Editorials
The Films That Unknowingly Predicted the Horrors of 2020
Genre films have been holding metaphorical mirrors up to our faces for as long as they’ve existed, uncomfortably (but necessarily) forcing us to examine our surroundings as well as ourselves through ways we can accessibly grasp. Thoughtful and reactionary, we’re astutely aware how much horror, especially, pointedly imitates life and historical context— everything from Nosferatu to Invasion of the Body Snatchers to Dawn of the Dead is evidentiary to that— but it’s even more chilling when genre precedes reality, unknowingly predicting the real-life horrors that would follow in its wake.
And 2020 has felt like one, long, nightmarish film reel of real-life horrors that few could’ve seen coming— with the exception of some filmmakers whose recent releases feel unbelievably on-the-nose, as if they had possessed a cinematic crystal ball before writing and directing their latest features. The Beach House, She Dies Tomorrow, and Rent-A-Pal were our horror forecasters for the year 2020— alarmingly so— and even their creators are surprised by this.
Jeffrey A. Brown’s timely The Beach House could’ve fallen into the hole of countless other contagion movies that feel too far-fetched and impersonal to affect audiences that never endured anything of the sort. However, what Brown calls his “confrontational” film, which Shudder released this summer, hits a little deeper considering the current state of affairs.
When a young couple arrives at a relative’s remote beach house, the unnamed town feels…off. Deserted. Eerily quiet. Apocalyptic, even. These sequences of desertion are nothing new; 28 Days Later and A Quiet Place depict doomsday all the same, yet, viewing the opening sequence of Beach House within this specific timeframe immediately recalls the initial months of our own early 2020 quasi-apocalypse, as everything was closed and everyone was subjugated to the indoors, with American towns completely devoid of activity. By placing the film inside a beach town— transforming a typically idyllic setting where many of us would be spending our summers under normal circumstances into a backdrop for fear— it has begged us to heed its warning to stay home. For the first time in our lifespans, watching the latest end-of-times on film felt tangible, succeeding at what these kinds of movies have imbued all along, as Brown describes: “Any possibility at joy and fulfillment becomes a fleeting pipe dream when your home and life is disrupted by yet another cataclysm. Then it’s down to base survival.”
He explains, “Throughout writing The Beach House, I was dealing with my own fears, broken down and recombined into a horror narrative, to somehow keep these alligators at bay. Before Covid, I would watch science documentaries and skip the pandemic/contagion episodes because they freaked me out. Dealing with these anxieties through a creative outlet was an honest exploration of my nightmares in seductively comfortable settings, which is how I see my life. That the alligators are now at the door is horrible.”
The characters in the film become exposed to a very wet, very slimy contagion that is transmitted through the ocean water (and air) leaving lesions, gross infections, and seemingly slow, painful deaths to those affected. As overheard on a car radio, the disease is “entirely unknown” and a mystery to all, tragically leaving a few characters with the choice to either suffer through it or take their own lives. What’s scarier, though, is the few answers we’re given: the film’s disease is rather mysterious and unexplained, much like Covid still remains a mystery to us. While we, at least, become more cognizant and continue to discover more about Covid’s uncertainties, the characters of The Beach House never stand a chance. The filmic, unnamed infection ravaging through the town is reminiscent of a nature-fights-back contagion— almost a punishment to humans for years of neglecting their surroundings. (Even though Brown suggests that this contagion is less vindictive and more so a product of cosmic horror realms.) Vengeful or not, this thing is just unnecessarily cruel— like our own very real situation.
“I’d hope a viewer of The Beach House ultimately feels less alone by the movie, to know I am having similar anxieties, and we are having a conversation about these concerns through the characters and the imagery,” Brown says. “Even in trying to figure out how all the pieces add up in the end— that’s the conversation I wanted to have with the audience.”
Reversely, Amy Seimetz’s contained psychodrama She Dies Tomorrow doesn’t depict a thrilling fight for survival, like other contenders in the pandemic subgenre would. Instead, it looks at how those infected choose to live their remaining days after already accepting their deaths as imminent.
