horror movies, part one

One constant theme of many horror movies is skepticism - about many things. Let's start with some instances:

The Hitcher
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091209/
directed by Robert Harmon
1986

The Hitcher is the story of a young man driving a car across the country. He picks up a hitchhiker, who turns out to be a mass murderer. John Ryder (the hitcher) holds a knife to Jim Halsey's (the kid's) throat, and tells him to say "I want to die." Jim eventually throws John out of the car, exclaiming "I don't want to die!" Later, John kills several police officers, and then proceeds to frame Jim for the crimes. Eventually, after much inducement, Jim kills John in a climactic showdown.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0490076/
directed by Jonathan Levine
2006

In this movie, a group of teenagers (including the titular Mandy Lane, who is so gorgeous and pure that everybody, male and female, lusts after her intensely) travels to a secluded ranch for a Bacchanalian weekend. They proceed to get murdered, one by one, until it is revealed that the high school outcast Emmet (and Mandy's apparently former friend) is killing them. In the movie's final moments, it is revealed that this has all been planned by Emmet and Mandy - and then Mandy kills Emmet.

Like I said, horror movies are about skepticism - about many things. I could go on nearly endlessly with examples, but these two movies provide a lot of material to work with. So:

The first trope is the innocuous killer - the fact that the killer's been one of the apparent victims all along. The idea here is that we really don't know very much about other people. Anyone could turn out to be holding a terrible grudge for which they desire to exact horrific revenge. They could be very motivated liars. (Screamers and The Thing are probably the two movies that take up this trope most centrally).

One series of tropes involves the cops getting killed, or a father getting killed, or the invasion of one's home or bedroom. The basic theme here is that traditional sources of authority fail in dire circumstances. Normally, once the cops arrive, we all know that everything's fine; affairs are out of our hands and in more competent ones. In the world of horror, there is no such authority - though we may have thought that such sources existed, we were wrong. (Another very clear example of this trope is Jeepers Creepers).

Yet another trope I'll call the "screaming blonde" trope, because that is the most well-known example. Sure, this person looks like they're pretty together, but when the shit goes down all they can think to do is run around (often in an amusingly awkward fashion) and scream (and get killed). They panic or get terrified or irrational and in general do things which guarantee their demise. Consider Nash from The Hitcher - although she seems to have it together, she can't keep it together; she cracks, calls her father, and gives away her and Jim's location to John, resulting in her gruesome death.

The last trope is the thought that we don't really know ourselves either, until we're really pushed. Jim, after all, starts The Hitcher cast in the screaming blonde mold - he shakes and quivers and is terrified of John. But in the critical moment, he pulls it together and figures out how to escape (this happens repeatedly). The point here is that it is usually difficult to distinguish the screaming blonde from the final girl* at first glance. Only when the shit goes down do we find out about ourselves whether we have what it takes to survive, or not.

The basic idea of all of these, and of skepticism in horror films, is that we know much less about the world, about other people, and about ourselves than we might think. We are subject to illusions - perhaps even fantasies - about the way things work. What the point of all this is I will leave for another post.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_girl
The "final girl" is a concept developed by Carol Clover in her Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (1992, Princeton: Princeton University Press). The basic idea is that the virtuous, chaste girl survives, while her debauched compatriots get murdered. These days, however, it is usually less easy to determine who the final girl is in advance - the first Hostel movie in particular is a good example of this, in which the chaste character is the first to be killed, and the debauched one survives.