The so-called “golden age” of modern horror is, arguably, the 1980s. It was the era where the slasher film reigned supreme. Horror franchises ruled the box office. Robert Shaye is fond of saying that New Line Cinema was the house that Freddy built, as the company was built on the success of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. There was a new Friday the 13th movie almost every year for an entire decade. So many amazing franchises came out of the late 70s and throughout the 80s. Halloween, Hellraiser, Phantasm, and Alien became house hold names. It wasn’t just the mega-franchises either. Even the lower run horror movies and one-offs benefitted from the golden age. Your Evil Deads, your Ghoulies, your Critters, your Sleepaway Camps, your Prom Nights.
Things then started to fizzle out in the 1990s and studios started killing off their horror franchise characters, promising these films were going to be the “last” ones to be made. They were lying. Any property will eventually replenish its blood supply if you stop squeezing the rock for a while. There were still some stand-out horror franchises of that decade. Candyman, Scream. Still, there seemed to be a lack of direction.
Post 9/11, horror came back in a big way but, in my opinion, not in a good way. The most successful franchise of the early 2000s was the Saw franchise. New Line Cinema tried to revived a number of horror franchises: Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th. Dimension Films gave the reigns of Halloween to Rob Zombie. All were subject to the “gritty reboot”, taking these iconic horror movie monsters and making them darker, more brutal, and adding a touch of realism. Lazy people would call this the era of torture porn, which is not an entirely fair assessment of the genre that came out of that era. Yes, there was a more visceral, almost meanspirited.
Still, these reboots mostly fizzled. Over the last decade the horror box office has been mostly dominated with ghost stories like Paranormal Activity, the Annabelle films. Witchcraft, demonic possession. Shit that was a draw in the 1970s are starting to see a resurgence.
And what of the slasher? After their failed gritty reboots many have been stuck in development hell. A new Nightmare on Elm Street movie is unspoken of after a decade. Last I heard anything, the estate of Wes Craven was shopping around for a script. Any plans for a Friday the 13th film has been indefinitely shelved as Victor Miller fights to regain ownership of his original story from Sean Cunningham’s production company. It’s a legal battle I hope ends in Miller’s favor, but I digress.
Then you have Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, two franchises that have have a long history of ignoring previous installments in favor of what I call “requels”. Halloween is notable for ignoring previous sequels in order to bring back Jamie Lee Curtis for the second time, 2017’s Halloween may have been subtitled H40. There is still talk about rebooting Hellraiser. Child’s Play just underwent the remake treatment but Don Mancini is still working on various projects based on the original Chucky franchise.
Phantasm, the one film you hoped was going to have a satisfying ending basically mashed two fan films together to create Phantasm: Ravager, which answered nothing and provided no resolution. One seems even less likely now that Angus Scrim, the iconic tall man, is dead and gone. His final performance in Ravager was nearly as pitiful as Bela Lugosi’s final film role.
There are talks about reboots, prequels, requels, origin stories. What these all amount to are attempts to reinvent the wheel. Which has not worked for the past 30 years, yet studios have been trying to force these reboot and retooled horror films. The running idea seems to be that for a horror franchise to be successful now the slate has to be either wiped clean, or have certain elements excised as though they never existed. You know the saying about doing the same thing over and over leading to insanity? Well that’s where the horror franchises are right now.
It’s not just even the contemporary horror slashers of the 80s. Not that long ago, Universal Pictures decided to not only “reboot” their classic universal monsters but also create a shared universe where they all existed. Which is kind of taking my long winded preamble is getting to….
You see, Universal saw how Disney was slaying it at the box office with their superhero movies and tried to copy that. Unfortunately, they focused on the wrong aspect of why superheroes, especially Marvel’s cinematic universe, have proven so successful.
Here are five things that horror franchises should take away from superhero movies:
Trust Your Audience Knows Your Franchise
When Marvel Studios put out it’s second film, The Incredible Hulk, it was not 5 years after the Hulk was released in 2003. The Hulk also had a long history of being on television in the form of various TV shows. The Hulk has been around since the early 60s. He was part of the cultural zeitgeist. When Marvel made the Incredible Hulk, they virtually skipped over the Hulk’s origin story.
This happened again when Marvel and Sony teamed up to bring Spider-Man into the MCU with their From Home movies. By that point, there had been two different Spider-Man film series and a shit ton of cartoons inbetween. All of those rammed home the Spider-Man origin home that committing another Uncle Ben murder to film was redunant. The audience already knows Spider-Man’s origins inside out and backwards.
To focus on origins is belaboring a point that audiences don’t need reminding. You need not look further that Batman v. Superman for a good example of this. So much time was spent reinforcing Batman’s origins. It was widely panned, especially when the pay-off of rehashing it was so minimal to the overall plot.
Horror is very much the same. There are films that I’ve watched to the point where all the fun has been sucked out of them. A lot of the Evil Dead movies are great fun, but they spend so much time rehashing themselves that repeat viewings become a joyless affair. Each revisit trying to recapture that first viewing but experiencing diminished returns every time.
