By Keri O’Shea
Happy birthday, Brutal As Hell!
It’s hard to believe, but this week Brutal As Hell has just reached its fifth anniversary, and it’s a real privilege for me to say that I’m still around as we celebrate that little milestone. Whilst I haven’t been with the site since the very beginning, I’ve been hacking away here for most of that time, and I’ve seen the site go from strength to strength along the way; if you’ll excuse a bout of mutual back-slapping for a moment, we have an incredibly strong team, a group of writers who certainly don’t always agree with one another (which in my opinion is one of our biggest merits) but who are all equally passionate about horror and genre film, finding time around some very busy personal schedules to demonstrate that passion in a range of regular articles covering everything from widely-released cinema to underground comics, interviews to indie movies, editorials to irreverent transatlantic conversations. It’s all good. I could just hug you all. I’m not gonna, but I could.
We were wondering, though, how to mark this occasion at the site in a way which took into consideration the sheer range of films and developments in (for want of a better phrase) the horror scene since Brutal As Hell first kicked into gear at the beginning of 2009. We have a big team feature coming, as well as some individual pieces on some of the more notable trends and themes which we have noticed during this five-year period. This got me thinking about these notable trends and themes, and what – on a personal level – I consider most important out of these. I started noting a few things down. An hour later, I had a very tattered piece of A4 paper and more ideas than I could possibly fit into one overarching article. Best laid plans, and all that…
So, for starters, here are some of what I consider the most significant themes or issues in the horror genre today. I make no claim that this is an exclusive list; but, as a fan writer of some years’ standing, these are things which I believe are particularly of note since 2009 – because a lot has happened since then…
1) There is no ‘horror audience’…there are now two horror audiences…
Straight in with a sweeping statement? I think it’s justifiable in this case, because I feel that particularly in the past five years (although there is no date set in stone and elements of this have of course begun to occur earlier and later), the horror genre has changed to accommodate a new demographic, and in many ways there seems to be little overlap between this new demographic and what I would call ‘horror fans’. A tentative term for a large and varied group of people perhaps, but when it comes down to it I’d identify people like us who regularly watch a range of films within the genre and probably relate to the genre as fans, reading about the cinema itself, knowing a little about its directors or regular stars and so on as ‘horror fans’; our engagement with the genre ordinarily seems to reach beyond the ninety-minute experience of viewing itself. That would ordinarily be the definition of fandom; but things have changed.
The massive influence of a still-burgeoning horror franchise like Paranormal Activity seems to have heralded a new type of horror fan: we now have a demographic who want something very different from their encounters with the genre. As such, the films which cater to them have developed a particular kind of horror which is all about bodily endurance. Jump scares are king; the more times you are manipulated into leaping out of your seat, the more this new demographic seems to deem the horror a success. If the film isn’t causing the viewer to yelp and jump, then it’ll relax a little and concentrate on making them squirm; the funniest thing about this is that these films often seem to appeal to, and are targeted at, ordinary cinema-goers who might, here and there, perhaps at Halloween or at other points in the year, circumvent the latest Jennifer Aniston rom-com to steel their nerves against the latest most terrifying film you will ever see because the billboard promises them they may well shit themselves. These part-time, multiplex horror-goers have certain expectations, and many of the most lucrative horror movies are very happy to cater to them.
Whilst you could make the case that The Blair Witch Project kicked off this trend for low-budget, high-profit at the end of the Nineties, setting the bar very high in the process, and that the Saw franchise really cemented the ick factor in modern cinema, upping the ante once and for all, Paranormal Activity has to be the apex (or the nadir?) of the no-idea, no-skill, little story, maximum profit venture. It plumps for the cheapest format, almost giving itself permission to look bad and make mistakes whilst dispensing with pace, again excusing this through the whole ‘found footage’ get out of jail free card. As long as there enough yelp-out-loud moments, however, people seem to still go to see these films. It’s not the dedicated horror fans that keep these films coming out year upon year; we’re more likely to be bewailing the fact than excitedly supporting them – but if they’re not for us, then it doesn’t matter.