When a woman named Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) contracts a viral sickness, convincing her she will die the next day, she confides in friends before inadvertently passing the belief on to them, until their collective worriment spreads like a disease. The film follows how each person handles their own self-destructing grief for, what they presume, is the end of their lives: some try to protect their children; others get drunk and demand their corpses be turned into leather jackets. Less cataclysmic on a grander scale and more introspective, She Dies Tomorrow is the embodiment of what a personal apocalypse feels like (and what 2020 has felt like for each of us, individually) in 84 minutes: absurd, existential, unusually morbid, and internally anxious for not knowing what the next day, week, or month is going to bring— the only harsh exception being death.
As Seimetz explains, her film was intended to be a metaphor for grappling with anxiety: “It’s a weird conundrum, because when you have anxiety, you should share that with people. (But) I always feel like I’m burdening them with it. So there’s the irrational fear that I’m spreading my personal shit with everyone.”
She continues, “In addition to that, there is something with words— you say it out loud, and then fear (spreads.) If you think of it like a virus— I think of fear as a barbed presence— even if you can laugh it off in the moment, somewhere in you, it sticks in.”
Even for those of us who may have never been diagnosed with anxiety before can probably connect to it this particular year, as adjusting to every hiccup within our plans, schedules, and routines has been challenging, to say the least. She Dies Tomorrow does, however, offer a glimmer of hope and comfort, positing for us to stop pressuring ourselves to have it altogether. During the film’s final moments, a character whispers to herself, “It’s okay; I’m not okay”— reminding us that, “It’s okay to not be okay,” as Seimetz says. “That always brings me a bit of solace. It’s correct to feel those feelings of anxiety.”
A consequence of quarantine, solitude has become our uninvited friend during 2020. The cancellation of social gatherings and physical proximity has led us to utilize tech-friendly means of communicating to fill the void, even when zoom calls and social media interactions could never be as fulfilling. While Jon Stevenson’s Rent-A-Pal may take place 30 years in the past, its morality tale is more relevant to the present: A lonely bachelor named David (Brian Landis Folkins) stumbles across a “Rent-A-Friend” VHS tape while searching for companionship and becomes addicted to his one-sided, pre-taped “friend” Andy, (Wil Wheaton) pushing away the few IRL relationships he has. Like most of us in this very moment, David feels trapped in the confines of his home, caring for his elderly mother full-time with little freedom and nothing to look forward to. But turning to technology to aid his loneliness backfires, as his friend inside the VCR proves to be nothing more than a toxic influence on him, leading to his downward spiral.
David’s downfall becomes a warning for us too. Subsisting our recent loneliness with an over-reliance on time spent online has been detrimental to many of us— warping our realities and getting consumed with daily Internet trivialities, i.e. doom scrolling, Twitter drama, and/or validation-seeking from all the wrong sources. David clings on to the “conversations” he shares with Andy, which, at first, seem fixed and impersonal, before escalating into violent and offensive. Similar to our feeding off of bad news and negativity online, David has allowed technology to give him all the wrong, unhealthy ideas about what constitutes legitimate connection. Stevenson considers Wheaton’s Andy to be an allegory for all of these things: “Andy is a predator who preys on the vulnerable; vulnerable people seek validation through whatever sources they can find. For most people, the closest and most immediate source of validation is their device, so it’s no surprise that predators flock to the Internet.”
Stevenson was all too familiar with isolation, well before the pandemic. Initially inspired by the real 1987 VHS service “Rent-A-Friend” during a dark time in his own life, Stevenson felt compelled to write a horror film based on how that tape made him feel. But he didn’t expect it to be released during such a time when it would be so connective to audiences: “When I wrote the film, I was completely isolated myself, albeit for very different reasons. So now that everyone is isolated, both physically and emotionally, a movie like this might resonate with people. There’s so much relief in knowing you’re not alone in whatever struggle you’re going through.”
