Shock and raw: new horror

The new horror directors have more to say than you might think

They’re called the “Splat Pack,” a nickname that’s stuck, fittingly. Today’s elite horror directors make up a youngish group that includes Eli Roth ('Hostel') and Rob Zombie ('The Devil's Rejects'), but also France’s Alexandre Aja ('High Tension') and Britain’s Neil Marshall ('The Descent'). They’ve seriously upped the gore quotient of late, pushing R ratings to their viscous limits. Their relatively low-budget movies have earned millions, infiltrating popular culture from the suburban mallplex to 'The Sopranos'. The films have also made many social critics nervous, particularly in regards to their almost loving attention to the details of pain. Detractors call it torture porn.

“That term is not only dismissive and simplistic, it’s insulting to the audience,” says one horror fan—not your typical goth, but Livia Bloom, assistant curator at the Museum of the Moving Image. Bloom has programmed “It’s Only a Movie: Horror Films from the 1970s and Today,” that, for the first time in a museum setting, contextualizes the current popular trend with its most significant predecessors, the Nixon-Carter crop, which yielded films like Tobe Hooper’s 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre' and Wes Craven’s 'The Hills Have Eyes'. “Then as now, the most inventive filmmakers have used horror to reflect the turmoil of the times,” Bloom adds. “We’re seeing an incredible resurgence in the genre, and it deserves to be taken seriously.”

The series won’t be breaking new ground when it celebrates the stealth satire of, say, George Romero. But its then-to-now scope has a refreshingly bold payoff: Vietnam becomes Iraq, Watergate becomes Abu Ghraib, and the films follow suit. So too do the comments of the Splat Packers themselves. “First and foremost, my job is to entertain,” Eli Roth says by phone. “But 'Hostel' is very much a reflection of my disgust with the Iraq War and the Al Qaeda videos: God, what if I’m abroad and someone’s going to chop my head off? That’s something that genuinely terrifies me. But also terrifying is the attitude of [my movie’s] American tourists, throwing a bunch of money around, thinking they can take over another country. And they’re the ones who ultimately get bought and sold. It’s not just about people wanting to kill us, but capitalism gone awry and American imperialism.”

James Wong, an X-Files veteran and director of last year’s 'Final Destination 3', is modest about his inclusion in the series: “I’m shocked!” he says from his home in Los Angeles. But it doesn’t take long to prod him into a discussion about the suggestiveness of his film’s universe, in which everyday objects coalesce into perfect killing machines. “What we’re really facing in Iraq—the improvised explosive devices—is what horror really is. Things that can kill you, but which seem harmless: just a piece of trash or debris on the roadside. It’s not necessarily the big boogeyman, but all the other ordinary things and the climate of fear we create.”

Standing slightly outside the political powwow is rocker-turned-director Rob Zombie, who chafes at the Splat Pack label. “It kind of devalues us: ‘Oh, those guys, whatever,’ ” says Zombie, calling from the final editing sessions of his risky remake of 'Halloween'. Indeed, Zombie would rather frame his 'The Devil's Rejects' as more a “modern-day Western, like 'Bonnie and Clyde'” than horror at all. Still, the visual integrity of his 2004 road movie, which looks like a grungy lost gem from the deepest, darkest ’70s, makes it a highlight of the series—and a sign of the director’s sober approach to misfortune, a hallmark of postsnark horror. “If you’re going to show horrible events, let them be horrible,” Zombie says. “And God forbid I should create an antihero you don’t like. These days, everything’s a shampoo commercial.”

While the new horror has few Freddys or Jasons, it does have its figurehead in Jigsaw, the Rube Goldbergian sadist of the 'Saw' series. Darren Lynn Bousman, who’s directed three of the franchise’s instalments (including this autumn’s 'Saw IV'), answers questions about extreme violence with a practiced patience. “Torture porn? There’s nothing pornographic about any of this,” Bousman says by phone from his postproduction suites in Toronto. “These are movies. What separate them from snuff films are their story lines, characters. This is not just falling into traps. Hieronymus Bosch is more brutal, more violent. It’s nothing new. There are other messages in there, whether it be appreciation for what you have, forgiveness, being given a second chance. The ’90s horror films were so jokey, stuff like 'Scream'. I’m not there to make someone laugh. Uneasy laughter, maybe. But no laughs. Should we be?”

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