Halloween, All Hallows Eve, Samhain, call it what you want. Its that
time of year again. That time of year when it seems half the female population
seem to lose all sense of creativity and just go as cats. When it seems
acceptable to walk out in a ‘Slutty (insert profession here)’ and still pretend
it’s a children’s festival. When clubs in every direction try to flog you their
‘Halloween extravaganza’, and it suddenly seems fine to walk around with a fake
axe in hand and covered in corn syrup without anyone calling the police. This
year, in my 20th year, it finally seems that maybe Halloween is losing
its magic, and instead seeming like a bizarre celebration of serial killers,
borderline racism, and pumpkins. So this year, I propose something different:
watch a movie. So here I present to you, not cheap sweets and blood-splattered
t-shirts, but the five horror films
which redefined the genre. Convention was so last year.
1. The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre (1974)
Before A Nightmare on Elm
Street there was Friday the 13th
, before that there was Halloween,
and before that there was The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre. Voted the scariest film of all time by Empire Magazine,
Tobe Hooper’s 1974 low budget slasher entered realms where no film had gone
before: filmed for less than $300,000, Hooper used gritty realism and
cutting-edge camerawork to make up for lack of effects and flare. By no means
was this the first slasher film, considering its predecessors Psycho and Peeping Tom, but set out what can now be considered an almost iconic
formula for any slasher film: group of harmless youths enter house, discover
maniac, maniac kills all but the main protagonist, main protagonist barely
escapes, inevitably to meet the same maniac some time soon (usually in the
prequel). Jason Voorhees, Freddy Kreuger, Michael Myers all owe a huge amount
to Tobe Hooper.
2. Alien (1979)
What Ridley Scott did in his 1974 breakthrough feature was nothing
short of revolutionary: he made what might be conceived as the world’s first
sci-fi horror film. Not just a sci-fi film with scary elements, nor a horror
film with a extraterrestrial twist, a true sci-fi horror film. See, what Scott
did was take the killer/maniac/monster on the loose plot which we know and love
so well, and do something which no one would expect – put it in space. Here,
the spaceship is the haunted house, the astronauts the helpless youths, and the
eponymous Xenomorph the killer on the loose. Not only does he grasp the sci-fi
genre with such intensity and intrigue, the film is truly terrifying. The
formula works: John Carpenter followed it just years later with cult classic The Thing, as did the near knock-off Predator in 1987. This is convention,
don’t get me wrong, but with an unbelievable twist and spot-on execution.
3. The Scream Quadrilogy
(1996-2011)
For some, sitting back and watching a film isn’t really enough: for
Wes Craven, it clearly wasn’t. Evidently inspired/overwhelmed/unsatisfied by
the classic conventions of horror films, he decided to make a horror film about
horror films. Scream reads the rule
book aloud, staring down the camera and nodding approvingly: it follows a group
of horror movie fans very aware of the horror genre, and how this
helps/definitely doesn’t help when dealing with a ghost-faced serial killer on
their hands. Scream II lovingly
acknowledges the one-up man ship of sequels, while Scream III goes full out meta, following the disastrous film
production of the fictionalized account of the events of the previous films.
Can’t help but feel the Scary Movie
gang slightly missed the point when spoofing a spoof itself.
4. The Blair Witch Project
(1999)
Ever waited for a film reveal for so long and then suddenly realize
there isn’t one? 1999 The Blair Witch
Project really changed the game when it came to film marketing: shrouded in
mystery upon mystery, it began with a report of a supposed lost film crew,
gradually building momentum and ending with the resulting 90 minutes of truly
terrifying and gripping found-footage. Adhering to the age-old film trope that
‘more is less’, we never see the titular ‘witch’, and are all the more relieved
for it. For without the appearance of a CGI nightmare, the true terror lies in
what is unseen, guided along only by some spine-tingling sequences involving
wooden sculptures, not to mention the bone-chilling finale. Everywhere you look
now, found-footage is all the rage: Paranormal
Activity, V/H/S, Cloverfield, but none have managed to recreate the
first-person thrills injected by this horror masterpiece for the ages.
5. Cabin in the Woods (2012)
Truly the horror film to end all horror films. If Scream reads out the rulebook, Cabin in the Woods grabs the rulebook
by the shoulders, tears out its pages, and sets them on fire while cramming
them down the audience’s throats. To say that it’s a rollercoaster is an under
exaggeration, and to say it’s a horror film is perhaps in accurate. To be
honest, I don’t really know what this film is, and I’m not sure writer Joss Whedon
does either. Without trying to spoil anything, it spoofs horrors of the Cabin Fever and Evil Dead ilk, while adding in cheeky shout outs to just about
every other horror sub-genre out there. A truly phenomenal undertaking, you may
be thinking, but Drew Goddard’s horror-comedy-thriller-etc does it with such
panache that you’ll come out screaming with joy about just how bloody clever
this film is. Consumer warning: it may just ruin every horror movie you ever
watch. 