Hey Somethings, I actually had to go back and look through some of my old blog posts to see if I’ve talked about this, and I was surprised to find out that I hadn’t! If the ending of a horror movie ends with the director saying things like, ‘Well, what do YOU think it means?’ like they are your therapist, you may have just watched an arthouse horror movie.
“But Hatton,” you ask, “what IS an elevated/arthouse horror movie?”
Well, it’s a movie that is trying to hide a deeper message beneath its horror. This isn’t new, as films like Jacob’s Ladder (1990), Dawn of the Dead (1978), and even Godzilla (1954) were talking about one thing under the guise of scares. Nowadays though, it is a twofold defense mechanism for:
* Movies that have a deeper message
* Movies that want you to think they have a deeper message
* People who don’t want to admit they like horror movies
Movies like Get Out, with its obvious racial overtones use the vehicle of horror to really turn a topic on its head and make you uncomfortable in your own world. Mother is a story of Christian mythology. Babadook is about abuse. These movies tell an engrossing tale of scares while also at the end give you something to think about. Bad arthouse horror, on the other hand, gives you attempts at symbolism that are never explained and plotholes that you hope are intentional until you get to the credits and you end up confused. The truth is, a good percentage of horror movies out there have some other meaning, intentional or not, and brushing aside any movie because its message isn’t deeply imbedded enough is, at the very least, insulting to the people involved. To sit and look at a movie like Hereditary (2018) or Neon Demon (2016) and comment about how the deeper message is beneath the surface and the horror is what you feel and.. well, I could go on, is to ignore that horror has been telling interesting stories about the human condition since the first vampires were born of fears of porphyria and rabies.
In the future, at the end of a movie, you sit there scratching your head while your one friend who only vapes artisanal clove oil and refers to your fruit salad as a ‘reconstructed charcuterie’ tells you how deep the film you just watched is. It’s ok to hate the movie.. it’s ok to think it was stupid.. it’s ok to want a clear answer to your narrative tales.. and it’s ok to kick that dude out, because seriously, you don’t need that kind of negativity.
