Editorials
“I’m the Thing Monsters Have Nightmares About” – Making the Case for Sarah Michelle Gellar as a Horror Icon
Jamie Lee Curtis was not the first horror heroine to make an impact, but she’s largely considered the quintessential scream queen. Following the success of her 1978 debut in John Carpenter’s Halloween, she starred in an unparalleled run of horror cult classics between 1980 and 1981: The Fog, Prom Night, Terror Train, Road Games, and Halloween II. Not wanting to be typecast, she moved onto other genres (until Michael Myers pulled her back in 1998’s Halloween H20) and found great success, but her horror legacy was sealed.
With the validity of the term “scream queen” up for debate – some actresses embrace it as a badge of honor, while others believe it diminishes the merits of their work – it’s easy to adopt the gender-neutral “horror icon” for Curtis and her ilk. From Fay Wray and Elvira to Barbara Crampton and Danielle Harris, plenty of actresses are just as deserving of the title as Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Tony Todd, et al.
In revisiting the Scream franchise ahead of the new entry, I couldn’t help but notice a worthy contender who is rarely brought up in the horror conversation. Certainly Neve Campbell and even Courteney Cox fit the bill, but Sarah Michelle Gellar deserves recognition as well.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer alone should be enough to cement her horror icon status. For seven seasons between 1997 and 2003, Gellar slayed in her breakthrough role as Buffy Summers, a high school cheerleader who discovers she’s a chosen one gifted with the skills to fight the forces of darkness. As the character puts it, “I’m the thing that monsters have nightmares about.”
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”
Not unlike Curtis’ 1980-81 run, 1997 saw Gellar appear in three iconic horror properties. In addition to Buffy‘s premiere in March, she received second billing in I Know What You Did Last Summer for her role as beauty queen Helen Shivers in October, and she played sorority sister Cici Cooper in the highly-anticipated Scream 2 to cap off the banner year in December.
Perhaps the reluctance to classify Gellar as a horror icon stems from the fact that she was not the final girl in either of those films, as their respective villains added her to their ever-growing body count. But she was more than mere slasher fodder; her chase scene in IKWYDLS was arguably the highlight of the movie, and her demise in Scream 2 echoed Drew Barrymore’s shocking death from its predecessor. Regardless of whether they made it to the end credits, her characters were intelligent, resourceful, and empowering.
After Buffy wrapped, Gellar starred in 2004’s The Grudge, which had the highest grossing opening weekend for a horror remake at the time, and returned (albeit to get unceremoniously dispatched early on) in its 2006 sequel, The Grudge 2. While not strictly horror, she also donned Daphne’s purple dress in 2002’s live-action Scooby-Doo movie and its 2004 followup, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. She went on to star in 2006’s The Return and 2009’s Possession, neither of which were particularly well received but still furthered her genre ties.
‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’
In a 2004 interview promoting The Grudge, Gellar spoke about her connection to horror. “In TV women are the stars, but in films we’re still struggling to play the leads. This particular genre is where women seem to get the best roles and can really shine. And I like films that are challenging – I couldn’t just be the girlfriend or the wife in a film. So I’ll be wherever the good female roles are. I like horror.”
Gellar later voiced herself in the 2011 Call of Duty: Black Ops video game zombie expansion “Call of the Dead” alongside fellow genre veterans Robert Englund, Danny Trejo, Michael Rooker, and George A. Romero. On the subject of voice acting, among her numerous guest spots on Adult Swim’s stop-motion sketch comedy show Robot Chicken were Ellen Ripley from the Alien franchise, Sarah Connor from the Terminator movies, Samara from The Ring, and tongue-in-cheek reprisals of her Buffy and Scooby-Doo parts.
More recently, Gellar revisited her horror roots in an Olay commercial that aired during the 2019 Super Bowl in which she’s chased by a masked killer, played by her husband (and IKWYDLS/Scooby-Doo co-star) Freddie Prinze Jr. It’s a fun send-up to her past, but I would love to see Gellar make a cinematic return to the genre that made her a household name.
When reflecting on Buffy‘s legacy with W in 2019, Gellar was hesitant to be labeled as a ’90s icon. “I think that the Buffy the Vampire Slayer show is iconic. I can say that,” she explained. “I don’t know where I fall.” Respectfully, I say she falls among the genre royalty that have earned the title of horror icon.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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