Editorials
Youth in Revolt: Horror’s Deadliest Teens from ‘Becky’ to ‘Tragedy Girls’
In horror, teens often tend to be the focal point of the terror. Cinema has long explored puberty, self-identity, hormones, and the turbulent waters of high school through the lens of horror, using masked maniacs, monsters, and familiar genre trappings to heighten the terror of adolescence. No matter the subgenre or character, these films push teens to their breaking point. Once they’ve had enough, they revolt in lethal ways.
The next teen-centric horror film is Becky, the latest by Cooties’ directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion, which is being pegged as a teenage John Wick meets Hanna. Penned by Nick Morris, Ruckus Skye, and Lane Skye, Becky stars Lulu Wilson (Annabelle: Creation, The Haunting of Hill House) as the eponymous teen with a significant mean streak. When a weekend trip to the family lake house with her dad, Jeff (Joel McHale), gets interrupted by the arrival of escaped convicts led by neo-Nazi Dominick (Kevin James), visceral violence ensues with unnerving ease. As in, the MPAA initially rated this movie NC-17 for violence and gore before edits for R-rated release.
Becky arrives in drive-in theaters, on digital and on-demand June 5th, and to prepare for this ruthless teen’s brand of violence, we’re looking back at some of the deadliest teens in horror.
Becky – Becky
Like most teens, Becky (Lulu Wilson) is a rebellious adolescent testing the boundaries of independence amidst hormonal changes. That rebellious streak comes with the traditional teen angst and anger, but it’s exacerbated to a severe degree by a personal loss. In other words, Becky is one vindictive teen eager to unleash her wrath. After a group of escaped convicts arrive at her family’s vacation home and tamper with Becky’s last remaining tether to civility, well, they pay the toll in buckets of blood, viscera, and death. Anger is healthy to some degree in all adolescence, but Becky isn’t your average teen.
“Blue Ribbon” Students – Disturbing Behavior
Proving that it’s best to let teens work through the inner turmoil that comes with transitioning into adulthood, Disturbing Behavior demonstrates how horrifically awry it can get when adults attempt to modify unruly teen behavior. High school psychologist Dr. Edgar Caldicott orchestrates a unique school program that reprograms its “Blue Ribbon” students, reshaping them into model citizens. The only problem is that it makes them dangerously aggressive at best and violently murderous at worst.
J.D. Dean and Veronica Sawyer – Heathers
This genre adjacent dark comedy packs a deadly punch thanks to teen mastermind, J.D. As the new kid in town, he woos the sole outlier of the Heathers’ clique, Veronica, and makes her an unwitting accomplice to murder. Changing the status quo of the high school hierarchy has never been so delightfully devious, or deadly. J.D. revels in his murder spree, which would be downright chilling without the humor.
Mitsuko Souma and Kazuo Kiriyama – Battle Royale
Thanks to a government-mandated act to control Japan’s disorderly youth, class 3-B has been selected to participate in the annual Battle Royale. The students are dropped on a remote island, provided with provisions, and given three days to slaughter each other until a single victor emerges. Those that refuse to cooperate have their explosive collars detonated. Pushed into slaying their classmates for a shot at survival results in a bloodbath. A large percentage of the 3-B class turns into cold-blooded killers, but psychotic teens Mitsuko Souma and Kazuo Kiriyama approach homicide with reckless abandon. This pair racks up quite a body count, separately, making them the deadliest in their class.
Carrie White – Carrie
Poor Carrie White. Having a broken woman turned fanatical religious zealot for a mother resulted in a profoundly sheltered upbringing that couldn’t prepare this teen for the cruelty of high school. Bullied at home as well as school, Carrie’s burgeoning telekinetic powers finally gave her the strength to find her voice. That was before she was pushed too far. Carrie White transitioned from an empathetic teen to the monster in her own story, with the wrathful annihilation of those attending her high school prom.
Billy Loomis and Stu Macher – Scream
Kicking off with the brutal gutting of teens Casey and her boyfriend Steve, Billy and Stu took turns slaying their way through high school while donning Ghostface masks and setting up Sidney Prescott’s dad to take the fall. Why? Because Billy harbors a severe grudge against Sidney’s mom over his mother’s abandonment of him. Stu’s motive is less emotional and far more chilling- peer pressure. The blood flows freely when these two teens are around; they’ve found an unhealthy coping mechanism for their angst through murder.
Jennifer Check – Jennifer’s Body
Needy’s relationship with her best friend Jennifer is at a turning point. Finding her independence outside of Jennifer’s shadow is a tricky thing for any teen girl. It’s further complicated once Jennifer is used as a pawn in a botched sacrifice for fame by an aspiring band. It renders Jennifer a boy-eating demon, viciously devouring the teen boys in their class. Needy puts it best, “Hell is a teenage girl.” In Jennifer’s case, it’s literal.
Ami Hyuga – The Machine Girl
After a group of bullies murders her brother and his friend, teen Ami snaps. Her first attempt at revenge leaves her without an arm, but luckily some kind mechanics fit her with a multi-barreled machinegun prosthetic. Attempt number two at revenge becomes a full-blown massacre. From the warped mind of writer/director Noboru Iguchi (Dead Sushi, RoboGeisha), this is a splatter flick through and through. Meaning the gore and violence is in excess. This time we’re rooting for the deadly teen.
Lola Stone – The Loved Ones
Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets. What she wants, in Sean Byrnes’ brutal entry in horror, is a date to the prom, and she doesn’t take rejection well. Guilt-ridden over the death of his father, Brent is detached from the world and contemplates suicide. That changes when a polite rejection of Lola’s prom invite causes her father to kidnap him and force Brent to love her. As in, Lola injects bleach into Brent’s voice box, nails his feet to the floor with knives, and subjects him to excruciating torture. The thing is, this is hardly Lola’s first brush with rejection; she’s amassed a shocking number of captive boyfriend hopefuls.
McKayla Cooper and Sadie Cunningham – Tragedy Girls
McKayla and Sadie have been best friends from childhood into adolescence, bonding deeply over their obsession with death. Or, most specifically, with homicide. These teens aspire to be infamous serial killers in the social media age, slaying for likes, follows, and retweets. They even kidnap an actual serial killer hoping he’ll teach them the ropes. It turns out McKayla and Sadie do just fine on their own, in the killing department. These bubbly cheerleaders slaughter with surprising ease.
Becky fully joins the ranks of horror’s deadliest teens in drive-in theaters and on digital and VOD June 5, 2020.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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