Everybody Chill: Horror in 2016 Is Just Fine

Like it was every other year.

Don't Breathe
Sony

Image via Sony Pictures

Don't Breathe

Apparently we're witnessing a resurgence of horror in 2016—a milestone year, some are even calling it. There's been a lot of talk recently about how scary movies are killing it at the box office, thriving in a year just bountiful with great horror films. Also though, horror is dead. What the hell is actually up with horror this year?

Well, I'm here to come swinging through the brick wall with this blazing hot take: Horror is just fine in 2016. It's not that superb of a year, but the genre's also so far from dead (the latter is a much more ridiculous sentiment). It really is just kind of in an okay place. Sure, Don't Breathe was a shocking success at the box office, raking in $26.4 million on opening weekend, and that makes it seem like horror is "back," but 1) horror never really went away, and 2) Don't Breathe is stupid-fun fare that serendipitously dropped in the midst of a heaping pile of hot summer garbage. Don't Breathe seems to be the peg for most of these "horror is back in 2016" pieces, but we seem to be forgetting that Don't Breathe is being judged on a steep curve. Let's be real: Don't Breathe is an at-best B movie, surrounded by Cs, Ds, and Fs, further aided by the fact that it's uniquely fun to experience inside a movie theater with an audience. 

Amidst a sea of critical flops, horror has become Hollywood's life vest this year. Salon notes that The Conjuring 2, Lights Out, 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Purge: Election Year, and The Shallows all made back five to ten times their budgets—and while that's still far less than what superhero movies made overall, horror movies have been much more worth the investment. What's more, with the exception of The Purge, these films all have fresh ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. The box office success of horror movies can be credited to the singularly sensational experience they provide—there's a collective thrill from going to these movies, rather than waiting for them to hit Netflix. There's also the urgent desire to be a part of the conversation, especially if it's a movie with a twist, as most horror movies are. 

At this point, it seems like horror movies are winning summer 2016 by default. Despite high ratings overall, I wouldn't consider any of the aforementioned movies great by any means (the only great horror film so far this year, in my opinion, is The Witch). But they're good enough, and that apparently means a whole lot in the dead summer of 2016. String these flicks together and horror seems to be on one hell of a roll but one by one, these movies are.... well... just okay. The Conjuring sequel is a frightfully long and inferior version of its prequel; like the previous, Lights Out is a meh James Wan-affiliated affair of jump-cut thrills that botches its subtext; 10 Cloverfield Lane is a surprisingly impressive non-sequel sequel that's not much more than a pretty good time; The Purge 3, The Shallows, and Don't Breathe are all of the so-dumb-they're-good variety. (I will and have argued that The Purge is a perfect franchise, but I mean that in the perfectly dumb-fun way.) I've had fun with all these movies—they've made me scream and gasp and laugh with catharsis—but many good movies do not make great movies.

It's completely unfair, however, to say that horror is dead. Outside the big studios, think of the great ones from even the past few years: It Follows (2015), A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014), The Babadook (2014), You're Next (2013), The Cabin in the Woods (2012), the list goes on. These are horror films that have reinvented and repurposed tired formulas, movies that make it impossible to mourn the death of a genre that is clearly alive. Sure, we see maybe only one to two greats a year, but we're still doing pretty alright in that genre. Plus, there are many more horror flicks to come later this year, from The Bad Batch to Blair Witch.

While the "horror is dead" argument is the worse of both polar ends, the one that argues horror is having a milestone year might be a more dangerous one. If we start to call mediocre work "great," that might inspire even more mediocrity in the future—mediocrity that will expect, and perhaps receive, high praise, Let's hope this kind of hyperbolic discourse doesn't inspire lazy horror films from studios. That's something actually scary to think about. 

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