2020 may carry a heavy load, and as we process the traumas and curveballs it has thrown at us, there’s an odd comfort in watching movies that parallel our experiences, making sense of similar issues. And that’s what they’re there for: “Films are amazing in that they can help people articulate their own feelings, in the same way that nightmares help us work out our anxieties and fears,” Stevenson says. “So, it seems weird that a horror film might bring people comfort, but it can.”
Horror was permanently changed in 1984 when Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street unleashed Freddy Krueger on the world. This brutal boogeyman pushed horror to exciting new places, but so much of the character’s impact is the result of Robert Englund’s quintessential performance.
Englund has a long and storied career as a performer that’s covered far more than horror alone. However, there’s such a sublime, sinister synergy between Englund and this heightened genre that’s made him one of horror’s most revered names.
Englund is set to scare audiences again as a malevolent reimagining of Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio Unstrung, but he’s also been responsible for many more macabre monsters.
The Cricket (Pinocchio Unstrung)
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey has somehow spun a morbid experiment in public domain exploitation into its own cinematic universe, the Twisted Childhood Universe. There’s been increasing promise in the TCU’s various films, which has also led to a growing list of capable horror guest stars, such as Roger L. Jackson, Richard Brake, and now Robert Englund. Englund is by far the most impressive name to attach himself to one of these movies, and Pinocchio Unstrung certainly doesn’t squander the opportunity to have him on board as its terrifying take on Jiminy Cricket. Englund’s performance as “The Cricket” in Pinocchio Unstrung becomes a sinister subversion of the classic character who is meant to function as Pinocchio’s conscience and moral compass.
Englund’s Cricket is instead the ultimate instigator who perpetually pushes Pinocchio into greater violence that condemns humanity and its many misgivings, rather than idolizing all the “real boys” in the world. Pinocchio Unstrung is a love letter to practical effects and old-fashioned animatronics and puppetry. This means that Englund just provides the voice for Cricket, but it’s still a deeply sinister performance and one of the most unnerving characters to appear in the Twisted Childhood Universe. Once again, Englund is careful not to just repurpose his Freddy Krueger persona, and he instead develops an original voice that plays into past renditions of the character. There’s a palpable rage and disdain in Englund’s Cricket that turns him into a threatening loose cannon and makes the audience forget that he’s only a few inches tall.
The Phantom of the Opera (The Phantom of the Opera)
The Phantom of the Opera is a foundational horror story that’s still being explored over a century later. 1989’s cinematic adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s 1910 classic doesn’t always get the respect that it deserves, despite it containing one of Englund’s most nuanced horror performances. Directed by Dwight H. Little, who previously helmed the underrated Halloween 4, The Phantom of the Opera operates as a gorier take on Leroux’s source material that feels like a lost Hammer Film picture. The titular Phantom is the perfect role for Englund following A Nightmare on Elm Street, and his participation in the picture was initiated by Englund promising his agent that he’d do another horror project after Elm Street’s success.
Englund was excited to tackle an iconic character who had previously been portrayed by formative horror legends like Herbert Lom, Claude Rains, and Lon Chaney. Englund beautifully fits the mold and is sublime casting for this ‘80s take on the character. Englund taps into a powerful dichotomy between the Phantom’s brutal and tragically sympathetic nature. It’s a role that’s significantly deeper than Freddy Krueger and better explores Englund’s range as an actor, which helps get him away from cheesy one-liners. It also doesn’t hurt that Little concocts a uniquely twisted take on the Phantom’s disfigurement, which was achieved by sewing human skin onto Englund’s face. The modern-day sequences that bookend the film were meant to tie into a planned sequel, The Phantom of the Opera 2: Terror in Manhattan, which unfortunately never came to fruition.
Victor Creel (Stranger Things)
Love it or hate it, Stranger Things assembled some impressive guest stars that took advantage of their respective legacies as ‘80s genre legends, such as Linda Hamilton, Matthew Modine, Cary Elwes, and Robert Englund. Englund’s turn as Victor Creel in the streaming hit’s fourth season is one of the series’ best performances and a role that rises above the mediocrity around it. Victor Creel is an opportunity for Englund to actually subvert expectations and play against type. It’s brilliant casting that initially conditions the audience to be wary of Creel and view him as a frightening threat. This perception is reinforced when Creel is encountered in a psychiatric ward and horrifically blinded.
