“Remember when horror was good?” asks one of Vogue‘s writers, who proclaims 2018 void of any good horror movies in an article published this week, yet still works in mentions of Hereditary and A Quiet Place – the latter of which he calls a “thriller”. Sigh.
“We didn’t even get a decent shark movie this year,” he bolsters like that’s some kind of quantifiable statistic over the past 100 years of cinema. (The funny thing is, the fact that we even did get a mega budget shark blockbuster with The Meg actually shows how huge horror is right now.)
The writer then slams Halloween, before he comically tells readers to watch Revenge, which, I hate to break it to him, came out this year. Remember when horror was good? Like, you mean right now? In this very moment we’re living inside of?
Then, Suspiria is removed from the equation. “Suspiria is not forgettable. Nor is it, I hasten to say, much of a horror film, despite being a remake of one.” He suggests that a horror movie isn’t a horror movie unless it has “an element of fun, of dark delight,” and excludes Suspiria because it wasn’t fun nor did he understand the finale. Must be a “thriller,” eh?
Typical for pieces of this sort, the article has no clear point and builds up to nothing; mostly, it’s supported by the writer’s viewing of Winchester, The Nun and Slender Man, three not-so-great films that offer only a fraction of horror that was put on display this year. Of course, as most horror fans are aware, the good has far outweighed the bad in 2018.
(And even the baddest, it’s worth pointing out, have proven quite successful.)
But I digress. This feels like yet another mainstream hit piece, one that perhaps it’s best to give no attention to at all. But it’s hard not to. After all, this is exactly the kind of bullshit we horror fans constantly have to deal with. You see, when horror is having a down year, they’ll write, “Horror is dead.” When it’s hot, like it has been for the past few years, they quantify it and remove films to fit their narrative. We’re low class to them. There’s no way a horror film could be so good that it deserves awards… right?
You just watch… when Toni Collette gets nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in Hereditary, and Ari Aster gets nominated for “Best Director” and “Best Original Screenplay”, the mainstream media will start the narrative that Hereditary is not a horror movie. Buckle your seatbelts, cause it’s going to happen. Hell, it already has.
Digressing yet again, I don’t understand how one of the biggest magazines on the planet can allow someone to write a horror hit piece having just seen a small handful of horror films?
Outside of the aforementioned Hereditary, A Quiet Place (a monster movie that’s without question a *horror* movie), Revenge and Suspiria (that’s a lot of great horror right there, no?), there have been dozens of phenomenal genre films released in 2018. So much so that I’m having a difficult time narrowing down the best of the year. While you may debate me on the merits of The Predator or this weekend’s Overlord (both extremely fun genre films), I offer you the following counter: Annihilation, Mandy, The Ritual, The Night Comes For Us, One Cut of the Dead, Apostle, Thoroughbreds, Before I Wake, Ghost Stories, Blue My Mind, What Keeps You Alive, Tumbbad, Lowlife, Possum, Let the Corpses Tan, Terrified, and The Witch In the Window.
I’m sure there’s even more, but let’s not pretend we’re not in the middle of a major horror renaissance. We are. We absolutely are. And true fans of the genre see that clear as day.
Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.