Horror movieshave had genre-defining films since they were produced. But there are also ones that define the era in which they were made. The 1970s were loaded with grotesque acts of bloodshed due to the post-Vietnam era and being exposed to violence through the media. The 1980s had movies about excess sex, drugs, and giant machete-wielding masked killers. Donald Trump was inaugurated in January 2017, and a month laterGet Outwas released, thus setting off an era of highly socially conscious horror films about race, class warfare, and religion. However, sprinkled throughout the years of horror films, there is a subgenre that scratches the itch of fans but then retreats back into the darkness. The sub-genre of werewolves
Zombies had their day in the 2010s withThe Walking Dead.Vampires had a resurgence inTwilight,a franchise with a character that would shape-shift into a wolf. And yet, in all of that, it has been a good forty-plus years since Joe Dante’sThe Howlingand John Landis’An American Werewolf in London.Looking at society right now, we’re all kind of angry. For years now, we have had pent-up rage inside all of us. It’s all there for us to see on YouTube and TikTok videos of people having public meltdowns. Maybe it is time to take the societal pressures all around us and project them onto the big screen with a new resurgence of a film about taming the beast inside all of us.
The Complexity of Good and Evil
For starters, let’s go back to the classic, the original Universal Pictures release ofThe Wolfman. Lon Chaney Jr. gave us an incredible performance of a man who becomes a savage beast upon a full moon. The real treasure of it, though, is the poem in the film that states:Even a man who is pure at heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolf-bane blooms and the moon is full and bright.
It’s a statement that showsthe complexity of good and evil, and how this beast inside us can come to light and overthrow whatever good it is that we may believe and try to implement into our lives. Divisive times often make people feel self-righteous like their good deeds assist them in good karma. And yet there is always someone with descending views of the next person. What does that say about us? What defines right and wrong? What defines good and evil? The best kinds of characters are complex. How many times have we seen a villain in a movie or a show that we disagree with their actions, but kind of get their motives? There is no room for plain old evildoers anymore. Thus, leaving the door open for a man or woman whose good heart is tarnished by the issues he kept dwelling deep inside of him
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Masculinity and The Werewolf
Masculinity has always been a constant theme in films about werewolves. It’s inThe Howling,An American Werewolf in London,andevenUnderworld: Rise of the Lycanstouches on it. Let’s go back to the poem fromThe Wolfmanfor a minute about having a good heart. It’s a brilliant study of masculinity and how the evil of men can still rise to the surface despite the good we may want to do. Masculinity is something that has been under a microscope these past few years since cancel culture has been on the rise and famous and powerful men have been caught committing horrible acts. It has also been studied because there isn’t much help out there for men when their problems start to get the best of them. Or they just don’t know where to turn.
There are a lot of issues addressed in terms of men’s mental health, but not many answers. On average, there are still 132suicides by men a day, and that rate is nearly four times higher than that of women. Thus creating a question of what men can do with their issues before they turn into an external problem for those around them. Horror has a way of looking at social commentary, and it seems like there is a lot to unpack here with what makes a man a monster. It seems like a good time to take the issues around masculinity as a society and see if there is a story or many stories to craft about how the beast inside us comes out and does harm to others and ourselves.
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The Indie Werewolf
The call to put werewolves at the forefront of the genre has already taken shape on an independent level. With films like Josh Reuben’sWerewolves Withinand others likeThe Wolf of Snow Hollow,some of these may lack some of the issues raised above, but they still seemed to have gotten some things right in terms of a fun horror flick. 2020 saw the release ofThe Invisible Man, a Blumhouse-produced blockbuster that revamps the Universal Monster classic character and loads it with themes that matter now more than ever. You have to wonder if Jason Blum can make the call on expanding on this all and giving us the updatedDark Universewe deserve.
Or, if anything, A24 has been on the prowl recently and hasshown interest in taking on some built-in IP.They recently went on the hunt to get the rights toHalloweenbut fell short. Maybe they would be the brand to take the werewolf sub-genre to the next level, whether it be aWolfmanreboot or something completely fresh and new.
Regardless, there seems to be a shift in horror. It’s a new decade; some things still work, some don’t. Art the Clown is at the forefront of a lot of horror fans' minds as the first real titan of horror in terms of slashers since the 1980s. But as one whole genre, maybe it’s time to take a look at society, with all our anger and frustrations and how nobody is really living well, even if they make it look that way on Instagram, and see if the monster inside all of us can make it to the surface to scare us all again (metaphorically speaking, of course).
