*adapted from my review of Late Night With the Devil (2023)
What is horror? Why is it important? I've already defended science fixion on this platform as a genre of great importance and potential, and horror might be the greater of the two, that is to say horror offers more than almost any genre could contend with.
Obviously, the primary funxion of horror is fear, but what is the funxion of fear? Why should we fear? Why stress when our lives and world are already filled to the brim with these emotions that we view as a negative aspect of ourselves? Well, that's precisely the problem. We've applied our moralising to fear, or at least deemed it is unnecessary and harmful, but why?
For the religious, God must have given us fear for a reason. For the scientific, fear must be an important aspect of our evolutionary survival--and it no doubt is. People will claim we used it to escape from predators and better survive in a more nomadic world. Does this mean fear is outdated? That it's unfit for our contemporary society?
What has motivated the greatest changes in human history? What has motivated progress aside from the unification of one class against another and the economic transitions of culture? That is, what has driven the economic conflicts which have moved us as a species from Feudalism to Capitalism, from Slave Economies into Feudalism? Our greatest motivator is fear. It's the secret voice of both progress and regression. It's what, to an extent, motivated Hitler, but it's also what motivated Malcolm X. Of course there is more to all of this, but fear underpins it.
It is obvious that the Neu starves us of fear. Our lives are made comfortable and blasé and that biological craving we have is reduced. It's a form of catharsis in the true meaning, in the Greek meaning, kathairein, a cleansing. A way to reenter the world and be reminded of your existence. It's as essential for the soul as a good meal.
It would be naïve to claim horror isn't perpetually experiencing a renaissance. Horror, more than any genre, is of the time, a reflexion of the time and the contemporary fears of a society. and that means it is perpetually, in motion, moving towards no culmination, coming from no origin, and always a symbol of both progression ad regression, a touchstone of that which we as humans can achieve and a reminder of the horrors we've already committed. However, in this current epoch, horror is taking an unexpected and interesting direxion.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly the start of this change--mostly because doing so would mean pinpointing the moment society itself began to switch. The roots of the change date back to the 70s and 80s with the explosion of first arthouse and then popular horror in the form of slashers, but that aspect only informs the repurposed nostalghia aesthetics of many contemporary horror projects. Some aspect of this change could be credited rise of studio produced, franchised horror along the lines of Paranormal Activity and any Blumhouse project. This souring of the market in many ways make a space for what might be termed the 'Indie Horror Renaissance'. But even this monumental movement, driven by the steam engine of A24 early on, is only an aspect of the grandiose genre change, which doesn't just see a pivot from popcorn-munching studio horror to independent and artistic pieces but an entire overall of the genre.
Instead, I'd like to highlight the most important contributor to this change as not a film/films but a collexion of work premiere online. The first of this is community writing boards like Reddit's r/nosleep, which itself has helped to shape the horror appetite of the current generation. Or the multiplatform ARG works of series such as Marble Hornets and Everymanhybrid. The descendants of this series like Petscop and Hiimmarymary. And there is the explosion of horror in video games as well.
As the observant reader might note, these too have roots that ambiguously date backwards, with ARGs owing a lot to lonelygirl15, and before the internet to projects like The Blair Witch Project and Cannibal Holocaust and The McPherson Tape.
The latest craze on the internet for horror--and nothing to be surprised by considering the aforementioned parade of 80s and 90s aesthetics or the history of creepypasta engagement with 'lost media'--is analogue horror, a subset of video horror that uses analogue furnishings to tell horror through outdated delivery methods. Think informercials, local broadcasts, old tv shows, etc. And also think that Alan Resnick and the Wham City Comedy folks were doing something similar all the way back in 2014 (see Unedited Footage of a Bear).
Now, the Neu being the time of complete cross medium engagement, films can't help but borrow from innovations and movements brought forth by online platforms like YouTube. After all, The Blair Witch Project was the result of consumer grade camcorders becoming affordable to the public, why shouldn't access to creating your own horror movie affect the horror movies that get made?
For my money, the only pinpointable moment in this whole progression (or regression considering the focus on analogue means) is Skinamarink. This was the first shot fired from a gun that has been loading up for sixty or more years. Finally, this new brand of horror, one that might even seem counter to the cinematic medium, had arrived in movie theatres and on streaming platforms.
Skinamarink was, in many ways, the biggest win for internet culture over the cinematic culture. It marked the first major conquest of the internet over the cinematic medium. More than any YouTuber vanity film, more than any video game adaptation, this was the raw power, and raw horror, of the web made manifest on the screen.
I believe this was truly a beginning and the cinema is in for a complete transformation. We've seen a greenlighting of The Backrooms movie and having recently watched Kane Pixel's The Oldest View, I'm confident he could easily be another player like Kyle Edward Ball, to shift the cinematic landscape.
The horror of the future is now the horror of the past. As it has always been and how it will never be again.
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