Today's cinema has been experiencing a very interesting experience in terms of horror films, which has even become a very faded and broad concept. Terror alone can symbolize countless variants of situations and stories that cause classic shocks to viewers, either through scares (the famous "jump scare") or through bloody films that shock through brutality. But many times, these films are bound to be trapped within this already common space, which follows very predictable scripts, or at least the sequence of events is well known. But that little by little has been transformed by a wave of films that has been gaining space within the genre, and that even makes me prefer to call them "Horror" instead of terror. Because, unlike these examples already mentioned above, horror films tend to work with the fears and impacts they generate on us differently, usually more subtly, but also with a very intense psychological violence. And the idea of a horror film is not necessarily new, one example that we can have of a horror classic is "Rosemary's baby" , 1968 film directed by Polanski. That with its subtlety and slowness leads the viewer to plunge into that suspicious building and its strange neighbors, in the almost helpless Rosemary that passes from the paradise of pregnancy to the paranoia and distress of a parallel world that unfolds before your eyes, doing the worst nightmares become real. The way the story is conducted and presented is a perfect example of a horror film, which causes something between disgust and shock, and the natural stylization of the time gives the film's dull and heavy tone.
But you can count on your fingers the films that cause such discomfort. Until somewhere in the decade of 2010, director Robert Eggers decided to show a film that would take a new leap in the genre: The Witch. When thinking about witch within the "terror / horror" concept, the classic and also great example of a horror movie came to mind: The Blair Witch Project . A great film, extremely innovative for the great mass that was not accustomed to the concept of "Found Footage Movies", but that ended up spoiling in a very weak continuation. However, The Witch, from 2015, worked with another level of horror. Telling an obscure and heavy story, set in "New Europe" in those dark times of colonization, isolation, religious rigidity, fear and apprehension. The film manages to materialize the legendary idea of a being from the forest that eats little children at an absurdly disturbing level, where details: Like the black goat, like milking blood, possessed children, etc., generate a much more violent effect on the viewer. than any "witch" itself.
A while later Eggers released the still little commented The Lighthouse, which in addition to its obscure aspect and with a carefully claustrophobic photograph and performances incredible, it deals with much more complex themes within the human psyche, such as isolation, paranoia, madness, alcoholism and so on. In the same energy as Eggers, another director had been bringing heavy and disturbing themes to the fore for this new cinema and its viewers with a desire for horror in their hearts.
"Hereditary" by Ari Aster shocked her debut, in 2018, due to the weight and anguish that her film was capable of causing, besides of course of a strongly disturbing ending, which already showed their potential influence in pagan horror films such as the eternal classic "The Wicker Man" of 1973, where there there is a hero, there is no room for external interference, things are as they are and whoever gets involved will have to pay the price. Not by chance, Aster took advantage of the path he had been following with the concept of the paganist Neo Horror and plunged headlong into his masterpiece: "Midsommar" film that will certainly mark the future wave of psychological and anthropological horror cinema. We can almost say that Midsommar is the postmodern update of The Wicker Man. But Aster's drive to put those young people on a weekend of pagan party initially viewed with curiosity and adventure and then in a chaotic vortex of despair and mental chaos, is perfect. There are countless beautifully crafted scenes that contrast with the despair present in the minds of those involved, especially in the unfolding of the psychological result unleashed in the protagonist of the film. It certainly is not worth giving more spoilers to those who have not seen, because there are many surprises.
I will not be able to talk about so many other films that have been pushing towards the concept of Neo-Horror in order not to make this text too long, but what is worth saying is that, it is very clear to those who watch such films, that the concept does not seek to shock and nauseating the viewer all the time, the intention is to give space to the breath and make it digest each new dive before it becomes deeper and deeper, making it go down to points where you didn't even know you would be able to. And all of this with class (and by that I mean, without calling for a gratuitous explanation that was very common in the past decades in the cinema and that made the public even become insensitive to blood for no reason, where deaths were even expected, after all. accounts). And If you don't like what is called horror movies, but you get along with heavy psychological dramas, you might like neo-horror. Of course, pleasant is not. After all, that is not the intention of this type of cinema, but something in us, has always called for this type of category, it is like a need to feed an instinct, perhaps.
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