The Modern Horror Film and Grief (Essay for Lang)
The Modern Horror Film and Grief The film Le Manoir du Diable was created by Georges Melies in 1896. It told the story of a man who is trapped in a haunted mansion, with a litany of specters antagonizing him. Though just under five minutes long, it began one of the most prolific movie genres to date. Horror has gone through numerous periods of public disapproval and has never risen to the full mainstream. Famously, the only horror movie to win an Oscar in the ninety-seven years the Oscars have been held, The Silence of the Lambs (dir. Jonathan Demme) won in multiple categories. In the public eye horror has been seen as noxious and unpleasant at its worst, and low budget throwaways at its best. Despite all of this horror has a unique talent that has been documented extensively. The ability to quell grief, comfort in hard times, and accurately depict nihilism are all talents that horror films have. Midsommer (dir. Ari Aster) starts out with an intense and haunting scene. Dani’s (Florence Pugh) sister has committed suicide, taking her parents out with her. Dani is rocked with grief, wailing and writhing. She is surrounded by less than caring people and finds herself forcing the sorrow down so she can properly fit in with her less-than-ideal boyfriend’s (Jack Reynor) group of friends. The film takes us to Sweden on a trip to experience the fabled Midsommer festival, and of course, only Dani makes it out alive. This ending feels different to other slasher type movies. Dani isn’t filled with unspeakable sorrow at the end of the film. She isn’t alone in the world, she is surrounded by a new type of family, and she is full of quiet glee. The movie ends in jubilation, her boyfriend burning alive in a bright yellow house with their friends' corpses laid out in an almost elegant ritual, and she is smiling, looking directly into the camera. She is covered in flowers, so much so that when she moves, she does so slowly and laboriously, but she moves, and she smiles. This ending fills the viewer with something close to hope. Midsommer is disturbing, nauseating, and gory. Despite all of this, it is touted as a “meditation on grief, teaching us that healing requires support and help from empathetic friends and family around us.” (Wagner-Mcgough).
Midsommer is not alone in this. When Evil Lurks (dir. Demian Rugna) is a film that pulls no punches. It is guttural, so much so that it urges you to look away, to not make eye contact with the horrors playing on screen. It begins with two farmers gazing at a goat, one who gazes right back. Something is terribly wrong with this animal, and the audience doesn't need to sit with this idea for long as the male farmer shoots the goat and storms off, leaving the female farmer alone, with an ax. This creates the iconic poster.
The main story follows two brothers who chase after the evil that has been unleashed into the world, which acts as a sort of plague, taking mothers and children as it corrupts. The brothers make every effort to stall this evil, but in the end, it is no use. The evil prevails and goes farther out into the world, which is shown in an ominous rising bird's eye shot. This ending is full of grief, grief of what could have been. This ending is different than Midsommer’s, where Midsommer was optimistic (if you searched hard enough), this ending is desperate and sad. This inherent evil prevailed, but there is a sort of twist. The world begins anew, any trace of the old world, the world that we as the viewer know is gone, but things do not stop. Evil did not destroy the world; it just shaped it in a new way.
Of course, the new world is cruel and disgusting, truly vile in its making, but that doesn't stop the fact that it is, that it continues. In an article by Gus Moreno titled How Horror Mirrors the Irrevocability of Grief he states, “It was only when I put down the grief books and picked up the horror again that I found what I was looking for- not an escape from my grief, but a way to dive deeper into it.” (Moreno). This is what When Evil Lurks did for many people. It created a world that was bleak, so unescapably sad, that there became comfort in despair, and in the fact that nothing stopped, things would continue. This idea of the world continuing is shown beautifully in 28 Days Later (dir. Danny Boyle). Similar in concept to When Evil Lurks, it tells the story of an outbreak of a sickness that creates rage in the victim. We enter the story, as the title suggests, 28 days after the initial outbreak. Our main character, Jim (Cillian Murphy), happened to be in a coma during the outbreak and is just now waking up. He wanders through empty London, calling out helplessly. Even when he does find survivors he is in shock from the sudden shift in his worldview. When he is confronted with the fact that every system of protection has shut down, he says “Of course there’s a government! There’s always a government. They’re in, a bunker or plane or something. This movie deals with a litany of issues, all of them going back to grieving the world left behind. One of the most interesting ideas that 28 Days Later deals with is the futile preservation of previous establishments. The group of survivors runs across a military base that is meekly run by a small number of soldiers. They are determined to keep rank important and in the forefront, creating strange power struggles. The movie takes a turn here, putting the zombies as a lesser villain than these defunct soldiers. The leader of the soldiers says a chilling line; “Eight days ago I found Jones with his gun in his mouth. He said he was going to kill himself because there was no future. What could I say to him? We fight off the infected or until they starve to death, and then what? What do nine men do, except wait to die themselves? I moved us from the blockade. I set the radio broadcasting, and I promised women... because women mean a future. We are suddenly confronted with the reality that the soldiers, relics from the world destroyed, are just as scary as the zombies who are filled with rage and bloodlust. The movie uses powerful social commentary that many have attributed to the war on terror, and post 9/11 culture, both in the United States and out. In a journal written by Anna Froula she makes countless comparisons to empire and oppressive states, and the ways people react to living under an empire. She states, “While concerned with various forms of violence in the world that bloodily embody social justice, the films zombie allegory operates as a proleptic mirror of the ways in which the Bush Administration convinced of and spoke about terror, terrorists, and terrorism throughout its tenure.” (Froula 195). This is a very good example of how horror can address larger social issues and attitudes. Even in a short silent film such as Le Manoir du Diable grief permeates and makes itself known. Horror cannot be without some form of grief, and it ends up helping and comforting forlorn people in the long run. As Gus Moreno writes “[horror] was the only genre that didn’t try to polish my grief into a steppingstone to get me back to normalcy. It validated what I was feeling and wove it into a larger tapestry...” (Moreno). Horror will always continue to evolve, but one thing stays the same. It reflects grief and validates.
Works Cited Moreno, Gus . “How Horror Mirrors the Irrevocability of Grief.” Literary Hub, 29 Oct. 2021, lithub.com/how-horror-mirrors-the-irrevocability-of-grief/. Accessed 14 May 2025. New York Film Academy. “The First Horror Movie & the History of the Horror Genre.” New York Film Academy, NYFA, 21 July 2022, www.nyfa.edu/student-resources/how-horror-movies-have-changed-since-their-beginning/. Wagner-McGough, Sean. “Midsommar’s Masterful Meditation on Grief.” Thelongshot.substack.com, thelongshot.substack.com/p/midsommars-masterful-meditation-on.