Scream does not tell the audience the rules
of horror.
In the 1996 film, a series of murders plague
the town of Woodsboro.
To escape the carnage for the night and ease
tensions, the high school students throw a
party wherein they watch horror movies.
Randy, a self-professed expert on horror,
halts the festivities when he realizes that
the other party-goers don't know the “rules
to surviving a horror movie.”
The first two rules are key.
Randy says that only virgins will survive
and that only those who abstain from getting
drunk or high will survive.
What Randy is describing is a pattern that
filmmakers – consciously or unconsciously
– tend to follow when crafting a movie like
Scream.
A movie is influenced by the society that
creates it and crafted for the society that
will watch it, not in terms of effectively
mirroring our circumstances but in displaying
what society values and what society de-values.
Virginity, chastity, modesty.
These Puritan, conservative values are praised
by the society that made movies like Halloween
and Friday the 13th.
In the former, not only is a woman slain immediately
after being intimate with her boyfriend, but
it happens in the very bed where she did it.
In the latter, the entire rampage takes place
due to counselors sneaking off to be with
each other while Jason Voorhees drowned.
These movies are undoubtedly influenced by
the real world false dichotomy of categorizing
women into two boxes:
Either the pure madonna or the insatiable
tramp who is both sought after and frowned
upon by the same men.
This pattern reoccurs in these movies with
such frequency that scores of books and academic
papers have been written about it.
Randy is correct in understanding that life
or death within horror movies is often a value
judgment and related to sin, but he is incorrect
in the specifics.
Because what he tells the party guests are
not the rules of horror but the rules of slasher
movies, a subgenre of horror.
Different subgenres have different values,
different sins that they highlight.
A slasher movie generally features a lone
killer, young, mostly women victims who are
taken out one by one, and a survivor – almost
always a woman who did not indulge herself
and who guarded her virginity.
Slasher movies can deviate from this pattern
a little and still be slasher movies.
Scream, for example, features a pair of killers
instead of one, older men are killed with
about as much frequency as young women, and
there are multiple survivors living in various
degrees of “sin.”
Randy survives Scream despite drinking alcohol.
Sidney survives despite losing her virginity
to Billy.
Slasher movies that purposefully deviate from
established patterns often do so in recognition
of those patterns nonetheless, subverting
the expectations of the audience.
Scream and other slashers that deviate from
established patterns are still recognizably
slasher movies.
Few slasher movies deviate as much as Scream,
but that is only because Scream is meant as
a send-up of the subgenre.
Although inaccurate, it makes sense that the
dialogue in this scene conflates horror movies
with the slasher subgenre.
In the 1980's and early 90's, slashers were
the dominant and most lucrative subgenre of
horror.
So much, in fact, that when the words “horror
movie” were uttered during that period,
popular slasher franchises like A Nightmare
on Elm Street would come to mind more often
than, say, The Fog or Videodrome.
Slasher movies were inexpensive to produce
and yielded big returns at the box office.
Low risk, high reward.
Also, if Randy's famous speech would have
been awkward if he had said “There are certain
rules you must abide by in order to survive
a horror movie, specifically the slasher subgenre,
as horror has a diversity of patterns and
influences, hey, where are you going?”
Nevertheless, the inaccuracy begs for correction
and examination.
Subgenres of horror have their own patterns,
and each entry into the subgenre reveals what
the society that created it values and de-values.
It is not a coincidence that various horror
subgenres made in the western world utilize
“sin” as its values barometer, even if
the patterns of different.
Gothic horror is defined by its romanticism,
forbidden sensuality, and by its setting,
taking place before the 20th century and in
castles, remote hamlets, or decaying, haunted
mansions.
Gothic horror movies often place sin center
stage, sometimes due to being adaptations
of novels prior to what we might consider
the modern world and sometimes due to the
ubiquity of purity and sin being what the
western world values and de-values.
In various adaptations of Frankenstein, Victor
Frankenstein plays God, resurrecting the dead,
unnaturally reanimating what was naturally
taken.
The novel leaves the method vague, but in
the most famous adaptation, Frankenstein harnesses
a storm, which has its own Biblical connections,
to give life to his creation.
In the name of God.
Now I know what it feels like to be God.
For this indiscretion, this affront to God,
both he and others around him are punished.
His hubris in transcending his human restrictions
and meddling in God's domain costs him greatly.
Adaptations of Dracula, particularly the 1992
adaptation, show Dracula's descent into inhumanity
correlated with the rejection of God, specifically
God as depicted within Christianity.
