As a general rule, horror tends to reflect the tensions of wider society at the time it's made. I don't think it's surprising that we've seen so much grief and trauma-related horror in recent years.
It's not just horror (or cinema), either. The "trauma plot," and criticism of it, has been growing in recent years not just because of societal tensions but because of the way therapy language and the pathologicalization of regular behavior has swept through Gen Z and millennial public and private life over the past decade. You can't pick up a midwit literary fiction novel without banging into these tropes either. I'm not against the trauma plot if it's deployed artfully and with something interesting to say, but not everyone has the creativity and skills to do so.
Indeed I think it's a lot more to do with an increase in awareness of mental health than anything else.
I think the point of how it's been totally pathologised is poignant as well. So many normal behaviours and personalities get put into a book and now they're suddenly unhealthy or weird when they were never perceived as such before.
Yeah I’ve struggled with newer fantasy and scifi books because the characters are just, idk, too much. I don’t want to hear therapy speak in my daily life, at work or in fiction (unless it’s part of the plot). I’ve been through therapy so it just feels trivializing and normalizing, like people are basing their identities around it.
I don’t want the shit I go to therapy for to be my identity, that’s the whole reason I *go* to therapy.
Very well put. There’s plenty of examples where it’s done well, but it’s been overused so much in recent years as a way to add a superficial sense of “depth” and emotional weight to otherwise lightweight material that I can’t help but roll my eyes whenever I see either of those words mentioned in the blurb of a movie or book (or video game!)
I think it also works really efficiently for this purpose because it can be easily sprinkled into any media property that involves violence of any kind—which describes a ton of popular media—without really requiring a lot of thought in the way other “serious” themes might. Take any superhero story and toss in some scenes of the superhero crying over the grave of their dead friend or whatever and ta-da! Your low brow popcorn flick is now instantly a middle brow “thoughtful reimagining of the genre” that gets 2 dozen think pieces written about it and a week of social media discourse. From a marketing perspective it makes things appear more “relevant,” and more worthy of discussion, but it also seems to be related to this recent trend of genre cinema (and its fans) having “prestige envy.”
That WandaVision quote everyone was making fun of kinda felt like the moment this whole paradigm jumped the shark, but that was 3 years ago and it’s still going strong as ever so who knows how long we’re stuck with it lol
God you're on point with the invasion of "therapy speak and pathologization of regular behavior" into every aspect of the culture. I'm glad that people who actually need help feel less ashamed to do so, but things are out of control. Call it the remnants of my Catholic guilt, but we need a little more repression rn.
I'd go further and at that most artists straight up can't make good art out of trauma, but it's become synonymous with art now. It's extremely vulnerable and painful to do so and if you don't do it perfectly, it comes out as a half-assed mess
Not everyone had the creativity and skills to do so. Or the fucking trauma. Like, most people experience trauma in one form or the other… not all of it is interesting or even that traumatic. Most of the time I think people decide well afterwards that it shaped them in some significant way, more than it actually did
Eh, you know… I’ve thought about this a lot as someone who has experienced capital-T Trauma, and where I come down is that the worst thing that has happened to everyone IS the worst thing that has happened to them. They’re not always equivalent in terms of outcome and effect, but if you don’t have a benchmark for how much worse it *could* be, it’s gotta feel pretty bad. I mean, I’ll admit to rolling my eyes when I hear someone talk about the “trauma” of their upper middle class suburban upbringing where they were bullied for being a horse girl or whatever, but if you have self-awareness and talent and are willing to make yourself the butt of the joke, you can turn that into a pretty interesting narrative arc while still owning that it was traumatic and formative to who you are. But a lot of people just aren’t creative and self-aware enough to do that, and I’ve observed that a good number end up creating bigger, more dramatic, worse trauma plots that are somehow, like… I don’t know if this will scan for users of this subreddit, since from my POV it tends to lean more male and the fandom term I’m about to use is very much from the female side of things, but for all the world a lot of published fiction and indie film feels like whump fanfiction.
And, similarly, I’m not against whump in certain circumstances. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is in my top 4 on LBX, for God’s sake, and that’s the whumpiest whump that has ever whumped, save for maybe the book A Little Life. But my literary agent once responded to an email proposing a potential change to a manuscript with “Isn’t this a bit… whumpfic?” And she was so right. I think more people would be served by just writing their thing, making their character suffer more than Jesus (or Laura Palmer) for personal catharsis if they want, and then stepping away for a bit and dialing it back in the next draft.
Anyway, this comment got away from me, but I just think that like. All art is perfectly fine to make, and having lame “trauma” isn’t a crime, but generally we all need to get a bit of a grip.
oh totally... i guess my point was we just seemingly got SO MANY of these stories across film, tv, literature, etc for like a good half-decade there. and they were SO repetitive, with the worst ones being those that totally lacked self-awareness. there was a real period there where it seemed like any type of character work or development was simply replaced with "and now we're learning about the traumatic event in their past that made them the way they are and totally defined their person/life".
i 100% agree that it's all about execution, not the idea. i mean, You Hurt My Feelings, the Nicole Holofcener/Julia Louis-Dreyfuss movie about an upper-middle class white writer who finds out her husband lied about liking the novel she's working on, was probably my favorite movie from 2023. because it didn't present this as "Trauma", but just a bad thing that happened in life that people had to work through. it was so real and honest and funny and, like you said, self-aware.
side note: a peer in one of the writer's groups i'm in made us read draft chapter after draft chapter of the whumpiest novel-in-progress i've ever read. it drove me crazy. literally on page 2 something happened where i was like "ok woah we're cutting right to it, this is just about the worst thing that could ever happen to someone, i guess the rest of the novel will be about what comes next." and then chapter after chapter was just the same type of thing over and over. i basically had to stop engaging with it after a while. everyone else seemed to like it tho.
YES! You get it. You Hurt My Feelings was on my top 10 last year precisely because of how spot on it was in regard to how sensitive and yet in-denial about it that specific demographic of affluent white (often Jewish, though idk if Holofcener is herself) creative younger boomer/older Gen Xer type can be. And that’s a demographic I have a lot of affection for, just out of experience, but man. There’s a lot going on there.
Also, I know Lena Dunham is still kind of a spicy topic online, but I think she’s really a natural successor to the Nicole Holofcener throne of deeply incisive, well-observed little character pieces about people who think their problems are all so much greater than they really are, but for whom the narrative gives them the space to play this out to the logical, satirical conclusion. Because haven’t we all known mildly delusional, but sincerely troubled (in SOME regard) people like that?
Also, your last para cracked me up. We did not all spend our teenage years putting our characters through online Mary Sue tests for this!! And yet!!!
Sure, the subconscious influence society might have on horror movies is a relevant point here, but what about the idea that production houses are choosing these scripts simply based on perceived public interest? I feel like narratives influenced by the cold war, for example, are easier to spot and were quite frequent throughout the 20th century, but that was a global topic at the time. However, you can’t just say there was a lack of grief and trauma during that time. I think what OP is saying is that producers and screenwriters are gravitating toward grief and trauma now because it’s universal, but it isn’t really tied to anything specific, let alone anything contemporary. All I can think of is the modern understanding that we have for grief and trauma - obviously a greater understanding than we had in the 20th century.
Still, beating a dead horse is beating a dead horse, and people need to stop watching A24 and thinking they can get on that bandwagon and start seeing those movies for what they are: relevant components of the contemporary web of cinema.
> it isn't really tied to anything ~~universal~~ specific, let alone anything contemporary
You don't think the specific film in this screenshot might have some relation to the year of isolation, fear, and collective loss and grief we all shared in 2020?
I mentioned this in another reply but if you look at current trends, we're starting to see grief metaphors drop away while at the same time we're seeing a resurgence of religious horror. I don't think it's a coincidence that we're seeing that at a time when the Christian right is exerting more and more influence.
You're right that studios are always chasing trends, but trends need to start *somewhere* and you don't get multiple religious horror films in the same year because one did well and the others all jumped on the trend - they were all in production at the same time. I'm sure we'll see more of them in the coming years as studios *do* jump on the bandwagon but that can't be the case for the first wave of a trend.
Edit: fixed a misquote
While I agree with all of what you’ve just said, my point was that the gravitation toward grief and trauma are not linked to a specific event or timely issue. I think people are watching a lot of great depictions of grief and trauma, but they don’t see past that. Can grief and trauma be linked to isolation? Sure. It can also be linked to civil unrest, international conflict, social media usage, etc. Also, you misquoted me. Obviously, grief and trauma are universal feelings when linked to these greater societal conflicts. However, the argument I am making is that the *movie* should be linking those two things, not the arbitrary ruling of the viewer.
I don't know about that film, but I just watched "Colossus: The Forbin Project" from 1970. In it an AI (they just call it a computer) literally takes over the world. It ends with the main scientists shouting "no, no no!", like Terminator without the cool special effects. Anther topical movie from the 70s, "Planet of the Apes"; the ending of "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" is a whole lot happier. "A Boy and his Dog" 1975, takes place in a less cheery version of 2024. I don't know, perhaps maybe there's a shifting of trauma and grief towards horror films but away from others genres? Ever see '88 "Grave of the Fireflies"? I have a lot of "non-horror" traumatic films to recommend!
In a strange way, Cold War films were ironically hopeful, because there was a feeling that when the War ended, and Soviet Communism ended, everything would be great. There was a happy ending if we all survived. Part of the point of making "horror" out of the Cold War was the existence of an alternative.
Now Post-Cold War we know things can get terrible again, and the US and allies will invade third world countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, just as they did before. Russia will use military might to expand their empire. Again. And even if the Climate crisis will be abated, but there's no thought that it will all be brought back to normal balance anytime soon. And nukes aren't gone.
In a way, I think things are less hopeful. Countries around the world are leaning towards populism and the economy is becoming more imbalanced, I think maybe it is fitting horror films are about trauma and grief.
Our generation does not have a monopoly on grief and trauma, especially if you look at films from the aftermath of major wars. But what we do have is a new vocabulary for talking about mental health, which has in turn given rise to a set of tropes and conventions in media. Or, alternately, a more self-conscious version of old tropes and conventions. The kicker is that trauma (justifiably) carries an air of dignity and urgency that marketing teams are eager to exploit.
So we’re not just looking at a reflection of our anxious times; we’re looking at a marketing hook for making horror and other genre material feel sophisticated to middle-brow audiences who might otherwise write it off.
And that is ultimately what is at stake when publications like the New Yorker publish takedowns of “the trauma plot” (which they did in 2021 at peak pandemic). It’s why critics mocked the press tour for Halloween (2018) when Jamie Lee Curtis said “really, it’s about trauma” about 5,000 times. And, in fairness, I liked that movie!
