Houston McLaury – Opinion Columnist 

Over the past summer, I had the pleasure and opportunity of seeing Jordan Peele’s Nope in theaters, a movie about a ranch owner investigating why their family’s horses have been disappearing into the night, only to have an encounter of the third kind. And although it’s been months since I’ve seen this film, I have not been able to get the imagery of this movie out of my head. This movie has stuck with me, not only because the scenes disturbed me, but because of the wonderful cinematography, acting, and creative process that went into this movie. Now, why does this interest me so? Because I love horror, and I believe that more often than not, this category of movie (or book) is left out of the artistic debate when it should be celebrated more due to the escapism it offers, the love that goes into the craft, and how it reflects fears and anxieties of the times. 

First, let’s start off with how love enters the craft of horror with a cult classic film series, Evil Dead. The series follows the story of Ash Williams, played by Bruce Campbell, as he encounters malformed humans thanks to an evil force released from the Necronomicon. Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series started in the early 1980s, the first of the movies being made for about 375,000 dollars with wonderful practical effects and makeup. Transitioning from the first movie to the second movie, they’re both nearly identical, mainly because Sam Raimi could not get the rights to the first movie, so he had to do a recap of the first movie, using new shots and reshooting what had previously happened. Evil Dead would then take the audience back to the past, to 1300s Europe, and then spawn its own TV show in 2015. 

The reason I bring Evil Dead up is that while yes, it is a horror series at heart, the movie is enhanced due to the slapstick comedy that Sam Raimi and actor Bruce Campbell wonderfully put into the series. The character of Ash grapples with his hand, fighting against it as it tries to kill him, and the comedy that comes from seeing Campbell fight against himself is too wonderful to deny. Not only that but through this series and its cult following, escapism is given to the audience. The audience can distract themselves with the horror and wonderful practical effects they see on screen, then laugh at the comedy that is also shown. For me, this is where horror thrives, distracting me with wonderful effects on screen, giving doses of fear and anxiety to the audience to better help them with their fears that occur in everyday life. Horror, in this way, is a therapy, a distraction, a tool to use to get the blood pumping so that a person can deal with what really troubles them in the real world.

Then there is the amount of love and care that goes into this craft, and by this I mean the work done through the effects department. Horror films are only as good as their visuals, and in the early 1980s, they had to rely on puppetry and makeup effects for their horror instead of the CGI that we currently revel in. Take for example the iconic killer Chucky from the movie Child’s Play. This doll had a variety of actors, some using puppetry, some using animatronics for the face, and others using real actors to display the full movement of Chucky. With each effect seen on the screen, a person had to specially design these outfits, the puppets, the animatronics, all of it. This, of course, isn’t to say that with CGI in current horror movies, this kind of care isn’t put into horror movies now. With Nope, research was done to create the alien’s design and artists worked tirelessly to make the design for the final cut of the movie. Along with this, a new way of filming day-for-night shots, filming night scenes during the day, was made to better capture the night within the movie. 

Finally, I would like to mention the cultural aspect the genre of horror can leave for future generations to dissect. In the 1960s, Rod Serling released The Twilight Zone, which was a sci-fi horror anthology TV show, exploring individual characters set into amazing and outrageous scenarios. Looking back on specific episodes, such as The Monsters are Due on Maple Street, they reveal the anxieties of the time, even commenting on the Red Scare. These episodes leave us wonderful windows into the past to analyze the growing fears and mounting tensions people of the time felt. And we too are leaving this impact for the future generation, most notably with the series Black Mirror, exploring how the digital age and the technology it brings with it can actually harm us. 

Horror, in its own way, is undefinably valuable to me. It is not only a reflection of the past or the present anxieties, but the amount of care and love for the craft that goes into the genre is astonishing. Not only that, but it offers me a great respite and escape from my anxieties and worries of the day, and offers an entertaining, and thrilling journey through the story of someone else. Horror, as a genre, needs to be valued for what it contributes and what it offers in terms of analysis. Something, I hope, more awards will look to do.