You can tell a great deal about the target audience and how they are perceived by the way in which the Paranormal Activity films and those like them are advertised: TV stints, which cost a fortune, after all, have now more or less given up on providing anything more than the barest idea of the film’s plot. These days, budgets are blown on night-view cameras which are trained on hyperbolic audience reactions; a few convincing seconds of this is usually followed by a quick vox-pop from a grinning part-timer describing how ‘scary’ the film is. Online campaigns, such as they are, ordinarily work against the films in question, making horror fans trying to read reviews and articles grind their gears as they desperately try to close down the fucking pop-up which keeps on appearing on all the major sites. Grrr.
Of course, in so many ways horror has always been a bang-for-buck genre, a convenient stepping-stone to a decent profit and a good place to start for any budding filmmaker. However, in decades gone by – and I’m sure this isn’t simply a case of nostalgia – a certain level of ingenuity seemed to be necessary, even if things were frequently cheap and nasty. There was more breadth, more variety; people wanted monsters and stories as well as exploitation or Herschell Gordon-Lewis nascent gore SFX. These days, in successful cinema monsters seem to be the province of Pixar; we have vampires, but in their most successful incarnations of late they’re now the nervous virgins. When horror ain’t a hit unless you jump out of your chair, this reduces the scope possible, and that is a real shame, especially when the rise of the multiplex horror consumer has meant this approach has gotten its tentacles into other films, too. For instance, a decent and promising film like The Woman In Black became something of a yelpfest, and all of the still-incoming horror remakes seem to hinge on an approach of ‘same – but louder and more’. Hey, it makes money, just like found footage always promises to. In each case, the chances of high turnover are just too damn good, too tempting.
This sounds as though I am painting a very bleak picture of horror as it has come to pass over the past few years, and in many ways, sure, I am. There’s a lot I’d like to see happening differently. It’s not all doom and gloom though. Not by any stretch. Writing this piece has, in a roundabout way, reminded me just why I ever wanted to write for a site like Brutal As Hell.
Marc, our site founder, asked us recently to come up with a list of our top 20 horror films which have come out during the site’s lifetime – in other words, a list of films from January 2009 to the present. There’ll be more on this anon, but as I sat down to write this list, once I got going I realised there was an absolute wealth of brilliant horror cinema during this relatively short period. Films which are innovative, clever enough to forge their own mythologies or to present interesting, courageous developments on existing mythology. Films with writing and direction so good that you get a clearer sense of characterisation and plot within twenty minutes than you do in many films over ninety minutes. Films which have in some way or another stayed with me. All of this, and – with one possible exception from the list, as it’s a movie which has been hastily remade – I would bet good money that your average Halloween shitfest filmgoer would never have heard of any of them, much less seen them.
This is, obviously, a crying shame, and indicative of just how difficult it is for the good stuff to get out there in these testing times, but the fact remains: if I’ve seen something I love, and as part of my hobby and my passion I get to talk about it, then maybe – just maybe – this can do a little for the filmmakers behind that project. If one person reads a favourable review and sees enough in it that they feel prepared to seek that film out, to take a chance on it, and maybe to recommend it to someone else, then in some small way that does good. Even one more viewer is another audience member, and this may even reach across the divide to someone who would never normally have given something different a go. Big business horror is here to stay; the last five years have shown us this, and things seem unlikely to shift dramatically. But, sites like Brutal As Hell will always be around to honestly champion good movies (and say so when we hate them, mind you) and I can authentically say that this makes me feel proud.
There’ll be plenty more to follow, and plenty more to say about horror in the current day. But for now, I’d like to wish our readers a very happy 2014, and let’s hope that BAH will be around in another five years doing more of what I’m proud we do today. Cheers!