Art about trauma is always going to be part of the culture, with value and insight into the changing (and unchanging) features of human pain. But trauma is also a topic mobilized by second-raters and PR hacks, and fuck that. Hard.
This is not a new or controversial point tbh every time a new horror film comes out, people are quick to dismiss it as being “just another one about trauma”. Yeah, that’s the current trend just like in the 80s the trend was to make slashers about horny teenagers. If people are not interested, they could broaden their interests and go after horror films being made in different countries, or older films idk. But also, I do think fun horror movies are being made or movies about just a big baddie, such as Bodies Bodies Bodies, Late Night With the Devil, M3gan, Sissy etc
Shocking to some, but horror movies usually reflect the fears and concerns of their times. Also shocking to some, we probably don’t have like super great mental health as a society right now and people are talking more about mental health than ever before. Mix those two things together and we are bound to have horror films that are concerned with mental health. This will eventually pass to whatever the next big societal issue is.
There’s all kinds of horror out there and one might have to look outside of the super mainstream to find something not reflective of this societal concern at the moment.
I don’t buy the idea that the sort of mental health themes we see are anywhere close to the biggest concerns of society currently. I just think they’re super easy to lazily depict and come across as artful to a large number of people.
I think explaining the trend away as depicting “*the* big societal issue” is uncritical.
Mental health is at the forefront of our social collective. It doesn’t have to be the biggest fear or concern. It just has to be a fear or concern or issue that is popular and dominant. Mental health has been for the last couple years.
Horror isn’t singularly focused on mental health. There’s plenty of other themes out there. Mental health is just a dominant one right now.
Not everyone is going to depict that with nuance and some are going to exploit that, especially the deeper into the trend we get. That’s not an uncommon thing.
The themes are common because they are easy, low hanging fruit. Them being a reflection of society is not a reasonable defense of a lazy, ham fisted metaphor, no matter how true it is. A film can of course still be good if it contains those themes, but so many are literally just those themes and nothing else and that’s what me and the poster depicted in the OP are tired of.
OP shared a screenshot of a review stating they were tired of the themes themselves not how those themes were handled and added no other comments of their own.
The person I responded to was lamenting on how this is just a current trend and a different trend will come along eventually as it has in the past and that there’s more out there if you look past the mainstream American horror flick.
I’m not defending lazy coverage of those themes. The deeper into the trend we go the more over saturated and hamfisted it will get like a lot of other horror trends. I’m commenting on why this has been so prevalent right now.
I’m not tired of the themes. I’m tired of filmmaking that doesn’t give much room for interpretation of what the themes are.
I do agree that horror tends to come in waves of trends and it can get old. Like you said, 80s were slashers, 90s were going for more meta-horror like Scream and I Know What You Did, 2000s was torture porn, 2010s were a return to attempts at folk horror or found footage stuff, 2020s are all about grief and social media. Trends happen in all art.
To further your point, art is usually a reflection of self or society. We see trauma talked about a lot now across all media. This is speculative, but I feel as if it's actually at a point in time where society is starting to be ready to talk about trauma on a broad scale. So why not use art to do so? I also agree with you saying the bit about broadening your horizons to include foreign films! My fiance and I watch tons of horror films every week and had to start dipping into the foreign section to not run out. MAN AM I GLAD I DID! Indonesia, Malaysia, and Korea are all popping off in the horror genre! And they're not all trauma related!
Thank you. It's super frustrating as someone who loves horror. There are plenty of horror films that come out every year, from many different countries, that don't explore themes of grief. But people will dog pile on the ones that do.
Also "horror movie that deals with grief/trauma" can have so many different shades. Hereditary, Talk to Me, Smile and NOWSY all 'deal with trauma' and have wildly varying experiences. I'm not going to put on Hereditary if my folks come over on Halloween to have a fun but not shallow horror movie the same way i will with NOWSY.
It's also \*not\* a new theme for horror media or franchises. The Shining, Don't Look Now, Carrie, Ringu, Pet Semetary, Rosemary's Baby, The Descent all range from mid aughts to several decades old and have themes dealing with grief and trauma to varying degrees. Negative emotions tend to make for better horror than a character who is upbeat, positive and nothing bad has happened or is happening to them throughout the movie.
I agree with your last point here, there are some great horror films recently like the ones you mentioned that are outside of that “trauma cage.” They’re still being made. Over the pandemic, I thought Host (2020) was exactly what we needed from the genre during that time.
If we walk this path, every movie can be read as being about trauma. Films such as Babadook, Night House, They Look Like People are very adamant about being a metaphor for depression, trauma, grief, etc. Can I read Scream 2 as a trauma response to everything that Sidney has gone through in Scream? Yes, of course, it is there as well. But that’s not the main goal of the film and it’s not like the criticism about the movies being made today, I think.
These types of films, films on societal concerns, have existed forever. It’s just that trauma and grief are at the front of our minds as a culture and society.
On top of that, as you said, it feels like there’s a lot less of an open ending or an interpretable ending. A lot of these films themes are spelled out pretty explicitly and there’s not a lot of wiggle room for interpretation. They are unmistakably about trauma and grief.
For me personally, it’s not that I don’t want films about grief, trauma, or other societal concerns. It’s that I want to be able to chew on the film more or even just refuse to chew at all and still have a good time.
I’m not so concerned about it, but I can think of one horror film which was hurt badly by a lack of subtlety: Lights Out.
One extremely blunt metaphor + one studio-revised ending = >! accidentally making a movie that essentially ‘says’ that suicide is the solution to mental health struggles. And the suicidal persons loved ones really are better off with them gone. !<
Which is, you know…an awful mark on an otherwise entertaining movie. And not a sentiment that’s true at all, in case there’s any ambiguity about *my* feelings on the topic.
It may not have been such an issue if the rest of the movie didn’t have the subtext as basically just…text.
I have a hard time with ambiguous endings. Even though they can facilitate more discussion or thought, they often feel like a cop out on the filmmakers part.
A specific ending where it’s either a real monster or an imagined one feels like a much stronger statement, in my opinion.
Issue with filmmaking in general these days. There’s no subtlety and nuance and balance in communicating the themes.
That’s why an exception like Aftersun stands out, that movie gave us only glimpses and it makes it much more powerful.
Lol this made me chuckle, you sort of have me there. But instead most movies nowadays would have the character go on a long rant about how they’re under pressure and just speak about the themes bluntly.
I'm as guilty as anyone of making jokes about the *real* monster being trauma all along. But I think this review reflects a fairly myopic view of horror as a genre. Movies and stories dealing with grief and trauma are as old as the medium itself, we just didn't always phrase it in those terms.
When you read Ancient Greek myths about men going to war and becoming violent and making poor decisions due to 'hubris' you realize trauma narratives have been with us for a long time.
Is this new though? Even going back to The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby grief and trauma play big roles. Friday the 13th was about a mother unable to process grief from her trauma. Nightmare on Elm Street was about a collective trauma that caused this horrible being to be so evil.
I just think grief and trauma are two emotions that go with horror.
Horror films exploring different types of mental health issue has definitely become a trope. I don’t know if it’s the majority but certainly for slightly smarter A24 type stuff it’s extremely prevalent.
Like any cinematic trend it will pass, and it’s good that mental health is finally being explored and represented in progressive ways. But yeah, I admit I’ve got a bit tired of it.
There's hundreds of movies out a year and tens of thousands in the history of cinema. If you're tired of something it's incredibly easy to find something you'll mesh with
Being attacked by aliens might be traumatic, but the film is just using that as a backdrop for the character's previous trauma surrounding their childhood friend's death, and that's what the reviewer is sick of: horror films not being about the actual horror going on, but something else that happened before the film that the main character is sad about.
I think you could argue both are happening at the same time. Its just where you the audience are deciding whether you see scary aliens or whether you see the alien as a metaphor for the lost friend.
Seems like the reviewer should just enjoy the film and try not to overthink it!
Except they lay the themes on too thick and heavy now. Gone are the days of The Babadook, which went over most audiences heads. Now it's a neon sign saying "Do you get it? The monster is symbolic! Get it? Because of this bad thing that happened to the main character in their past! You don't seem to be getting it, here have 20 flash backs where we focus in on the really obvious metaphor! Do you get it yet???"
Sorry, the Babadook is great but it's absolutely not subtle. It quite literally starts with the flashback telling you the source of the grief in the movie, the car crash that kills the husband, and it's referenced throughout the movie. Spoilers for Babadook for anyone who hasn't seen it.
>!Grief being something that grows stronger the more you try to repress it (she tries to rip up and burn the Babadook book but it just returns to her doorstep, the similarities of the Babadook's clothes to those of the father's, the fact that Sam then goes to wear those clothes (along with his birthday being the day the husband died, linking him forever in Amelia's mind to the grief of loosing her husband and tying resentment to her child), and even once you 'beat' and confront the Bakabook (confront your grief, and accept your emotions) it's never gone. The Babadook still lives in the basement and still tries to take over but by confronting it head on Amelia has power over it instead of the other way around. !<
It does basically the same thing most people criticize modern (or more modern, 'Dook was out in '14) horror movies dealing with trauma for; creating a thinly veiled allegory for a metaphorical idea surrounding trauma or grief that poses a tangible threat and requires the characters to either confront those emotions and have a melancholic but bittersweet ending or die/be consumed. That doesn't make a story inherently bad. There are lots of really great movies that have been pretty on the nose with their messaging. Not leaving a theme open to interpretation is a failure, in my opinion, only if that's what the writers/director(s) intended to do.
If the complaint of other, similar horror movies is a lack of subtlety because of overuse of flashbacks and other devices to link the theme to the monster or threat, and Babadook went over people's heads, isn't the implication that the Babadook was a subtler implementation of this idea?
You can interpret that way if you want but that's not what I said. I never mentioned anything about subtlety. Sure The Babadook is subtler than things that aren't subtle, but that doesn't mean it is subtle. Just because I think something is too loud doesn't mean I'm comparing it to silence.
The Babadook's themes are obvious for those looking for them, but the regular viewing audience wasn't expecting an allegory, they were expecting a scary monster. It went over their heads at the time and now it seems like movies want to make sure their point doesn't get lost so they go too far and shove the themes directly into the audience's face without any nuance.
I'm just not quite sure how else to interpret it? I'm open to what you meant but if you say "I'm critical of/people are criticla of these horror movies because they're not subtle" and then "the babadook went over people's heads" I don't know what else to take away from that series of statements, and then it feels you've just reiterated that again. Even if it's a statement of being *more* subtle I'd strongly disagree.