Creel’s disturbing eye-gouged appearance is revealed to actually be a symptom of his tragic life and the psychological torment he received from Vecna. Creel is hard to look at, but there’s nothing to fear about him. He’s led a sad life that’s filled with inescapable guilt. He’s more like one of Freddy Krueger’s victims than Freddy himself. Englund goes above and beyond as Victor Creel, and the emotional monologues that he delivers are among some of the actor’s best work and proof that Englund’s still got it.
Marquis de Sade (Night Terrors)
Tobe Hooper’s Night Terrors is a particularly forgettable ’90s horror film that faced a litany of production problems and changes that certainly didn’t do it any favors. The story is a mess, even for a Cannon Video production, but it provides the novelty of Englund pulling double duty as the cruel Marquis de Sade and his modern day descendant, Paul Chevalier. Night Terrors banked on the novelty of Hooper directing Englund as one of history’s greatest monsters, and his performance is easily the best thing about this movie.
There’s an unabashed glee to Englund’s work as the Marquis de Sade that’s reminiscent of Freddy Krueger’s twisted jubilation over his creative murders, yet it doesn’t just feel like a carbon copy of Englund’s iconic role. There’s an appreciated degree of restraint going on before the film goes off the rails and incorporates supernatural elements and abstract dream sequences. Chevalier and his modern cult worship the Marquis de Sade as a deity of torture and liberation. The nightmare sequences that involve the Marquis de Sade are the most chilling and make this figure look as frightening on the outside as he is on the inside. There’s enough to latch onto here, even if the film as a whole is a mess, and Englund doesn’t squander the opportunity to play two sides of the same creepy coin.
Scarecrow (Injustice 2)
Robert Englund is no stranger to voiceover work, and he’s voiced his share of macabre and memorable characters over the years. That being said, one of his most inspired roles is the work that he did in NetherRealm’s dark DC Comics-based fighter, Injustice 2, where he plays Jonathan Crane, better known as the Scarecrow. There’s a certain tongue-in-cheek brilliance to having Englund voicing the Batman rogue who is the self-appointed “Master of Fear.” There’s certainly a meta quality to Englund’s casting here, right down to how some of his dialogue explicitly references Freddy Krueger one-liners like “Welcome to your nightmare” and “Now I’m playing with power.”
Englund doesn’t just phone in this performance or replicate his work as Freddy. The actor cultivates a unique voice for Scarecrow that cuts to the core of this character in a menacing manner. Englund’s Scarecrow is raspy, erratic, and honestly one of the better takes on Dr. Crane. It makes one wonder what he’d be able to accomplish if he were playing the part in live-action. He takes a simple role and breathes fresh life into it. Curiously, it’s not his first time playing a Batman villain. He does comparably interesting work as The Riddler in The Batman and the more obscure sorcerer, Felix Faust, in Justice League.
Evil Bloodthirsty Brian (The Hughleys)
There’s a surprising relationship between horror icons and sitcoms, with Robert Englund being no stranger to adding a devious dose of terror to a farcical comedy. Englund shows up as a playful take on Lucifer in Married…with Children, but he also provides a genuinely chilling performance in the first season of The Hughleys. Season one’s “Storm O’ the Century” is centered around the Hughleys and Rogerses getting stranded at a seemingly haunted hotel during an intense blizzard.
“Storm O’ the Century” functions as a proper love letter to horror fans, with genre guest stars that include The Addams Family’s John Astin, The Shining’s Shelley Duvall, and Robert Englund as the comically-named Evil Bloodthirsty Brian. The episode certainly prioritizes its comedy, but it manages to also be legitimately creepy thanks to a locked-in performance by Englund. He’s used sparingly, but always to punctuate a particular scene and function as a jump scare. Evil Bloodthirsty Brian sports a ghastly scar and has a look that’s just frightening enough to be included on a ’90s sitcom. Anyone who is curious about Englund’s performance can check it out for free on Tubi.
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