through the use of horror, Peele is able to reflect the social tensions present in modern-day America, from racism to class tensions. Not only that, but he expresses an unapologetically black look at these issues that makes his films all the more effective and refreshing. His films are horror allegories of an America that have gone through 8 years through a false idea of color blindness – a liberal ideal that has only proven false with the rise of white supremacy and xenophobia in America – and an America that is seeing the gap between poor and wealthy growing wider by the day. They reflect growing tensions in a way that has never been seen before in the horror genre. In Get Out, we follow a young African American who visits his white girlfriend’s family and finds himself in the middle of a disturbing white supremacist conspiracy. With an unapologetically black view of the issue, he dissects the systematic racism present in America effectively, expressing in an unrelenting way the fears of African-Americans every day and portraying the growing racial tensions in America in a harrowing way. While Us is less about the black experience in the US, it portrays the class tensions and struggles in modern days through the story of a family terrorized by murderous doppelgängers. They both are intelligently constructed social allegories that use horror as a cloak to their social commentary, making it even more effective if that commentary had been used in any other genre. They are thought-provoking reflections on social issues that afflict America and, therefore, clear mirrors of its society. They reflect the many divisions and fissions in America as tensions rise. The social commentary is the core of his horror, and that’s why I label Peele’s horror as “social horror”. He brilliantly uses the genre to make the message he wants to convey much more intense, being a direct product of increasing social tensions inside the USA.

 Ari Aster, Robert Eggers, Jordan Peele. These are the three faces of Modern American Horror. Their masterpieces of horror reflect a modern America filled with inner imbalances and tensions. Emotional Horror, Isolation Horror, Social Horror. These are the three major tendencies of Modern American Horror reflected by their masterpieces. They portray different aspects of modern America and aren’t strictly used by these directors. Films like It Follows (2014) and Green Room (2015) can be included in the label of social horror, It Comes at Night (2017) can be included in the label of isolation horror and A Quiet Place (2018) can be included in the label of emotional horror, although not in the same way as these three directors explore each of these facets of modern horror.

 Horror is a fascinating genre. It taps directly into our fears. It reflects the fears of the culture that the filmmaker is in contact with, and so, it works as a barometer of the tensions present in it, and Ari Aster, Robert Eggers, and Jordan Peele’s filmography prove just that. They are the masterminds of the American horror of today, and they reveal to us the anxieties lived by us in these scary modern times.