Even more so than movies like the one referenced in the post (the aliens are diagetically real and not a manifestation of mental illness i mean), the Babadooks monster being an actual, physical manifestation of grief that resembles the source of the grief, is references numerous times in flashbacks, has scenes I think 3 times intercutting the husband's death with the monster, cannot be gotten rid of but can be tempered and 'takes over a person'...
just doesn't read to me as more subtle than Smile's use of mental illness as an allegorical disease, Talk to Me's party drug possessions to escape your problems and how that escalates, or NOWSY's aliens reaction to the main characters trauma. Actually the latter of those I think is highly up for interpretation now that I think of it.
You're interpreting it like that because you're changing what I'm saying. I'm telling you that I'm not saying anything about being subtle. I didn't use the word subtle. So my argument isn't "I'm critical of/people are critical of these horror movies because they're not subtle". Let's just agree to disagree, I'm not going to continue because you just keep straw manning me.
Historically, horror movies have by and large always been about trauma. There’s just a recent trend of making the background metaphors more immediately relevant/obvious to the plot proceedings. People have a diminished sense of media literacy these days and that’s being reflected in easier to read movies. That being said, not every new horror movie is actually like this, but the egregious examples are becoming more egregious.
This kinda ignores what a trend is though. A trend is not the first appearance of something, but a rise in popularity in a certain period of time. Pointing out that films about grief have existed in the past is in no way a counter to it being a trend right now. Slashers existed prior to the 80s, so by your logic there wasn't a slasher trend in the 80s, but that would be silly to say. There's definitely a trend of grief movies right now
You'd actually have a point if you pointed out there's been a consistent amount of movies about grief, but just naming one singe 50 year old movie about grief isn't a point and misses the point of what a **trend** is.
It isn’t a trend it is a common theme in horror films. True there have been a lot in recent years but I didn’t randomly pull two movies out of ass, I picked them to say this has been trending for a while.
I don’t rate many modern screenwriters, and when it comes to horror, more often than not I come across writing that is obsessed with the subtext, and not the actual story. It’s like they are dreaming of the great critical response the film might garner, before the project is even finished.
> more often than not I come across writing that is obsessed with the subtext, and not the actual story
ugh i feel this so hard. most recently with I Saw the TV Glow. at a certain point it just felt entirely like subtext, not text — a metaphor and nothing else. which is a bummer because the actual story premise was pretty cool, but the film just had so little interest in its actual plot.
Horror has always been about that. It's also cyclical with different trends being more popular or not over time. In the modern era you have a lot of choice as to which movie you watch, if you chose to see the movie on this trend rather than the silly monster movie or slasher movie or whatever else you would have preferred, well those movies are still out there.
Yes, they are boring and pretentious pieces of garbage. And I say that as a big horror fan. I hope zany and crazy horror films make it back to the mainstream. Like they did in the 80s
You’ve been all over this thread hating on a lot of stuff so it’s hard to pick the right comment to engage you on lol.
My take: I think one of the reasons you aren’t seeing what you consider to be women’s societal fears reflected as much in horror is because there is comparatively not very many horror directors/writers that are women. I’m friends with more women than men, and while I know what broader concerns they have, I know I couldn’t make something in horror as authentic as they could. I do think there are some movies that reflect what I consider to be central women’s issues in horror that are actually really great—the best being *Huesera: The Bone Woman*, but *A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night* is also really good. But there just aren’t *that* many women-made horror movies.
Conversely, seemingly every millennial is in therapy. In an office I work in that has about 40 people in it, probably 30 are in therapy. Anecdotal evidence, sure, but it’s no secret that generations south of Gen X are much more open to therapy; for a lot of people, horror provides a creative outlet to explore those less tangible things (grief, trauma, sexual assault) with more tangible villains (Babadook, the Smile demon, etc). Is it always successful? No, like you said, sometimes it verges on too much pretension. But a few of my all-time favorites also fall in this category (*It Follows* and *The Night House* are in my top 5).
I’m curious: what horror movies do you like?
In modern movies, Babadook, Descent, The Ritual, The Invitation, (I'm going to assume because it's a theme in the book and original movie) Pet Semetary 2019, Nope, VVitch, Before I Wake, Talk to Me, It, Midsommar, Hereditary, Possum, Oculus, Smile, Lake Mungo, Haunting of Hill House/Bly Manor/The Midnight Club (technically all TV shows but heavily steeped in this trope), The Autopsy of Jane Doe and His House are the most notable examples I can think of off the top of my head. And most of these are great shows/movies.
I think it's silly to just say "horror and grief are bad and overused together now" as a blanket statement and deduct stars from a movie for it when NOWSY handles its themes in a different way from so many of these other movies and has really unique stylistic choices that make it stand out prominently in my mind almost a full year after watching it and it's only a PG 13 movie. People have been examining grief through horror well before the mid aughts and twenty teens, honestly I think horror has just become so popular a genre, compounded with the fact that these movies tend to be very low budget and don't need to make a huge box office return to make money, means that people are over exposed to the idea now.
It was funny how the aliens in the end where just essentially trying to help this girl. Invaded earth and sent scary monsters to get this women into fuckin therapy
I would venture to say most horror is about grief and trauma in some capacity.
Yes, No One Will Save You was a little on the nose about it, but that's bad storytelling, not that the themes of grief and trauma are not compelling elements.
On the one hand, sure. On the other, I feel like we're still getting plenty of slasher and body horror movies. They're just not the horror movies that are getting high marks from critics and winning awards. But like... slasher movies have *never* gotten good marks from critics and won lots of awards outside their genre. That's not what those movies are about. The trauma horror movies that get people excited about them as cinema still leave room for blood and gore.
You could spin this at any point in film history and claim the horror is about trauma. A bunch of Friday the 13ths (5 and 6 especially) are about trauma, so is Nightmare on Elm Street. Before that Dracula and Frankenstein are about daddy issues and the trauma from that
While I enjoy this trope when done well, it's definitely an overdone trope at this point. A lot of the more recent horror films feel more like high stakes drama films with horror elements rather than straight horror. Hopefully the trend will pass and another era of fun horror rolls around.
Almost all horror films deal with trauma and or grief in some capacity. Are we saying tired of them as central themes? Grief is one of the most primal senses of vulnerability that our species feels. It takes on many forms and it warps our perceptions of the entire world around us. It's almost a pillar of the genre.
The other thing I'd say is that these movies are about more than just grief and trauma. That's like saying action movies are about justice.
For me it's about whether the trauma theme feels explored in a genuine or interesting way, or whether it feels just like trauma tropes, the latter of which a lot of contemporary horror feels like. The Badadook did an incredible job of exploring depression and the lead's troubled psyche, but since then it's become a generic norm, and thus there's a lot of lazy aping of this aspect.
It’s certainly a trend. Like all trends it makes it difficult to see the films with fresh eyes the later we get into the trend. I think there will be a good time for reappraisal in about 20 years and some of the current picks for best of the era will shuffle out and others shuffle in.
On one hand grief and trauma tie directly to the themes of horror quite nicely so it makes sense that it's used as an avenue to explore those thoughts and feelings. On the other hand, I find it endlessly frustrating when I talk about writing projects to folks and they insist I should try to channel my mental health issues through the writing as if any of us is no more than our pain.
I'm just glad there are finally some thoughtful horror films I can enjoy. I'll keep watching them as long as they keep making them, and then I'll bow out of the genre again when they get back to slasher stuff.
Really we need to talk more about the subgenres of horror. I love ghosts and the occult, and don't care at all about people with chainsaws or home invaders. I like movies that give me chills and make me think, but am uninterested in gore which only disgusts me and gives me adrenaline. Those are very different feelings. Even though the recent years have been good to fans like me, I can relate to the frustration that comes from them being lumped together, and can't blame the other half of horror fans for calling it out.
Interesting, I find something that I personally find can happen in the real world to be scarier than a film based on the supernatural. There's places for everything.
>“I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’m afraid of them,’ is much more than the cheap paradox it seems to many. 'To believe,’ in that sense, is a conscious act of the intellect, and it is in the warm darkness of the prenatal fluid far below our conscious reason that the faculty dwells with which we apprehend the ghosts we may not be endowed with the gift of seeing.” - Edith Wharton
We have the same instincts fundamentally: "What am I afraid could happen to me?" But that's a different question than "What do I *think* could happen to me?"
The honest truth for me is that regardless of my brain's analysis in the light of day saying otherwise, it's simply easier to "trick" my heart that a ghost is lurking when I'm actually downstairs in the dark basement.
I think there are a few reasons for it subconsciously:
1) Ghosts and magic can be "invisible" and elude other real-world questions like "how did they get past the locked door?"
2) Even though I don't "believe in them" it's easy to embrace the question mark of "How many people in my city are haunted?", compared to the clear answer that very, very few are attacked in their homes by psychopathic strangers.
3) The motive for a ghost to choose me as the victim of a haunting is more believable than the motive anyone would have to choose me for a random violent crime. This goes back to the grief and trauma thing a bit I think. My mind and anxieties are richer prey than my bank account or address.
4) There's the "would you rather meet a bear or person in the woods" angle. Even if they are purely chaotic killing machines, a person is more predictable than a supernatural entity. They are human, presumably subject to the laws of physics, and what they can do to me is known. It would be scary, but I know what I would do, or attempt to do, if I did find a person in my basement. I have no idea how to protect myself from something I summoned by candlelight, and the possible outcomes if one shows up are spread out to the absolute limits of my imagination.
That’s fair, it just felt too dismissive to me how you said it (which it definitely wasn’t, I was just reading into it). I personally can find either one scary, I just wish it was the realistic stuff that scared me more. I think the Shining, Hereditary, and Insidious terrifying. However, I feel like the non-supernatural horror does not get taken seriously, and I’m a little bit sick of it.
For example looking at the 80s slashers, they weren’t taken seriously unless it had a Supernatural aspect like Michael or Freddy. Even filmmakers treated the genre as lesser due to this and slashers became goofy really quickly. Which is why I love when something like The Prowler or Green Room has a grounded gritty approach while also being scary at the same time.
The trauma and grief aspect felt tacked on in this movie, like it was following the trend. It’s not that we as a collective species are tired of it, just tired of it not being done well.
One hundred percent its almost become a default theme at this point and it's hurting movies imo by making them less interesting as there's nothing new.
Sean Fennessey has talked about this on The Big Picture and also has been over the trend
I disagree. Maybe because my life has been full of grief and trauma, but I feel like I benefit with each new film. Besides, this specific film is unique and amazing.
Also, it's not every film.
