Horror movies have become a booming industry. On Halloweekend, people everywhere are looking for their fix of fright. Some return to classic slashers like Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, or John Carpenter’s Halloween. Others turn to the more cutting edge, genre-pushing films like Antebellum, Midsommar, or Hereditary. Regardless, there is a cultural obsession with being scared, and it’s worth investigating why these stories are so popular.
Fr. Ronald Tacelli, S.J., is known by many as an Associate Professor in BC’s Philosophy Department. However, his students also know him as an aficionado of horror movies, frequently sharing recommendations with his class. The horror genre is vast and has its own subgenres (e.g. slasher, supernatural, psychological), so it can be hard to define the genre as a whole. As Fr. Tacelli puts it, a horror movie is any movie that “is supposed to give those who watch it a feeling of extreme fright.” I’ll be sticking mostly to those iconic slasher conventions that even those who aren’t familiar with the horror genre know about.
I argue that these movies are so compelling because they rely on a narrative framework found throughout history, namely morality plays and fairy tales. Most of these classic horror movies abide by a loose set of rules. Horror comedies like Scream and Cabin in the Woods are devoted to naming these rules and subverting them. Teens awaken a killer through some kind of rebellious act. The killer then strikes their victims while they are engaged in immoral activity, such as having premarital sex, drinking, doing drugs, or bullying. One teen is left, typically a girl who is virgin or pure in heart in some way, and she defeats the villain through cunning. This last survivor is called the “final girl.”
Here is where we can see why these classic movies can be so popular. For one thing, witnessing a menagerie of increasingly creative murders can be entertaining. Yet, there is something deeper at play. As Fr. Tacelli puts it, “most mainstream American and European horror movies are rooted in the presuppositions of Christian culture… These movies by and large presuppose a standard of “good” inspired by the religious origins of Western civilization; and the plot of these films puts that good in extreme danger, a danger posed by some evil force aimed directly against it.” The “good” in the classic slasher movies is embodied in the final girl, who exhibits pure moral choices. The impending threat of the killer on the virtuous survivor causes the tension of the movie. It’s okay for Michael Myers to kill the bully, and that death is a moment of entertaining catharsis, but that can’t be the whole movie. For Fr. Tacelli, “a movie consisting of people who are all utterly depraved gives us no one to care about” and therefore makes the movie turn stale.
This motif is not new. Grimm’s Fairy Tales follow the same formula of an evil force (usually a witch) exacting brutal punishment on those who misbehave. The morality plays, 15th century theatrical shows focusing on embodiments of vices and virtues, also rely on a narrative forcing characters to choose life through moral actions or death through immoral actions. Therefore, classic horror movies tap into a rich storytelling tradition that finds its roots in Christian thought.
Horror movies can still be compelling without following this tradition. For example, Tacelli finds that Japanese horror movies center around “a violent, chaotic, unstoppably destructive force unleashed upon a culture of formal politeness” characterized by dreadful helplessness. Or Get Out, which focuses less on moral rules and more on the surreal and horrific ends to which racism can lead . Yet, with even these exceptions, Tacelli comments that horror movies “frighten us by showing us vivid pictures of the way something good can be seduced, disfigured, or even destroyed by the forces of evil. But they also give us … a kind of hope that goodness has the power to struggle against evil.”
Horror movies are safe environments to experience fear. They are a communal experience, reveling in each other’s reactions. Underlying the whole experience, however, is the fulfilling sensation of watching the virtuous fight against overwhelming darkness.
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