Indie Quiets and the New Gothics
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ARTICLE Received 30 Nov 2016 | Accepted 25 Jul 2017 | Published 1 Sep 2017 DOI: 10.1057/palcomms.2017.88 OPEN “It fixates”: indie quiets and the new Gothics Joan Hawkins1 ABSTRACT The article attempts to make several interventions. Following Jamie Sexton’s work on Independent Horror, it revisits the vexed status of horror within American Inde- pendent Cinema. Not only is indie horror frequently omitted from discussion of American Independent Cinema, but low budget, direct-to-DVD and video-on-demand indie horror titles are frequently omitted from academic discussions of horror. This has the effect of skewing our understanding of the genre. From there the article moves to consider a specific subgenre of indie horror that has been gaining in popularity: the Quiet Horror film—a category that contains the sub-genre of indie-Gothic films. Lastly, the paper moves on to a close reading of a specific low budget indie Gothic title, Absentia. 1 Indiana University, Cinema and Media Studies, Media School, Bloomington, IN, USA PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | 3:17088 | DOI: 10.1057/palcomms.2017.88 | www.nature.com/palcomms 1 ARTICLE PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | DOI: 10.1057/palcomms.2017.88 ike Flanagan’s Absentia (2011, FallBack Plan Produc- American Independent and horror cinema (Sexton, 70). What Mtions; US $70,000) belongs to a film cycle that straddles that means for film scholarship is an impoverished and two important trends in contemporary horror: low incomplete film history, and a frequently inaccurate portrayal budget independent production and the New Gothic. The fact of contemporary horror and contemporary horror audiences. that this film and others like it have remained outside scholarly As has been noted elsewhere, there has always been a thriving discourse indicates a certain structuring absence in genre and horror video and DVD collector culture (Hawkins, 2000). And sub-genre studies. To some extent, this is just another certainly from the 1980s on, studios and production companies manifestation of a problem that has plagued academic film began to use that culture to recuperate titles and give them what theory and history for years. As Jim Collins writes, theoretical Linda Badley has called a “second wind.” (Badley, 2010: 49). That discussions “about how a popular art form works has somehow is, films that performed poorly in the theater, or that were deemed been severed from the activity of actually going to the movies,” or too “dark” or “cerebral” were moved quickly to the VHS/DVD —as this case would have it—having the movies come to us marketplace (Farelly 2003 60 #14), sometimes returning to (Collins, 1). Similarly, Gregory Waller notes that Film Studies has theatrical distribution after building a word-of-mouth following. tended to make categorical statements about film and genre Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001) is perhaps the best known history, based primarily on urban theatrical consumption, rather example of this strategy, but there were earlier examples as well. than on the way many people in this country have historically And by the end of the 90s, even films that did well at the box watched films (Waller). This tendency limits and skews our office received a quick turn-around subsidiary market release. The understanding of the reception and circulation of certain films, Blair Witch Project (Eduardo Sánchez and James Myrick) as about genres and their historical trends, and- in many cases- Badley notes (49) was “one of the fastest turnovers of its time”. about audiences. Released in theatres on 16 July 1999, it was available on VHS by It is beyond the scope of this essay to provide a thorough 22 October 1999, this despite enormous box office success. By the corrective to our understanding of horror history. But I would following decade, VHS and DVD sales accounted for the largest like to consider how low-budget production impacts horror and, percentage of a production company’s revenues. And by 2002, more importantly for our purposes, what the emergence of a new DVDFILE editor Peter Bracke would argue that most movies “are Gothic impulse might mean. In terms of genre and sub-genre released theatrically only to legitimize their imminent video studies, the essay is less interested in the impact that the New release”, and poor box office numbers do not sentence a film to Gothic might have on Gothic Studies per se, and more interested death. (#15 p. 60). This was particularly true for horror and in the way that the Gothic—as a mode of narrative—has been softcore porn titles. To cite one example, Session 9 (Brad written out of larger horror film history. That is, since the Anderson, U.S. 2002) had a 1.5 million dollar budget. It grossed emergence of the slasher, films with strong Gothic overtones— $373,000 in limited theatrical release, yet generated over George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), Psycho $2 million in DVD/VHS rentals. (Hitchcock, 1960), The