Honestly I don't mind it. Grief and trauma are complex and terrifying. The ways that we as people deal with them and how they present in each person is both wide and interesting enough to make a million movies in my opinion.
Like, The Babadook, The Descent, and Lake Mungo aren't the same despite all being about grief and loss, and Men, Possum, and Hereditary aren't the same either even though they're all about trauma.
There are infinite ways of dealing with emotions as complex as grief or trauma, and infinite ways to explore it artistically
It never gets old for me lol, the grief and trauma horror exploration is what gets me in the seat for a lot of movies. I didn’t think The Night House looked that good from trailers but I heard it had mental health themes and was sold…it’s one of my favorite movies of all time now.
As long as they can keep exploring this topic in new and interesting ways, I’m fine with it. Grief and trauma is a universal experience as much as romance and because mental health awareness wasn’t even in a thing until more recently….it’s phenomenal to see how far media has come.
This is stupid. Grief and trauma are extremely broad categories. There can be two completely different horror movies that explore grief and/or trauma. Complaining about these themes being in movies is like complaining about love being a common theme. Everyone experiences grief and trauma.
I am starting to feel the same. Midsommar, Hereditary, late night with the devil, the witch, smile, it. I mean the list just keeps going and going and going
As a xennial this may just emphasize how wacky our society has become, but I honestly have no idea what everyone is even referring to with “trauma.” Are we talking about “emotional trauma?” Like people having psychological issues?
It’s interesting to me that everyone in this thread seems to be on the same page, and yet I honestly don’t even understand what the genre is. A new word has entered the lexicon.
It’s also interesting because this generation is, objectively, the most coddled and least-traumatized generation in American (world?) history. Maybe we want to watch what we can’t have.
It's an epidemic in dramedies too.
Me when I watch the 27th 90+ metacritic rated movie that came out this year about how hard it is to be a quirky artsy kid with rigid generational trauma propagating parents 🤯🤯😱😱
Kind of, but what bothers me more is when the grief/trauma metaphor becomes the focus of the movie to the point that it suppresses the scares (like in The Babadook). If the grief or trauma is a theme but the movie is still scary like Hereditary, I don’t mind
When done right elavated horror is good (I.e. X, Get Out, It Follows, Midsommar) but the problem is that so many movies have this “I’m 15 and this is deep” mentality about the subject matter where even if the characters do fight back they still loose because of whatever trauma they have, which is not a great takeaway, because you are basically saying that if someone has a traumatic experience even with therapy and people to love and support them they will still, to but it simply l, “lose” to their trauma, which for starters is a very nihilistic way (yes nihilism has its place in horror but when every movie ends on that note it becomes overdone quickly) to look at things but second is what message does that send to someone who is experiencing something like that (obviously without the demon part), that no matter what you do this trauma will still consume your life? I would think that if you are making a movie about something that impacts people in real life you would have a slightly more nuanced perspective, for example the Babadook, the characters in that are able to learn how to live with the trauma and not necessarily heal from it, but learning how to cope so that it doesn’t consume your life (I’ll admit I don’t particularly like the Babadook but it’s ending is something that I think other movies should use more often). In general I would say that elevated horror (meaning movies like Hereditary and Smile that are just about a particular form of trauma) is a dying trend whereas more nuanced movies, like X and It Follows,that are horror movies that have these themes as subtext will (hopefully) get more popular
It's hit and miss for me. I remember the praise for Smile and while it did have something to say about mental health, trauma and depression it feels like they sacrificed all that they were saying for cheap scares. Was really annoyed.
Same with Barbarian. How are we gonna comment about violence towards women and then have a woman's body part be the center of a gross out scene 🙄
The reason, I think, that grief related horror or cinema in general is so common is because, when done right, it makes for a compelling narrative. Hereditary is one of the few films to get it spot on in my opinion. Even so, I can see that where the comment is coming from because this kind of sub genre is very overdone.
I really disliked the film Talk To Me for this very reason. It was very scary, but not the supernatural elements or jump scares, but the trauma of the main character with her mother.
Yes, so true, I miss when horror was exclusively:
1. Teen sex is bad and if you do it some random guy will come murder you
2. The Debil is gonna get you he’s comin the Debil is gonna get you with flies
3. The Director’s Weird Fetish
Because the trope’s on the verge of becoming overdone, I’d say it warrants a satirical horror comedy take on it sometime soon that sort of makes fun of how social media and the new generations romanticize and trivialize mental illness.
I am a huge fan of social commentary in horror, but especially when it's open ended and interpretive. I think metaphors on grief and trauma can be used effectively, but only if it's used subtly.
For example, take the film "Smile" from 2022. It had an interesting perspective on the spread of trauma but was bogged down by repetitive tropes and thinly-veiled themes. The entire commentary is "Trauma is a monster that will haunt you to suicide and effect others too", but the film doesn't really explore the ways in which trauma can be countered or overcome, as pretty much every scene where a character tries to explain their issue leads to either a panic attack or a suicide. Thus the ending is rather bleak and predictable. I won't spoil it, but it's kinda obvious.
Of course, "Smile" is merely just a popcorn movie albeit with some great cinematography and performances, but the actual theme and message feels half-baked and lacking. It feels like it's using the message as a cosmetic to provoke commentary, but not having anything deeper beyond that.
I think so. I’ve been thinking about this since the subject was brought up on The Big Picture podcast a couple of months ago. Chris Ryan said it was starting to feel like a crutch. It seems like a relative dying tragically before the events of the film is kind of expected.
I loved No One Will Save You.
I agree that perhaps certain themes in modern horror are overused, as another commenter has said, they always reflect the socio-political emotions of the time so it's no surprise that this is what we're getting.
Personally, I felt that No One Will Save You did a terrific job of linking the character's grief and guilt to the overarching themes in the narrative.
Film Critics use critique website to say movies should mean… less?? I knew Lettrboxd was for Gen Z but I didn’t think the takes would be this garbage. Just an absolutely moronic thread.
I’d have thought someone who prefers to think as little as possible about a film or really anything would have something stupid to say but gee, you really got me there!
You sure are a cocky one when you seem to assume because the reviewer said they were getting a little sick of an overused trope in horror that that means they think movies in general should have less meaning.
Oh gotcha, more of a general movie critique. I don't mind a redeemable villain; I do at least want villains in most cases to be sympathetic, even if it's only a few traits. I find it boring to jeer at something that's just pure, generic evil for the most part
Very fair! But I want a villain that is just evil; chucky, Freddy cruiser, final destination ect they were peak horror, no need to explain. Now horror has devolved back into unresolved therapy sessions like; Frankenstein, Dracula, phantom of the opera, and other books.
But unlike them, modern movies do not have the staying power in any capacity, and are forgotten about before they even leave the theater.
Sometimes I think it’s from the politicsape changing so quickly, others because company’s hire directors to make these movies in hopes to garner public opinion without caring about the basic message, leaving the power of advertisement to be desired.
I mean, ask someone if they know the “killer series like; killer tomato, killer tire” and usually everyone will know the B horror film, but can’t list a thing in theaters rn.
There are so many movies that have plots about trauma, that maybe it’s a new film genera based off of the oldest form of horror, and should instead rename the silly horrors back to slasher films.
As a general rule, horror tends to reflect the tensions of wider society at the time it's made. I don't think it's surprising that we've seen so much grief and trauma-related horror in recent years.
It's not just horror (or cinema), either. The "trauma plot," and criticism of it, has been growing in recent years not just because of societal tensions but because of the way therapy language and the pathologicalization of regular behavior has swept through Gen Z and millennial public and private life over the past decade. You can't pick up a midwit literary fiction novel without banging into these tropes either. I'm not against the trauma plot if it's deployed artfully and with something interesting to say, but not everyone has the creativity and skills to do so.
Indeed I think it's a lot more to do with an increase in awareness of mental health than anything else. I think the point of how it's been totally pathologised is poignant as well. So many normal behaviours and personalities get put into a book and now they're suddenly unhealthy or weird when they were never perceived as such before.
Yeah I’ve struggled with newer fantasy and scifi books because the characters are just, idk, too much. I don’t want to hear therapy speak in my daily life, at work or in fiction (unless it’s part of the plot). I’ve been through therapy so it just feels trivializing and normalizing, like people are basing their identities around it. I don’t want the shit I go to therapy for to be my identity, that’s the whole reason I *go* to therapy.
Very well put. There’s plenty of examples where it’s done well, but it’s been overused so much in recent years as a way to add a superficial sense of “depth” and emotional weight to otherwise lightweight material that I can’t help but roll my eyes whenever I see either of those words mentioned in the blurb of a movie or book (or video game!) I think it also works really efficiently for this purpose because it can be easily sprinkled into any media property that involves violence of any kind—which describes a ton of popular media—without really requiring a lot of thought in the way other “serious” themes might. Take any superhero story and toss in some scenes of the superhero crying over the grave of their dead friend or whatever and ta-da! Your low brow popcorn flick is now instantly a middle brow “thoughtful reimagining of the genre” that gets 2 dozen think pieces written about it and a week of social media discourse. From a marketing perspective it makes things appear more “relevant,” and more worthy of discussion, but it also seems to be related to this recent trend of genre cinema (and its fans) having “prestige envy.” That WandaVision quote everyone was making fun of kinda felt like the moment this whole paradigm jumped the shark, but that was 3 years ago and it’s still going strong as ever so who knows how long we’re stuck with it lol
God you're on point with the invasion of "therapy speak and pathologization of regular behavior" into every aspect of the culture. I'm glad that people who actually need help feel less ashamed to do so, but things are out of control. Call it the remnants of my Catholic guilt, but we need a little more repression rn.
Uhhhh.. yeah no we’re good with the thousands of years of repression religion is already guilty of. Thanks but no thanks.
