Why These Films Now?

If you have been to a children's movie anytime in the last few months, it is clear that aliens abound. "Aliens in the Attic" was just released. James Cameron's "Avatar" will be out in December. "Race to Witch Mountain" was released in March. "Shorts"-a film about a magic rock from the sky no one can control-is coming out this fall. And DreamWorks' latest children's film was "Mosters v. Aliens" in 2008. There may be a reason for that. In uneasy economic and social times, film theory 101 dictates audiences will respond to movies about outside forces they do not understand and cannot control. That is one of the main theories about the popularity of Alfred Hitchcock...cause, you know, '60s and '70s America wasn't the most stable of times.

But Hitchcock was also about scare and gore. That too, seems to resonate with our current sociopolitical realities. According to the April 2009 "Atlantic" article entitled "Don't Fear the Reaper: Learning to Love the Slasher-Film Renaissance" by James Parker, there is a specific reason we are seeing a resurgence of slasher flicks. Parker cites filmmakers that believe "horror tends to boom in wartimes, and...our lately renewed interest in torn flesh has the same relation to Iraq that 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre' and 'The Last House on the Left' [both of which have been remade many times...and recently] had to Vietnam". Along with the war uneasiness, there is a streak of end of the world freak-out that comes with a post-9/11 America. Blood and gore (that would be the noun, not former popular vote President-elect) speaks to that as well. Parker, like many film theorists, believes one of the main threads of slasher films is "civilization collapse [and] the rending of the established order"...even all the way back to Beowulf.

True story on the Beowulf. Parker even breaks it down for you. I know you are dying to read it.