INTERVIEWS

V/H/S/2 and the New Horror Aesthetic

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by KJ Doughton

During my late-’70s youth, Jaws chewed me up, spit me out, and left formative tooth-marks on my brain. The film’s terrifying set-pieces, rising from ominous build-ups to visceral shocks, continue to haunt my memory. The dark, murky Universal Studios logo, ushering in the opening credits amidst spooky whale calls and John William’s ominous score, branded my brain forever. The massive shark’s torpedo head honing in stealth-like on a doomed lifeguard, still jolts my synapses. Robert Shaw’s salty shark-hunter, gurgling blood as the great white’s bear-trap teeth snap him in half, resurfaces now and then like a horrible-yet-hypnotic acid flashback.

The terrible beauty of Jaws had a similar effect on legions of viewers. Following its release in the summer of 1975, Steven Spielberg’s now-legendary scare-fest quickly became the highest-grossing film in cinematic history (the first to reach $100 million in U.S. box office receipts). More recently, however, I was told by a younger movie buff, “Jaws is lame.” He followed this sacrilegious proclamation by claiming that “found-footage” films and gorytorture porn had overtaken the throne of horror once claimed by Spielberg’s classic. Society’s definition of horror, it would seem, has taken new form.

Adam Wingard, director of the "Phase I Clinical Trials" portion of V/H/S/2

Adam Wingard, director of the “Phase I Clinical Trials” portion of V/H/S/2

Adam Wingard, one of several directors contributing short films to last year’s horror anthology V/H/S and its current sequel, V/H/S/2, feels that classic, tried and true scares still work… but might require a contemporary tune-up. “I still think Jaws is scary. It’s one of the few movies I own. But to a modern audience, you might need to find a new way to tell the story. What’s the current version of this?”

Simon Barrett, You’re Next star Sharni Vinson and Adam Wingard

Simon Barrett, You’re Next star Sharni Vinson and Adam Wingard

Simon Barrett, whose short films are also featured in both V/H/S films, agrees. “Currently, you need to surprise people and play on the stylistic conventions that appeal to them, and that they can relate to. I think Jaws used the best cinematic techniques of the ’70s that had been built up to that point. But I think one of the reasons people are getting into foundfootage films is because it’s utilizing a modern perspective on scary stuff.”

The V/H/S films fall into the staggeringly popular (and profitable) style of filmmaking known as found-footage. Typically, found-footage movies are presented as discovered video recordings of some horrific incident from the past. Depending on the setting and era in which they’re presented, images might appear to be caught on film, digital or surveillance cameras, most often seen through the lens of one or more characters involved.

Poster for Cannibal Holocaust

Poster for Cannibal Holocaust

Found-footage films were arguably spawned in 1980 by Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust. However, 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, made on a shoestring budget and ultimately grossing over $248 million dollars, established the genre as a bona-fide phenomenon. Since then, the style continues to prosper through subsequent horror hits like Paranormal Activity and the V/H/S series.

To add spontaneity and documentary realism, many found-footage films use an intentionally crude technique called “shaky cam.” Cell phone camera graphics such as battery charge meters and dates might be present in the shot. Images and audio might fade in and out. The rough-around-the-edges vibe of these movies might seem unprofessional, but according to Barrett, that’s the entire point. They feel authentic. “There’s a real art,” he laughs, “to making things look like shit.”

Found-footage films are only as good as the stories they represent. The five short films featured within V/H/S 2 were written by their respective directors. Although they’re all linked by the foundfootage presentation style, each screenplay is surprisingly self-contained and separate from the others.

Jason Eisener's "Alien Abduction Slumber Party" segment of V/H/S/2

Jason Eisener’s “Alien Abduction Slumber Party” segment of V/H/S/2

Barrett’s Tape 49, for example, acts as a wrap-around story that book-ends V/H/S/2 and provides a holistic plot binding the other segments contained within. After a college student goes missing, two private investigators are hired to find him. While searching his apartment, the sleuths stumble across a sizable stash of videotapes. Each tape contains one of the successive short stories that make up the mid-section of V/H/S/2. As the film’s mystery-solving protagonists continue screening this collection of unsavory images, increasingly strange occurrences take place within the abode, culminating in a wave of unsparing madness.

Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto's "Safe Haven" segment of V/H/S/2

Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto’s “Safe Haven” segment of V/H/S/2

Meanwhile, Wingard’s Clinical Trials involves the disastrous, gruesome results of a eyeball implant gone awry, A Ride in the Park follows a flesh-eating rampage—presented entirely from a zombie’s point of view, and Slumber Party Alien Abduction depicts an extraterrestrial home invasion, seen through the bewildered eyes of a family mutt. Safe Haven, arguably the film’s piece de resistance, pulls us through the satanic, Indonesian compound of a Jim Jones-styled cult leader. Like reluctant first-person shooters navigating the labyrinthine halls of a particularly gruesome videogame, we brave newborn demons, cackling nurses, zombified schoolchildren and explosive-stuffed bodies blown into bloody vapors.