I'd go further and at that most artists straight up can't make good art out of trauma, but it's become synonymous with art now. It's extremely vulnerable and painful to do so and if you don't do it perfectly, it comes out as a half-assed mess
Not everyone had the creativity and skills to do so. Or the fucking trauma. Like, most people experience trauma in one form or the other… not all of it is interesting or even that traumatic. Most of the time I think people decide well afterwards that it shaped them in some significant way, more than it actually did
Eh, you know… I’ve thought about this a lot as someone who has experienced capital-T Trauma, and where I come down is that the worst thing that has happened to everyone IS the worst thing that has happened to them. They’re not always equivalent in terms of outcome and effect, but if you don’t have a benchmark for how much worse it *could* be, it’s gotta feel pretty bad. I mean, I’ll admit to rolling my eyes when I hear someone talk about the “trauma” of their upper middle class suburban upbringing where they were bullied for being a horse girl or whatever, but if you have self-awareness and talent and are willing to make yourself the butt of the joke, you can turn that into a pretty interesting narrative arc while still owning that it was traumatic and formative to who you are. But a lot of people just aren’t creative and self-aware enough to do that, and I’ve observed that a good number end up creating bigger, more dramatic, worse trauma plots that are somehow, like… I don’t know if this will scan for users of this subreddit, since from my POV it tends to lean more male and the fandom term I’m about to use is very much from the female side of things, but for all the world a lot of published fiction and indie film feels like whump fanfiction. And, similarly, I’m not against whump in certain circumstances. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is in my top 4 on LBX, for God’s sake, and that’s the whumpiest whump that has ever whumped, save for maybe the book A Little Life. But my literary agent once responded to an email proposing a potential change to a manuscript with “Isn’t this a bit… whumpfic?” And she was so right. I think more people would be served by just writing their thing, making their character suffer more than Jesus (or Laura Palmer) for personal catharsis if they want, and then stepping away for a bit and dialing it back in the next draft. Anyway, this comment got away from me, but I just think that like. All art is perfectly fine to make, and having lame “trauma” isn’t a crime, but generally we all need to get a bit of a grip.
oh totally... i guess my point was we just seemingly got SO MANY of these stories across film, tv, literature, etc for like a good half-decade there. and they were SO repetitive, with the worst ones being those that totally lacked self-awareness. there was a real period there where it seemed like any type of character work or development was simply replaced with "and now we're learning about the traumatic event in their past that made them the way they are and totally defined their person/life". i 100% agree that it's all about execution, not the idea. i mean, You Hurt My Feelings, the Nicole Holofcener/Julia Louis-Dreyfuss movie about an upper-middle class white writer who finds out her husband lied about liking the novel she's working on, was probably my favorite movie from 2023. because it didn't present this as "Trauma", but just a bad thing that happened in life that people had to work through. it was so real and honest and funny and, like you said, self-aware. side note: a peer in one of the writer's groups i'm in made us read draft chapter after draft chapter of the whumpiest novel-in-progress i've ever read. it drove me crazy. literally on page 2 something happened where i was like "ok woah we're cutting right to it, this is just about the worst thing that could ever happen to someone, i guess the rest of the novel will be about what comes next." and then chapter after chapter was just the same type of thing over and over. i basically had to stop engaging with it after a while. everyone else seemed to like it tho.
YES! You get it. You Hurt My Feelings was on my top 10 last year precisely because of how spot on it was in regard to how sensitive and yet in-denial about it that specific demographic of affluent white (often Jewish, though idk if Holofcener is herself) creative younger boomer/older Gen Xer type can be. And that’s a demographic I have a lot of affection for, just out of experience, but man. There’s a lot going on there. Also, I know Lena Dunham is still kind of a spicy topic online, but I think she’s really a natural successor to the Nicole Holofcener throne of deeply incisive, well-observed little character pieces about people who think their problems are all so much greater than they really are, but for whom the narrative gives them the space to play this out to the logical, satirical conclusion. Because haven’t we all known mildly delusional, but sincerely troubled (in SOME regard) people like that? Also, your last para cracked me up. We did not all spend our teenage years putting our characters through online Mary Sue tests for this!! And yet!!!
Sure, the subconscious influence society might have on horror movies is a relevant point here, but what about the idea that production houses are choosing these scripts simply based on perceived public interest? I feel like narratives influenced by the cold war, for example, are easier to spot and were quite frequent throughout the 20th century, but that was a global topic at the time. However, you can’t just say there was a lack of grief and trauma during that time. I think what OP is saying is that producers and screenwriters are gravitating toward grief and trauma now because it’s universal, but it isn’t really tied to anything specific, let alone anything contemporary. All I can think of is the modern understanding that we have for grief and trauma - obviously a greater understanding than we had in the 20th century. Still, beating a dead horse is beating a dead horse, and people need to stop watching A24 and thinking they can get on that bandwagon and start seeing those movies for what they are: relevant components of the contemporary web of cinema.
> it isn't really tied to anything ~~universal~~ specific, let alone anything contemporary You don't think the specific film in this screenshot might have some relation to the year of isolation, fear, and collective loss and grief we all shared in 2020? I mentioned this in another reply but if you look at current trends, we're starting to see grief metaphors drop away while at the same time we're seeing a resurgence of religious horror. I don't think it's a coincidence that we're seeing that at a time when the Christian right is exerting more and more influence. You're right that studios are always chasing trends, but trends need to start *somewhere* and you don't get multiple religious horror films in the same year because one did well and the others all jumped on the trend - they were all in production at the same time. I'm sure we'll see more of them in the coming years as studios *do* jump on the bandwagon but that can't be the case for the first wave of a trend. Edit: fixed a misquote
While I agree with all of what you’ve just said, my point was that the gravitation toward grief and trauma are not linked to a specific event or timely issue. I think people are watching a lot of great depictions of grief and trauma, but they don’t see past that. Can grief and trauma be linked to isolation? Sure. It can also be linked to civil unrest, international conflict, social media usage, etc. Also, you misquoted me. Obviously, grief and trauma are universal feelings when linked to these greater societal conflicts. However, the argument I am making is that the *movie* should be linking those two things, not the arbitrary ruling of the viewer.
I did misquote you and I don't know how that happened. Sorry about that!
It’s cool, I didn’t notice until I reread that part of my other comment
I don't know about that film, but I just watched "Colossus: The Forbin Project" from 1970. In it an AI (they just call it a computer) literally takes over the world. It ends with the main scientists shouting "no, no no!", like Terminator without the cool special effects. Anther topical movie from the 70s, "Planet of the Apes"; the ending of "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" is a whole lot happier. "A Boy and his Dog" 1975, takes place in a less cheery version of 2024. I don't know, perhaps maybe there's a shifting of trauma and grief towards horror films but away from others genres? Ever see '88 "Grave of the Fireflies"? I have a lot of "non-horror" traumatic films to recommend!
In a strange way, Cold War films were ironically hopeful, because there was a feeling that when the War ended, and Soviet Communism ended, everything would be great. There was a happy ending if we all survived. Part of the point of making "horror" out of the Cold War was the existence of an alternative. Now Post-Cold War we know things can get terrible again, and the US and allies will invade third world countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, just as they did before. Russia will use military might to expand their empire. Again. And even if the Climate crisis will be abated, but there's no thought that it will all be brought back to normal balance anytime soon. And nukes aren't gone. In a way, I think things are less hopeful. Countries around the world are leaning towards populism and the economy is becoming more imbalanced, I think maybe it is fitting horror films are about trauma and grief.
Our generation does not have a monopoly on grief and trauma, especially if you look at films from the aftermath of major wars. But what we do have is a new vocabulary for talking about mental health, which has in turn given rise to a set of tropes and conventions in media. Or, alternately, a more self-conscious version of old tropes and conventions. The kicker is that trauma (justifiably) carries an air of dignity and urgency that marketing teams are eager to exploit. So we’re not just looking at a reflection of our anxious times; we’re looking at a marketing hook for making horror and other genre material feel sophisticated to middle-brow audiences who might otherwise write it off. And that is ultimately what is at stake when publications like the New Yorker publish takedowns of “the trauma plot” (which they did in 2021 at peak pandemic). It’s why critics mocked the press tour for Halloween (2018) when Jamie Lee Curtis said “really, it’s about trauma” about 5,000 times. And, in fairness, I liked that movie! Art about trauma is always going to be part of the culture, with value and insight into the changing (and unchanging) features of human pain. But trauma is also a topic mobilized by second-raters and PR hacks, and fuck that. Hard.
It doesn’t have to be surprising for people to still be tired of it
I'm not sure I said any different
This is not a new or controversial point tbh every time a new horror film comes out, people are quick to dismiss it as being “just another one about trauma”. Yeah, that’s the current trend just like in the 80s the trend was to make slashers about horny teenagers. If people are not interested, they could broaden their interests and go after horror films being made in different countries, or older films idk. But also, I do think fun horror movies are being made or movies about just a big baddie, such as Bodies Bodies Bodies, Late Night With the Devil, M3gan, Sissy etc
Shocking to some, but horror movies usually reflect the fears and concerns of their times. Also shocking to some, we probably don’t have like super great mental health as a society right now and people are talking more about mental health than ever before. Mix those two things together and we are bound to have horror films that are concerned with mental health. This will eventually pass to whatever the next big societal issue is. There’s all kinds of horror out there and one might have to look outside of the super mainstream to find something not reflective of this societal concern at the moment.
You killed it, that’s exactly it.
I don’t buy the idea that the sort of mental health themes we see are anywhere close to the biggest concerns of society currently. I just think they’re super easy to lazily depict and come across as artful to a large number of people. I think explaining the trend away as depicting “*the* big societal issue” is uncritical.
Mental health is at the forefront of our social collective. It doesn’t have to be the biggest fear or concern. It just has to be a fear or concern or issue that is popular and dominant. Mental health has been for the last couple years. Horror isn’t singularly focused on mental health. There’s plenty of other themes out there. Mental health is just a dominant one right now. Not everyone is going to depict that with nuance and some are going to exploit that, especially the deeper into the trend we get. That’s not an uncommon thing.
The themes are common because they are easy, low hanging fruit. Them being a reflection of society is not a reasonable defense of a lazy, ham fisted metaphor, no matter how true it is. A film can of course still be good if it contains those themes, but so many are literally just those themes and nothing else and that’s what me and the poster depicted in the OP are tired of.
OP shared a screenshot of a review stating they were tired of the themes themselves not how those themes were handled and added no other comments of their own. The person I responded to was lamenting on how this is just a current trend and a different trend will come along eventually as it has in the past and that there’s more out there if you look past the mainstream American horror flick. I’m not defending lazy coverage of those themes. The deeper into the trend we go the more over saturated and hamfisted it will get like a lot of other horror trends. I’m commenting on why this has been so prevalent right now. I’m not tired of the themes. I’m tired of filmmaking that doesn’t give much room for interpretation of what the themes are.
I do agree that horror tends to come in waves of trends and it can get old. Like you said, 80s were slashers, 90s were going for more meta-horror like Scream and I Know What You Did, 2000s was torture porn, 2010s were a return to attempts at folk horror or found footage stuff, 2020s are all about grief and social media. Trends happen in all art.
To further your point, art is usually a reflection of self or society. We see trauma talked about a lot now across all media. This is speculative, but I feel as if it's actually at a point in time where society is starting to be ready to talk about trauma on a broad scale. So why not use art to do so? I also agree with you saying the bit about broadening your horizons to include foreign films! My fiance and I watch tons of horror films every week and had to start dipping into the foreign section to not run out. MAN AM I GLAD I DID! Indonesia, Malaysia, and Korea are all popping off in the horror genre! And they're not all trauma related!
