Editorials
[Editorial] Horror Was Highlighted By Several Great Ghost Stories in 2018
*Keep up with our ongoing end of the year coverage here*
While last year marked a massive renaissance of Stephen King adaptations, 2018 is the year in which the supernatural quietly dominated genre offerings. If you’re looking at 2018 in terms of major theatrical releases then it’s been a fairly light year in horror, dedicated almost solely to remakes and sequels. But if you’re looking beyond major releases then you’ll find a wealth of independent horror, streaming service originals, and a wave of foreign releases that continued horror’s hot streak from 2017. When looking at 2018’s horror as a whole, a major recurring trend emerged, revolving around one of horror’s most tried and true villains: the ghost.
The first quarter of the year brought the theatrical releases of Insidious: The Last Key and Winchester, both profitable though unexciting entries in supernatural horror. Despite compelling leads in Lin Shaye and Helen Mirren, both relied on familiar haunted house tropes that ultimately deem them as fairly unforgettable. Luckily, horror’s continued evolution meant ghosts were about to get much more interesting.
Writer/directors Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson adapted their well-regarded British stage play Ghost Stories for the big screen. Released on digital and limited theaters in April, Ghost Stories follows skeptical Professor Phillip Goodman (Nyman), a television presenter devoted to debunking the supernatural. When tasked with solving three previously unsolvable cases, Goodman is sent on a terrifying journey that shatters everything he thought he knew about the supernatural. Invoking the Amicus anthologies of the ‘60s, Nyman and Dyson put a new spin on the anthology format. More importantly, the story segments are actually scary. Though the film’s climactic payoff has proven divisive, the ghosts in Ghost Stories succeed in eliciting chills.
It wasn’t the only foreign film to give a refreshing take on ghosts and haunted house fare either. Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum and The Devil’s Doorway brought international flair to found footage haunters. The former proved to be a massive success in native South Korea and followed the exploits of a horror web series crew seeking major clicks during their live broadcast show set at the very haunted Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital (where it was also filmed). Naturally, they’re in way over their heads. Interestingly, Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital is one of the most purportedly haunted places in the world. As for The Devil’s Doorway, co-writer/director Aislinn Clarke uses found footage horror to explore the real-life horrors of ‘Fallen Women’ in Ireland, set in the 1960s. Granted, if you despise found footage, these won’t win you over. However, both bring unique perspectives and histories to the mix.
Indonesia ushered in not one, but two terrifying features about families haunted by the sins of generation’s past. Joko Anwar’s Satan’s Slaves, a remake of a 1980 Indonesian horror film of the same name, unleashed nonstop thrills and chills from beginning to end. Family matriarch Mawarni Suwono was once a successful singer but the money has since dried up and she begins the film at her deathbed. When she dies, strange supernatural occurrences start to plague the family, and details emerge about Mawarni’s past that suggest that she might have sold her soul for fame. Timo Tjahjanto’s May the Devil Take You, on Netflix, may have a similar plot set up, but it’s executed in a very different way. Think gruesome gore and biting humor, with scares a plenty, in a very Sam Raimi manner.
Hailing from Argentina came Demián Rugna’s aptly titled Terrified, a Shudder exclusive. Set in a seemingly idyllic neighborhood in Buenos Aires, a trio of paranormal specialists and a cop on the verge of retirement investigate a rash of bizarre activity that may or may not be connected. Terrified is light on plot, and even lighter on explanation, but it more than makes up for it with effective scares and unnerving atmosphere. It’s the feature length equivalent of a haunted house attraction, and it works. So much so, that reports have recently surfaced that Terrified is already receiving an American remake. This doesn’t even touch on sequel rumors.
The magnum opus of 2018’s ghost stories, though, belongs to Mike Flanagan for his emotionally devastating, loose reimagining of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. The ten-episode series on Netflix recaptured the themes of Jackson’s source novel while becoming something wholly new as the narrative toggled between the past and present nightmares of the Crain family. Flanagan crafted some of the year’s best scares, as well as memorable ghosts, but he also reinterpreted the very definition of a ghost. Memories can be just as haunting and traumatic, and nothing cuts deeper than grief.
That same concept was explored in the lesser seen adaptation of the gothic ghost novel by Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger. And family bonds were tested in writer/director Andy Mitton’s quiet chiller The Witch in the Window, and especially for the Graham family in Ari Aster’s Hereditary. The cause of their strife was much more occultist and complex than just ghosts, but they were haunted both literally and emotionally all the same. Writer/director Austin Vesely opted for a comedic approach to his ghosts in A24’s Slice. Valak may be pure demonic evil, but the latest entry in the Conjuring universe featured no shortage of ghosts with The Nun.
Ghosts are a powerful tool for portraying lingering sins and trauma of the past, a common motif that resonated in 2018’s collection of haunted families. For many in this year’s ghost-centric horror, the children were the ones to suffer the most for their parents’ pacts with the devil. For others, ghosts were used as a reflection for the ugly truths the characters were unwilling to face on their own. And for the rest, ghosts were means of eliciting the year’s most effective scares.
2018, one could argue, was the year of the ghost.
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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