Editorials
You Are What You Eat: Cannibalism in Contemporary Horror
You can always count on horror to test boundaries, so it’s no surprise that the genre has long explored the taboo of cannibalism. Cannibals are most often associated with exploitation horror, leading to a cannibal horror boon in the ’70s and early ’80s, thanks to Italian horror filmmakers like Umberto Lenzi, Ruggero Deodato, and Joe D’Amato. But as the Video Nasty craze came and went and time evolved the genre, so did the depiction of cannibalism.
The ’90s brought horror’s most common depiction of cannibals out of the jungle and into society, largely thanks to The Silence of the Lambs’ Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins). The Academy Award-winning feature adapted Thomas Harris’ 1988 novel and introduced a supporting character so fascinating that he overshadowed the film’s actual antagonist, Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). Protagonist Clarice Starling gets assigned to interview the incarcerated cannibalistic serial killer in the hopes that Dr. Lecter will provide insight into their pursuit of Buffalo Bill. Clarice and the audience are surprised to find a rather couth and elegant psychiatrist with an affinity for manners and refined tastes. Hopkin’s line reading of “A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti,” as if describing a delectable fine dining meal, catapulted the character into the pop culture lexicon.
‘The Silence of the Lambs’
This marked the beginning of a dramatic shift for cannibalism in horror. The Antonia Bird-directed Ravenous, penned by Ted Griffin, drew from “The Colorado Cannibal” Alferd Packer, the Donner party, and Wendigo folklore to deliver a compelling and quirky horror-comedy cannibal western. The film sees an entire remote military outpost thrown into lethal turmoil upon the arrival of a stranger, F.W. Colqhoun (Robert Carlyle). Of course, it quickly descends into an eat-or-be-eaten situation. But the cannibalism here is less overtly grotesque and more of a biting critique of Manifest destiny, the belief that America was destined to conquer, settle, and expand from coast to coast. Colqhoun’s aggressive means of enlisting fellow cannibals or devouring those who stand in his way is the embodiment of this concept.
The turn of the century further evolved the cannibalistic metaphor with the rise of New French Extremity. Claire Denis’s divisive Trouble Every Day revolves around two couples at opposite stages of their relationships, connected by an insatiable, all-consuming sexual desire to consume human flesh. Neuroscientist Léo Semenau (Alex Descas) has given up much of his life and career to find a cure for his long-afflicted wife, Coré (Béatrice Dalle). The recently married Shane (Vincent Gallo) has a connection to Coré and seeks out Semenau once he, too, begins developing the urge to consume human flesh. Denis keeps the narrative thinly sketched and hard to grab ahold of while never shying away from graphic depictions of the feeding frenzies. Consume serves as the central word here, open to multiple interpretations. Trouble Every Day speaks to the consuming nature of love and carnal desires but suggests that perhaps modern society drives the inherent need to consume constantly for pleasure.
‘Raw’
In many ways, Julia Ducournau’s Raw feels like a spiritual continuation of Denis’s film. It follows Justine (Garance Marillier), a lifelong vegetarian struggling with new impulses to consume raw flesh after undergoing a college hazing ritual. Justine’s new cannibalistic tendencies are a physical manifestation of how she sees herself. She’s terrified by her emerging feelings of sexual desire and an inability to control them; her cannibalism allows her to give in to her more primal instincts, a trait that runs in her family. The cannibalism heightens the emotions of an otherwise grounded coming-of-age story and acts as the embodiment of that awkward transition from adolescence to adulthood.
Jim Mickle‘s 2013 cannibal tale We Are What We Are, a remake of the 2010 Mexican horror film, used cannibalism to explore devout religious devotion and family tradition. The reclusive Parker family sees their world turned upside down when Mrs. Parker (Kassie DePaiva) unexpectedly succumbs to illness. It causes a rift as the surviving family members find themselves at odds with upholding their mother’s religious duties. Dad Frank (Bill Sage) wants his eldest to continue their grisly traditions, even callously pushing them toward violence while murdering those in his way. It creates the central conflict as the eldest daughters, Iris (Ambyr Childers) and Rose (Julia Garner), cannot decide whether to give in to their cannibalistic family rituals or start anew in society. Like Raw, the coming-of-age story gets a cannibal twist, with the teens taking back control of their lives by devouring flesh.
‘We Are What We Are’
This year brought Fresh, a horror-comedy that uses cannibalism to get cheeky (pun intended) about the horrors of dating. Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) thinks she’s found Prince Charming in Sebastian Stan’s Steve after a meet-cute in a grocery store. A weekend getaway brings the startling realization that she’s become a featured course on the menu of a literal meat market. And his week brings Bones and All, an achingly tender coming-of-age story that once again seeks to normalize feelings of Otherness through cannibalism.
Whereas bygone eras of horror framed the cannibal as Other, contemporary horror assimilates cannibalism into modern culture. Cannibalism isn’t a taboo but a genre representation of sexual awakenings, upending the status quo, capitalist consumerism, meat markets made literal, or even acts of defiance. It’s a stand-in for monstrous feelings and a blank slate for metaphors and explorations of impulsive, uncontrollable emotions. Contemporary horror takes the proverbial saying “you are what you eat” to new, grotesque heights to explore the most vulnerable aspects of being human.
‘Bones and All’
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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