“What's Your Favorite Scary Movie?” Sociocultural Anxieties of America

Home , Ari Aster, David Robert Mitchell, Drafthouse Films, FilmDistrict, House of 1000 Corpses, It Comes at Night

“What’s Your Favorite Scary Movie?”

Sociocultural Anxieties of America Represented in Post-Millennial Horror Films

Nicholas T. Nelsen

A thesis submitted to

Sonoma State University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Film Theory

Committee Members:

Marco Calavita, Chair

Ajay Gehlawat

15 July 2019

iii

Authorization for Reproduction of Master’s Thesis

I grant permission for the print or digital reproduction of this thesis in its entirety, without further authorization from me, on the condition that the person or agency requesting reproduction absorb the cost and provide proper acknowledgment of authorship.

DATE: 15 July 2019 Nicholas T. Nelsen

“What’s Your Favorite Scary Movie?”

Sociocultural Anxieties of America Represented in Post-Millennial Horror Films

Thesis by

Nicholas T. Nelsen

Abstract

Current trends in the box-office have seen an increase in revenue associated with horror films. This thesis will include an examination of previous literature on meaningful decades of horror films and an analysis of sub-genres. The films analyzed will be It!

(2017), Hereditary (2017), and Halloween (2018) which will be dubbed Post-Millennial horror. The films will show representations of sociocultural anxieties in contemporary

America.

MA Program: Film Theory

Sonoma State University Date: 15 July 2019

Table of Contents

Chapter Page

I. Introduction 1

II. Literature Review 6

III. Horror Subgenres 9

IV. Halloween 11

V. Hereditary 18

VI. It! 25

VII. Conclusion 32

VIII. Bibliography 34

IX. Filmography 41

On the 8th of September, 2017 I was managing a modest art house cinema, a four screen that played independent and first run films but maintained a usually low attendance. At this point I had been working in cinemas for 12 years, either as a projectionist or a manager, and had seen a peak in cinema attendance as well as a struggling low point. During these years my mentors would stress the importance of understanding box office trends, and early on I realized the sheer power of the horror film. Not only have I paid attention to the attendance, but I have had a unique perspective of seeing first-hand hundreds of audience reactions to these films. That weekend in

September, Andy Muschietti’s It! (2017), shocked the industry with its record shattering grosses. Making $123 million with a September opening weekend, It! claimed the title of

“largest September opening, largest Fall opening, and largest opening of an R-rated horror film” (Brevet 2017), to name a few. The second weekend, which more often than not sees a drastic drop in horror film grosses, proved It’s drawing power of that first weekend was not a fluke.

It! is not an isolated incident in recent horror, with films such as Hereditary

(2017), and Halloween (2018) drawing millions to the cinemas and terrifying crowds en masse. The experience I have in the cinema industry, as a manager and projectionist, has made clear as day why horror films are made; the films are usually profitable with low production costs and high returns. And in the film industry profit will more often than not control the production of films and sequels.

It would be useful at the start to clarify what is meant here by a ‘horror film,’ a term that has been interpreted and reinterpreted. Noël Carroll suggested that horror films feature a monster, or an implied monster, and that to be a monster it must be a “fearsome 2 creature not acknowledged by current science” (16). This creates problems in some horror films, such as Last House on the Left (1972) or Silence of the Lambs (1991), where the horror is induced via vengeance or a psychopath. Benshoff notes that problems in

Carroll’s theory on horror and monstrosities will never fit all horror subgenres, such as slasher or revenge (2014). A workable definition of horror is a definition that has to be malleable as well, but should include an audience reaction of fear and/or disgust. For this thesis I will lean on the theory of Carroll and include a psychoanalytic framework to clearly define a horror film: a work with realist and/or supernatural traditions that creates an audience reaction of fear and/or disgust.

An understanding of the horror film is important to the claims in this thesis, but just as integral is an understanding of Carl Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious.

Jung was a student of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis; while on a lecture tour Jung had a dream that sparked his research into the idea of a collective unconscious

(Mattoon 32). The theory of the collective unconscious in simple terms, although it is far from simple, is that the structures of the unconscious mind are shared among entities of a single species. “To distinguish it from the ego consciousness, which is subjective, Jung characterized the collective unconscious as the ‘objective psyche’ because it is non- personal and, in its power to generate images and concepts, independent on consciousness” (Mattoon 35). Jung’s collective unconscious relied on archetypes, or universal associations in beings, to explain common images in the psyche. These archetypes can show up in horror films as characters or theme, such as Carol Clover’s

“Final Girl” trope (1990). The Final Girl of 70s and 80s horror would start as an innocent and virginal teen compared to her friends, but eventually flips gender norms when she

3 confronts and defeats the slasher. This is an example of an archetype that translates across a collective, and while the Final Girl is still a common horror film trope it has obviously changed with the times. The fears and anxieties of society change with the decades, and there is plenty of literature on the history of horror, so it is important that with the changing times scholars show how newer movies reflect a new collective unconscious. This new era of postmillennial horror has not been studied extensively, which offers me the opportunity to contribute to the literature of horror film studies.

The horror film genre is becoming more popular by the decade (Murphy), which raises the question of why so many individuals, consciously and/or unconsciously, choose to face their fears in a dark cinema. Why do so many cinema goers put themselves in a state of fear, anxiety, disgust and/or stress so eagerly? As part of this thesis I will look at the foundation of horror analysis by peering into the cabinet of German expressionism of the 1920s, consider the perspectives of Noël Carroll and psychoanalytic interpretation, and discuss the established theories on horror representations of the collective anxieties of audiences and societies. It needs to be made clear that I am not the first, nor the last, to write about the importance of the horror genre in cinema. I am guided by some of these theories, often agreeing with them, but there is always room for skepticism. Wrapping up my look at previous literature on the horror film, I will go over the Horror Paradox theory of the powerful draw of horror films, and the cinema-goers voluntary surrender to fear.

After a discussion of the literature on horror and clarifying some essential vocabulary used in this thesis, I will discuss the subgenres of horror and why I am choosing three in particular to discuss in greater detail: the Slasher Film, the

Psychological Horror film, and the Supernatural Horror film. The common thread of these subgenres however will still be the social/cultural anxieties represented in the stories and these films’ box office popularity. In discussion of the films I will lightly touch on their 70s roots, but with all the literature on 1970s horror I do not want to be repetitive. While these subgenres are important to understand, my discussion of them is primarily to help support my claims about the representation of sociocultural anxieties in these films.

Following the subgenre discussion, I will delve into the meat of this thesis, pun intended, and analyze the main films I chose to represent the popular postmillennial

Horror films. These films are IT!, Hereditary (2017), and Halloween (2018). I have only chosen American films to analyze primarily because I have witnessed their powers in theatres and because I feel more qualified to discuss turmoil in a country I inhabit. My discussion of the films will include a short overview of each story, enough to provide context for the discussion, an analysis of key scenes and moments, and a look at how they represent contemporary cultural/social anxieties. And to wrap up the discussion of each film I will look at box office trends to see the changes in horror film attendance in the cinema as manifested by box-office record breaking Post-Millenial horror films. I will discuss and analyze how these films relate to and symbolically represent such difficult and compelling Post-Millennial America topics as racism, sexism and sexual assault, family dysfunction, mental illness, Post Traumatic Stress, and mass shootings. As part of my argument for how these films connect with horror audiences and their collective unconscious it is worth noting here that audiences for these films tend to be younger and more diverse than the American population as a whole. For example, a Civic Science poll

5 shows that Millennials in their 20s and early-to-mid 30s make up 40% of the horror film audience, but less than 25% of the American population as a whole, and that 60% of the horror audience is female (Frey; Enright). In addition, Movio.co breaks down the horror audience as 18% African-American (as compared to 13% in the population as a whole),

31% Hispanic (as compared to 18%), and 42% Caucasian (as compared to 60%)

(“Unmasking Horror Movie Audiences”; U.S. Census Bureau). It stands to reason that these younger, more diverse audiences might be more drawn to and stirred by the symbolic representations of especially consequential and poignant issues like racism, sexual assault, mental illness, and mass shootings (so many of which seem to take place at schools), than a relatively older, whiter, more male audience might be (Frey; Milligan;

Cohen & Tanner; Zraick).

