The Substance (2024)
Horror has hit the big time.
Everyone wants a piece of the pie. Writers, artists, Hollywood studios, independent films. It’s everywhere. As the world burns, people turn to fictional nightmares to keep the real monsters at bay. Demi Moore won a Golden Globe, her first, for starring in a horror movie. The Substance is not just some flash-in-the-pan studio hack-job, but a bona fide actual horror film, with biting social commentary and gruesome body horror. Not that horror hasn’t been dipping its toes into social commentary the whole damn time. The Substance was nominated for five Academy awards, including best actress for Demi Moore, best director for Coralie Fargeat, and best film. The film took home one Oscar, for Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
Not too shabby for a ‘horror’ movie.
It is high time the genre is recognized for pushing beyond mere chills and thrills. Horror left its elementary ‘cautionary tale’ beginnings at the door a long time ago, now easily examining societal issues within the confines of lurid tales, subtext as needed. And yet, it can still send a chill down our spines with social commentary and as a cautionary tale simultaneously. The horror genre has moved past the ‘elevated’ terminology (though critics still try to poke that sleeping expression with a stick occasionally) by embracing its roots. With clever and crafty writing, building on the paths made by giants in the field, modern horror delivers the goods by sticking to what it knows best … scaring the hell out of you.
This wave of horror should last quite a while. It’s taken a long time to get to this point. Ten years, maybe fifteen. Horror has been steadily growing unchecked in the secret laboratories of our fertile imaginations for years. No longer dormant, wide awake and kicking, horror has spread her wings and taken flight, soaring like a phoenix, ever higher.
And like a phoenix, she will eventually crash and burn.
Don’t worry.
Not right now.
Think about how long it took horror to get to this point. It’ll probably take that long for the genre to begin to slowly fade back into the ether. But until horror gets rebranded to ‘supernatural suspense’ or ‘thriller’ on the book spines, we’ve got some serious work to do.
Remember the last address? (Maybe not, that was three years ago.)
Remember when I wrote about writing fearlessly? Ferociously attacking your horror fiction creations with passion, taking no prisoners, breaking through the barriers?
Guess what?
IT’S TIME!
Possession (1981)
Currently, the market is flooded with horror, which is good. It means we did it, we made it mainstream, and there’s going to be so much more for horror lovers to enjoy. This is seriously a really good thing. But at the end of the day, quality control matters. While quantity is great, too much of a good thing usually means quality falls off. If everyone is doing it, including people who have never created anything in horror and want to ride the gravy train because it’s the ‘hot new thing’, then the last thing the genre needs is a bunch of lukewarm no-risk scary stories whipped up for a quick payday. All this means that if you want to make it in horror—the big leagues or in the indies—you need to swing for the fences and write fearlessly.
There’s another reason to write fearlessly. Conservatives hate horror.
They hate how the horror genre easily exposes their greed, their bigotry, their hypocrisy.
They hate how the horror genre can show their accusations are confessions.
They hate that people can find solace and comfort with horror.
They have been, unsuccessfully, trying to blame horror, and music, and video games, on every single damn real horror of the world.
How do we fight this? By writing fearlessly.
The new Satanic Panic is their fear of education, fear of enlightenment, fear of people reading books. Conservatives aim to control the narrative because an ignorant population is a population they can manipulate. So, we harvest our darkest nightmares and create. We “go there”. We make it too crazy, too violent, too horny, too scary.
And if we can’t “go there” in those ways, we make it too clever, too emotional, too intellectual.
And we damn sure make it too political.
Write the stories that make them clutch their pearls.
Refuse to dumb it down. Refuse to make it more palatable. Refuse to explain away the mystery. Embrace the unknown, the weird.
If you need a call to arms, consider it done … the time is now.
Kev Harrison says: “I feel like horror right now is a representation of the numerous and vast threats that people are facing, from climate disaster to autocratic governments, to the potential for all-out war for the first time in a generation for much of the developed world. Horror stares these threats in the face and calls out the bullshit of those who perpetuate or deny the existence of such threats.”
With everyone dipping their toes into the horror pool, creatives who write their stories fearlessly will be the ones whose names we will remember the most. It’s easy to compare modern writers to those that paved the way. Eric LaRocca is the modern-day Clive Barker, which is great praise, but LaRocca is really the one and only Eric LaRocca. Same with Hailey Piper, Stephen Graham Jones, Tananarive Due, and Clay McLeod Chapman. These writers are a product of a lifetime of inspirations and influences filtered through their own experiences. It is those personal experiences that shape the stories they tell, the determining factor that makes their work stand out. That is their brand. This personal brand is so difficult to discover, but when you do find it, you latch on to it, cultivate it, and never let it go. Be the only person you can be.
Be the next you.
The First Omen (2024)
Horror is in a great place right now and will be for at least the next few years. Expect to see more genre blending. More horror/science-fiction, more horror/espionage, more horror/romance. Horror is poised to tackle societal issues now more than ever before. Horror from marginalized writers, especially from the LGBTQ communities, is here to stay, and perhaps the finest example of writers presenting their horror stories fearlessly. Horror from around the world and different cultures is showing up on bookshelves and movie theaters, and our tv screens, in record numbers. Religious horror, especially possession stories, are more popular than ever, with creators from every corner of the globe digging deep into their own personal cultures and folklore.
Traditional publishers and major Hollywood studios are releasing more horror themed stories than we’ve seen in years, but we may find these efforts among the more tepid entries in the bunch as time goes on. Indie publishers and film companies consistently deliver hard-hitting stories, perhaps because they’re more willing to take a chance on a weird and personal idea. Horror should polarize audiences. No creator wants their story to be lost in the middling arena. Polarizing stories are the stories that get the most traction, simply because audiences and readers have such strong reactions to them. Even the most negative response can interest us. Maybe we see it as a challenge, or maybe it’s just in defiance of contrarianism—we still will go out of our way to seek it out to see for ourselves.
If the world is to burn, then horror creatives should match that intensity with the same fury and energy. We are all in this thing together. That is our strength, our power. By sharing glimpses of our fictional nightmares, we can expose the real horrors of the world, and hopefully make the people who inflict those horrors scurry back into the shadows where they belong, if not stamp them out completely.
With my last address, I wrote about the need to get our hands dirty. So far, so good. We did it. Horror is the most popular genre in all major mediums. What do we do now? We continue to cast a wide net, write fearlessly, write characters and stories with passion and fire, and make it intimate and personal. Refuse to compromise your visions. And above all else, scare the hell out of people.
BOB PASTORELLA