Brood (David Cronenberg, 1979), The biggest market shift was the emergence of Direct to Video Paranormal Activity (Oren Peli, 2007)—have been discussed (DTV) horror in the 1980s. Bypassing theatrical distribution primarily as something else: zombie films, slashers, body-viral entirely, DTV films still found a limited audience and pointed a horror, found footage. So students new to horror history way for the emergence of microbudget horror, regional horror, frequently get the idea that the gothic ceased to be a popular and truly independent production. Linda Badley cites The Ripper form shortly after 1970. (Christopher Lewis 1985) as the inaugurating DTV title (Badley, The emergence of “quiet horror”—the New Gothic—provides 2010: 49). But given the decade’s explosion of independent an opportunity to re-consider the post-slasher history of the production, it is difficult to pinpoint the “film that started it all” Gothic genre and to revisit Gothic genealogy. Low budget, with any precision. Early titles include Dreamaniac (David independent Gothic horror invites a reassessment both of DeCoteau, 1986), Tales from the Quadead Zone (Chester Novell Independent film’s predominantly prestige status and of the Turnere, 1987), 555 (Wally Koz, 1988) and Greydon Clark’s The current horror market. Mike Flanagan’s Absentia provides a Uninvited (1988) all of which pointed toward a rapidly growing particularly rich low budget example through which to begin this indie market, made possible by independent, niche and reconsideration. convenience store video rental outlets. By the late 1990s, DTV was what Screen Review calls “The Industry’s fattest cash cow” with “children’s video, softcore porn and horror dominating this Indie horror and direct to video rung of the market and filling an increasing demand” (Badley, Horror films have been a staple of independent film production, 2010: 49). Between 2005 and 2008, the number of studio- yet, as Jamie Sexton points out, “since the 1980s they have been sponsored direct-to-DVD films had grown 36%, with 675 titles marginalized from discourses relating to American Independent released in 2007 alone. And by 2008, as New York Times writer Cinema” (Sexton 2012). They have also been marginalized from Brooks Barnes notes, critics could point to a studio “direct-to- the academic world of horror studies. While mainstream indie DVD policy” (Barnes, 2008). In the world of low budget filmmakers (Guillermo del Toro, for example) are included in independent horror, numbers are harder to come by. Horror scholarly horror genre discussions, low budget filmmakers like Ti websites list 167 microbudget DTV films for the same 2007-2008 West (House of the Devil, 2009), Zack Parker (Proxy, 2013), and period. DTV has become so profitable that DVD franchises like Mike Flanagan (Oculus, 2013) are largely excluded from the Redbox have themselves begun soliciting and producing titles. syllabi and state-of-the-genre essays that help define the The Legend of Wasco (Shane Beasley and Leya Taylor, 2015) parameters of the field. Horror conference panels at the Society began when Redbox offered the creative team behind Found for Cinema and Media Studies, our international scholarly (Scott Schirmer, 2012) and Headless (Arthur Cullipher, 2015) organization, largely ignore limited release independent horror $3,000 to make a microbudget horror film. The only caveat was in favor of the more commercial franchises that already receive that it had to be about a clown. The film was released Video on substantial media attention. Even academic fans frequently know Demand and Direct to DVD through Redbox, on 15 less about low-budget indie horror than they should. At least December 2015. since the 1980s then, as Jamie Sexton notes, “only particular types As the last example suggests, Livestreaming and Video on of films” have been deemed appropriate scholarly examples of Demand are the newest platforms in a media environment that 2 PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | 3:17088 | DOI: 10.1057/palcomms.2017.88 | www.nature.com/palcomms PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | DOI: 10.1057/palcomms.2017.88 ARTICLE increasingly promises consumers a nontheatrical viewing option. zombie and torture porn sub-genres; and that gradually displaced Companies like Curzon Home Cinema advertise films that can be them in popularity. While there have been some notable vampire streamed the very day of their theatrical release. In the tales here, this cycle is dominated more by ghosts, hauntings, independent market, filmmakers increasingly turn to sites like domestic abuse and dread than by the Undead. To some extent Vimeo to promote their movies. For the indie horror filmmaker, the new cycle is a logical American response to the popular Asian these are frequently the only viable platforms. “Every filmmaker films Ringu, (Hideo Nakata, Japan 1998) and Ju-On: The Grudge wants to see his or her movie in theaters”, Videomaker writes, (Takashi Shimizu, Japan 2002); their American remakes: The “but theatrical distribution is rare for a low-budget horror film.