A Quiet Place Roars into Theaters, and More!
In this Issue:
- Horror History: Enjoy the Silence
- Tiny Bites – This Week’s Best Horror Headlines
- The A to Z of Subgenres: B is for Body Horror
- A Very Shudder Book Club – What We’re Reading
HORROR HISTORY: ENJOY THE SILENCE
By Joshua Lyon
A Quiet Place grossed $50 million at the box office over the weekend, and its success has us thinking about when great movies utilize a lack of sound for scares. Most horror films include at least one moment with a character forced to keep quiet to avoid detection (Ginny hiding under a bed in Friday the 13thPart 2 comes to mind), but flipping that script is often freakier.
Picture the crows amassing on a jungle gym behind Tippi Hedren in The Birds. They don’t emit a single caw, and when they take flight to attack, all you hear is the flapping of wings. It’s the opposite of Psycho’s staccato violins, but just as horrifying. Found footage films like The Blair Witch Project and [REC] forgo music entirely so that viewers only hear as the characters do, an essential device for the subgenre to maintain authenticity.
The spelunkers in The Descent faced enemies similar to the aliens in A Quiet Place. Trapped with cave creatures that hunt using echolocation hindered the women’s every move and sound. Don’t Breathe put a domestic spin on the premise by locking a crew of thieves inside a house owned by a blind vet with mad survival skills. The film builds to an eerie basement scene filmed in night vision, everyone silently feeling their way around in the dark.
It makes us wonder—why is silence so golden as a fear tactic? Maybe it taps into something deep within. Humans are hardwired with a fight-or-flight mentality, and these stay still/stay silent scenarios create subconscious tension by going against one of our most primordial instincts. Then again, it could just be the best way to set up a jump scare.
TINY BITES
TRAILERS, CHUCKY, AND BREAKFAST
Looking for a friend ’til the end? This Kickstarter is making life sized (death sized?) Chucky dolls using original molds and clothing swatches from Child’s Play 2.
Steven Spielberg and Stephen King have yet to collaborate, but Spielberg owns the rights to The Talisman and hints it might get made in the next few years.
Stephen King isn’t the only one in the family on a roll. His son Joe Hill’s novel, the supernatural drama NOS4A2, just got picked up by AMC for a 10-episode series.
Funko is going to make breakfast cereal featuring Freddy Krueger, Beetlejuice and Elvira. Better yet, when you add milk to the Freddy cereal, it will turn blood red.
Check out the long-awaited trailer for August’s giant shark flick The Meg (we love the “Pleased to eat you” tagline) and the trailer for The First Purge, premiering on the 4th of July.
Birth.Movies.Death. explores what Universal’s Dark Universe can learn from horror’s current renaissance.
Check out five great horror shows cancelled too soon.Come back, Kolchak!
THE A TO Z OF SUBGENRES: B IS FOR BODY HORROR
It came from within. Capitalizing on the bottomless anxiety of how little we understand our own makeup, Body Horror stretches as far back as Poe, Shelley and the silents, but was popularized and most regularly associated with Canadian master, David Cronenberg. Body Horror boasts the great distinction of being as philosophical and ponderous of ourselves and the violation of our physicality as it is the grand guignol of mutation, degradation and all things generally, gross as fuck.
Cronenberg Essentials: Shivers, Videodrome, The Fly, The Brood, Dead Ringers.
Personal Favorites: Society, In My Skin, Tetsuo, Taxidermia, From Beyond
A VERY SHUDDER BOOK CLUB – WHAT WE’RE READING
Liked The End of the F***ing World? I’ve just finished Slasher by Charles Forsman, who penned the original graphic novel on which the series is based. His latest is altogether kinkier, bloodier, more challenging and more grotesque than the title might suggest.