Words By Frances Court
As a self proclaimed horror film lover, I’m all too familiar with the sad reality that it’s really hard to find a good one. We’re at the point in time where every five minutes there’s a new Blumhouse production which is a variation of, ‘The Conjuring’ or ‘Insidious’, which without fail, I fall prey to and end up wasting a good few hours of my life watching it in Cineworld.
Whilst there is nothing wrong with enjoying the usual jump scares and some state of the art special effects, the films seem to endlessly pop up, just as quickly as they fade away onto Netflix. Despite this, there are a few films that stand out as iconic horror which all appear to share a common theme – the fear of the woman. Once the pattern becomes visible, it only becomes more obvious. The horror of the woman is a multifaceted concept with each element fueling a different terror; the female body, female sexuality and motherhood.
The female body is used as an object of horror, which is easy as the female form is objectified culturally anyway. Both subtly and overtly, the female body is used for shock value like in IT 2, 2019. A sweet old lady transforms into a grotesque being, who appears naked and even older – with its grey hair and breasts swinging wildly whilst running at the innocent character. The age of the monster is deliberate, as older women in Western culture are seen as undesirable and ‘hag-like’ in comparison to the younger women. This can also be seen in older classics too like The Shining, 1980. Jack Nicholson is seduced by what appears to be a supple, young woman in Room 237, before he sees her in her true and horrifying form – a rotting, old, naked woman.
As well as the female form, sexuality is intertwined and unleashed as a form of terror. In The Witch, 2015, a Christian family is plagued by unknown forces that took the form of a seductive witch who lives in the woods. Through her manipulative power over her sexuality, she lures in the male character resulting in his slow and painful death – choking on a bloody apple, which couldn’t be more symbolic. The fear over a woman’s sexuality is not a new societal anxiety. The 1980’s for the West was plagued by the secularisation of the world, deterioration of religion – emerging in the form of killing the sexually promiscuous. Seriously. The threat of contamination of the pure became the basis of horror. The classic form was constructed around youth – typically featuring a group of teenagers who are terrorised and taken out in turn, before the virginal girl survives the film. The virginal girl is known as the ‘final girl’, the lone survivor of the slasher film. Nightmare on Elm Street, 1984 demonstrates this troupe perfectly.
Moving past the female form and sexuality, the warm and familiar connotations of motherhood are undoubtedly one of the more unsettling features of female horror. A mothers instinct as a force of horror has generated very successful films in both adult and children’s cinema, such as Hereditary, 2018 and Coraline, 2009. In Coraline, the mistrust and deception by the ‘other mother’ figure was terrifying to watch as a kid, which left both me and my sister very grateful for our real mother. Yet as an adult, the mother figure ‘Annie’ in Hereditary, is equally as unnerving as the root of the family unravelling – along with cults and sacrifice of course…
Clearly, the fear of the woman is a long standing anxiety. We learn the fearsome nature of the female form and the dreaded process of ageing, whilst witnessing the destructive power of sexuality and unhinged motherhood. Yet, it is the power of women that is feared and expressed in these sexist and unsettling ways.
As a self proclaimed horror film lover, I’m all too familiar with the sad reality that it’s really hard to find a good one. We’re at the point in time where every five minutes there’s a new Blumhouse production which is a variation of, ‘The Conjuring’ or ‘Insidious’, which without fail, I fall prey to and end up wasting a good few hours of my life watching it in Cineworld.
Whilst there is nothing wrong with enjoying the usual jump scares and some state of the art special effects, the films seem to endlessly pop up, just as quickly as they fade away onto Netflix. Despite this, there are a few films that stand out as iconic horror which all appear to share a common theme – the fear of the woman. Once the pattern becomes visible, it only becomes more obvious. The horror of the woman is a multifaceted concept with each element fueling a different terror; the female body, female sexuality and motherhood.
The female body is used as an object of horror, which is easy as the female form is objectified culturally anyway. Both subtly and overtly, the female body is used for shock value like in IT 2, 2019. A sweet old lady transforms into a grotesque being, who appears naked and even older – with its grey hair and breasts swinging wildly whilst running at the innocent character. The age of the monster is deliberate, as older women in Western culture are seen as undesirable and ‘hag-like’ in comparison to the younger women. This can also be seen in older classics too like The Shining, 1980. Jack Nicholson is seduced by what appears to be a supple, young woman in Room 237, before he sees her in her true and horrifying form – a rotting, old, naked woman.
As well as the female form, sexuality is intertwined and unleashed as a form of terror. In The Witch, 2015, a Christian family is plagued by unknown forces that took the form of a seductive witch who lives in the woods. Through her manipulative power over her sexuality, she lures in the male character resulting in his slow and painful death – choking on a bloody apple, which couldn’t be more symbolic. The fear over a woman’s sexuality is not a new societal anxiety. The 1980’s for the West was plagued by the secularisation of the world, deterioration of religion – emerging in the form of killing the sexually promiscuous. Seriously. The threat of contamination of the pure became the basis of horror. The classic form was constructed around youth – typically featuring a group of teenagers who are terrorised and taken out in turn, before the virginal girl survives the film. The virginal girl is known as the ‘final girl’, the lone survivor of the slasher film. Nightmare on Elm Street, 1984 demonstrates this troupe perfectly.
Moving past the female form and sexuality, the warm and familiar connotations of motherhood are undoubtedly one of the more unsettling features of female horror. A mothers instinct as a force of horror has generated very successful films in both adult and children’s cinema, such as Hereditary, 2018 and Coraline, 2009. In Coraline, the mistrust and deception by the ‘other mother’ figure was terrifying to watch as a kid, which left both me and my sister very grateful for our real mother. Yet as an adult, the mother figure ‘Annie’ in Hereditary, is equally as unnerving as the root of the family unravelling – along with cults and sacrifice of course…
Clearly, the fear of the woman is a long standing anxiety. We learn the fearsome nature of the female form and the dreaded process of ageing, whilst witnessing the destructive power of sexuality and unhinged motherhood. Yet, it is the power of women that is feared and expressed in these sexist and unsettling ways.
In the future, perhaps women will no longer be used in horror films in gory, graphic ways – and maybe the lone survivor will be a girl, who isn’t waiting for marriage.