While the study of horror films and their representations of societal fears is not new, the particular importance of this thesis is its contribution to the literature on very recent postmillennial horror films. Academic work on these newer films is lacking and I can add especially valuable insight into how the representations of societal fears have changed in these newer horror films. In the end I would like to leave this thesis having looked at and illuminated the social/cultural anxieties represented in these stories, at the profitability of recent horror films, and at the possible connections between these two phenomena. And I will argue in the end that horror films are particularly popular today in part because they tap into the audience’s societal fears and anxieties about significant and difficult issues of the 21st century.

Literature Review

The first major text to look at is Siegfried Kracauer’s ode to German expressionism, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film

(1947), which is considered a first thorough analysis of German film. This text is essential to this thesis because it laid a foundation of film theory looking at the social/culture representations in film, and how a country’s anxieties can be conveyed on the screen. This work is known, for instance, for its postulation of The Cabinet of Dr.

Caligari (1920) as an allegorical representation of the attitudes and anxieties of the

German populace post World War I, a time of massive economic depression in Germany.

While Kracauer’s theories are still discussed, they are met with some skepticism. Thomas

Elsaesser, to take one example, disregards Kracauer’s theory because in his view

Kracauer did not see and discuss enough films to make his argument legitimate (2000).

While Elsaesser’s claims have some merit, for this thesis I will nevertheless agree with

Kracauer and his view of films offering a representation of collective anxieties. In the years since Kracauer other scholars have continued to connect the representation of social/cultural anxieties in horror films to a collective unconscious.

Kracauer would not be the last to analyze the representations of social and cultural anxieties in horror films, as many of the proceeding decades of horror films have provided us with similar literature. The 1950’s Atomic Age, for example, offered representations of nuclear fear and communist paranoia in films such as Them! (1954) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). One of the most discussed films of that era,

Invasion has been read by critics such as N. Megan Kelley as a representation of anti- communist paranoia, of anxieties about conformity, and the rising influence of psychiatry

(2016). Moving forward a few decades we can have a similar conversation about the representation of social/cultural anxieties in more recent films. Carol Clover has a sharp critique of the Slasher subgenre, for example, which will inform my discussion of

Halloween (2018) and the representation of gender in modern horror films: “The slasher film speaks deeply and obsessively to male anxieties and desires seem clear… [But] the slasher is the first genre in literary and visual arts to invite identification with the female”

(61). Clover made her imprint on the horror genre and and coined the term ‘Final Girl’ in her 1992 book Men, Woman, and Chainsaws, which revealed how the golden era of 70s and 80s slasher films was representative of the ideals at the time of how American society viewed gender at that time. Clover argued that an audience aligned with the male in the beginning of the film, but eventually flipped the gaze to identify with the female.

The representation of archetypes in horror films invokes images from the collective unconscious of a society and in doing so can highlight its anxieties, preoccupations, and fears. And again, the purpose of this thesis in particular will be to look at very recent postmillennial horror and its representations of sociocultural anxieties.

To ground my analysis of postmillennial horror, it is also important to discuss the psychoanalytic perspective of film theory, which I believe helps us understand the subtext of sociocultural anxieties represented in the images on screen. The psychoanalytic approach, which became influential in the 1970’s through the work of Christian Metz and

Laura Mulvey, employs the theories of of well known psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and

Jaques Lacan. Just as Freud and Lacan analyzed individual psyches, the psychoanalytic approach to film study allows critics to analyze a collective unconscious as it is represented in images and stories. Mulvey and Metz both discussed ‘the gaze’ in cinema,

8 and Metz explored the ideas of scopophila, or the desire to see, and voyeurism (1982). In

Mulvey’s essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” she defines the ‘male gaze’ and the unconscious influence the patriarchal society has had on film form, wherein “the male protagonist is free to command the stage, a stage of spatial illusion in which he articulates the look and creates the action” (204). These theories helped create the foundation of gender theory that Clover builds upon, informed a psychoanalytic approach that is useful in explaining the collective anxieties represented in horror films.

The next literature I want to discuss is Noel Carrol’s theories on the Paradox of

Horror, a paradox he uses to question how and why individuals can be attracted to something repulsive. This will be integral to understanding the consumer draw of horror, and help to understand how viewing horror films is neither completely appealing nor repelling. The idea of horror films being repulsive can be understood with ease; these films portray anxiety-inducing situations, cause physical reactions similar to fight or flight mode (such as increased heart rate or sweaty palms), and induce fear, something humans habitually avoid. The content that induces those reactions includes images and stories about paranormal entities, murderous children, monsters, abhorrent violence, rape, and murder, to barely scratch the surface. Virtually anything that would cause a person to respond with fear has been addressed in horror films since the beginning of cinema.

Carroll claims persuasively that these cinema-goers are “not perverse or abnormal,” but instead seek what would be considered natural to avoid (1990). It is important to understand the Paradox of Horror for the purposes of this thesis to reveal the importance of the repulsiveness and attractiveness of these films and their representations of society, and to help explain the increasing popularity of post-millennial horror films.

Horror Subgenres

Defining film genre has never been an easy task, as there is no single, concrete definition for a genre. Genres vary not only according decades and cultures, but in their themes, subject matter, and even presentation. “The question [of genre] is complicated by the fact that genres can be more or less broad. There are large blanket categories that fit many films” (Bordwell & Thompson 319). The only constant with genres is their fluidity, the ability to change and redefine themselves within the context of an era and/or culture.

On top of the ever-changing definitions of individual genres, there are subgenres which I will mainly explore under the umbrella genre of horror. The films discussed in this thesis are examples of subgenres I believe to be important to the history of the horror film, with conventions dating back to the first silent horror films which are now being used and reinvented in postmillennial horror. In the following paragraphs I will explain the conventions of the slasher, psychological, and supernatural horror subgenres.

The subgenre that I will discuss first may be the quintessential subgenre of all horror, the Slasher film, which most scholars see beginning with Texas Chainsaw Massacre

(1974) or Black Christmas (1974). Sotiris Petridis’s definition of this film subgenre states that “these movies are about a serial killer who is spreading fear in a middle-class community killing innocent people” (2014). Using this basic definition, I will be analyzing David Gordon Green’s Halloween (2018), a postmillennial Slasher film that broke multiple box office records and was a fresh take on an established franchise for a new generation of cinema-goer. The Slasher genre still maintains tropes and themes from its inception and increasing popularity in the 1980s, Clover’s ‘Final Girl’ being one of

10 them. The Final Girl has evolved, leaving behind for instance the outdated notion of a more “pure,” meaning virginal, heroine. Clover developed a theory that held for a few decades of the Slasher subgenre, but with gender relations changing drastically in postmillennial film, the Slasher’s gender roles need to be revisited.

The second subgenre I will look at is Psychological horror, such as Roman

Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), which create fear by showing the psychological vulnerabilities of the characters in the film. The films uncover and probe the darkest areas of the human psyche, ones that cause serious mental distress or that individuals repress or deny. An example of this would be Lynne Ramsey’s acclaimed independent 2011 film

We Need to Talk About Kevin, where a grieving mother processes the atrocities created by her murderous son. In this thesis, however, I want to look at a film that had more box office success, Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018). While it overall is an occult horror film, with themes such as Satanism and possession, I believe it mainly represents a terribly flawed family in an era that is changing our perception of family values.

