When 'horror' looks within

There are rites of passage in every marriage. In mine, it is about surviving horror films. My partner loves the genre; I cannot bear it. That may have something to do with the fact that I grew up on a heady dose of Ramsay brand of horror, replete with jumpscares, outlandishly dressed ghosts (not that one expects the undead to 'power dress', but the attempt to caricature them was hilarious), and streams of gore. This was the world I was expected to be scared of. I wasn't. The real life, with its Sisyphean order, seemed more frightening. As I learnt to exorcise the onscreen demons, my partner only grew more fascinated with them. 
His fascination for horror often makes me wonder why do people find themselves attracted to the genre in the first place. What sort of refuge do we really seek among ghosts, vampires, and the bloodbath that follows? Ask a horror film buff and they will tell you that the genre fulfils a fundamental curiosity and sense of adventure. Then how do we - the genre agnostics - find the film that can truly scare us? Thankfully, there's the horror film that offers scares and then there's the horror film that offers catharsis. Some of the films that have personally terrified me are ones that draw more from real-life situations and everyday experiences than fictional ghosts. Think of Roman Polanski's 1968 classic Rosemary's Baby. The plot revolves around a pregnant woman who moves into a new apartment with her actor husband. With time, she increasingly finds herself being more alone as neighbours come across as being notoriously imposing and the husband remains absent from her internal suffering. The horror here is not simply amplified by ghosts and spirits, but the experiences of a woman as she finds herself being more isolated amid a complicated pregnancy. To the viewer, it remains unknown whether the events are playing out in Rosemary's mind or if they are indeed real. An article in Psychology Today interprets the film as a "sensational, fictional portrayal of psychosis during pregnancy". Alejandro Amenábar's 2001 film The Others is an equally layered story. The film has been adapted in so many languages over the years that its classic twist in the tale has become predictable. Revolving around the lives of a religious woman and her two children living in a countryside mansion during World War II and awaiting the return of her missing husband, The Others deep-dives into the fear of abandonment. Social isolation is the central theme of Stanley Kubrick's  The Shining (1980), while racial subjugation is at the heart of Jordan Peele's Get Out (2017).
The most challenging horror film to make is the one that takes a leaf out of what is considered a 'regular experience' and dissects it to show how it's undone us. A more recent example is Mike Flanagan's adaptation of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, which released on Netflix last week as The Haunting of Bly Manor. Two years ago, Flanagan's adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House was critically applauded. While his tweak on Hill House is a commentary on how our childhood experiences haunt us for lives, Bly Manor takes the premise from its original source material but expands it by adding layers of complexities and nuance. A young au pair comes to live at a countryside manor to take care of town children who have lost their parents unexpectedly. She experiences a few 'eerie' things, but is largely protected by the children who have 'learnt to co-exist'. With these broader contours, Bly Manor also addresses various horrors human beings learn to live with. For the children, it is the fear of abandonment. For the au pair, it is the terror of not confronting a truth about herself. For the cook, it is about living with a parent who has no memory of him. While for the housekeeper, it is the overwhelming sense of duty. Because the present has no answers, the characters also explore what living in memories could entail. To die in order to live in memory. a fascinating premise is explored with diligence.
Ever since it began, the horror genre has evolved from alerting the viewer to the 'ghost behind you' to the 'ghost within you'. In the age of individualism, it only makes sense to ditch external props too that induce fear for something more internal; it even makes the genre more humanist in its appeal. A rite of passage that may well be worth it. 
- anamika@khaleejtimes.com