The dichotomy of the pure woman and the promiscuous
woman often comes into play within gothic
horror as much as slashers, but rather than
this dichotomy portrayed as only implicitly
having to do with Christian morality, gothic
horror set during more “modest” eras can
more explicitly reference this.
Lucy, who is portrayed as promiscuous, is
transformed into a monster that needs to be
slain through the power of the cross.
Mina, who is chaste until her marriage to
Jonathan, survives Dracula despite her temptations.
Gothic horror antagonists are often those
that Christian morality posits as being in
direct competition with God or an affront
to God, such as witches and the Devil himself.
So, how does one survive a gothic horror movie,
Randy?
Surviving a gothic horror movie is connected
with abstinence and a devotion to God.
Not always, as there are variations within
the subgenre, but often.
Mina survives.
Lucy does not.
“Sin” as the moral barometer and arbiter
of survival exists in gothic horror movies
as much as slashers, but in the former, belief
in both God and Christian morality are also
components.
Faith cannot stop Michael Meyers, but it can
and will stop Dracula.
This overlaps with the broader supernatural
horror subgenre.
Supernatural horror is often defined by the
antagonist: spirits, demons, devils.
Supernatural entities that haunt the protagonist.
If the supernatural horror movie is made in
the western world, due to Christianity being
the most common religion, the supernatural
elements are often explained through Christianity
or defeated through Christianity.
Often, the haunting visited upon our characters
is related to sin or not showing proper respect
to God.
In Poltergeist, when the father learns that
the cemetery had been moved, he calls it “sacrilegious.”
He later discovers that the headstones were
moved, but the bodies remained under his house.
The antagonist is explained through religion,
through sin.
In The Exorcist, the demon possessing Reagan
is defeated through religion, through the
expulsion of sin.
Once again, horror movies show what the society
that creates them values and de-values.
It values faith, and it de-values a lack of
faith.
The power of Christ compels you.
The power of Christ compels you.
Father Karras' greatest obstacle in The Exorcist
is not Pazuzu but his own lost faith, which
he struggles to overcome throughout the film.
In the end, he believes again and sacrifices
himself to save Reagan.
At a glance, Karras dying despite his faith
conflicts with who survives, but this is a
different kind of survival.
A spiritual survival.
What greater value is there for a Catholic
than martyrdom?
Surviving a supernatural horror film is best
achieved by trusting Christians.
What about more secular horror subgenres?
What are the secular values they espouse?
Completely over-saturated in the past twenty
years, zombie horror generally takes a detour
from “sin” as the cause of the problem
and sin as something to overcome to solve
the problem.
Zombie horror, despite being supernatural
at a glance, takes a more secular route.
Often the cause of the zombie apocalypse is
either completely unexplained or is caused
by humankind making a simple mistake.
Dawn of the Dead has a line about “no room
left in Hell” that touches on a spiritual
explanation for what is happening, but nothing
ever comes of it, and it exists largely in
isolation in the subgenre.
The solution to the zombies is more humanist
than in other horror subgenres.
Because the solution is cooperation.
The zombies are many, but the humans can use
weapons, can strategize, and can think.
It is in their cooperation, their humanity
that allows them to live.
When cooperation fails, that is when the humans
are most vulnerable to the zombies.
When cooperation succeeds, that is when the
humans are strongest against the zombies.
Surviving a zombie movie is unlike some other
horror subgenres because all that is necessary
is humanity.
Sci-fi horror often values human knowledge
over human ignorance.
It also values the aforementioned human cooperation.
In Alien, Ripley states that the xenomorph
must not be brought on board because it will
almost certainly endanger the entire crew.
They ignore her warning, and the crew is lost
– except for Ripley – the only crew member
who recognized the danger.
In The Thing, paranoia and lack of cooperation
eventually leads the shape-changing alien
to run amok.
Surviving sci-fi horror is a matter of intelligence
and cooperation.
In a sense, both Alien and The Thing operate
much like slasher movies.
An unstoppable foe who picks everyone off
one by one until there is only a sole survivor.
We don't find out who will be the sole survivor
in The Thing, but the pattern is still there.
Remember, a slasher movie can deviate from
the pattern a little and still be recognizable
as a slasher movie.
So, is Alien a “slasher” movie if it follows
the structure of a slasher movie?
I would say there is not enough family resemblance
and not only because of its setting and tone.
It doesn't resemble a slasher movie because
of what is values.
The real rule of horror – the way to “survive
a horror movie” – is to find out what
kind of horror movie you're in.
People define these horror subgenres by so
many features, their setting, the monster,
but these subgenres are perhaps most recognizable
in what they value.
What they portray as a “sin.”