The final subgenre I will discuss, using the record breaking 2017 hit mentioned earlier, It!, is supernatural horror. Supernatural horror usually has aspects of spirits, religion, afterlife, or possession, but is not always limited to those. Films with these elements include The Conjuring (2013), Paranormal Activity (2007), and The Exorcist

(1973), and interestingly It! was the film to dethrone The Exorcist’s reign of the highest grossing R-Rated horror film of all time (Brevet). A clear distinction has been made between supernatural and psychological horror, with Supernatural horror involving a breach of physical laws created by some type of monstrous entity, and psychological operating in the realm of reality (Clasen 2017). In the successful Paranormal Activity, a

11 couple (Katie and Micah) living in a suburb of San Diego is terrorized by a demon which slowly drives the couple to madness and finally possesses Katie to kill Micah. While this film includes a monstrous entity terrorizing on a small scale, the film I will be looking at involves a monster holding a town in secretive terror for hundreds of years, brutally killing children and satiating itself on the fear.

Halloween (2018)

David Gordon Green’s Halloween is a direct sequel to the 1978 film of the same name, with Michael Myers coming back just as vicious as in his first encounter with

Laurie Strode forty years before. The original Halloween helped spark the slasher subgenre’s popularity in the 1980s (Clover 24), and this new Halloween has changed up the idea of the Final Girl. Laurie Strode is no longer a timid virgin but a prepared mother.

Halloween (2018) retcons all the previous Halloween franchise films, picking up forty years later as Michael Myers is transferred from Warren County Sanitarium, where he has been held since his first killing spree in the original Halloween (1978). This transfer is of course unsuccessful, and he escapes to terrorize Laurie on Halloween night. Laurie, still obviously dealing with the traumatic events of that Halloween night 40 years ago, has become mostly estranged from her family and lives in seclusion. The first glimpse we see of Laurie’s eccentric lifestyle is when the podcasters, who visited Michael in the beginning of the film, pay her a hefty $3000 for an interview. Laurie’s property is guarded by an electronically-controlled gate and security cameras, which are mocked as examples of her paranoia. As Laurie lets the interviewers into her house we see the numerous locks, deadbolts, and barricades she must undo to get the front door open; her

12 compound is designed solely to protect her from Michael. In the the next few pages I will look at Laurie as a character and how her behavior after a traumatic event is representative of a society coping with the traumas of, for example, mass shootings and terrorist attacks. Halloween tells a story of a survivor affected by Post-Traumatic Stress and how that affects the quality of life of the individual and her family, and I will explain how it depicts the effects of mass violence in America today. After discussing the traumatic stress incited by Laurie’s terrifying night in the first Halloween, I will also take a look at how her new representation of the Final Girl is a symbolic representation of the

#MeToo era, and of women speaking out about their experiences of sexual assault and trauma, and standing up to their attackers (Milligan).

Laurie is a trauma survivor, a survivor that has never really addressed her trauma other than going full survivalist in her hidden fortress in the woods of Haddonfield. She has turned her compound into a maze of barriers, secret passageways, hidden rooms, and an impressive arsenal of weapons. She is twice divorced, something the interviewers bring up as a subtle way to pick at her failures, and has a strained relationship with her daughter, who claims her mother is irrational. While the main focus is on Laurie, her strained relationship with her daughter is indicative of unchecked trauma. At one point, when Laurie has broken into her daughter’s house to show she is unprepared for the coming attack, her daughter claims “the world is not a dark and evil place.” This is a critique of how trauma survivors usually cannot have their feelings validated, and how those who have not experienced the trauma ignore the long-lasting effects. Invalidation is when a person’s thoughts or feelings are ignored, rejected, or judged according to the

DSM-5 and creates emotional stress (2013). This is echoed in a scene with high school

13 kids walking home, discussing the attacks of 1978 and claiming that “a couple of people getting killed with a knife isn’t that big of a deal by today’s standards.” These sorts of invalidations of trauma survivors are very real today; we have constant, violent tragedies and the broader American community quickly moves on, at least on a conscious level.

For example, in 2017, a year in which Halloween was in development, the number of mass shootings in America of four or more victims hit a record high (Smart

2018). With these incidents on the rise, and with the regular media coverage they receive, such violent tragedies and the fear they evoke have become ingrained in American culture and the American mind. Even with statistics showing that violent crime in general has declined in recent decades (Gramlich 2019), constant media coverage of violent crime and high-profile mass shootings continue to terrorize Americans. The images of

Michael Myers murder sprees, while not perpetrated with a firearm, are representative of a society gripped in fear by a boogeyman. In the following pages I discuss how Laurie’s character and Halloween (2018) portray the fear that many American’s feel in an age of violence.

Laurie is sometimes portrayed as the quintessential bomb-shelter building, canned-good-storing, gun-toting paranoid American. We see this in her basement when she brings her family to her compound to prepare for the coming attack of Michael. What

Laurie really portrays is the long-lasting effects of violent trauma, which makes her a character many Americans can relate to. She struggles with the damage to her psyche, but has promised herself she will not be a victim again, especially not at the hands of

Michael. When Laurie brings her daughter’s family to her compound, the husband looks around in astonishment at the traps and a secret passageway revealed beneath the kitchen

14 island. As the group descends into the bunker Laurie closes the secret hatch. She goes over to a roll-top door, unlocks it, and raises it up with the horrendous sound of the grating metal—all of that juxtaposed with flowers painted on the door, most likely from

Laurie’s daughter during her childhood. We even see plenty of canned and pickled food on a shelf in the background. The door and the contents behind it reflect extremes, as opposite the flowers is an arsenal that Laurie seems quite comfortable with. She hands out the firearms, explains the preferred use of said firearms and holds them as if they are an extension of herself. This scene is about Laurie, but it is not every trauma survivor, and the importance of that is to know that dealing with trauma can vary. Halloween speaks to a generation that has seen family, friends, and acquaintances murdered for no other reason than hate. This film depicts the trouble with trauma in our society, both how it affects people and how the people close with a trauma survivor are affected.

Understanding the effects of trauma on Laurie will help to understand how this new

Halloween reshaped the Final Girl trope and is a startling representation of trauma as well as of the #MeToo movement.

Laurie as the Final Girl in John Carpenter’s 1978 version of Halloween spurred the Final Girls of the 80s slasher film cycle. An innocent sheltered teen who is usually a virgin, she is a stark contrast to her promiscuous and drug imbibing friends, who almost always end up as bloody victims. Clover describes our original Final Girl as:

The one who encounters the mutilated bodies of her friends and perceives the full extent of the preceding horror and of her own peril; who is chased, cornered, wounded; whom we see scream, stagger, fall, rise, and scream again. She is abject terror personified… She alone looks death in the face, but she alone also finds the strength either to stay the killer long enough to be recued or to kill him herself (35).

Green’s 2018 sequel, Halloween, introduced us to a Laurie that had never recovered from the trauma she encountered decades previously. Laurie is now a mother, but there is tension in family relations because her encounter with Michael so many years ago dictates her behavior to this day. She is represented as flawed, yet not in a particularly negative way; it is clear she has the inner strength needed to overcome. Laurie is still the

Final Girl, but she is the new Final Girl for the #MeToo era. Similar to Rose McGowan with Harvey Weinstein, Laurie has decided she will not fear the toxic masculinity that is

Michael; and although her memories of that fateful Halloween night have dictated her life, she will no longer run from Michael.

Understanding Michael Meyers as a representation of toxic masculinity will be important in explaining how Laurie’s character is a new Final Girl for the #MeToo era.

Michael’s origin story is blatantly representative of a traumatic childhood; he murders his sister mid-intercourse when he is a child with his famous butcher knife. The infamous butcher knife even evokes phallic imagery, a murderous form of penetration. Michael, with his phallic weapon, seems to be motivated by absolutely nothing, no wants or desires. Just a faceless entity dehumanizing his victims that cannot be stopped. In the

2018 Halloween Michael has three generations of women in danger, and he is looking to end their lives for no particular reason. Michael is a symbol for male oppression, a boogeyman creating fear and anxiety without a face; he could be the reason it isn’t safe to walk to your car after work or why you carry mace on your keychain. He may be a fictional character but he represents a real danger plaguing girls and women and whole

American communities.

