Viewers will always be drawn to horror movies, because balance requires various experiences, including negative ones. In addition, almost all horror movies and their genre hybrids are based on everyday themes that are subconsciously close to most. And it is often everyday motives that break the characters' routines into new circumstances.
Over the past decade, the genre has experienced a new round of popularity. Long-running studio episodes get “safe” sequels and restarts, while newcomers and established authors delight with experiments. Often, in advertising campaigns and texts by film critics, unusual horror films are singled out as a separate subtype.
The “New Wave of Horror” shines with a claim to intelligence, overtones and a unique vision. Directors David Robert Mitchell, Ari Aster, Robert Eggers and Jordan Peel especially excelled in this field. In their works, they focus not on history or on “classical” sources of fear, such as injuries, brutal deaths and monsters, but on “deeper” things — atmosphere and allegorical things.
“The Lighthouse” by Robert Eggers takes horror to the back burner and focuses on human relationships in unusual circumstances. Post-horror films use fear not as an end in itself, but as a means to tell moderately mundane stories. Directors take an interesting and uncharacteristic idea and deliver it through slowly increasing tension.
Post-horror films do not feature prominent monsters, ghosts or vampires. They are ruled by the struggle of the main characters with internal and external “demons” — racism, traumatic experience, fear of their own child or an unpleasant roommate who speaks gibberish and drinks soundly.
Unlike David Cronenberg, who loves physicality (read our text), post-horror horror moves from the physical dimension to the existential dimension. They scare not with a set of visual sequences, but with conflicting meanings that form an eerie narrative landscape.
“Midsommar” by Ari Aster dressed in a surreal drama about traumatic relationships and indifference to the feelings of a loved one — with a tragic and ambiguous message. The picture begins with a horrifying event, but later it always seems like something worse is about to happen. However, when this happens, the tone and message change dramatically.
The brazen illusion of expectations is another hallmark of post-horror movies. Their creators deliberately play with the viewer's eye. They use references and homages, tease with anticipation of the plot twist in order to turn the story inside out at the most inopportune moment. Sometimes it's just to shake things up, and sometimes it's just for fun.
Ari Aster uses surprise in different ways. In “Midsommar” and “Hereditary” it works on pain points to make what is happening more alienated and irrational, and therefore more terrible. But “Beau Is Afraid” already makes you laugh with an hypertrophied tragedy, turning a painful experience into a crazy sitcom.
The post-horror label is just a way to separate non-trivial horror films from “classic” members of the genre. The same thing happened with body horror films, “found tapes”, and slowherners. Largely due to the fact that each of these categories fits seamlessly into other genres.
Although “intelligence” is not a reason to single out cinema into a separate category, after all, you can find subtext even in “flat” slashers. If “Friday the 13th” is based on the loss of a beloved son, the horror of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” revolves around the prejudices and sins of the past. And in recognized classics, there are even more similar ones. “Rosemary's Baby” is ruled by depression and anxiety due to motherhood, while “The Shining” is ruled by uncontrollable addictions.
“Beau Is Afraid” drives the abstract formula to the point of absurdity and seems to end the post-horror era. A funny but still terrible bacchanalia takes place in the film that does not cause the usual fear and confusingly conveys the main idea. Because of this, the film is like “post-post-horror”, which simultaneously reinterprets and ridicules a subgenre that is confidently immersed in self-copying.
Not so long ago, Paul Schrader praised the film “I Saw the TV Glow”. He called director Jane Schoenbrun “the most original film voice of the past decade”. The catch is that he was touched but not frightened by the sad story of how the closest person disappears without a trace, and his favorite series is hastily closed.
Despite its clear belonging to the language and images of post-horror films, “I Saw the TV Glow” is a prickly teenage melodrama about missed opportunities, inability to find your place, and at the same time an example of giving up Campbell's “call”. It's as if Harry Potter stayed with his Muggle guardians in a dusty closet, didn't find friends and didn't stop evil.
“I Saw the TV Glow” is a non-trivial horror movie representative that you need to prepare for in advance, because agreeing to watch is tantamount to agreeing to be deceived. Instead of “positive stress”, Jane Schoenbrun gives viewers the same thing that Mr. Melancholy gave to the main characters of her film: he made them regret missing suffocating reflection in his arms.
In a sense, the genre basis of “I Saw the TV Glow” ridicules the desire to dissect genres and divide cinema into niches, to distinguish horror from post-horror films and them from ridiculous “post-post-horror” movies. Perhaps these are just the intrigues of the creepy Mr. Melancholy, who distracts the world from something vital, leads the wrong track and hides tree notches under fresh moss.