Safe Haven represents horror at its most ruthlessly contemporary. Co-directed by Gareth Evans (The Raid) and Timo Tjahjanto (Killers), it twists the classic haunted house story into something more disturbingly depraved. Instead of candle-lit rooms and evasive ghosts, we’re exposed head-on to skull-shattering shotgun blasts and baby Baphomets bursting from pregnant bellies—all presented in the raw, stripped-down format of found-footage. It’s rough, relentless stuff tailored to our fast-paced, attention-impaired times.

Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto‘s "Safe Haven" Segment of V/H/S/2

Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto‘s “Safe Haven” Segment of V/H/S/2

If found-footage films shake us up with their intimate, point-of-view realism, other films shock with grotesque visceral imagery. Torture porn describes the most extreme vein of gore, in which medieval, barbaric bodily damage is heaped upon its subjects. France’s Inside (2007) boasts a black-garbed female executioner hell-bent on slicing a newborn baby from its mother’s womb. Takashi Miike’s Audition (1999) subjects us to a Japanese femme fatale who transforms her final-reel victim into a human pin-cushion, impaling his eyes with acupuncture needles and severing his ankle with a cheese-cutting wire. Frontiers, Martyrs and Hostel also exemplify this merciless hybrid of fright film.

Timo Tjahjanto, writer/director of the "Safe Haven" segment of V/H/S/2

Timo Tjahjanto, co-writer/co-director of the “Safe Haven” segment of V/H/S/2

A more recent example is Timo Tjahjanto’s L is for Libido, a short film from another current horror anthology called The ABC’s of Death. The film can be read as either a condemnation of society’s jaded attitude towards extreme sex and violence, or a deliberate attempt to push the grisly envelope further than any gore-fest in recent memory. We’re made witness to a particularly depraved contest, in which two male contestants are restrained in chairs against their wills and forced to masturbate. The winner continues to the next round, while the loser endures some form of brutal death. Meanwhile, participants are aroused to erection by onstage images beginning with simple nude women, before quickly transgressing to amputee sex, pedophilia and chainsaw death.

Torture porn poses the question, is shock synonymous with scary? Are images of unflinching brutality truly frightening or just a geeky jolt to an already-jaded nervous system? Tjahjanto, who also co-directed the Safe Haven segment of V/H/S/2 with Gareth Evans, suggests that filmic horror has branched off into two distinct sub-categories. Some emphasize extreme visual shock, while others employ more subtle tension. Both, he insists, are effective and scary in their own ways.

Marketing for Eli Roth's Hostel Part II plays upon the idea of its characters being meat

Marketing for Eli Roth’s Hostel Part II plays upon the idea of its characters being meat

“I think that the younger horror films rely more on visual shock than creating a traditional sense of dread,” Tjahjanto explains. “I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. I think that’s just how horror started to evolve. Some people say that a lot of horror films rely too much on gore, but I recently watched the Evil Dead remake and enjoyed it very much. But I’ve also learned to appreciate understated horror like The Others. Even when it’s done in a subtle way, it still has an effect on me. Horror can always be done right if you rely on characterization and storytelling.”

Others aren’t so enamored with torture porn. “The films that are defined as horror,” suggests Eden director Megan Griffiths, “definitely seem different from the classic horror films of, say, the ’70s. I feel like the violence has become more glamorous and fetishized. I think as a society we are exposed to much more violence on a daily basis, and that violence is so normalized.

Megan Griffiths' movie Eden

Megan Griffiths’ movie Eden

“The way the ratings board deals with violence is that they might grant a PG-13 rating to an incredibly violent film so long as it is ‘bloodless’ violence. People can be shot or stabbed or blown up in every scene, but if there’s no blood it is still deemed appropriate for minors. I think those who have grown up with this standard get very disconnected from the psychology of killing. Death becomes entertaining, so horror films have to go farther to make it disturbing again.”

Found footage and torture porn films might strive for realism, but ultimately, they’re still designed for escapism. Ask many people on the street what scares them, and you’re likely to hear about home invasions, unemployment or cancer. Griffiths’ mesmerizing film Eden, which follows an innocent girl’s immersion into the lucrative, cruel underworld of child sex trafficking, depicts real-world horror of the most incomprehensible kind. But the director doesn’t consider Eden a horror film.

“What happens to the girls in Eden is horrific and unspeakable,” Griffiths confirms, “and the fact that it is actually occurring in the real world makes it disturbing on a level that is hard to achieve in a horror film. Not that anyone is trying. I think horror audiences are seeking out a very different kind of horror. They want to be entertained, not reminded of the horrors of their actual world, so most horror directors try to provide that experience and don’t attempt to bring real-world politics into it.”