Laurie’s friends were brutally murdered and she spends most of the original 1978 film’s third act running from Michael. But Laurie 40 years later will not be a victim; she refuses to stay oppressed by the long-lasting trauma of Michael’s rampage. Clover’s idea of the Final Girl has been flipped; she is no longer defined as a victim but as an adversary against these male predators as represented by the slasher. Laurie has trained for decades for the possibility of coming face to face with Michael again, and it almost seems as if she is hoping she has the opportunity to face her nemesis. Laurie knows her past will not repeat itself, and during flashbacks in Halloween we see Laurie, and sometimes her daughter, training in a military style. This is a significant alteration of Clover’s Final Girl, as our old Final Girl would run, try to escape, or even hide from their attacker. Similar to the women speaking out in the #MeToo movement, Laurie is ready to address Michael head on, showing that she will no longer be held down by oppressive males, or even be rescued by them like in the 1978 Halloween.

The true strength of Laurie is shown in her final battle with Michael, which takes place at her heavily fortified compound. Laurie’s confidence as she descends into her bunker for her firearms is so different from her teenage years. She has built that house solely for Michael, and her life path has been shaped by the presence of him, even if he has been locked away. Like Laurie, many women’s lives have been shaped by predators; at this moment in time we hear names such as Weinstein and Kavanaugh, but it is a long standing tradition (Smyth 4). Laurie, however, like other women in the #MeToo era, has the strength to resist this predation and shows us in Halloween that she will finally kill

Michael and still end up the Final Girl. In contrast to her first encounter with Michael, in this film she hunts him, never once showing any signs of victimization. She is not

17 victimized for the first half of the film nor eventually given masculine qualities to survive like Clover’s Final Girl, but rather is strength personified without being given any male attributes. She is wholly a strong woman, an experienced mother, and does not end up alone at the end of this film. Like many of the women fighting sexual misconduct today, she goes after this predator with strength and determination.

The post-credit audio needs to be mentioned as well; while there is no image after the credits are done rolling we clearly hear Michael breathing. It is a blatant set-up for a sequel, but also possibly a deeper message that the fight of the #MeToo era is not over.

While progress is made in outing the Weinsteins and Kavanaughs the fight will continue, and now with new-found strength the next generations of Final Girls no longer have to run. Forty years later, the Final Girl has transformed from the victim to fighting on her own terms, using the past as knowledge and fuel for her future actions.

The opening weekend of Halloween brought in old fans as well as a new generation that has been thirsting for a slasher film with more depth than just brutal killings and teens running away in fright. The film opened in October and grossed

$77.5M domestically, becoming the second largest October opening ever (Brevet 2018).

Being released shortly before Halloween was a good strategy to create more desire for this film, but the depth of this story and its connection to the current climate in our country may have also been a draw for American audiences, and relatively younger and more female horror audiences in particular. Halloween addresses more than the brutal violence of a slasher; it is able to symbolically represent the long-term traumatic effects of mass shootings and sexual assault, as well as the resilience of women in the #MeToo era. The Post Traumatic Stress portrayed in Halloween gives horror audiences a chance to

18 face these terrors in a somewhat safe atmosphere, and how this film addresses these key concerns in our society can be a reason for its popularity in the cinema.

Hereditary (2017)

Hereditary (2018) is the feature length directorial debut of writer-director Ari

Aster. It follows the story of Annie Graham and her family, following the death of her secretive mother and the tragic accidental decapitation of her daughter, Charlie. Charlie is decapitated as her brother, Peter, drives her from a party as she is experiencing an allergic reaction to walnuts that were in a piece of chocolate cake. In shock, Peter leaves the gruesomeness in the back seat of the family station wagon for Annie to discover in the morning. The grieving following Charlie’s funeral heightens tensions between Annie and

Peter, creating psychological distress in the family. Both begin experiencing nightmares and visions, creating an almost supernatural element to the film, although it is vague enough the viewer can never be sure if the image onscreen is real or hallucinated. As the family descends into madness the secrets of the grandmother begin to surface, and the horror of a cult envelops the family looking to use the son as a host for a demonic ceremony. While the film may seem to have supernatural elements, the ambiguity and history of mental illness in the family implies that the film’s events may be imagined.

That is why I will examine this as a psychological horror, discussing the sociocultural anxieties layered in the images and story of the film.

A look at Hereditary’s opening scene will help frame my discussion for the rest of this section, in which I focus on the film’s representation of mental health stigmas in our society and the grieving process of losing a child. The scene fades in with an obituary for

Ellen Taper Leigh, the mother of Annie, which notes that she recently passed away in the family house. After this we open on a shot looking out at Charlie’s treehouse through the frame of the window, outside the family home, before the camera starts to pan to the left.

As the camera pans we get a full glimpse into Annie’s studio, where we learn later she creates miniature replicas of everyday life. The camera centers on a miniature house and proceeds to zoom towards a bedroom. As it fills the frame the patriarch of the family,

Alex Wolff, enters the room. The transition from doll house to real house is smooth, almost unnoticeable, and important in understanding the artifice of this film. From this point on we are never sure if what we see on the screen is real or rather Annie’s way of dealing with trauma through her miniatures and some sort of demented play therapy, which we see examples of later in the film.

Annie later delivers a chilling eulogy at her mother’s funeral, a monologue that hints at the strangers and secrets about to envelop Annie’s family and the possibility that they have always been there:

It’s heartening to see so many strange, new faces here today. I know my

mom would be very touched, and probably a little suspicious to see this

turnout. My mother was a very secretive and private woman. She had

private rituals, private friends, private anxieties. It honestly feels like a

betrayal just to be standing here talking about her (2018).

The private life of Annie’s mother will eventually cause irreparable damage to

Annie’s psyche and the destruction of her nuclear family. The importance of this opening scene to my discussion is the importance placed on secrecy in this family,

20 which makes more sense when we learn of the atrocities committed by family members she claims had mental disorders.

The secrecy Annie’s mother shrouded the family in seems to be fueled in part by shame, and is aligned with the stigma of the mental disorders. Although the family afflictions mentioned are Dissociative Identity Disorder, Psychotic

Depression, and Schizophrenia, this connects to a much larger social perspective on mental health, and how horrifying it would be to have your own mind betray you. While much of the instability in the family comes from the grieving processes experienced by each family member after Charlie’s death, we see symptoms of each mental affliction mentioned above in Annie and Peter and its eventual toll on the family. I want to look at Annie’s descent into madness and those effects on the stability of the family, then wrap by examining Peter’s psychotic break.

Tragedy sets in motion when Charlie has an allergic reaction to nuts, and while Peter is speeding home with her, hangs her head out the window struggling to breathe. When she is decapitated by a light pole, Peter leaves the headless body of his sister in the back seat of the family car. Annie has the unfortunate luck of discovering her deceased daughter in the morning because Peter drove home after the accident in shock and left the car in the driveway, corpse and all. This is the point when we see the family relationships truly nosedive, and the rift between

Peter and Annie grows. Annie was already grieving from her mother passing, and now must deal with the added trauma from the loss of her child. Annie eventually goes to group therapy, where she confesses her family history of mental disorders,

21 and we finally see the secrets she was referring to in her mother’s eulogy. I feel these secrets refer to the stigma of mental disorders, and the embarrassment a family can have if members are afflicted. Annie is deeply concerned that her children may end up affected, given that some mental disorders are inheritable.

Throughout the film we see that the family seems to have little agency, something implied in the opening scenes that suggest they are figures in Annie’s miniature houses. With a disorder that can be transferred through genes they may have no say in the family curse.

