Evil Rose This Year: How Horror Saved 2023
One of my favorite things to do every year is look back at the collective horror genre and try to cull some meaningful, connective thread and expound on what it all might mean. Horror is reflective, a mirror if you will. While the task would certainly be easier with years of hindsight, contemporaneously is more difficult than it might seem. For 2023 horror, it was especially difficult, largely because while everything seems to have gotten much worse, there was an overarching, cultural sense that it hadn’t.
That dichotomy rendered this year incredibly difficult to navigate. Exhaustion, stress, grief, and even ennui were omnipresent, but broadly, things were ostensibly fine. Everyone kept saying they were. Except, they weren’t fine. Total transparency—and I’m not sure many will disagree here—this year was hard. And, for the first time since I started doing this in 2020, it was less about the scary movies and more about the community they serve which made it just a little bit better.
Check out my recaps from 2020, 2021, and 2022 at the links here.
Like “film Twitter” or some other kind of niche online community, the horror world can feel enigmatic and difficult to probe. There are so many names, so many tastemakers and filmmakers and creatives, it can be difficult to parse through. There are the usual conflicts, singular announcements, or collective acrimony (we all owe Maxine Wally an apology for “The Year Horror Went Highbrow”). But in truth, it’s not always the most welcoming community, and as a queer person, my ingratiation into the community no doubt parallels with the experiences of other marginalized persons. It’s great, yeah, but one wrong step and allies are enemies, work is eroded, and, perhaps most critically, one’s ability to even be a horror fan is litigated. I didn’t think Sidney Prescott needed to be in the later Scream films. I had no idea that would incite the mob it did.
On that note, of particular interest is my digital niche, the online horror critics community and, more broadly, online film commentary in general. 2023 was plagued with the augmentation of AI scriptwriting, a conspicuous bludgeon wielded to suggest an algorithm could do a job as good as any ol’ human. It can’t, but that hasn’t stopped CNET from trying it out, a much-derided move that will almost certainly become more common in the years to come. Corporate AI fervor has only been matched by scores of layoffs, with several friends of mine unceremoniously let go, forced to leverage their connections for something—anything—that not only allows them to continue doing the critical work they love so much, but simultaneously allows them to survive in a year where it’s estimated Americans need to be making $11,400 more to just afford the basics.
And all the while, the horror genre has continued to churn out hit after hit, though I know I’m not the only one who watched something like, say, Evil Dead Rise, unable to focus entirely because of just how terrible things were at the time. Compartmentalization can and should be healthy, but it’s harder now, for instance, to attend some awards season screening without thinking about the Israel-Gaza War or displacements and killings in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Those spectacular scenes of urban destruction in Godzilla: Minus One resonate just a little bit more painfully.
Simultaneously, horror cinema has put in the work. Both The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster and Huesera: The Bone Woman, for instance, feel very of their time, urgent interrogations of the present hegemony and the way our cultural norms and power structures continue to produce monstrous results. Suitably apocalyptic fare like Knock at the Cabin feels more like an augur, less like fantasy, than it might have in every other year.
What has made the year tenable—presuming the world is on fire in, I don’t know, just a few years—is that same horror community. The best things in life hurt and heal, yet for as many times as I’ve felt burned, even as an outlier in the community, someone comfortable on the periphery, there have been just as many times the indomitable spirit of the horror world has kept me afloat.
Throughout the year, I saw peers band together to help another writer or critic struggling with rent. I saw peers pool their resources to help an artist pay for medical bills, to help their favorite podcaster cover veterinary expenses. When swaths of talented writers were laid off, everyone chipped in, directing them to new resources and new opportunities. Over the summer, I wrote about queer horror creatives in Florida. I connected with so many wonderful folks, and just as encouraging, others reached out to me, asking how to help.
The community writ large has supported indie presses and small VOD releases. Titles like Skinamarink, through the collective pull of the community, made bank. Collaboration, community, and mindfulness of our collective role therein have swelled, making the storm that much easier to bear. There is still considerably more work to be done, but if the 2023 horror scene had one single thing to say, it’s this: being scared together is better than being scared alone.
And I have been scared. My friends, family, and acquaintances have been scared. Folks online, many of whom I don’t even know, have been scared. We owe it to ourselves and others to ensure no one is experiencing that horror on their own. No different than a packed theater holding their breath or gripping the armrests, screaming when the tension is released and a sequence punctuates with a jump, we need to stand by one another. We owe each other a lot. As a philosophy of love, it’s what the horror genre has always meant. So, the next time the lights go down and you get scared, reach out to see if someone is feeling the same. Grab their hand, hold on it, and walk with them. That way, when the lights come back on, it won’t feel quite as scary.
Categorized:Editorials
