a legacy prequel to a reboot of a list

i have had cause before now, in the brief but reliably diseased history of this tinyletter-turned-substack, to interrupt regularly scheduled programming for what amounts to a buzzfeed list. this happens, in the main, when i am tired or when i have a book out, or when i have spent the majority of the month going to see the movie the iron claw over and over again but cannot find a convincing way to shoehorn it into a blog about horror movies that are only ok. situations, in short, where pickings are slim, and my brain has reached the consistency of a wet cake left to congeal in a stairwell, and i want to hit my monthly deadline but can't bring myself to write anything meaningful about the movie heretic, which was after all not so much three stars fine as four stars good, and who needs to hear about that.

at these points, i start flailing around for a topic like carrie in that episode of sex and the city where she claims she is writing a column comparing men to the contents of her sock drawer, but then just types "some men are argyles" and "you are definitely getting fired". it's not my fault - because after all my monthly deadline is completely invented and i don't need to impress you people, and also no one is going to live or die on whether or not i have anything to say about the movie lisa frankenstein, but even so, if i don't have this substack then what do i really have, intellectually, and more to the point what do you have, and what does any of us have, because if we aren't all coming together to talk about trap, or what's going on with taissa farmiga, or how the already threatened sequel to alien: romulus will presumably involve the reanimated corpse of tom skerritt despite the fact that he isn't even dead yet, what are we even doing here?

[nb it was at this point that i suddenly decided to stop writing for a grand total of 4 days, meaning that it is now december 1st, so i've missed any attempt at a monthly deadline anyway, and also god how is it december, old age comes to us all, because i guess we are all demi moore in the movie the substance, which i'm still not writing a substack about, and where on earth did this year go, and also am i going to have to watch the movie krampus at some stage and tell you what i think about it, even though i don't really want to watch the movie krampus, and is this what i get for doing the movie black christmas already, way back before anyone followed this blog?]

anyway.

+

here is a list of trends i have noted in recent horror movies, collated for no particular reason beyond the fact that the end of any year encourages retrospection and also i haven't seen anything i want to write about lately

*nb please feel encouraged to supply any tropes i may have missed, with the caveat that my power is total and if i did not spot it then probably it does not exist

one: trauma bonds among men

i am not as offended as most people seem to be by the fact that, in recent years, the word trauma has become less an underlying theme and more the literal title of various mainstream horror movies, including but not limited to the movies trauma, trauma 2, talk to trauma, bagtrauma, longtraumas and alien: trauma in space. this is a joke, but my point is valid and well made. i can understand critical frustration at this development - particularly when movies like alien: romulus insist on playing out scenes where characters soberly inform one another that they have a deep-seated mistrust of 120-A/2 androids because of trauma connected to their dead moms, or whatever - but i'm not certain that this is truly a problem that deserves such censure when, after all, trauma has always been the point. sure enough, it can feel at times as though movies like smile are less weaving together a plot from the disparate strands of character development, backstory and subtext that traditionally makes up a work fiction than they are parking themselves directly atop a button labelled daddy issues: do not push, but i don't know that i actually mind that so much when the overall product is at least well-made. though having said that, i can accept that some of these movies do feel less like movies than they feel like principal skinner putting his hand over the word trauma in a headline reading trauma movie is awful rich and superintendent chalmers being like what's that word under your hand, so who knows.

two: murder! at the eras tour

in re trap and also smile 2, i'm not entirely sure why everything is happening at pop concerts at the moment except to say that i saw someone posting the other day (in tones of apparent regret, which made it worse) that only three shows remain before the eras tour is over FOREVER, and it became apparent to me that perhaps the cinematic genre most concerned with topical fears and contemporary boogiemen has simply been making commentary on this particular long national (several nations) nightmare we have all been experiencing recently.

three - god-bothering

i have already spoken about this trope a little in my substack about immaculate and the first omen, but i am exceptionally interested in the fact that organised religion has once again rolled around as a central trope in modern horror. with an incomplete list including both aforementioned nunsploitation movies (even if one was exceptionally good and one was about having an elite pair of eyebrows), plus heretic, plus sister death, plus the exorcist: believer, plus the nun 2, plus - ahem - the pope's exorcist - there is unquestionably a lot of god about at the moment, and whilst it's not like this is a new thing in a genre built directly upon the improbably beautiful shoulders of father damien karras et al, it's still interesting to register times at which we seem to reach peak capacity. i'm sure it all points to The State of Things These Days being less than ideal, but what's the point in dwelling on that.

fact: i would very much enjoy to watch a horror movie in which patrick wilson plays a cistercian monk.

fact: the extended chapel sequence in terrifier 3 is interminable and really the only dull stretch in an otherwise perfectly conceived movie, so i don't propose to dwell on it except to say that it's very funny when the virgin mary crops up later as a playable character, only in the form of a sentient china figurine, whipping a fetish orc, in hell, because he needs to make some magical armour, for the heroine, to defeat the clown. cinema.

fact: the fact that russell crowe - your substack host's one true boy, main star and master of the revels - has only recently made the movie the pope's exorcist, and now appears to have made a movie called the exorcism, which is NOT A SEQUEL and in which he does NOT APPEAR TO BE PLAYING THE SAME CHARACTER is just impeccable to me, i don't know what to tell you.

four - legacy prequels, sequels, remakes, reboots, retools, re-ups, and so on unto the fall of rome

this isn't news, of course. we live in in a world of ip hell, in which the sound of executives taking enormous bong rips and saying idk have we explored the traumatic backstory of the oogie boogie man can always be heard gently emanating from a nearby room, and i've recently heard that they're remaking, of all things, the movie idle hands, with finn wolfhard, so i guess the old adage that when you think things can't possibly get worse, they do, continues to hold fast. even so, amidst the fetid lagoon of legacy prequels to movies like the strangers and endless hellboy remakes that only ever seem to get worse, there is occasionally a bewilderingly brilliant outlier like the first omen, so i guess it's hard to completely condemn this practice.

five - big titty old lady monsters

this one is of course complete as it stands

anyway, as you were.