In staying true to the psychoanalytic perspective I want to mention current discussions on psychological disorders and their genetic inheritability as it pertains to the family of Hereditary. In Annie’s group therapy session, she reveals her mother had Dissociative Identity Disorder, her father had Psychotic

Depression, and her brother suffered from Schizophrenia. Annie, as well, demonstrates behavior associated with schizophrenia, such as hallucinations, paranoia, and delusions. And while there is no confirmation Annie or Peter are afflicted, they portray symptoms of mental health disorders to give the audience the impression the younger generations of the family have inherited disorders. I relate this to current research in psychology that has pointed common genetic markers in families with history of mental health disorders. According to the

National Institutes of Health, “recent studies have turned up limited evidence of shared genetic risk factors, such as for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, autism and schizophrenia, and depression and bipolar disorder” (2013). The family in

Hereditary represents the concern of mental health disorder inheritability and how individual members cope.

There is a scene I would like to look at that I believe encapsulates Annie’s fear of her family’s mental disorders and her disdain for her son, Peter. The family sits at the table for dinner, the room is dimly lit and claustrophobic, the tension in the air electric. Peter asks his mother if there is something on her mind while he looks down at his plate and moves his food around, fishing for an apology that will never come. Annie voices her disgust with the way Peter looks at her, asking why she would say anything if Peter will just sneer at her. Peter responds with swearing at Annie, begging her to release him from the guilt of his sister’s death. Annie explodes in rage and resentment at Peter, chastising him for not taking responsibility for anything, and ending with the claim that nobody admits anything they have done. Annie’s explosion comes from shame and secrecy in the family, and her belief that no one in her family can see the problems causing the trauma. Peter’s reply – “What about you mom?” – shows the discord between generations and the family’s history of mental health problems. Annie’s hostility goes in both generational directions, towards her mother’s curse and her son’s ambivalence towards her, all of which continues the generational trauma.

Peter’s psychotic break is much more intense than Annie’s and is shrouded in ambiguity, as it appears to be the agenda of a cult to use his body as a vessel for a demon. After Charlie’s accidental decapitation Peter starts to hear or see her, as in one terrifying scene when Peter wakes up in the middle of the night

23 after hearing Charlie’s tongue-click noise, with only light from the moon shining in. He focuses his vision on the corner of his room to see Charlie standing partially shrouded in the shadows. Her head rolls off her shoulders and turns into a ball rolling across the floor towards the bed, in one of many instances of Peter’s perspective that we can never be sure is reality. Peter dealing with the trauma of losing his sister, and being the one blamed for it, seems to be a catalyst for his psychosis. The voices and visions, with the knowledge of Annie’s brother’s mental disorder, seem to point towards schizophrenia. Peter even harms himself, as his uncle before him did, when he breaks his own nose in class. Sitting in class he starts to hear the distinct sound Charlie used to make, a faint clicking of her tongue. Staring into the camera, with a blank yet horrified face covered in sweat, his arm shoots up in a jerky manner and trembles in the air. As his teacher repeatedly asks if he is alright, he slams his face onto his desk twice, then flies backwards screaming uncontrollably This is a truly disturbing scene. Peter’s behavior is less that of a haunting than a mental disorder, and the visual and auditory hallucinations are just that, emerging from the traumatic death of his sister. There is no demonic entity at work here.

Annie and Peter’s descent into psychosis is triggered by a set of emotionally charged events, Annie’s mother’s death and Charlie’s decapitation.

Annie’s grief is portrayed as highly reactive; a scene shows her rocking in the fetal position sobbing so loud it echoes down the hall to Peter’s room. Peter’s guilt starts a chain reaction of hallucinations, such as seeing Charlie’s head roll off or imagining his mother trying to “pull his head off.” The history of mental

24 health disorders in the family is a given fact, and we see Annie and Peter displaying behavior that alludes to inheriting them. And with the stigma towards mental health it is reasonable to see Annie’s mother’s secrets as her hiding the shame of the family’s afflictions. The family in Hereditary, although on screen tormented by a ‘demon’, could be representative of family anxieties and stress due to the mental health disorders passed down in the family and Annie’s fear of her children being affected.

Not only was Hereditary a critical success (with Metacritic showing perfect scores from multiple high-profile outlets), and drawing comparisons to

Rosemary’s Baby and The Amityville Horror, like the other films I am examining it was successful at the box office and broke previous records. It became studio

A24’s highest grossing film worldwide, beating 2015’s The Witch by nearly 40%

(D’Alessandro 2019), and made $79 million against a $9M budget. With a terrifyingly powerful performance by Toni Collette as the matriarch, Hereditary struck a chord with the 2017 audiences I encountered in my cinema, where I observed long silences in tension building scenes and screams and gasps at the final collapse of the family. The horror of mental illness infiltrating and ruminating in a family for years is not some fantasy; in fact, in recent years

“America seems to be in a full blown panic attack” (Lavin). And the relatively younger horror film audience in particular would seem to be especially concerned about mental illness—a recent study finding, for example, that 70% of teenagers saw mental heath as an important contemporary issue (Zraick). The fear on the screen in Hereditary is relatable, and much like Annie’s miniatures which act as a

25 form of therapy to her, letting her recreate scenes and work them out through her mind, horror films give us the chance to face our unconscious fears in a safe environment, much like exposure therapy. Hereditary is popular in part because it addresses the horror we face in dysfunctional families, generational trauma, and our stigma of mental disorders.

It! (2017)

Andy Muschietti’s It! (2017) is the second adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 novel of the same name, which follows the story of seven children living in Derry, Maine being fed on by an ancient entity that possesses many fear-based forms, most commonly

Pennywise, the Dancing Clown. The story begins with Bill Denbroughs’s younger brother Georgie sailing a boat down the gutters of his neighborhood in a rainstorm. When his boat falls into a storm drain, his arm is ripped off and he is dragged into the sewer by

Pennywise. The following summer each of the seven children are terrorized by the clown, who takes the form of each of the individual kid’s fears, and the local bully Henry

Bowers. The seven kids, known as the Losers Club, discover their shared enemy and start taking steps to battle this monster, which has been causing tragedies every 27 years in

Derry. The film is split into two parts, with the Loser’s Club battling Pennywise and causing it to retreat into hibernation for another 27 years. The friends vow to return and kill It when it returns. In graphic depictions of hate and racism, and subtle hints of sexual abuse, Pennywise’s supernatural terror conveys real world evils. In the coming pages I will look at how the Loser’s Club’s fears come to life in Pennywise in ways that represent

26 a much larger picture of sociocultural anxieties, and how their battle against the evil clown stands in for real life struggles and social problems in contemporary America.

In the hostile climate of 2017 in America, It! is less nostalgia for the 80’s and more an allegorical look at the hate and evil thriving in our current times. The first member of the Loser’s Club I want look at is Mike Hanlon, the only black kid in the group and possibly the only one in Derry. When Mike is introduced we learn his parents are gone and he is living on a farm with his grandfather. The scene opens on a shadowy corral, with bleating sheep being led into a chute that will reveal Mike shakily holding an air powered bolt gun between the defenseless animals’ eyes. The camera cuts from the hollow black eyes of the sheep to the barrel of the bolt gun and the unfocused image of

Mike holding it, a muted voice over telling Mike to “go on and pull it,” referring to the trigger. His grandfather snatches it out of Mike’s hand and, in a fluid motion, aims and kills. Mike’s grandfather tells him that there are two places to be in this world, referring to outside or in the pen to be slaughtered, and that if he is does not take action that someone else will make his choice. This scene is important to Mike’s story, as we will later see his hesitation vanish, and the courage he grows to fight against a true evil.

