In the spirit of October I've decided my next few posts will be centered around iconic horror movies. And specifically the reoccurring and often formulaic themes they tend to have.
A common fear of human beings is the fear of what the future holds, which is rooted from our primal fear of the unknown, not knowing what lies ahead is scary for us, we don't know what to expect, if we don't know what to expect then we can't prepare, and if we can't prepare often we fail. However the two films I will be talking about aren't about the fear of the future, but rather our fear of the past, the fear of what we or did, or in these cases what someone else did, and how they will come back to haunt us.
One of the most played out sub-genres of Horror is the slasher flick. Usually characterized by a lone antagonist slaughtering promiscuous teenagers one by one, only to be temporally handicapped by the last surviving girl and possibly her love interest at the end of the movie, only to return with vengeance in the following sequels. This entire sub genre can be all traced back to arguably the first of it's kind: John Carpenter's Halloween. Set in the quaint little All-American town of Haddonfield, Illinois, Halloween follows the escape of Michael Myers, a criminally insane patient who murdered his older sister when we has 6. After escaping the hospital, Myers begins to stalk local teenage babysitter Laurie Strode. After several dismissing several sighting of Myers, Laurie's friends begin to be methodically killed off. After discovering the bodies of her friends, Laurie faces off with Michael in the final showdown of the film, which afterwards, forever impacting the horror genre, Michael's body seemingly disappears, leaving him open to much more mischief in the following sequels
One of the themes of Halloween could be interpreted as Isolation. We know from an early age Michael was disturbed and disconnected from conventional morality. It is important for children, especially young ones, that they are taught the difference between right and wrong. For whatever reason Michael did not absorb this lesson. To no fault of his own he was severely disillusioned, it was an almost unconscious act when he killed his sister. After being institutionalized he was isolated from the world, he received no love from his doctors, this traumatized him. We know from psychological studies that often childhood trauma places the victim at forever that mental age, stagnating any emotional growth. For this reason Michael never learned not to kill. Even his psychiatrist in the film, Dr. Loomis, expresses his regret for not handling Michael's case more in a more caring manner, he admittedly treated Michael as a puzzle to be fixed, not a human to be cared for. We see his mistakes, as well as the parents, come back to destroy the lives of others, most importantly Michael's.
During the 2000's another horror sub-genre seemed to kick off due to the success of a movie that was the first of it's kind. "J-Horror Remakes" are horror films that were original released in Japan, but were remade for the American market. J-Horror Remake is arguably not a genre by itself, but for the sake of this article it is. In 2002 the Japanese film Ringu was remade and released as The Ring. This films follows a cursed video tape, who's viewers are doomed to day 7 days after they watched it, and it's affect on one woman and her attempt to break the curse. After the death of her niece, Rachel Keller begins to investigate the rumors that her niece had watched the video a week before. Finding her way to the location of the tape, she proceeds to watch it, and is left a cryptic message by phone. Growing concerned, Rachel studies the tape which leads her to a lighthouse, where she recognizes a woman from the video tape in a picture. Research shows her the woman is Anna Morgan, who was a local rancher that commited suicide after her horses mysterious deaths. Following her lead, Rachel tracks down the husband of the late woman. She learns that the girl from the tape is Samara Morgan, the daughter of Anna Morgan. She is informed that Samara had psychic abilities and was responsible for the horse drownings, as well her mothers suicide. After being informed that Samara's father abused her and locked her away. Going another location Rachel recognized from the video, she finds a well and accidentally falls in it, finding the corpse of Samara, and receiving a vision of Anna throwing Samara down the well.
Here we see again the past mistakes of caregivers creating monsters of the present. Samara was a child gifted with extraordinary abilities. However being a child she naturally did not understand how to use them and what to use them for. She began to be seen as a curse by her parents, who treated her like an animal. Scaring Samara, this treatment and abandonment led her becoming an evil anomaly. Treated and cared for properly, she may have been able to do wonderful things with her powers.
Both of these films exemplify our fear of what our past mistakes could do to us, or even other people.
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