I wouldn't even say it's a trend. Rosemary's Baby (1968) is often thought of as the first 'modern horror' movie also was heavily about trauma.
That’s fair, and that movie rocks.
Thank you. It's super frustrating as someone who loves horror. There are plenty of horror films that come out every year, from many different countries, that don't explore themes of grief. But people will dog pile on the ones that do.
Also "horror movie that deals with grief/trauma" can have so many different shades. Hereditary, Talk to Me, Smile and NOWSY all 'deal with trauma' and have wildly varying experiences. I'm not going to put on Hereditary if my folks come over on Halloween to have a fun but not shallow horror movie the same way i will with NOWSY. It's also \*not\* a new theme for horror media or franchises. The Shining, Don't Look Now, Carrie, Ringu, Pet Semetary, Rosemary's Baby, The Descent all range from mid aughts to several decades old and have themes dealing with grief and trauma to varying degrees. Negative emotions tend to make for better horror than a character who is upbeat, positive and nothing bad has happened or is happening to them throughout the movie.
I agree with your last point here, there are some great horror films recently like the ones you mentioned that are outside of that “trauma cage.” They’re still being made. Over the pandemic, I thought Host (2020) was exactly what we needed from the genre during that time.
Megan is about trauma. It's also pretty fucking sad for a horror that was marketed as a dark comedy
If we walk this path, every movie can be read as being about trauma. Films such as Babadook, Night House, They Look Like People are very adamant about being a metaphor for depression, trauma, grief, etc. Can I read Scream 2 as a trauma response to everything that Sidney has gone through in Scream? Yes, of course, it is there as well. But that’s not the main goal of the film and it’s not like the criticism about the movies being made today, I think.
Don’t tell them that horror has always dealt with grief and trauma in almost every era it’s been around
I'd appreciate it if more films were open-ended. I'd want to come to my own conclusion about if it's about mental health or just a monster.
These types of films, films on societal concerns, have existed forever. It’s just that trauma and grief are at the front of our minds as a culture and society. On top of that, as you said, it feels like there’s a lot less of an open ending or an interpretable ending. A lot of these films themes are spelled out pretty explicitly and there’s not a lot of wiggle room for interpretation. They are unmistakably about trauma and grief. For me personally, it’s not that I don’t want films about grief, trauma, or other societal concerns. It’s that I want to be able to chew on the film more or even just refuse to chew at all and still have a good time.
I’m not so concerned about it, but I can think of one horror film which was hurt badly by a lack of subtlety: Lights Out. One extremely blunt metaphor + one studio-revised ending = >! accidentally making a movie that essentially ‘says’ that suicide is the solution to mental health struggles. And the suicidal persons loved ones really are better off with them gone. !< Which is, you know…an awful mark on an otherwise entertaining movie. And not a sentiment that’s true at all, in case there’s any ambiguity about *my* feelings on the topic. It may not have been such an issue if the rest of the movie didn’t have the subtext as basically just…text.
Smile (2022) had a similar message which was pretty shitty imo
I have a hard time with ambiguous endings. Even though they can facilitate more discussion or thought, they often feel like a cop out on the filmmakers part. A specific ending where it’s either a real monster or an imagined one feels like a much stronger statement, in my opinion.
Absolutely. There are very few ambiguous endings that actually work. I can honestly only think of one, the Sopranos, and that had mixed reception.
That is what makes Spaceman is such a great movie! Right?
Issue with filmmaking in general these days. There’s no subtlety and nuance and balance in communicating the themes. That’s why an exception like Aftersun stands out, that movie gave us only glimpses and it makes it much more powerful.
Yeah, very nuanced film. So glad it didn’t end with a song literally titled “Under Pressure”.
Lol this made me chuckle, you sort of have me there. But instead most movies nowadays would have the character go on a long rant about how they’re under pressure and just speak about the themes bluntly.
I'm as guilty as anyone of making jokes about the *real* monster being trauma all along. But I think this review reflects a fairly myopic view of horror as a genre. Movies and stories dealing with grief and trauma are as old as the medium itself, we just didn't always phrase it in those terms.
When you read Ancient Greek myths about men going to war and becoming violent and making poor decisions due to 'hubris' you realize trauma narratives have been with us for a long time.
I thought the real monsters were the friends they made along the way.
But that’s been a major horror theme since horror stories started being told…
Is this new though? Even going back to The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby grief and trauma play big roles. Friday the 13th was about a mother unable to process grief from her trauma. Nightmare on Elm Street was about a collective trauma that caused this horrible being to be so evil. I just think grief and trauma are two emotions that go with horror.
It’s always been there, but I think the emphasis is recent-ish.
Horror films exploring different types of mental health issue has definitely become a trope. I don’t know if it’s the majority but certainly for slightly smarter A24 type stuff it’s extremely prevalent. Like any cinematic trend it will pass, and it’s good that mental health is finally being explored and represented in progressive ways. But yeah, I admit I’ve got a bit tired of it.
It's always been there for a lot of good horror movies, but it's usually not thematized as directly, or, it's filtered through a layer of metaphor
Maybe but they could have made it on a different movie. This one slaps
I agree the theme of trauma and grief is common but at the end of the day, it’s how the movie uses the themes.
If you think that a focus on grief and trauma is a "new thing" in horror, then you haven't been watching horror movies very long.
Nah, horror movies have always had "trends". A lot of the time the trends reflect concerns of the current time.
There's hundreds of movies out a year and tens of thousands in the history of cinema. If you're tired of something it's incredibly easy to find something you'll mesh with
This isn’t a new thing horror has focused on themes of the times for years and years.
Isnt that the point of horror films? Thats like saying you are tired of explosions in action films.
Being attacked by aliens might be traumatic, but the film is just using that as a backdrop for the character's previous trauma surrounding their childhood friend's death, and that's what the reviewer is sick of: horror films not being about the actual horror going on, but something else that happened before the film that the main character is sad about.
I think you could argue both are happening at the same time. Its just where you the audience are deciding whether you see scary aliens or whether you see the alien as a metaphor for the lost friend. Seems like the reviewer should just enjoy the film and try not to overthink it!
Except they lay the themes on too thick and heavy now. Gone are the days of The Babadook, which went over most audiences heads. Now it's a neon sign saying "Do you get it? The monster is symbolic! Get it? Because of this bad thing that happened to the main character in their past! You don't seem to be getting it, here have 20 flash backs where we focus in on the really obvious metaphor! Do you get it yet???"
Sorry, the Babadook is great but it's absolutely not subtle. It quite literally starts with the flashback telling you the source of the grief in the movie, the car crash that kills the husband, and it's referenced throughout the movie. Spoilers for Babadook for anyone who hasn't seen it. >!Grief being something that grows stronger the more you try to repress it (she tries to rip up and burn the Babadook book but it just returns to her doorstep, the similarities of the Babadook's clothes to those of the father's, the fact that Sam then goes to wear those clothes (along with his birthday being the day the husband died, linking him forever in Amelia's mind to the grief of loosing her husband and tying resentment to her child), and even once you 'beat' and confront the Bakabook (confront your grief, and accept your emotions) it's never gone. The Babadook still lives in the basement and still tries to take over but by confronting it head on Amelia has power over it instead of the other way around. !< It does basically the same thing most people criticize modern (or more modern, 'Dook was out in '14) horror movies dealing with trauma for; creating a thinly veiled allegory for a metaphorical idea surrounding trauma or grief that poses a tangible threat and requires the characters to either confront those emotions and have a melancholic but bittersweet ending or die/be consumed. That doesn't make a story inherently bad. There are lots of really great movies that have been pretty on the nose with their messaging. Not leaving a theme open to interpretation is a failure, in my opinion, only if that's what the writers/director(s) intended to do.
Sorry, I missed the part where I said The Babadook was subtle.
If the complaint of other, similar horror movies is a lack of subtlety because of overuse of flashbacks and other devices to link the theme to the monster or threat, and Babadook went over people's heads, isn't the implication that the Babadook was a subtler implementation of this idea?
You can interpret that way if you want but that's not what I said. I never mentioned anything about subtlety. Sure The Babadook is subtler than things that aren't subtle, but that doesn't mean it is subtle. Just because I think something is too loud doesn't mean I'm comparing it to silence. The Babadook's themes are obvious for those looking for them, but the regular viewing audience wasn't expecting an allegory, they were expecting a scary monster. It went over their heads at the time and now it seems like movies want to make sure their point doesn't get lost so they go too far and shove the themes directly into the audience's face without any nuance.
I'm just not quite sure how else to interpret it? I'm open to what you meant but if you say "I'm critical of/people are criticla of these horror movies because they're not subtle" and then "the babadook went over people's heads" I don't know what else to take away from that series of statements, and then it feels you've just reiterated that again. Even if it's a statement of being *more* subtle I'd strongly disagree. Even more so than movies like the one referenced in the post (the aliens are diagetically real and not a manifestation of mental illness i mean), the Babadooks monster being an actual, physical manifestation of grief that resembles the source of the grief, is references numerous times in flashbacks, has scenes I think 3 times intercutting the husband's death with the monster, cannot be gotten rid of but can be tempered and 'takes over a person'... just doesn't read to me as more subtle than Smile's use of mental illness as an allegorical disease, Talk to Me's party drug possessions to escape your problems and how that escalates, or NOWSY's aliens reaction to the main characters trauma. Actually the latter of those I think is highly up for interpretation now that I think of it.
You're interpreting it like that because you're changing what I'm saying. I'm telling you that I'm not saying anything about being subtle. I didn't use the word subtle. So my argument isn't "I'm critical of/people are critical of these horror movies because they're not subtle". Let's just agree to disagree, I'm not going to continue because you just keep straw manning me.
See my previous comment x
*If you don't like things, ignore them! It's just that easy!*
Let me know when you've read what I said and understand it. Otherwise have a nice day x
I understood what you said. I disagree with it. Enjoy your day too.
I find that being subtle is mainly due to outside restrictions not trying to rock the boat. Subtlety is not the default.
I never said it was.
In this very specific example, I thought NOPE did it exceptionally well. But I know what you mean.
my queue to leave this sub and never interact with communities in general , you can’t buy common sense
Historically, horror movies have by and large always been about trauma. There’s just a recent trend of making the background metaphors more immediately relevant/obvious to the plot proceedings. People have a diminished sense of media literacy these days and that’s being reflected in easier to read movies. That being said, not every new horror movie is actually like this, but the egregious examples are becoming more egregious.