Mike’s fears emerge later while making a meat delivery, presumably for his grandfather. He sees Henry Bowers, the local bully who viciously hunts the Loser’s Club members. Fearing he will be spotted, Mike slips into the alley behind him. Mike leans his bike against a dumpster, and has his attention drawn to an old chained up wood door, that is being pushed against from the inside. Charred hands begin to emerge from all around the crack between the door frame and the door, smoke billows out, and agonizing screams are heard. The hands panic, searching for escape from a fiery demise. The

27 context of this is later revealed as the fire at The Black Spot, an old night club in Derry’s

Black community that Pennywise attacked. It was thought to be an attack from the racist townspeople of Derry. And to really drive that metaphor home the door Mike is standing at blows open to reveal Pennywise, with his eyes blazing orange like a fire, dangling from a noose. In an instant the image cuts to Henry and his goons speeding down the alley towards Mike with heavy metal blaring from the car’s speakers. The car screeches to a halt in front of him, Henry sticks his head out of the T-Top convertible, flicks his cigarette at Mike and screams “Stay the fuck out of my town.” The racial terror

Pennywise invokes echoes the turmoil America has been experiencing recently, and the still apparent struggle of racial inequality. Mike’s battle with supernatural terror is a real battle that many Americans face daily.

The final scene with Mike and Henry reveals the full story of their relationship and the parents’ connection. Mike is separated from the others in the Loser’s Club by

Henry, a murderous maniac possessed by Pennywise and covered in his father’s blood.

Henry’s final dialogue to Mike reveals the hate simmering in him: “You should have stayed out of Derry. Your parents didn’t and look what happened to them. I still get sad every time I pass by that pile of ashes. Sad that I couldn’t have done it myself.” Henry straddles Mike with the bolt gun primed and aimed at the boy’s forehead. Mike’s grandfather’s warning from earlier echoes in this scene as Mike has become the sheep, in danger of his life being cut short for no good reason. Henry shakes and drips sweat as he hopes to end Mike’s life and move on to the rest of the Loser’s Club. But Mike has a different idea and moves out of the path of the bolt. Mike doesn’t let anyone else make

28 his decision now, taking a nearby rock and smashing Henry’s head, then pushing him down the well. Henry bounces off the walls all the way to his death.

Mike’s fears in It! are an image of the civil unrest in our society at the time of this film’s release, and while it represents the time it also represents racial inequality throughout previous generations. Pennywise has used racism as a tool for his killing in the past, and our country as a whole is far from innocent of racist evils. Mike’s fight against Henry seems to mirror the racial divide in America, and seeing this connection is helpful in understanding the importance of this film and one of the reasons for its popularity. However, Mike’s struggles are not the only connection to real life fears in this film.

Beverly is the only female member of the Loser’s Club, and is uncomfortably sexualized throughout this film. She subscribed more to the club on the basis of her poverty than being bullied, yet the other Losers do not understand the extent of Beverly’s abuse. There are scenes in It! where the sexual abuse and unwanted attention is displayed, from her father and an adult in town. Beverly’s situations are representative of larger problems in our society of gender inequality, and of the abuse inflicted on children. I will relate Beverly’s struggles to current sociocultural issues, but it addresses the much larger picture of gender inequality in America. I will specifically be looking at the implication of her father’s sexual abuse and the pharmacist’s completely inappropriate flirting with

Beverly.

The scene with the creepy pharmacist, Mr. Keene, begins with Beverly running into the Loser’s Club while buying what seems to be her first box of tampons. The club explains to Beverly that they are trying to buy medical supplies for another victim of

Henry Bowers and they have no money, but Beverly just stares behind them at the pharmacist. Cut to Beverly complimenting Mr. Keene’s glasses, mentioning his likeness to Clark Kent in a flirting manner, and asking to try them on. Slowly putting on the glasses she bats her eyes at Keene, who flirtatiously likens this young girl to Lois Lane.

In one swift motion Beverly removes the glasses to return them, shoots her hand towards

Keene, and knocks over a plastic display on the counter. While Keene leans behind the counter to clean up the mess, Beverly quickly glances back at the Loser’s Club and gives them the cue to run with the supplies. Cutting back to Beverly she slips a pack of cigarettes off the counter and into her pocket. Beverly is self aware of her maturation, and similar to Mike has choices made for her and makes her own. Very different from the relationship with her father, which will be discussed shortly, Beverly uses this situation for her empowerment, fighting back against the real life evils of Derry.

While Pennywise has started terrorizing the kids of the Loser’s Club, Beverly has been living in fear of an evil that is much darker and more real than Pennywise. Every parent in this town is less than healthy, an example being Eddie Kaspbrak’s mother, who keeps him on a heavy regimen of placebos and tries to prevent him from socializing. In the simplest terms the parents of Derry are psychotic, but Beverly’s father Alvin is the most grotesque of all adults. A widowed janitor that eyes Beverly every time they are in the house together and gives off all the hints of sexually abusing Beverly, he constantly refers to her as “his little girl.” Her father’s stroking of her hair, staring, and inappropriate comments stand in for a larger statement on the behavior directed towards women on a daily basis. Beverly fights her father the best she can, such as when she cuts off a majority of her hair after an encounter in the dark hallway of the house. His disgusted

30 look and pointing out her resemblance to a boy makes her realize that she is not helpless.

Beverly’s subversive behavior helps her gain the confidence to fight all the evils of

Derry. As the film goes on we see Beverly mature much like Mike in facing real life evils.

Beverly’s final encounter with her father is her ultimate show of strength and her full realization of her power. While attempting to leave, presumably to meet up with the

Loser’s Club, Beverly encounters the padlocks her father has bolted to the front door.

Behind her, with half his body hidden in the shadows, he sits and waits to ask her where she is sneaking off to. Alvin calls her over, begins to hold and caress her hand, and asks her about the rumors around town of her spending the summer with the Loser’s Club.

Alvin’s problem is that the group is all boys except Beverly, and he knows how boys look at her because he sees the same thing. There is no longer any subtlety in his sexual attraction to his daughter. The encounter escalates into Alvin attempting to rape Beverly, a situation that has been hinted at with every scene of them together. Beverly fights back, kneeing her father in the crotch as he pins her down asking if all the boys know she is still his little girl. She runs to her sanctuary, the bathroom, but her dad eventually kicks in the door. Beverly is waiting behind the shower curtain with the ceramic toilet tank cover.

She swings as he rips aside the curtains, knocking him unconscious. This is Beverly conquering her fear, and making the choice to not let the world make her decisions.

While Pennywise is still very much a threat, the real terror that filled Beverly’s life has been addressed.

Mike and Beverly are representations of evils that are currently plaguing our society. America’s issues with racial and gender injustices are deeply sewn into the fabric

31 of our country and have been a constant topic of discussion in the era of President Trump.

In recent years, for example, there has been a rise in hate crimes and a growing concern over police treatment of African-Americans (Friedersdorf & Xu). Similarly, the emergence of the #MeToo movement has seen an increased attention paid to sexual assault and a rise in reports of these crimes (Milligan). It! uses the supernatural terror of

Pennywise infecting and controlling a whole town to symbolize how institutionalized racism and sexism work; when it is ignored, it grows. Pennywise is the ultimate horror character for a film in the sense that he adapts to the fear of the town and children, which allows the story to touch on the anxieties of our society/culture in various ways. This film depicts so many real world evils, but the two I touched on seem to be ever-present in our collective minds today. Beverly and Mike’s stories, as well as most of the fears

Pennywise takes on, are understandable and at times relatable to a wide audience.