Sebastian Cordero, director of Rage and Europa Report

Sebastian Cordero, director of Rage and Europa Report

Even so, scares often pop up in movies seemingly removed from the horror genre. With its depiction of a space mission to Jupiter’s moon that goes horribly awry, Sebastian Cordero’s Europa Report builds a sense of helpless, reverse-claustrophobia. “In Space, No-one Can Hear You Scream” was the catchphrase for Alien back in 1979, and it also holds true for Cordero’s tense thriller, also shot in found-footage style.

“One of the most fascinating things about space travel,” describes Cordero, “is its sense of leaving the earth, leaving home, and being so far removed from even the basic (needs for survival). If you lose communication, what’s scarier than being millions and millions of miles away from earth, without technical or moral support… then gradually losing your mates to something that’s bigger than yourself?

Europa Report

Europa Report

“Add to that the fact that you’re looking out into space, and optically, because of the way your eyes reference things from the film’s spaceship, you’re not even actually seeing stars. One of the first decisions we made was not to fill the sky with beautiful stars like the Milky Way and those that we’re used to seeing from the earth. What’s scarier than being in the middle of a black void? You’re in a tin can, while feeling this infinite space surrounding you.

“During one screening, someone commented that in science fiction movies, there are so many cases of things going horribly wrong during a spacewalk. This comes up in films repeatedly. But so far (historically), it hasn’t happened. Still, whenever someone tells you about the concept of a spacewalk, it’s just so scary—the thought of stepping out into the void.”

If found-footage films package horror into a current, familiar format, torture porn pumps out extreme visual horror to those who crave this imagery, and real-life situational fears don’t fit into the horror genre, what about good old fashioned ghost stories, or tales of fantastical situations? Have ghosts and monsters become too benign to scare today’s more sophisticated fright-seekers? Hardly.

Vera Farmiga as Lorraine Warren in The Conjuring

Vera Farmiga as Lorraine Warren in The Conjuring

The Conjuring, James Wan’s relentless film about a haunted houses and demon possession, conjured up a whopping $34 million during its opening July weekend. Wan went light on the gore, favoring primal thrills like dark basements dripping with cobwebs and infested by malevolent spirits. “Looking at the films in the genre that are available on Netflix,” observes Griffiths, “it seems like there are plenty of both (reality-based and supernatural horror). There’s definitely been a big movement to found-footage in the genre, but I think a lot of those still have supernatural elements to them. I think a good ghost story still has power.”

Comparing V/H/S/2 to its predecessor, Barrett confirms Griffith’s proclamation. “The first one is a much darker movie in a lot of ways. It’s kind of a bummer. The segments the audiences reacted to the most were things like Radio Silence’s final segment (10/31/98), which had a fun haunted house feel, and David Bruckner’s insane succubus short (Amateur Night). Those had very fantastical elements. I think going into the second one, we realized that was the stuff that not only audiences responded to, but that we responded to. All of the filmmakers coming into this film saw that same kind of influence. We wanted to make it a more entertaining, fun movie this time around. This doesn’t mean it’s less gross. It’s probably the goriest movie we’ve ever done.”

David Bruckner’s "Amateur Night" segment of V/H/S

David Bruckner’s “Amateur Night” segment of V/H/S

Whether striving for shock, realism or fantastical fright, filmmakers must begin their mission to scare by scribing a compelling, nerve-jangling screenplay. For V/H/S/2, participating directors conjured forth truly inventive scenarios, proving that vivid (and as some would say, warped) imagination is crucial to the process. Meanwhile, Griffiths reveals her own recipe for creating a sense of frightful dread in her screenplays. “I think it’s all about holding out, waiting to reveal the mystery. You want to build that apprehension, the feeling that something bad is going to happen, for as long as possible. Once you’ve unveiled the mystery, the tension is broken, and the tension is the best part.”

Pondering the ongoing power of tension in terror films, we’re brought full circle, and left to answer the crucial question: is Jaws, a film once considered the definitive example of sustained tension and suspenseful horror, still relevant as a horror film? “To me,” proclaims Tjahjanto, “Jaws is still a powerful experience. Even now, my greatest fear is to be stranded in the water somewhere and be eaten by a shark. It’s that sense that some creature with a dead set of eyes is looking at you and waiting to attack.”

Steven Spielberg's Jaws

Steven Spielberg’s Jaws

“However you tell the story,” giggles Wingard, “being eaten by sharks is still scary. Put someone in a tank with a shark, and I guarantee you they’ll be scared.” Perhaps, suggests Wingard, found-footage and torture porn will become extinct long before Jaws loses its bite. “In thirty years there will be some other kind of advancement or stylization,” he predicts with a laugh. “Audiences will have the same perception on our stuff, and think it’s hokey.”

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Married with two children, KJ Doughton resides in Tacoma. As an occupational therapist, he has worked with soldiers, seniors and forensic mental health patients. His passions include fishing, film, and face-melting riffs. His work has also appeared in <i>The Rocket, Filmmaker, Guitar World, BAM, Nitrate Online, Film Threat, Kamera</i> and <i>Moviemaker</i>. He is the author of <i>Metallica Unbound</i> (Warner Books,1992).

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