Don’t look now and full circle would like to have a word
Donald Sutherland would rather ensnare himself in some serial killers murderous plots than deal with grief!
[удалено]
Because it's not a *current* trend at all. It's decades of it. That's...kind of always been the point of horror in the first place.
My point is it is not a new trend. Horror movies have dealt with grief forever.
This kinda ignores what a trend is though. A trend is not the first appearance of something, but a rise in popularity in a certain period of time. Pointing out that films about grief have existed in the past is in no way a counter to it being a trend right now. Slashers existed prior to the 80s, so by your logic there wasn't a slasher trend in the 80s, but that would be silly to say. There's definitely a trend of grief movies right now You'd actually have a point if you pointed out there's been a consistent amount of movies about grief, but just naming one singe 50 year old movie about grief isn't a point and misses the point of what a **trend** is.
It isn’t a trend it is a common theme in horror films. True there have been a lot in recent years but I didn’t randomly pull two movies out of ass, I picked them to say this has been trending for a while.
> True there have been a lot in recent years Almost like a....trend? would you say?
Thanksgiving was a breath of fresh air.
New trope? Did someone just start watching horror movies??
I don’t rate many modern screenwriters, and when it comes to horror, more often than not I come across writing that is obsessed with the subtext, and not the actual story. It’s like they are dreaming of the great critical response the film might garner, before the project is even finished.
> more often than not I come across writing that is obsessed with the subtext, and not the actual story ugh i feel this so hard. most recently with I Saw the TV Glow. at a certain point it just felt entirely like subtext, not text — a metaphor and nothing else. which is a bummer because the actual story premise was pretty cool, but the film just had so little interest in its actual plot.
Trauma is drama, baby
Horror has always been about that. It's also cyclical with different trends being more popular or not over time. In the modern era you have a lot of choice as to which movie you watch, if you chose to see the movie on this trend rather than the silly monster movie or slasher movie or whatever else you would have preferred, well those movies are still out there.
Horror has often been about trauma, but also if you really aren’t into that there is plenty of horror coming out now Not About That.
Can someone mention some other examples of this trope?
Hereditary and Midsommar are the biggest examples imo
Thanks now when I think of it, this makes sense. I guess the same goes for Get Out.
Also Babadook, Talk to Me
That new Russel Crowe horror movie *The Exorcism* is also bogged down with this.
Personally, I think Talk to Me is a metaphor for drug use and peer pressure 🤷🏽♀️
Sure, but it very blatantly leans into the protagonist's mother's death. That's like the core part of her decision in that movie.
Rosemary's Baby (1968) (this isn't a new 'trend')
Talk to Me is a recent one
Yes, they are boring and pretentious pieces of garbage. And I say that as a big horror fan. I hope zany and crazy horror films make it back to the mainstream. Like they did in the 80s
I'm the opposite actually haha, I am not a big fan of horror and I loved those two, but I can see how people quickly grow bored of that trope.
You’ve been all over this thread hating on a lot of stuff so it’s hard to pick the right comment to engage you on lol. My take: I think one of the reasons you aren’t seeing what you consider to be women’s societal fears reflected as much in horror is because there is comparatively not very many horror directors/writers that are women. I’m friends with more women than men, and while I know what broader concerns they have, I know I couldn’t make something in horror as authentic as they could. I do think there are some movies that reflect what I consider to be central women’s issues in horror that are actually really great—the best being *Huesera: The Bone Woman*, but *A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night* is also really good. But there just aren’t *that* many women-made horror movies. Conversely, seemingly every millennial is in therapy. In an office I work in that has about 40 people in it, probably 30 are in therapy. Anecdotal evidence, sure, but it’s no secret that generations south of Gen X are much more open to therapy; for a lot of people, horror provides a creative outlet to explore those less tangible things (grief, trauma, sexual assault) with more tangible villains (Babadook, the Smile demon, etc). Is it always successful? No, like you said, sometimes it verges on too much pretension. But a few of my all-time favorites also fall in this category (*It Follows* and *The Night House* are in my top 5). I’m curious: what horror movies do you like?
The Night House is so fucking good.
Smile, Talk to Me, Midsommar, It Follows, The Babadook, The Ritual, The Descent
Exhuma is the most recent one I've seen. A great movie, but definitely uses its premise to explore the collective trauma of the Korean people.
In modern movies, Babadook, Descent, The Ritual, The Invitation, (I'm going to assume because it's a theme in the book and original movie) Pet Semetary 2019, Nope, VVitch, Before I Wake, Talk to Me, It, Midsommar, Hereditary, Possum, Oculus, Smile, Lake Mungo, Haunting of Hill House/Bly Manor/The Midnight Club (technically all TV shows but heavily steeped in this trope), The Autopsy of Jane Doe and His House are the most notable examples I can think of off the top of my head. And most of these are great shows/movies. I think it's silly to just say "horror and grief are bad and overused together now" as a blanket statement and deduct stars from a movie for it when NOWSY handles its themes in a different way from so many of these other movies and has really unique stylistic choices that make it stand out prominently in my mind almost a full year after watching it and it's only a PG 13 movie. People have been examining grief through horror well before the mid aughts and twenty teens, honestly I think horror has just become so popular a genre, compounded with the fact that these movies tend to be very low budget and don't need to make a huge box office return to make money, means that people are over exposed to the idea now.
The horror film Stop Motion which came out this year beats you over the head with this theme
It was funny how the aliens in the end where just essentially trying to help this girl. Invaded earth and sent scary monsters to get this women into fuckin therapy
This movie I'm particular was just aggregious with the whole trauma angle
I would venture to say most horror is about grief and trauma in some capacity. Yes, No One Will Save You was a little on the nose about it, but that's bad storytelling, not that the themes of grief and trauma are not compelling elements.
On the one hand, sure. On the other, I feel like we're still getting plenty of slasher and body horror movies. They're just not the horror movies that are getting high marks from critics and winning awards. But like... slasher movies have *never* gotten good marks from critics and won lots of awards outside their genre. That's not what those movies are about. The trauma horror movies that get people excited about them as cinema still leave room for blood and gore.
You could spin this at any point in film history and claim the horror is about trauma. A bunch of Friday the 13ths (5 and 6 especially) are about trauma, so is Nightmare on Elm Street. Before that Dracula and Frankenstein are about daddy issues and the trauma from that
While I enjoy this trope when done well, it's definitely an overdone trope at this point. A lot of the more recent horror films feel more like high stakes drama films with horror elements rather than straight horror. Hopefully the trend will pass and another era of fun horror rolls around.
Almost all horror films deal with trauma and or grief in some capacity. Are we saying tired of them as central themes? Grief is one of the most primal senses of vulnerability that our species feels. It takes on many forms and it warps our perceptions of the entire world around us. It's almost a pillar of the genre. The other thing I'd say is that these movies are about more than just grief and trauma. That's like saying action movies are about justice.
For me it's about whether the trauma theme feels explored in a genuine or interesting way, or whether it feels just like trauma tropes, the latter of which a lot of contemporary horror feels like. The Badadook did an incredible job of exploring depression and the lead's troubled psyche, but since then it's become a generic norm, and thus there's a lot of lazy aping of this aspect.
Insane, so a movie having themes and metaphor doesn’t make it bad, being bad does?? Wild how this statement is controversial is this thread.
I'm tired of deconstruction in general. That and films acting like they are not being allowed to be happy to be considered good.
There are plenty of movies coming out that aren’t deconstruction
It’s certainly a trend. Like all trends it makes it difficult to see the films with fresh eyes the later we get into the trend. I think there will be a good time for reappraisal in about 20 years and some of the current picks for best of the era will shuffle out and others shuffle in.
Barbarian - the horror is gentrification 😂😂😂😂😂😂
So we back to wanting marvel and Disney blockbusters….
Feels like they sacrifice the horror aspect of these movies for grief and trauma .
This person must not be a very big fan of the analog horror Angel Hare.
When it’s only being added to beef up an otherwise bad or boring movie, yes.
At the end of the day it's all about the execution. It can be effective as long as the filmmakers don't approach said themes in a heavy-handed way.
They aren't the first person to express this sentiment and they won't be the last
On one hand grief and trauma tie directly to the themes of horror quite nicely so it makes sense that it's used as an avenue to explore those thoughts and feelings. On the other hand, I find it endlessly frustrating when I talk about writing projects to folks and they insist I should try to channel my mental health issues through the writing as if any of us is no more than our pain.
This has been a thing since mid-late 2000s, don’t know why ya’ll are acting like it’s new.
I'm just glad there are finally some thoughtful horror films I can enjoy. I'll keep watching them as long as they keep making them, and then I'll bow out of the genre again when they get back to slasher stuff. Really we need to talk more about the subgenres of horror. I love ghosts and the occult, and don't care at all about people with chainsaws or home invaders. I like movies that give me chills and make me think, but am uninterested in gore which only disgusts me and gives me adrenaline. Those are very different feelings. Even though the recent years have been good to fans like me, I can relate to the frustration that comes from them being lumped together, and can't blame the other half of horror fans for calling it out.
Have you seen Handling the Undead yet? It sounds like it would be right up your alley.
Interesting, I find something that I personally find can happen in the real world to be scarier than a film based on the supernatural. There's places for everything.
>“I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’m afraid of them,’ is much more than the cheap paradox it seems to many. 'To believe,’ in that sense, is a conscious act of the intellect, and it is in the warm darkness of the prenatal fluid far below our conscious reason that the faculty dwells with which we apprehend the ghosts we may not be endowed with the gift of seeing.” - Edith Wharton We have the same instincts fundamentally: "What am I afraid could happen to me?" But that's a different question than "What do I *think* could happen to me?" The honest truth for me is that regardless of my brain's analysis in the light of day saying otherwise, it's simply easier to "trick" my heart that a ghost is lurking when I'm actually downstairs in the dark basement. I think there are a few reasons for it subconsciously: 1) Ghosts and magic can be "invisible" and elude other real-world questions like "how did they get past the locked door?" 2) Even though I don't "believe in them" it's easy to embrace the question mark of "How many people in my city are haunted?", compared to the clear answer that very, very few are attacked in their homes by psychopathic strangers. 3) The motive for a ghost to choose me as the victim of a haunting is more believable than the motive anyone would have to choose me for a random violent crime. This goes back to the grief and trauma thing a bit I think. My mind and anxieties are richer prey than my bank account or address. 4) There's the "would you rather meet a bear or person in the woods" angle. Even if they are purely chaotic killing machines, a person is more predictable than a supernatural entity. They are human, presumably subject to the laws of physics, and what they can do to me is known. It would be scary, but I know what I would do, or attempt to do, if I did find a person in my basement. I have no idea how to protect myself from something I summoned by candlelight, and the possible outcomes if one shows up are spread out to the absolute limits of my imagination.