As I noted in my introduction, It! broke numerous box office records and brought in $327 million overall. While the 80’s setting of the film exemplifies the popularity in recent 80’s themed entertainment, such as Stranger Things (2016), the supernatural terror of Pennywise represent present day real life fears. Muschietti was able to take the anxieties of our times and use them as supernatural terror in this film. Mike and Beverly’s stories are representative of two major current anxieties in our society, racial and gender injustice. The more a horror film can relate to an audience’s deeper concerns, the more it can increase the popularity, and some of the everyday fears represented on screen currently can explain some of the massive success of It! Pennywise has put our fears on the screen in a manageable context. I say manageable because the anxieties are wrapped into a film and a story, one that has an optimistic ending. That is not how the real world

32 always is. Pennywise is a vessel for our society’s fears and problems that we can see be killed and solved.

Conclusion

The horror film has always had an odd place in the diverse community that is film, with critics labeling works such as The Exorcist as “nothing more than a religious porn film” (Fitch 202) even while it breaks box office records. While critics love to lambast these films there is obviously a drawing power, and as I have argued in this thesis, part of that power is that the relatively young and diverse horror audience in particular can relate to and be moved by some of the issues addressed symbolically in these films. The true evil portrayed in these films is not so much the monsters on the screen, but rather the “monsters” that cause chaos in our lives. It!, Hereditary, and

Halloween all represent something we as a society are struggling with today. It! uses

Pennywise to show the anxieties and anger we have as a country about racial and gender injustice. Hereditary destroys a family from the inside due to its anxieties about mental heath disorders being passed down. And Halloween brings back the Slasher film, a subgenre that usually deals primarily with gender and turns it into not only a representation of #MeToo resilience, but also a lesson on Post Traumatic Stress and the mass violence plaguing America. All of these recent horror films represent and speak to certain aspects of our collective unconscious, and not coincidentally they have performed well at the box office. The future of this conversation and further academic study will need to examine the countless Post-Millennial horror films I have not analyzed here, as well as the increasingly heavy slate of horror films due for release in the rest of 2019,

33 including Doctor Sleep, It!: Chapter 2, and Black Christmas. It will also ideally incorporate studies of other popular subgenres of horror, such as the rape/revenge film, found-footage film, and zombie film. Whatever subgenre it may be, the horror film will continue to captivate audiences, drawing in crowds to face what they fear the most.

Bibliography

Andrews, David. “Reconsidering the Body Genre: Rape-Revenge and Postfeminist

Softcore as Biocultural Phenomena.” Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen

Media, Vol. 7, 2015.

Barthes, Ronald. “The Death of the Author.” Image-Music-Text, 1968, pp. 208-213.

Benshoff, Harry M. A Companion to the Horror Film. United Kingdom: John Wiley and

Sons, Inc., 2014.

Brevet, Brad. “’IT’ Remains #1 With $60M Second Weekend, Floating to September

Record.” Box Office Mojo, 17 Sep. 2017,

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=4325&p=.htm. Accessed 5 February

2019.

Brevet, Brad. “’IT’ Devours Competition with Record-breaking $123 Million Opening.”

Box Office Mojo, 10 Sep. 2017,

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=4323&p=.htm. Accessed 5 February

2019.

Brevet, Brad. “'Ocean's 8' Steals #1; 'Hereditary' Delivers Record Numbers & 'Jurassic

World 2' Roars Overseas.” Box Office Mojo, 10 June 2018,

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=4406&p=.htm. Accessed 5 February

2019.

Carrol, Noel. The Philosophy of Horror. New York: Routledge, 1990.

Clasen, Mathias F. Why Horror Seduces. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Clover, Carol J. Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.

Christopher, David. “Zombieland and the Inversion of the Subaltern Zombie.” Horror

Studies, vol. 7, no. 1, 2016, pp. 111-124.

Cohen, Sharon & Tanner, Lindsey. “Mass Shootings Transform how America Talks,

Prays, Prepares.” AP News, 3 June 2019,

https://www.apnews.com/73d3cdd6ee5643449bab86c3fe301ce8. Accessed 5 July

2019.

Connolly, Angela M. “Film Review: Rosemary’s Baby.” International Journal of

Jungian Studies, vol. 10, no. 2, 2018, pp. 175-179.

Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. New York:

Routledge, 1993.

D’Alessandro, Anthony. “’Ocean’s 8’ Steals Franchise Record with $41.5 M Opening.”

Deadline Hollywood, 10 June 2018, https://deadline.com/2018/06/oceans-8-

sandra-bullock-box-office-hereditary-hotel-artemis-1202406200/. Accessed 5

February 2019.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual

of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric

Association, 2013.

Elsaesser, Thomas. Weimar Cinema and After: Germany’s Historical Imaginary. New

York: Routledge, 2000.

Enright, Jenna. “13 Insights About Horror Movie Fans.” Civic Science, 26 October 2017,

https://civicscience.com/horror-movie-fan-facts/. Accessed 3 July 2019.

Fiddler, Michael. “Playing Funny Games in The Last House on the Left: The Uncanny

and the ‘Home Invasion’ genre.” Crime, Media, Culture: An International

Journal, vol. 9, no. 3, 2013, pp. 281-299.

Fitch, Marc E. Paranormal Nation: Why America Needs Ghosts, UFOs, and Bigfoot.

Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2013.

Frangos, Constatine. “On the Autopsy of Jane Doe.” Film Matters, vol. 8, no. 2, 2017, pp. 20-22.

Friedersdorf, Conor. “How to Distinguish Between Antifa, White Supremacists, and

Black Lives Matter.” The Atlantic,

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/drawing-distinctions-antifa-

the-alt-right-and-black-lives-matter/538320. Accessed 3 July 2019.

Frey, William H. “The Millennial Generation: A Demographic Bridge to America’s

Diverse Future.” Brookings, https://www.brookings.edu/research/millennials/.

Accessed 5 July 2019.

Gramlich, John. “5 Facts About Crime in the U.S.” Pew Research Center, 3 January

2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/03/5-facts-about-crime-in-

the-u-s. Accessed 2 July 2019

Hoskin, Dave. “Rape, Revenge and Responsibility: The Day of the Broken.” Metro,

Spring, no. 82, 2014, pp. 34-37.

Jackson, Kimberly. Gender and the Nuclear Family in Twenty-First-Century Horror.

New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Jones, Steve. “The Pure Moment of Murder: The Symbolic Function of Bodily

Interactions in Horror Film.” Projections, vol. 5, no. 2, 2011, pp. 96-114.

Kelley, N. Megan. Projections of Passing: Postwar anxieties and Hollywood films.

Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016.

Kline, Jim. “Fleeing and Fighting with The Exorcist.” Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche,

vol. 12, no. 2, 2018, pp. 10-25.

Kracauer, Siegfried. From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German

Film. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947, 2004.

Lavin, Talia. “Age Of Anxiety.” The New Republic, 26 February 2019,

https://newrepublic.com/article/153153/age-anxiety. Accessed 5 July 2019.

Lukas, Scott A. Fear, Cultural Anxiety, and Transformation: Horror, Science Fiction,

and Fantasy Remade. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2010.

Maddeaux, Sabrina. “Are horror fans sickos? On the surface, most horror films seem

simply depraved but dig a bit deeper, and the genre represents so much more.”

National Post, 31 Oct. 2018.

Metz, Christian. The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema. Trans. Celia

Britton et al. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982. 58-67.

Miller, Cynthia J. & Van Riper, A. Bowdoin. “Marketing, Monsters, and Music:

Teensploitation Horror Films.” The Journal of American Culture, vol. 38, no. 2,

2015.

Milligan, Susan. “Sexual Assault reports Spike in the #MeToo Era.” U.S. News, 27

December 2018, https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2018-12-

27/sexual-assault-reports-spike-in-metoo-era. Accessed 5 July 2019.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Narrative, Apparatus,

Ideology: A Film Theory Reader, ed. Phillip Rosen. New York: Columbia UP,

1986. 189-209.

Musante, Dewey. “Insidious Forms: Deleuze, the Bodily Diagram and the Haunted

House Film.” Horror Studies, vol. 7, no. 1, 2016, pp. 73-93.

