(Or even hunger, as in the 1988 Troma film Rabid Grannies, in which a pair of grandmothers eats its inheritance-greedy relatives. And the elderly have their own agendas in many of these films: control and fear, typically. And for a long time, the elderly have been part of that “them,” too.Įlderly people have been used by a number of filmmakers as villains or jump scare providers: in Rosemary’s Baby, Mulholland Drive, The Visit, the Insidious franchise. The us-vs.-them format is integral to nearly every horror villain: serial killers, zombies, ghosts, demons, monsters, things that go bump in the night. And what’s coming is something or someone who will take from us, and force us to reckon with what’s left behind - and what’s left of us. Don’t open that door! Don’t go down the stairs! Don’t wander out into the night! Don’t summon ghosts or demons! We collectively respond to horror because of the ebullience of that cathartic release, and because the genre has instructed us to know what’s coming within the confines of its format. There is a thin line between tragedy and comedy, and horror walks upon that boundary by choosing from each and daring us to scream, cry, yelp, laugh, or otherwise let our emotions out.
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