Several of my friends and family members have told me that they don’t do horror films: they don’t watch them, point blank. Quite simply, they don’t want to be scared. Everyday life is stressful enough without having to witness anaphylactic children being decapitated by telegraph poles - a sentiment I fully understand. But the response I’m always primed to give, although I’m hardly an expert myself, is that plenty of horror films are worth watching for something other than the horror itself - whether it’s a brilliant lead performance, memorable cinematography, or tight, engaging storytelling. The trouble is that the vast majority of the films I have in mind were made at least thirty years ago. So what is it about the modern horror pantheon that has Gen Zs wincing and mumbling ‘No thanks’?

“Everyday life is stressful enough without having to witness anaphylactic children being decapitated by telegraph poles”

2021’s No One Gets Out Alive is a prime example of the explanatory theory I’ve formulated: the modern horror filmography lacks a sense of humour. Ostensibly, it seems bizarre to argue that a genre known for eliciting screams and terrified wriggles should have an element of mirth; I would argue that it’s not only possible but vital to introduce one, because the consequences of not doing so are dire.

Santiago Menghini’s tale of a young immigrant woman, who becomes trapped in an archetypally sinister boarding house run by a pair of broad-necked brothers who plan to sacrifice her and her fellow sobbing, shrieking prisoners to a laughably unscary monster in their basement, takes itself so seriously that you can practically hear the director’s erratic breathing. From the aggressively blue Tumblr-like vignette (the cinematographer clearly drank a few Red Bulls beforehand) to the generic omnipresence of ‘creepy’ in the sound design and the staggeringly expository dialogue (“Our dad was a real nutjob – killed our mom!“), there is not a single moment of alleviation, and this makes the viewing experience a total slog. Tragedy and comedy are, after all, two sides of the same coin – it doesn’t hurt one to introduce the other. That’s why Hamlet wonders aloud whether the obviously human Polonius is a rat before stabbing him through the curtain.

Rob Reiner’s 1991 film Misery has a terrifying premise – a paralysed writer completely at the mercy of his psychopathic ‘biggest fan’ – and a genuinely frightening lead performance from the talented Kathy Bates, but that doesn’t stop it being funny when Annie, the serial murderer who believes that swearing is morally incorrect, exclaims ‘OH POO! ’ when something goes amiss. Humour is part of real life, and Reiner understands that the more horror resembles real life, the scarier it is. This is also what Glenn Close understands when chillingly bringing to life Alex Forrest, the bunny-boiling other woman who won’t be ignored in Fatal Attraction. Both Annie and Alex are deplorable, yet both elicit some level of pity; they’re mentally unwell, damaged, desperate for love, and totally alone.

“The modern horror filmography lacks a sense of humour”

The wifebeater-esque goons of No One Gets Out Alive have nowhere near this level of complexity. They’re just unhappy predators who derive sadistic pleasure from feeding undocumented immigrant girls to a monster that looks like a cross between female genitalia and an avocado. It’s alluded to that these men are damaged because of their homicidal father, but the screenplay hardly scratches the surface of this assertion, and this is another casualty of the overly sombre directorial approach to modern horror: underdeveloped character writing.

An even more egregious example of this approach to directing is 2020’s The Grudge, which also has the misfortune of being a remake. It shares many similarities with No One Gets Out Alive (pretentious music video-like cinematography, obviously CGI-generated gore, Psycho rip-off bathroom scenes), but the absence of any true audience attachment to the characters is ten times worse, because they simply don’t exist substantively enough. They’re all ciphers. Who is this wide-eyed policewoman, and why doesn’t she just send her supposedly beloved son to his grandparents? Has this old woman been standing in a corner of her kitchen cutting off her own fingers with a carving knife for…weeks? Months? Like No One Gets Out Alive, this film is afraid to offset the depressing atmosphere of wasting and decay, and the only humour arises from how ridiculously derivative some of its scenes are. A mute, frightening child possessed by supernatural forces pushes a woman over a railing…where have I seen that in a horror film before? (Answer: The Omen. Duh.)

The answer to my earlier question may be simply that we need less blood and more character, less vignette and more tonal variety. Give us this, and the genre will probably be significantly less maligned by my fellow Gen Zs – because young people will simply have a better time watching.

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