With the arrival of Spooky Season, fear is filling the streets. New slasher movies like Terrifier 3 are taking over theaters but fear isn’t all about blood and gore. Sometimes it’s about what’s hiding the darkest corners of your own mind.
In recent years horror has shifted away from your typical scary movie. It has gone deeper into psychological torment, like in this fall’s The Substance. It touches on the ongoing fear of aging, which is something that vastly affects women all over the world. As humans were meant to feel fear, and while they aren’t as deadly as the guy with the chainsaw, they still pose a threat to our day-to-day life.
Possibly the most scary thing about fear is how it can completely alter the decisions a person makes.Take politics for example. Fear can be used to influence the kinds of voting practices people make, and over the years this has proven to be a huge problem in politics.
Fear has been used to target certain groups of people. Politicians like Barack Obama have often voiced their concerns with fear and how it could lead to democracy crumbling.
However there have been instances in politics where fear has been redirected for the greater good, for example in George W. Bush’s speech after the September 11 attacks. Bush recognized the fear people had would make them attack muslims. In this speech Bush was able to tell the American people not to demonize an entire religious group. This is just one example of when fear is used to manipulate a person it can lead to dangerous outcomes.
Fear however is not strictly applied to real life, there can also be whole genres of movies based around fears.
Just like fear, horror in media has become multi-layered and complex. There are certain rules followed within the horror genre, like not every character survives the end of the movie. The one who does end up surviving is named the final girl. Since the beginning of time there has always been a final girl. That one lucky girl who outsmarts evil and makes it to the sequel.
These girls usually have the same characteristics: they’re usually smart, young, innocent, and resourceful.
But horror is constantly changing. While for many years this was the mold for every final girl, in 2022 the movie X took a different route. Maxine Minx, the final girl in X, was the last girl expected to survive.
Although Maxine was resourceful, she was typically the girl who would get killed within the first 20 minutes in a slasher film. Maxine was confident, obsessed with becoming famous, and would do just about anything to ensure she got her big break.
Maxine quickly became a fan favorite, as she was unapologetically herself and was not ashamed of doing what she needed to do in order to get what she wanted. X broke the norm of the typical final girl, only time will show how future horror films will approach this new final girl mold.
With the ever changing aspects of fear, it’s crucial to recognize the power it can have. While it can be as lighthearted as watching your favorite slasher, fear can quickly become a tool of manipulation in order to achieve a certain narrative.
