Millennial Nasties: Analyzing a Decade of Brutal Horror Film Violence by Ariel Powers-Schaub
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Big thanks to Encyclopocalypse Publications and Book Sirens for providing me with a copy of Ariel Powers-Schaub’s Millennial Nasties: Analyzing a Decade of Brutal Horror Film Violence. Although I’m a horror movie fan and I love reading about the history and themes in horror films, I’m not too familiar with the period that Powers-Schaub explores in this book. Nevertheless, I loved her passion for horror and this period roughly from the late 90s up until 2010. As she explains in her introduction, she was not writing an academic text that would be filled with references and footnotes, but rather her own personal exploration of these films, organizing them into different themes and subgenres. I also appreciated her efforts to recast these films as Millennial Nasties, moving away from the term that many of them are known by: torture porn. While this term was applied to Eli Roth’s Hostel, it became a kind of catchall phrase to refer to violent horror films featuring brutality and gore. Powers-Schaub makes great efforts to delve under the surface of these films and examine events and themes in society that many of these films reflected or challenged. Part of what made me avoid many of these films were some of the aesthetics—including the lighting and music video like editing/cinematography that was such a part of early 2000s horror. However, Powers-Schaub repeatedly notes how integral events like 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were in influencing not only the violence and brutality in these films, but also in the gritty and kinetic film aesthetics. This helps to portray the kind of social and cultural influences that were contributing to the films. In addition, the popularity of the Saw series also helped to further create some templates and methods filmmakers and studios could replicate to attempt to cash in on young horror fans’ desire for violence. However, beyond looking at the contemporary influences of these films, Powers-Schaub also examines the legacy of other horror films, particularly the slashers and grindhouse fare from the 70s that most likely influenced many of the filmmakers who were writing and directing these millennial nasties. Powers-Schaub repeatedly mentions The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but I also was thinking about Hooper’s other 70s horror film Eaten Alive! Which features some of the same themes related to outsiders traveling to a rural community, only to be met by an insane motel owner. There’s not as much gore, kind of like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but the implications of the violence and brutality are pretty tough. The first essays on the Saw series were interesting, but were more like synopses and summaries, focusing on the events and identifying some themes of these different films. I’ve only seen the first film, and I really didn’t like it that much. Beyond the brutality, I didn’t like the grimy lighting and the plot seemed kind of boring to me. However, after reading about some of the other films, I’d definitely consider exploring more of this franchise to see how these themes about loyalty, family, and especially fathers and sons are explored further. The other sections in Part I dealing with traveling, home invasions, families, and captivity/kidnapping, were much more analytical and explored different themes as well. I haven’t seen many of these films, but I have read and/or heard about most of them. Reading books like these about horror films always stretches out my to watch list, and there are a number of new films I’ve added. However, I really liked these other sections because Powers-Schaub becomes more analytical of the themes and ideas in these films, and is more critical of the jokes, language, and characterization of individuals in these films. I really appreciated the critical perspective she takes, often questioning the motivations of filmmakers in presenting characters and action in the film in such a way. It made me reconsider a great amount of horror films and think more critically about representation in films, especially for women and minority characters. Furthermore, she uses Carol Clover’s great text Men, Women and Chainsaws as a reference to explore some of the themes and tropes in horror films, examining how these millennial nasties conform or challenge the common practices of horror. Section two focuses mostly on slashers, looking at how Scream created a new kind of meta-slasher template, and created these kinds of references to other films in the genre. The Final Destination series is also included in this, and Powers-Schaub’s analysis makes the film series seem more intriguing, since I haven’t watched any of them. Section three focused on remakes and updates, examining how a new generation of filmmakers paid tribute to some older, more iconic films and tried to apply the millennial nasties’ aesthetics to these updates. I think this was my favorite section, possibly because I was more familiar with the original movies and because the films covered a broader perspective- not solely focusing on gore or slashers. I liked how in depth Powers-Schaub explored the ideas and themes in these remakes and how they frequently applied to issues and problems in society. It was really interesting to see the differences between the originals and the more recent versions, and Powers-Schaub’s analysis and explorations of themes and ideas are in depth. This was really interesting book that had some great essays on a broad range of films that were released during a turbulent and uncertain time period in America’s history. Although not completely in-depth and academic, Powers-Schaub does go beyond the surface to explore themes, style, and substance of these films, analyzing their relationship to issues, events, and problems in society at the time. While I enjoyed the book, I think I would have liked more analysis, especially around the film aesthetics. Powers-Schaub repeatedly mentions the lighting in these films, often described as yellow or green. I was wondering more about the significance of this kind of lighting. While it does represent the grittiness, does it have the same meaning for all of the films? What might it mean beyond grittiness? Was there a kind of clinical or detached feeling that the filmmakers were trying to explore? Was the color yellow to excite us or induce more anxiety? Other topics like this related to music, sounds, or editing techniques could have been explored further to provide a deeper analysis, but this omission did not take away from my enjoyment of the book. The only other criticism I would mention is possibly using another word besides “nasty” to describe the action or violence in the films. Although this adjective is in the title and relevant to reframing these films, I found that the word was used a little too much and I wanted more to describe the action and details from these films. Again, this overuse of the word didn’t take away from the book, but I think using some different words might have strengthened the descriptions.
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