North, Anna. “The #MeToo Movement and its Evolution, Explained.” Vox, 11 October

2018, https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/10/9/17933746/me-too-movement-

metoo-brett-kavanaugh-weinstein. Accessed 3 July 2019.

Nowell, Richard. Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle. New

York: Continum International Publishing Group, 2011.

Pertridis, Sotiris. “A Historical Approach to the Slasher Film.” Film International, vol.

67, 2014, pp. 76- 84.

Phillips, Kendall R. Dark Directions: Romero, Craven, Carpenter, and the Modern

Horror Film. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 2012.

Plantamura, Lydia. “Blood, Guts, and Disgust: The Effects of Censorship Changes on

American Horror Films.” Film Matters, vol. 6, no.3, 2015, pp. 78-82.

Prince, Stephen. The Horror Film. New Brunswickan: Rutger’s University Press, 2004.

Quandt, James. “Flesh & Blood: Sex and Violence in Recent French Cinema.” Artforum

International, vol. 42, no. 6, 2004, pp. 126-132.

Reyes, Xavier Aldana. “Beyond Psychoanalysis: Post-Millenial Horror Film and Affect

theory.” Horror Studies, vol. 3, no. 2, 2012, pp. 243-261.

Roche, David. Making and Remaking in the 1970s and 2000s: Why Don’t They do it Like

They Used To. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014.

Sarris, Andrew. “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962.” Film Culture, vol. 27, pp. 1-8,

1962.

Scahill, Andrew. “Demons are a Girl’s Best Friend: Queering the Revolting Child in The

Exorcist.” Red Feather Journal, vol. 1, no. 2, 2010, pp. 39-45.

Schneider, Steven, Rothman, William, & Andrew, Dudley. Horror Film and

Psychoanalysis: Freud’s Worst Nightmare. New York: Cambridge University

Press, 2004.

Schubart, Rikke. Master Fear: Women, Emotions and Contemporary Horror. New York:

Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018.

Smart, Rosanna. “Mass Shootings: Definitions and Trends.” Gun Policy in America,

https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/essays/mass-shootings.html.

Accessed 3 March 2019.

Smyth, J.E. “Babylon Revisited.” Cineaste, vol. 43, no.2, 2018, pp. 4-9.

Stam, Robert. Reflexivity in Film and Literature: From Don Quixote to Jean Luc-

Godard. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.

Thompson, Kristin & Bordwell, David. Film History: An Introduction. New York:

McGraw-Hill, 1994.

“Unmasking Horror Moviegoing Audiences.” Movio, 28 October, 2018,

https://movio.co/blog/unmasking-horror-moviegoing-audiences/.

Wein, Harrison. “Common Genetic Factors Found in 5 Mental Disorders.” National

Institutes of Health, https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-

matters/common-genetic-factors-found-5-mental-disorders. Accessed 19 May

2019.

Williams, Evan Calder. “Sunset with Chainsaw” Film Quarterly, vol. 64, no. 4, pp. 28-

33, 2011.

Williams, Tony. Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Films.

Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014.

Zraick, Karen. “Teenagers Say Depression and Anxiety are Major Issues Among Their

Peers.” 20 February 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/20/health/teenage-

depression-statistics.html. Accessed 5 July 2019.

Filmography

31. Dir. Rob Zombie, Saban Films, 2016.

A Quiet Place. Dir. John Krasinski, Paramount Pictures, 2018.

All The Boys Love Mandy Lane. Dir. Johnathon Levine, 2006.

Autopsy of Jane Doe. Dir. Andre Øvredal, IFC Midnight, 2016.

Babadook. Dir. Jennifer Kent, Entertainment One, 2014.

Cabin Fever. Dir. Eli Roth, Lionsgate Films, 2002.

Cabin in the Woods. Dir. Drew Goddard, Lionsgate Films, 2012.

Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The. Dir. Robert Wiene, Decla-Bioscop, 1920.

Conjuring, The. Dir. James Wan, Warner Brothers Pictures, 2013.

Devil’s Rejects, The. Dir. Rob Zombie, Lionsgate Films, 2005.

Don’t Breathe. Dir. Fede Alvarez, Screen Gems, 2016.

Exorcist, The. Dir. William Friedkin, Warner Brothers, 1973.

Friday the 13th. Dir. Marcus Nispel, New Line Cinema, 2009.

Get Out. Dir. Jordan Peele, Universal Pictures, 2017.

Green Room. Dir. Jeremy Saulnier, A24, 2015.

Halloween. Dir. John Carpenter, Compass International Pictures, 1978.

Halloween. Dir. Rob Zombie, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 2007.

Halloween. Dir. David Gordon Green, Universal Pictures, 2018.

Halloween II. Dir. Rob Zombie, Dimension Films, 2009.

Hereditary. Dir. Ari Aster, A24, 2018.

House of 1000 Corpses. Dir. Rob Zombie, Lionsgate Films, 2003.

Insidious. Dir. James Wan, FilmDistrict, 2010.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Dir. Don Siegel, Allied Artists, 1956.

Invitation, The. Dir. Karyn Kusama, Drafthouse Films, 2015.

IT! Dir. Andy Muschietti, Warner Brothers Pictures, 2017.

It Comes at Night. Dir. Trey Edward Shults, A24, 2017.

It Follows. Dir. David Robert Mitchell, Radius-TWC, 2015.

Last House on the Left, The. Dir. Wes Craven, Hallmark Releasing, 1972.

Last House on the Left, The. Dir. Wes Craven, Rogue Pictures, 2009.

Lords of Salem. Dir. Rob Zombie, Anchor Bay Films, 2012.

Mandy. Dir. Panos Cosmatos, RLJE Films, 2018. mother! Dir. Darren Aronofsky, Paramount Pictures, 2017.

Mom and Dad. Dir. Brian Taylor, Momentum Pictures, 2017.

My Bloody Valentine 3D. Dir. Patrick Lussier, Lionsgate Films, 2004.

Neon Demon, The. Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn, Amazon Studios, 2016.

Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film. Dir.

Andrew Monument, 2009.

Raw. Dir. Julia Ducournau, Focus World, 2016.

Revenge. Dir. Coralie Fargeat, Rézo Films, 2017.

Rosemary’s Baby. Dir. Roman Polanski, Paramount Pictures, 1968.

Scream. Dir. Wes Craven, Dimension Films, 1996.

Scream 4. Dir. Wes Craven, Dimension Films, 2011.

Sinister. Dir. Scott Derrickson, Summit Entertainment, 2012.

Straw Dogs. Dir. Sam Peckinpah, 20th Century Fox, 1971.

Straw Dogs. Dir. Rod Lurie, Screen Gems, 2011.

Stepford Wives. Dir. Bryan Forbes, Columbia Pictures, 1975.

Stepford Wives. Dir. Frank Oz, Paramount Pictures, 2004.

Strangers, The. Dir. Brian Bertino, Rogue Pictures, 2008.

Summer of ’84. Dir. Francois Simard, Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell,

Gunpowder & Sky, 2018.

Suspiria. Dir. Dario Argento, Produzioni Atlas Consorziate, 1977.

Suspiria. Dir. Luca Guadagnino, Amazon Studios, 2018.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The. Dir. Tobe Hooper, Bryanston Distributing Company,

1974.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The. Dir. Marcus Nispel, New Line Cinema, 2003.

Witch, The. Dir. Rober Eggers, A24, 2015.

Them! Dir. Gordon Douglas, Warner Brothers, 1954.

Treehouse. Dir. James Roday, Blumhouse Television, 2019.

Upgrade. Dir. Leigh Whanell, OTL Releasing, 2018.

We Are What We Are. Dir. Jim Mickle, Entertainment One, 2013.

We Need to Talk About Kevin. Dir. Lynne Ramsay, Oscilloscope Laboratories, 2011.

Witch, The. Dir. Rober Eggers, A24, 2015.