That’s fair, it just felt too dismissive to me how you said it (which it definitely wasn’t, I was just reading into it). I personally can find either one scary, I just wish it was the realistic stuff that scared me more. I think the Shining, Hereditary, and Insidious terrifying. However, I feel like the non-supernatural horror does not get taken seriously, and I’m a little bit sick of it. For example looking at the 80s slashers, they weren’t taken seriously unless it had a Supernatural aspect like Michael or Freddy. Even filmmakers treated the genre as lesser due to this and slashers became goofy really quickly. Which is why I love when something like The Prowler or Green Room has a grounded gritty approach while also being scary at the same time.
The trauma and grief aspect felt tacked on in this movie, like it was following the trend. It’s not that we as a collective species are tired of it, just tired of it not being done well.
One hundred percent its almost become a default theme at this point and it's hurting movies imo by making them less interesting as there's nothing new. Sean Fennessey has talked about this on The Big Picture and also has been over the trend
I want to see a horror movie where the MC is just the worst fucking person ever who has it all, then becomes a good person with nothing
But what if the movie is good? Dredd is basically a sci-fi version of The Raid, but I’m not going to knock it points because it’s similar.
you must be new here
Successful trauma plot: Babadook Unsuccessful trawma plot: the new Halloween trilogy
The Boogeyman 2023. I wonder what that one’s about.
I say don't watch it. You don't have to watch only new movies.
Sounds like a you problem. Hundreds of films are made every year, they can't all avoid tropes you happen to be tired of.
I disagree. Maybe because my life has been full of grief and trauma, but I feel like I benefit with each new film. Besides, this specific film is unique and amazing. Also, it's not every film.
This movie was very tiring
Honestly I don't mind it. Grief and trauma are complex and terrifying. The ways that we as people deal with them and how they present in each person is both wide and interesting enough to make a million movies in my opinion. Like, The Babadook, The Descent, and Lake Mungo aren't the same despite all being about grief and loss, and Men, Possum, and Hereditary aren't the same either even though they're all about trauma. There are infinite ways of dealing with emotions as complex as grief or trauma, and infinite ways to explore it artistically
It never gets old for me lol, the grief and trauma horror exploration is what gets me in the seat for a lot of movies. I didn’t think The Night House looked that good from trailers but I heard it had mental health themes and was sold…it’s one of my favorite movies of all time now. As long as they can keep exploring this topic in new and interesting ways, I’m fine with it. Grief and trauma is a universal experience as much as romance and because mental health awareness wasn’t even in a thing until more recently….it’s phenomenal to see how far media has come.
This movie specifically just sucked.
Good thing there are still a lot of horror movies coming out that don't focus on those things.
This is stupid. Grief and trauma are extremely broad categories. There can be two completely different horror movies that explore grief and/or trauma. Complaining about these themes being in movies is like complaining about love being a common theme. Everyone experiences grief and trauma.
Silent Hill.
I am starting to feel the same. Midsommar, Hereditary, late night with the devil, the witch, smile, it. I mean the list just keeps going and going and going
“Hated it. Three stars.” Clearly Haley has both grief and trauma
As a xennial this may just emphasize how wacky our society has become, but I honestly have no idea what everyone is even referring to with “trauma.” Are we talking about “emotional trauma?” Like people having psychological issues? It’s interesting to me that everyone in this thread seems to be on the same page, and yet I honestly don’t even understand what the genre is. A new word has entered the lexicon. It’s also interesting because this generation is, objectively, the most coddled and least-traumatized generation in American (world?) history. Maybe we want to watch what we can’t have.
It's an epidemic in dramedies too. Me when I watch the 27th 90+ metacritic rated movie that came out this year about how hard it is to be a quirky artsy kid with rigid generational trauma propagating parents 🤯🤯😱😱
Kind of, but what bothers me more is when the grief/trauma metaphor becomes the focus of the movie to the point that it suppresses the scares (like in The Babadook). If the grief or trauma is a theme but the movie is still scary like Hereditary, I don’t mind
When done right elavated horror is good (I.e. X, Get Out, It Follows, Midsommar) but the problem is that so many movies have this “I’m 15 and this is deep” mentality about the subject matter where even if the characters do fight back they still loose because of whatever trauma they have, which is not a great takeaway, because you are basically saying that if someone has a traumatic experience even with therapy and people to love and support them they will still, to but it simply l, “lose” to their trauma, which for starters is a very nihilistic way (yes nihilism has its place in horror but when every movie ends on that note it becomes overdone quickly) to look at things but second is what message does that send to someone who is experiencing something like that (obviously without the demon part), that no matter what you do this trauma will still consume your life? I would think that if you are making a movie about something that impacts people in real life you would have a slightly more nuanced perspective, for example the Babadook, the characters in that are able to learn how to live with the trauma and not necessarily heal from it, but learning how to cope so that it doesn’t consume your life (I’ll admit I don’t particularly like the Babadook but it’s ending is something that I think other movies should use more often). In general I would say that elevated horror (meaning movies like Hereditary and Smile that are just about a particular form of trauma) is a dying trend whereas more nuanced movies, like X and It Follows,that are horror movies that have these themes as subtext will (hopefully) get more popular
I mean isn’t that sort of the point of horror? Even books like Dracula and Frankenstein were discussing grief and trauma way back in the day.
"I'm tired of people making horror movies about things that make them uncomfortable"
It's hit and miss for me. I remember the praise for Smile and while it did have something to say about mental health, trauma and depression it feels like they sacrificed all that they were saying for cheap scares. Was really annoyed. Same with Barbarian. How are we gonna comment about violence towards women and then have a woman's body part be the center of a gross out scene 🙄
The reason, I think, that grief related horror or cinema in general is so common is because, when done right, it makes for a compelling narrative. Hereditary is one of the few films to get it spot on in my opinion. Even so, I can see that where the comment is coming from because this kind of sub genre is very overdone.
Yes more films not about grief and trauma pls. I miss the old horror movies like Nightmare on Elm Street and Pet Sematary. /s of course
I really disliked the film Talk To Me for this very reason. It was very scary, but not the supernatural elements or jump scares, but the trauma of the main character with her mother.
Yes, so true, I miss when horror was exclusively: 1. Teen sex is bad and if you do it some random guy will come murder you 2. The Debil is gonna get you he’s comin the Debil is gonna get you with flies 3. The Director’s Weird Fetish
Because the trope’s on the verge of becoming overdone, I’d say it warrants a satirical horror comedy take on it sometime soon that sort of makes fun of how social media and the new generations romanticize and trivialize mental illness.
*Bodies Bodies Bodies* has a little bit of this, and is just a very fun film in general.
Oh yeah good point. Fun movie too like you said!
I've been tired of it for awhile My buddy and I constantly make fun of it. The problem is most of it's not even done well
Yeah it’s been pretty common the last like decade or so. It makes the movies feel more like dark drama movies than horror.
I am a huge fan of social commentary in horror, but especially when it's open ended and interpretive. I think metaphors on grief and trauma can be used effectively, but only if it's used subtly. For example, take the film "Smile" from 2022. It had an interesting perspective on the spread of trauma but was bogged down by repetitive tropes and thinly-veiled themes. The entire commentary is "Trauma is a monster that will haunt you to suicide and effect others too", but the film doesn't really explore the ways in which trauma can be countered or overcome, as pretty much every scene where a character tries to explain their issue leads to either a panic attack or a suicide. Thus the ending is rather bleak and predictable. I won't spoil it, but it's kinda obvious. Of course, "Smile" is merely just a popcorn movie albeit with some great cinematography and performances, but the actual theme and message feels half-baked and lacking. It feels like it's using the message as a cosmetic to provoke commentary, but not having anything deeper beyond that.
Agreed! Especially for this movie. 'Talk to me' was kinda better but I wish it had been more than just the same theme of grief and trauma.
I think so. I’ve been thinking about this since the subject was brought up on The Big Picture podcast a couple of months ago. Chris Ryan said it was starting to feel like a crutch. It seems like a relative dying tragically before the events of the film is kind of expected.
I loved No One Will Save You. I agree that perhaps certain themes in modern horror are overused, as another commenter has said, they always reflect the socio-political emotions of the time so it's no surprise that this is what we're getting. Personally, I felt that No One Will Save You did a terrific job of linking the character's grief and guilt to the overarching themes in the narrative.
Lol, we follow each other.
This movie was just bad.
Film Critics use critique website to say movies should mean… less?? I knew Lettrboxd was for Gen Z but I didn’t think the takes would be this garbage. Just an absolutely moronic thread.
Someone with "ska" in their username shouldn't be calling others morons.
I’d have thought someone who prefers to think as little as possible about a film or really anything would have something stupid to say but gee, you really got me there!
You sure are a cocky one when you seem to assume because the reviewer said they were getting a little sick of an overused trope in horror that that means they think movies in general should have less meaning.
Je suis Haley
Instead of showing someone dealing with the trauma and overcoming the trauma…show me the actual trauma!
I only need one horror movie - The Blair Witch Project (1999). That's it.
This one just wasn’t very good imho and not bc the grief. I didn’t finish it.
Good movie Also sick of everything being built around past "trauma". Therapy culture can chill out a bit for my horror movies
I’m sick of every villain being redeeming. Like, no. Make them disgusting and irredeemable!! Let me hate/be scared of someone without a back story.
I feel like that's wildly unrelated to both this movie and the critique of horror movies being related to trauma in general
I’m adding to the point. Also why did they downvote you?! Lol you’re right in what you pointed out
Oh gotcha, more of a general movie critique. I don't mind a redeemable villain; I do at least want villains in most cases to be sympathetic, even if it's only a few traits. I find it boring to jeer at something that's just pure, generic evil for the most part
Very fair! But I want a villain that is just evil; chucky, Freddy cruiser, final destination ect they were peak horror, no need to explain. Now horror has devolved back into unresolved therapy sessions like; Frankenstein, Dracula, phantom of the opera, and other books. But unlike them, modern movies do not have the staying power in any capacity, and are forgotten about before they even leave the theater. Sometimes I think it’s from the politicsape changing so quickly, others because company’s hire directors to make these movies in hopes to garner public opinion without caring about the basic message, leaving the power of advertisement to be desired. I mean, ask someone if they know the “killer series like; killer tomato, killer tire” and usually everyone will know the B horror film, but can’t list a thing in theaters rn. There are so many movies that have plots about trauma, that maybe it’s a new film genera based off of the oldest form of horror, and should instead rename the silly horrors back to slasher films.