Reviews
Teen Slasher Vs. New Brutalism - By Joe Berry
"A good horror film should scare you, it should scare and then it should scare you", quote taken from a John Carpenter interview.
A director will always insist that our motivation behind sitting in a dark theatre, home or bedroom with a scary movie, revolves around our need to escape reality, the adrenaline rush of the terrifying jumps on screen provide something we never wish to encounter in our own lives and while that holds much truth, the horror genre is often reflected on as a perfect date movie, a challenge amongst friends or even a way to vent the twisted inner evil or aggression. The horror genre entered my life when I was ten years old, forced to watch a film at midnight with friends, about a Haddonfield killer, Halloween became the first and last experience of a horror film until I was fifteen, it was not until I became more versed with the genre in film studies that I found a greater appreciation of the genres effect, the bogey man waiting in the dark to slaughter an isolated group of unsuspecting teenagers became an experience of my adolescence that I continue to this date. The title however addresses the issue of my intention, to reveal the Teen Slasher films supremacy over the latest sub genre to enter horror, New Brutalism.
Throughout the seventies to late nineties the Teen Slasher (otherwise referred to as a body count film) slaughtered box-office records and created some of the most prestige movie monsters since Dracula and the Wolfman.
In 1996, the Teen Slasher offered something that other horror films had passed over, self reflection; Scream ideally reflects the conventions of the genre while creating the irony of the characters pitfall into the some of the expected dangers, the film has remained a favourite for years because of its Slasher conventions, the repressed Sydney Prescott, the isolated party house and the overall teen focus on dating, alcohol and school, creating a movie that's self awareness would set the bar, "never ever say, I'll be right back, because you won't be back". Despite my personnel phrase for the film, it arguable killed the Slasher Film as directors were no longer able to return to the conventions of a lurking monster killing teenagers as audiences were now above the methods of the Slasher Film, meaning that New Brutalism would pick up were Scream left off, turn the audience on there heads.
Taking a moment to back track, many directors refer to the Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho, which essentially introduces the human killer, to take a quote from director John Landis, "what really scares me, people, people really scare me because people kill people, I don't know one person killed by a Werewolf or Godzilla, people scare the shit out of me", the Norman Bates character loosely inspired by the killings of Ed Gien paved the way for the next generation of anti heroes in the genre. Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Freddy Kruger all posses the relentless tenacity the audience searched for in there villain, so much so that the sequels to come would centre on the anticipation of there return rather than the safety of the teens. Arguably the failure to create a successful psychopathic predecessor to Jason, Michael, Freddy or Leather Face, meant the plot would eventually wear thin and the audiences omnipresent knowledge of what's round the corner resulted in the slasher going under for a number of years.
The Teen Slasher monsters are physical, brutal and relentlessly driven to accomplish there goal and as much as we expect the same characteristics in our actions heroes, we feel vulnerable as an audience to known the protagonist stands little chances of survival, making final girl survival all that more satisfying, which brings me to the first battle of brawn versus brain.
In the right corner we have the mongoloid machete pro from Crystal Lake Jason Voorhees and in the left is the trap setting fiend himself Jigsaw, now a one on one situation seems unfair so I'll begin with a more technical approach, I became very frustrated when the new brutalism phase introduced the same height, weak build antagonist with a grudge or lust for blood, none more evident than the killers from Hostel. The horror genre has forever been viscerally charged, the physical dominance seems to justify the brutal consequences and as such I feel monsters with brain rather than brawn fails to deliver the anti-hero build up and creates irritating anxiety of the knowledge that this monster could be overpowered.
The approach of New Brutalism into the sequels of Slasher films (such as Halloween or Freddy VS Jason) brings into question whether they could really survive without the prestige of the movie monster, many of the Halloween sequels (not including H20 due to its parody to the first) could not live up to the expectation of the original and the origins of Michael Myers was left to House of Thousand Corpses Director Rob Zombie, many critics evaluated the fact that the films separation from any B rated gore film was due to the man in the mask, Michael Myers, the star driven power of the infamous Slasher killer appears to one of the few ways that New Brutalism can survive.
New Brutalism (to its credit) has come full circle to pincer the Slasher era, dating back to the revolution of techni-colour; Hammer Horror ceased the opportunity in gory fashion in the Blood from the Mummies Tomb, a film which soon cultivated in the phase of the Video Nasty, whereby audiences became curious by a films banning from cinema. Essentially New Brutalism extracted the attraction of world wide bans and attempted to incorporate it into current cinema, the implication being that the cinema census had moved on from banning corn syrup on the throat of a wide eyed actors, meaning that New Brutalism would find it an up hill struggle to have a film rated eighteen, let alone banned from cinema, I am of course extracting the nineteen eighty Italian release of Cannibal Holocaust, the film was rejected by audiences and put on trial whereby it was never realised until 2001, a decision which did not persuade the audience otherwise. Movies such as Saw 4 and the Hills have Eyes remake, needed to cross the line of taste, and human mutilation in order to test the theory, does daring the audience equal box-office killings. The current survival of the New Brutalism phase certainly would suggest that audiences are now ready for a new-age in horror, but after conversations and analysis of the genre I discovered that the New Brutalism is all about the test and none of the scare. The movies frighten the audience in a different way to the Slasher Genre and those that preceded it, which brings me to the final and key argument, that suspense and the horror scares have been replaced by the special effects of New Brutalism. The Blair Witch Project set the audience up and allowed there imaginations to take flight, while never seeing this witch, her effect on the audience in none the less terrifying, much like the early Slasher films, audiences were allowed the freedom to use the most frightening tool at there disposal, imagination, "everyone knows what a guy with a knife is gonna do, I mean, you don't need to see it" an extract from the Halloween H20 interview with John Carpenter. The excess of visceral gore has slowly begun to subdue the audience's expectations of a monster waiting to jump out and frighten them; "I really like the films, but not for the fright, I'm not scared of them, it's just to see the blood and guts", a quote taken from a friend who essentially embodies my view on the genre and my conclusion, a horror film has so much more to offer that guts spilling on the floor, they are a release from reality and the focus on teen life makes them that much more of the adolescent experience, "let's face it baby, these days, you gotta have a sequel"!
By Joe Berry
4:48pm Monday 10th March 2008
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