All in Metahorror

Surreal Idol

Surreal Idol

Meg Sipos
Animated Horror, Dreamscape Horror, Identity Horror, Metahorror, Psychological Horror

Perfect Blue likes to jar audiences out of escapism and suspension of disbelief as a way to get us to think critically about the film as a film—as a story, a fantasy, a constructed narrative. When you engage with the film in this way, assuming the film itself knows it’s a film, the nature of the story changes. It becomes clear that the film’s “reality” has been invaded by a surreality brought on by fan obsession with the fantasy of a J-pop idol. That fantasy comes to literal life in the film, as a metaphor for the real-life dangers of immersion, suspended disbelief, and escapism in the arts.

Family Values in Ready or Not

Family Values in Ready or Not

Meg Sipos
Metahorror, Satanic Panic

The ham-fistedness of Ready or Not fits the carefully-crafted and well-paced balance of quippy, campy, self-aware pulp horror/comedy. The film doesn’t waste a single moment of screen time and pays close attention to the arcs of its three main characters through the deconstruction of Grace's wedding dress as she finds herself hunted in The Most Dangerous Game: Satanic Mansion Edition.

Grotesque Comedy, Part 2: Get Out of Stepford

Grotesque Comedy, Part 2: Get Out of Stepford

Meg Sipos & Eric Botts
Metahorror,

While not technically an adaptation or a remake, Get Out re-envisions The Stepford Wives--both the 1972 novel and the 1975 film--in what you could call a remake in spirit. (Oh, and it rightly ignores the 2004 atrocity.)

Forbes’ film and Levin’s novel dealt with feminist themes of gender power dynamics, ownership of female bodies, and the objectification of women. Get Out builds on how those issues intersect with racial power dynamics, ownership of Black bodies, and racist ideas of Black people as animals.

But Peele’s up to more than just swapping Women’s Liberation for Black Emancipation. He gives us a more hopeful film, lighter and funnier than The Stepford Wives, but at the same time heavier and more horrifying.

Imminent & Spontaneous Personal Doom

Imminent & Spontaneous Personal Doom

Eric Botts
Metahorror, Personal Essay

Spontaneous combines gallows humor and whiplashing tonal shifts to pile on emotional intensity, capturing two-plus decades of ongoing trauma on two generations of children the United States has failed to protect from mass shootings due to its own systemic incompetence and lack of political will. The film leaves you numb, reflecting the effect of personal and national trauma, as well as the necessity of overcoming it.

Missing the Messy Bits: A Comparison of Fright Nights

Missing the Messy Bits: A Comparison of Fright Nights

Meg Sipos & Eric Botts
Metahorror

Craig Gillespie’s 2011 remake of Tom Holland’s 1985 meta-horror classic streamline's characters, cuts out the creepy sexualized treatment of Amy, and favors a more action-oriented approach over Holland’s self-aware campiness and references to horror movies of yore. But in buffing out the original’s messy strangeness, the remake loses some of the magic that made the original a beloved gem.

Stop Me if You've Heard This One

Stop Me if You've Heard This One

Tim Barzditis
Metahorror

Rallying against many clichés that seemed built into the slasher genre at the time of its making, Cabin in the Woods was not only a rebuke of what the horror genre had become, but also a celebration of what it could be.

More than a quippy teen slasher brimming with meta-humor, Cabin is a teen slasher about making teen slashers. Leaning into filmmaking allegory and industry clichés, the film argues that the recycling of old ideas from the masters was unsustainable, that we needed to burn down the work of the Ancient Ones so that something new could rise from the ashes.