Horror movies will forever be relevant. There are times when you can dismiss slasher films and monster movies as garbage, but what we're afraid of will always tell us more about the cultural zeitgeist than a history book.
John Carpenter's "Halloween" scared the bejeezus out of moviegoers at drive-in theaters in 1978. Masked-killer Michael Myers was a knife-wielding, faceless threat, who stalked the hormonal, all-American teenagers of Haddonfield, who believed they were safe in their homes.
Watching "Halloween" now, the morality of the film is a bit dated. OK, cool, in the 70's, if you had pre-marital sex, you were to be butchered by a maniac. But, if you stayed at home, studied hard, and refrained from your primal, libido urges (A.K.A. you were Laurie Strode), you were safe to live another boring day. Even more, if we see Michael Myers as a faceless threat due to his plain, white mask, the fear of Communism permeating the film and the USA is apparent. Think about it, a faceless man stalking good old American neighborhoods, stabbing our daughters with knives—it's unsettling. Things were different then, and through "Halloween" we're able to see what made out parents' generation nervous.
Although it's a dated movie and the jump scares don't pack the punch they once did, "Halloween" is an artifact that speaks to what nightmares plagued the American psyche. The horror genre as a whole evolves with its audience, paralleling the concerns that plague each new generation.
There will always be piece of crap Hollywood horror films that exist to only make a quick buck, but to see the power, the immortality of horror movies, we can look no further than Jordan Peele's "Get Out."
Amidst a time of racial tension in America, "Get Out" spoke to the real concerns of our country. #BlackLivesMatter has undoubtedly polarized the nation, as activists call for an end to police brutality, especially to majority black citizens, while the other end of the spectrum calls for stronger support for the police. "Get Out" follows black New Yorker, Chris as he visits his white girlfriend, Rose's family upstate for a long weekend. At this point, everyone has seen Peele's film, so I'll bypass a "Spoiler Alert" warning. But, the weekend doesn't go as planned when Rose's family, the White Liberal Armitage clan, who would've voted for Obama for a third time, want to take over Chris' body due to the perceived "perfection" of his race's physicality. It's not the racism your grandparents knew, but modern day racism that is the evil force at work in the film. Chris suffers due to the machinations and of Rose's family and the perceptions the world holds against him due to the way he looks.
It's remarkable how a horror film could touch upon real contemporary angst and fear, yet that's what horror does. Horror movies dig deep, tearing away at the walls, the safe spaces we put up around ourselves to tell us that the world is OK. There's real terror out there, and good scary movies will always exploit our fears. As long as humans are around, we will always have horror movies.
