Nightmare on Our Street: Social Commentary in Modern Horror Dashboard Dashboard

Writers talk tackling complex issues in horror scripts at recent WGAW panel.

(11/12/2021)

“Horror has been a vehicle for social commentary going all the way back to Frankenstein, Night of the Living Dead, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, to contemporary films like Get Out, It Follows, and the Purge franchise. Hell, we should probably throw in The Social Network at this point,” said moderator Lori Rosene-Gambino at the onset of the Guild’s October 27 virtual panel, “Nightmare on Our Street: Social Commentary in Modern Horror,” presented by the WGAW’s Genre Committee.

“The best social horror films and television represent their times and examine the fears of their generation,” continued Rosene-Gambino, a social horror writer herself.

This sentiment was echoed by the event’s panelists, which included Gerard Bush (Antebellum), James DeMonaco (The Purge franchise), Bryan Fuller (Hannibal), Gigi Saul Guerrero (Bingo Hell, Into the Dark), April Wolfe (Black Christmas), and Boston University professor George Vahamikos.

Panelists discussed how the horror genre, the fundamental goal of which is to scare and thrill audiences, can tackle complex topics including race, gender identity, sexual orientation, current events, and politics—sometimes without the audience even realizing it.

“Like any popular film genre, horror has had its peaks and its valleys,” said Vahamikos. “Every time the monsters of one era become so familiar that they become laughable, a new variation comes along to make America anxious again.”

Vahamikos pointed out that using the fears of a generation to thrill, chill, and comment on the state of the culture at the time is something the horror genre has always done: take the alien invader movies of the ’50s, the slasher films of the ’80s, or the supernatural horror films of the 2000s, for example.

“These most recent films remind us that America has always been a frightening place,” he continued. “That the United States has always been a land of fear…from its foundation to its most recent attacks on our capitol.”

Purge franchise screenwriter-director-creator DeMonaco spoke up about those January 6 attacks, calling it one of the saddest days he’s experienced since 9/11. “It was weird because people who had seen The Forever Purge were shocked at how similar it was to the day,” he said of the fifth installment of his horror film franchise that centers on one night a year in which all crime is legal: a dystopian idea that people were suddenly afraid was becoming real.

While the idea for the Purge films was born out of his interest in America’s “unique relationship with guns and a lack of what I thought were proper gun control laws,” DeMonaco concedes that each installment of the franchise has gotten progressively more sociologically relevant, without preaching to the audience who’s there for a scare. The films “became about class, about government’s treatment of the poor,” he explained. “If I made a drama about gun control laws, I don’t think I could get to the same audience as I could with the Purge movies.”

Guerrero explained that her recent film, Bingo Hell, aims to break the stereotype of ageism; of the weak and the old. The inspiration? Her abuela, whom Guerrero describes as being “religiously obsessed” with bingo. “What would happen if we took bingo away from her? Honey, you better run.” The result is a horror movie that puts seniors front and center: as “the heroes in a gentrified setting… For me it was really important to have them be the ones that kick ass.”

As a young Latinx screenwriter-director, does Guerrero feel pressure to tell other Latinx stories? “I’m still new in the industry but I feel so lucky to be a filmmaker right now when diversity, authenticity, new fresh voices are really coming into play and being so recognized and considered.”

In addition to tackling topics like gentrification, ageism, and current events, addressing issues such as homophobia and LGBTQ+ representation is equally as important and prevalent in the genre—and an element of horror that dates back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. On LGBTQ+ narratives in Hannibal, Fuller said the titular character, a cannibal psychiatrist, “loves beautiful things in all their forms and beautiful people in all their forms, so it just kind of evolved into a queer read. When really I just wanted to set out and explore what a nonsexual romance is between two straight guys, and then I was like, oh maybe they’re a little gay.”

“We’ve come a long way but we have much road to travel ahead of us in terms of representation and equality and nobody flinching at a same-sex kiss, or being in a theater where it’s booed,” Fuller continued. “We’re still dealing with the audience.”

Bush and his partner/writing partner Christopher Renz co-wrote and co-directed Antebellum—in which a modern Black woman finds herself inexplicably enslaved on a Southern plantation—and went so far as to shoot the film with the same lenses as Gone With the Wind. “The story started from a nightmare I had, and in that nightmare it really played out pretty much the way it did in the film,” Bush said. “Being a Black kid that grew up in Texas and having to sort of grin and bear it when white kids and their parents would have convos about films like Gone With the Wind… For me it’s a horror film.”

“What is most important is to create work that moves us,” Bush said of his and Renz’s cowriting process. “I’m here to disturb people’s peace. I’m here to catalyze a national dialogue around a whole host of really urgent issues.”

An unexpected socio-political issue is addressed in Black Christmas: “The original Black Christmas is a cult classic from the 1970s and it essentially dealt with abortion rights,” Rosene-Gambino said by way of introduction to Wolfe, who cowrote the 2019 remake with Sophia Takal.

“All these years of smuggling these messages into horror films…” Wolfe said, acknowledging that some of the social commentary messages in horror movies might go unnoticed by those in the audience who are committed to not seeing them. To that, the co-screenwriters’ tactic in developing the script was, “What if you make a movie where they have to see them?”

The pair had less than three months to write the script, and striking a balance between the idea of a slasher film and female empowerment presented a challenge in addition to the tight deadline. “We put in multiple shots of a menstrual cup that we thought were hilarious,” Wolfe said, going on to discuss how the script flipped the “final girl” trope on its heels—in their script, a group of sorority girls band together to vanquish the killer wreaking havoc on their sisters, rather than having one lone “final girl” standing up to him at the end. “We wanted to not have that and go in the exact opposite manner,” doing “kind of an extreme reversal to the point where people got so mad at us,” about how they “fucked up the final girl thing.”

Among the issues the panelists aspire to tackle in future horror scripts are climate change, dwindling populations, wealth inequality, the weaponization of religion, and the perils of social media.

“2016 awoke a sleeping giant in the country, and many writers like myself are putting societal fear and anxiety into our work,” Rosene-Gambino told Connect. “I wanted to bring this discussion to WGA members and talk to writers whose work comments on the times and reminds us that the real monsters and true terrors await us once we leave the dark cinema.”