How the modern horror genre is using science to reimagine their monsters
Every Halloween season in my early childhood, I would make it a habit to watch the American classic Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein with my grandfather. For those unfamiliar with this 1948 black-and-white film, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is a horror comedy that satirises the Golden Era of Horror—a period between the early 20s to the late 30s marked by Universal’s Classic Monster movies. Featuring iconic villains like Bela Lugosi’s Count Dracula and Lon Chaney Jr.’s Wolf Man, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, in many ways, had been my introduction to the concept of the quintessential movie monster: purely evil, deadly violent, and outside the realm of scientific law.
For many decades now, these gothic monsters of the mid-1900s have fallen out of favour in the horror genre. Yet, the core principles of these classic characters carried over to shape iconic horror villains of the 70s and 80s. Take, for instance, Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers, who typified the classic boogeyman archetype; these silent, mask-wearing serial killers—incapable of death and always driven to kill—personified supernatural forces of evil. Like their horror predecessors, these slasher icons embraced their out-of-world qualities in order to enact terror in their audiences. In essence, the horror of these monsters stemmed from their ability to transcend the laws of nature.
The supernatural horror subgenre refers to phenomena that lie outside the realm of scientific explanation. This form of horror underscores the human fear of the unknown and the unexplainable manifestations of evil in everyday life. As such, the popularity of supernatural movie monsters, ranging from Count Dracula to Pazuzu not only gave a face to the audience’s deepest fears but also showcased how viewers gravitated towards depictions of evil that could not be rationalised or scientifically explained. In this way, the supernatural genre has represented a reaction against an increasingly scientific and intellectual worldview.
Today, supernatural horror continues to play its part in the modern horror genre, as evidenced by blockbuster hits like It (2017) and The Conjuring (2013). Yet, as a horror fan, I can’t help but notice the genre’s departure from the supernatural, alongside its reconstruction of the classic movie monster.
I first noticed this trend earlier this year when I watched HBO’s The Last of Us (2023). Within the first five minutes of my viewing experience, I recognised how the show immediately marketed itself in opposition to the classic undead zombie story. In fact, they went so far as to claim that their monsters were grounded in a type of reality by affirming the existence of the fungal infection, ‘Cordyceps,’ in nature. As a viewer, this worked effectively to strike terror in me and this
only escalated further when I read scientific articles that corroborated the real-life science of these fungal infections.
The Last of Us isn’t the only fictional work to use science to reimagine horror villains. 2023’s M3gan harkened back to horror’s killer doll trope that was popularised by the Chucky franchise. Yet, unlike her horror counterpart, M3gan diverges from the demonic path and opts for a fun technological twist. Even though experts have raised questions about the accuracy of M3gan’s representation of AI, I think the success of this film indicates the continued market for horror films centred around fears about technology.
Thus, with these vastly different horror shows as major talking points for this year’s horror entertainment, I find it important to question the future of the horror genre and the representation of classic monsters. In an era plagued by fears of the climate crisis and a world still recovering from the effects of a global pandemic, there is an abundance of material that may haunt us on our screens. However, I think we as audiences may be moving on from our fear of the boogeyman under the bed.
