Well, I want to talk about a weird problem with the horror genre today. And the best way to illustrate this is to compare two things I watched shortly before preparing this article in early December last year – a horror movie and a short animated sitcom – which both focus on a classic horror villain: The Devil.
On the one hand, there is Ti West’s 2009 horror film “The House Of The Devil” (Note – the DVD case includes a photosensitivity warning). Inspired by the “Satanic Panic” in 1980s America, this historical horror movie is a masterpiece of atmosphere and suspense. Whilst it might lack the beautiful psychedelic palette of Dario Argento’s “Suspiria” (1977), it is one of those films where the suspense itself is actually more scary than the cruel and/or grisly moments that happen afterwards.
It is an exquisitely slow-paced slow-burn of a film, giving the audience time to get familiar with the main character and the location and the understated “retro” 1980s atmosphere. Even the premise itself is designed to build suspense, with its creepy rural mansion and bizarrely well-paying babysitting job. No-one expects anything but horror to emerge from this, but the suspense comes from wondering how, when and what it will be. It’s a “love it or hate it” type of film, but a really cool homage to classic 1970s/80s horror movies.
On the other hand, there is Winston Rowntree’s “Secret Satan” (2023) (Warning – flashing/flickering images, mature humour). An eight-minute animated sitcom pilot revolving around the idea that Satan has been banished to Earth in human form. Most of the episode consists of her drinking with her friends and having a more meaningful and intelligent conversation than most Hollywood films could ever dream of.
It’s a short film about how everyone is weird, about ridiculous social traditions (“Even gender roles“), about the universal nature of hedonism (eg: people in both heaven and hell reacting in the same way when she sets up a stall selling booze and risqué magazines), about impossible standards and imposed guilt/self-loathing etc… It’s the sort of incredibly well-written feel-good thing which, like most of Rowntree’s work, makes everything else seem shallow by comparison. The characters seem more like real people than some actual real people do.
Anyway, the point I want to make here is the different way that both things handle the idea of “weird”. Whilst there are certainly some things in the horror genre – mostly in the vampire genre but also novels like Clive Barker’s “Cabal” (1988) and TV shows like the 1960s “Addams Family” series too – where the main character is a weird misfit and the horror comes from the “normal” world around them, these are very much the exception rather than the rule. Often, horror tends to focus on “This monster or villain is WEIRD! Aren’t they scary?“. For something so “rebellious”, it’s a bizarrely closed-minded and conservative genre a lot of the time.
And there’s a paradox here. The horror genre is a genre for misfits. Even if, like me, you have a weird love-hate relationship with it – the fact that you’re interested in movies, games and novels where the atmosphere is gloomy and ominous. Where monsters lurk and there are rarely happy endings. Where the budget is low and the pacing is slow. Where the villain is often more of a main character than the supposed main character. I could go on for a while, but it is very much an outlier compared to the other genres. Being a fan of it is – when seen “objectively” – a weird thing.
Yet, more than any other genre, it often demonises the “weird”. It often makes its villains misfits and its main characters paragons of “normality”. Yes, it’s subversive in the sense that it evokes the feeling of fear for entertainment – rather than evoking it in order to manipulate people (in the way that religions, newspapers, activists, politicians, advertisers etc… can do). But, for a genre which appeals so much to the really interesting people in this world, it’s oddly staid and conservative most of the time.
On the other hand, the short Winston Rowntree film I mentioned earlier absolutely embraces the fact that the audience – myself included – are weird misfits. It’s a film which makes you question why Hollywood movies and TV shows rarely ever do this. In keeping with this, the film is ridiculously subversive – a gigantic middle-finger to the stories we’re all told in real life (or about real life). The artificial game of “normality”. Almost hinting that perhaps the real devil isn’t the quirky red-haired lady but is instead the society which the characters live in. If you’re even vaguely “weird”, this short film will be literal balm to your soul. You’ll gleefully be shouting “YES!” and “OF COURSE!” at the screen at various points. Yet, despite the main character being the literal devil, it isn’t in the horror genre. It’s a comedy.
And it made me realise that, for a genre where most of its strongest fans are “weird”, the horror genre isn’t really the sanctuary that it is often made out to be. Again, there are exceptions to this (Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 remake of “Suspiria” is another good example) but it is a genre that often relies on presenting the weird or unusual as being frightening or unsettling. One which often reveres “normality”, presenting any challenge to it as being frightening or dangerous.
So, yes, there really should be more horror media for weird people, rather than about weird people.
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting