Horror, Lost And Found

The genre must dilute its essence to make itself Oscar-worthy

Written by Kabir Firaque | Published: March 12, 2018 1:05 am

Are The Shape of Water and Get Out really horror? Yes, they are, the latter more so, yet neither is conventional horror

The Shape of Water is only the second horror film (after The Silence of the Lambs in 1992) to win Best Picture.

In horror’s night of triumph at the Oscars, which acknowledged the genre with five awards, including three of the top five, there was something for the genre itself to acknowledge. In seeking the recognition it has long been denied, horror has lost a part of itself. Not on this night, but in the 90 years leading to it.

Are The Shape of Water and Get Out really horror? Yes, they are, the latter more so, yet neither is conventional horror. Both the question and the answer underline the reinvention that horror has needed in order to make itself presentable to the Oscars’ jury. If presented in its conventional form, horror runs the risk of falling victim to a long tradition of snubs: The Shape of Water is only the second horror film (after The Silence of the Lambs in 1992) to win Best Picture, and one of only seven horror entries, including Get Out, among 546 Best Picture nominees in 90 years. And only one of these seven — The Exorcist, nominated in 1974 — has been unadulterated horror.

It is a well-known fact that Oscar juries have often looked at horror as a low-brow genre unworthy of the top honour. This might explain why director Guillermo del Toro felt the need to tweet last year that The Shape of Water is not a horror movie but a fairy tale. The distributors of The Silence of the Lambs, too, had marketed it as a thriller rather than as horror.

The Shape of Water may lack the scares that are the hallmark of horror, but it is built around a beast inspired by the monster of Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). It convinced the jury not because of its moorings in horror but in spite of them. Del Toro, a master of crossing genres, subtly turned his film into a commentary on American social hierarchy, including reinventing the beast as a romantic hero.

Get Out, which is no less subtle, has a sounder claim to being horror. Compare its plot to those of the classic Gothic novels and films in which a young, naïve woman marries a mysterious man, moves into his ancestral home where she is greeted by sinister domestic staff, and goes on to find clues that suggest a horrible family secret. In Get Out, the genders of the two protagonists are reversed. I owe this convincing explanation to Kevin Heffernan, an American scholar and historian of films and horror.

It is not the reversal of conventional horror roles, however, that brought an Oscar to the screenplay of writer-director Jordan Peele, who is said to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of conventional horror. What clinched the verdict was the social satire subtly packaged into the story: It is a black man who moves in with his girlfriend’s mysterious family, and it is race that drives an apparent disparity of power between him and the white family. Without what you read between the lines, neither Get Out nor The Shape of Water stood a chance. This is the price horror has paid in making itself Oscar-worthy.

This is not to suggest that such films should not be made. If such trappings or camouflage help bring recognition to horror, we welcome it. But spare a thought for horror in its chastest form. Will a haunted house ever win an Oscar? Ignore Rebecca, Best Picture in 1941, because it is more hybrid than horror. Will Dracula ever win awards worthier than those for costuming or sound? Will the Oscars ever honour werewolves of the kind that terrorised London and Tarker’s Mills, conventional monsters of the kind that Frankenstein built, zombies of the kind that George A. Romero made immortal?

Speaking of the late Romero, he was honoured in the montage “In Memoriam”, as was The Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme. What horror fans are livid about, however, is the omission of Tobe Hooper, who gave us The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Poltergeist (1982). To get a sense of how much it offends a horror fan when a tribute includes Romero and Demme but omits Hooper, think how much it might offend a Bollywood fan when the same tribute includes Srideviand Shashi Kapoor but leaves out Vinod Khanna.

kabir.firaque@expressindia.com

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