Generation Terror
The latest in-depth horror doc from Sarah Appleton and Philip Escott – who previously made The Found Footage Phenomenon (Sarah Appleton directed Damaged on her own and The J-Horror Virus with Jasper Sharp). It has a slightly less grabby hook than these in that it takes in a bunch of discrete horror cycles (serial killer thrillers, meta slashers, remakes, torture porn, mumblegore – and even slight reprises on J-Horror and found footage) which were about in the 1990s and 2000s. A wide range of interviewees – many familiar FrightFest presences – cover a wide range of films, and showing this doc at FF is apt because so many of these titles had early showings in the festival. If there’s a unifying concept, as the title suggests, it’s that the big influence of horror in this era was terrorism – specifically 9/11, but with the War on Terror inspiring at least subliminally a great many tied-to-a-chair-and-tortured-in-a-basement movies.
Though a few critics appear alongside many filmmakers and Appleton and Escott refrain from editorialising, there are occasional suggestions that maybe turning out remakes of name-recognition titles like Black Christmas or When a Stranger Calls wasn’t an altogether brilliant idea … or that Wrong Turn-type backwoods mutant pictures reinforced a red state stereotype which has contributed to deep divisions in American society … or even that horror films from this era tend to be harder to get on with than other phases in the genre. I realise there are a lot of films listed here I gave positive notices to but wouldn’t watch again unless I had a good reason. No amount of waffle from Mr and Mrs Zombie makes me want to sit through House of 1000 Corpses ever again but William Malone reminds me that Feardotcom – which seemed like a throwaway at the time – was surprisingly significant for being the first western film influenced by J-horror, an early instance of torture porn and a precedent-setting use of the internet as a locus for horror (after the War on Terror, the next wave of horror would be heavily cyber).
Nostalgia waves have advanced as the 21st century wears on – but currently, the hot decade for rose-colouring is the 1980s with even middling movies getting feature-length making-of documentaries (I joked we were likely to see a six-hour re-assessment of Armand Mastroianni’s Cameron’s Closet this FrightFest). It’s probably inevitable, given that there’s a genuine fondness among film fans even for extremes like Cannibal Ferox, that there will eventually by warm and fuzzy appreciations of Hostel, Martyrs or Grotesque … in the mean time, here’s a warier look back at a period when really dark material seemed de rigeur in horror (it could be called the Not Much Fun Cycle) and a great many talented, interesting filmmakers found themselves channelling the headlines in ways they still seem puzzled by but more or less own up to.
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