Nightmare on Elm Street doesn’t need a prequel. We don’t need to rehash the origin of Jason Voorhees. People know these stories. They have become part of the cultural zeitgeist. Even if they aren’t, there’s something that Disney takes advantage of that the horror genre should take some notes…
All Media is Now Available in the Present
Recently, on Twitter, writer Andrew P. Street related to an interview that he did with musician Brian Eno back in 2009. You can read it here, or if you want the Coles notes version is this: We’re living in a world where the entire back catalogue of entertainment is at our finger tips. This was more of a commentary on why it is important to contextualise older media because its needed in a world where all media is available all the time for the first time in history.
Before, streaming services, entertainment followed the march of society and the old stuff eventually faded to memory or was harder to come by. Back in the day when you had to track down a physical copy of an older movie, the idea of doing a reboot or an origin story, or retelling an old horror tale made sense.
However, it’s not like that anymore and again, Disney is leading the way on this. There’s a reason why they have been buying up all sorts of media properties. There’s a reason why they are then making these massive back catalogues available on Disney+ and/or Hulu. It’s myth building short hand. With Star Wars or the latest Marvel epic, they spend very little time rehashing past movies. They rely on the audience knowing the basic story and everything else is just gravy. In the event someone — somehow — has never seen the early Star Wars movies, they can access all the Star Wars movies and TV shows that have ever existed. If Disney were to — God help us all — make another Ewok movie, they can reply on people having access to Return to Endor on Disney+ which saves them a lot of trouble when it comes to telling new stories.
Horror movies can take a lot from this strategy. All those old films? They’re out there. Forever. For someone to stream if they want to know more about the franchise. With unfettered access to the back catalogue you no longer need to go backward and retell the same old shit. You don’t need to do that anymore.
Embrace the Past, Warts and All
What makes superhero movies fun? The fact that while they are always moving forward they pay respect to the past. There are Easter eggs from past iterations. References that long time fans will recognize and enjoy as an extra layer to the movie going experience.
Meanwhile, we’re living in a world where the last few major horror franchises have been trying to ignore what has come before. 2017’s Halloween ignores literally every movie after the original film. Texas Chainsaw 3-D bills itself as a direct sequel to the original, ignoring the past films. This creates a huge disservice because, (a) I’m supposed to believe these monolithic slashers took a 40 year breather before renewing their murder spree during their retirement years?
Why are we watching Michael Myers chasing after Laurie Strode again 4 decades after the fact? That shit is old hat. I mean, it’s great to see Jamie Lee Curtis back in the saddle, but for fucks sake, are you that bankrupt for ideas that you have to go back to that 70s era chestnut?
Why make a contentious effort to ignore past movies in the franchise when it would be simpler just to not mention them directly.
The last enjoyable horror franchise film was 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason came out. While it leaned more on Nightmare on Elm Street lore due to rights issues with Friday the 13th, it was a love letter to both franchises. It was littered with references to both franchises that — if you knew your shit — it added layers to its enjoyment. This was not pulled off by haphazardly negating past movies, but embracing everything. I mean, this movie even had deleted scenes paying homage to the frequently panned Nightmare on Elm Street 2. Most importantly, it was fun!
Make the Experience Fun
Superhero movies have been dominating the box office since 2008 with no apparent end in sight. Marvel has eight fucking movies on the docket between now and 2024. Why do these movies endure? Why do they keep on breaking box office records that were previously set by the last installment of the franchise? Because these movies are fun. They have a sense of on going continuity but they have fun.
Admittedly, horror films have a different tone, but when you look back at the slashers of yore, they were fun. Somewhere along the way, these horror franchises forgot to have fun. They were able to make movies where Jason comes back to life from a bolt of lighting, or Freddy raises a kid, outlandishly stupid sounding ideas on paper, and make them both fun and entertaining.
Move Forward While Staying Familiar
There have been three different actors who have played Spider-Man. Three played the Hulk. If you count Adam West, there are seven people who have played Batman. There’s going to be an entirely different cast in the new Fantastic Four (the 4th different cast if you count the Roger Corman ashcan). Before this decade is out I think it’s fair to assume that they will find new actors to play Captain America and Iron Man. You better believe that when they get around to making some new X-Men movies, they’ll use a new cast.
However, even with the new casts these characters always remain familiar. The Tom Holland Spider-Man is very different than the one played 20 years earlier by Tobey Maguire, but there is enough the same about the two that remain familiar.
This is where horror movies have gone wrong every step of the way. Jackie Earle Haley was an excellent replacement for Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger. Haley wasn’t the problem. The problem was trying to change Freddy’s iconic look for “realism” on top of trying to reinvent the wheel with an unnecessary reboot.
If you change the actor but kept the look and the feel of the franchise I think the 2010 Nightmare on Elm Street could have been a better movie.
Trust your audience knows your character. Create a new story that moves forward but has nods to the past to reward long time fans. Most importantly: Have some fucking fun with it. Get creative. Take risks. Do things that are unconventional.
Except maybe don’t put your monster in space when it doesn’t belong there to begin with. That never turns out good.