The 2024 Movie Monster State of the Union

As the year draws to a close, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to provide a sort of State of the Union during the year. movie monster—A quick analysis of what is still considered scary. However, on reflection, that was envisioned as the 21st century Bestiary Starting to look less like one Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual And more like the aisles at my local Walmart. As the old world dies and the new world struggles to be born, it seems the monsters of 2024 may represent the same fears, but they take on a more mundane complexion. Since I’m not sure what to do with this information, I submit for your approval io9’s 2024 monster revue.

known

In a year marked by the re-election of a former president to office, an ongoing war in the Middle East, mounting nuclear fallout and the return of bird flu, 2024 carries a grim sense of repetition. The feeling is we’re going to double down on exactly what we’ve tried before, only more so, with a whole trilogy of material in mind, so it’s never been done before, right?

It’s no coincidence, then, that the year saw the new variety a quiet place, alien, The Woman, Rosemary’s Baby, Beetlejuice, Ghostbusters, Godzilla, Hellboy, Salem’s Lot, The Crow, The Strangers– even wichboardThe likes of which we haven’t heard since the direct-to-video sequel in 1995.

Currently, there seems to be no end to reclaiming past recognized IPs, including new ones Saw, Conjuring, Insidious, Fear Street, I know what you did last summerAnd final destination Movie scheduled for release next year. not mentioned After 28 yearsAnother nostalgia piece boasts a trailer on track to become the most watched horror trailer of all time.

As we enter 2025, this “devil you know” attitude will extend to Universal once again doubling down on its stable of classic monsters, trading the company’s previous efforts at a shared cinematic universe for a bespoke take. frankenstein, bride of frankenstein, wolf man, And the mummy No less than the likes of Guillermo del Toro, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Leigh Wannell and Lee Cronin respectively.

Today even see a new release NosferatuComplete with a marketing campaign hoping to turn its cozy Gothic trappings into a new Christmas tradition. It’s interesting that movie audiences have largely rejected vampires—emphasis on it this Vampires, especially—with films like the last few years Abigail, Renfield, And Demeter’s last journey Failed to make much of an impact on culture or the box office.

its characteristics dracula and/or Nosferatu-Feeding on the blood of others, isolating oneself, yet maintaining enormous wealth and influence over others – these are good things fully supported by culture. The kids call it “Sigma”.

What feels particularly new about this ongoing tendency to stick with what we know is the sudden respect we’ve developed for the humble slasher genre—officially considered horror-of-the-barrel. While yesterday’s cultural detritus becoming tomorrow’s critical darling is nothing new (recent Best Picture winners have included the story of a human woman who falls in love with a fish-man; a universe in which humans have evolved pork products instead of phalanxes; and the socially acceptable ABC of the Week movie, Bad Ronald), nothing that has achieved this level of cultural significance has been laser-focused on the Gore effect. Two and a half hours terrible The film has more in common with the films of Herschel Gordon Lewis than Dario Argento. in violent nature, Which is like a movie reimagined Friday the 13th or crazy From the point of view of its undead killer, it adds an experimental richness to the genre’s classically simple narrative, emphasizing such thin-walled distinguishing films from the French New Wave as indeed the occasional splatter of blood.

Envelope-pushing though terrible While the franchise may seem like a litmus test for human empathy, it’s people like Art the Clown and his Harpo Marx-meets-Freddie Krueger routine that should legitimately take notice. Something too devastating will not be able to find this audience. Which is why I was legitimately interested in a movie that didn’t come out this year: Macon Blair’s remake. The Toxic Avenger. A politically motivated judge, jury and executioner of big business wealth were deemed too flamboyant to reveal anything. I wonder why…

media

Coupled with the continued popularity of slasher films is the taboo approach to housing their star child characters who have recently slipped into the public domain. In the past year, new slashers have been announced starring Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan, Bambi, Popeye, Steamboat Willie, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid and the Mad Hatter. Some bloodthirsty killers about character transfers meant to draw as much revenue as possible into the kingdom feel “right” in a way that’s both timely and inevitable – not to mention punk rock. Once an IP falls into human hands, isn’t the only moral thing to do is to become a monster? Especially if all roads lead to 2024, then Mickey and company will have to agree to sell us a bill of goods for the first time.

One has to lightly scour YouTube these days for an endless array of video essays on darkness pokemon An unusually gruesome PlayStation 2 game starring Theory or Piglet. In these circles, a lost Cartoon Network bumper or unproduced episode SpongeBob SquarePants Spoken with the same hushed reverence as the unexploded nuclear ordinance. When everything is available online, anything—no matter how innocuous—suddenly becomes suspicious and mysterious. If only we told children scary stories, so they wouldn’t get into it Alone in the woods, lost media hunters must stop each other from sharing their credit card information with seed collectors on the dark net.

Recent movie favorites I watched TV Glow Children understand the kind of fanatical devotion that investing themselves heavily in media can bring—the kind people used to describe as “Lovecraftian,” but now refer to by terms like “Disney Adult.” To a generation where Cthulhu was available as a plush doll all their lives, the Great Old Ones might as well have lived alongside Garfield and friends. Smile 2 It follows on the heels of another film from last year to understand the ring And It followsWhere curses spread as transmissible memes that run like viruses — even our celebrities aren’t immune.

As of 2024, “cosmic” horror is strictly Earthbound, and while the beliefs of its media-savvy cultists may seem silly to you, you don’t need to believe in the destructive power of their particular fandom until they do.

Technology

The past year has also seen several movies about monster-fiving AI and bleeding-edge technology—like the movie subjugation And scaredWhere machines are personally invited into homes to improve our quality of life, like vampires, only to reveal some unsettling appetites of their own.

However, as much as we’ve become terrified of robots doing our jobs, we’ve paradoxically collectively lost faith in the idea of ​​technological progress. We have movies about homicidal robot nannies, toys, smart homes, and personal assistants, but we’ve yet to reach the “singularity” where this ever-increasing technology does something awful rather than being better at whatever you vaguely define it as. to be

As our government continues to recognize our airspace as always occupied by physics-defying aircraft beyond human comprehension, I’m reminded of Jordan Peele’s 2022 feature. noWhich suggests that UFOs are secretly some kind of insatiably hungry, atmospheric creatures we zoologists have yet to recognize or catalog. Somehow, it’s easy to believe. Which brings us to…

Life itself/Old man

Much as AI is replacing our workforce, one of the most intriguing trends of the past year has been a string of monster movies centered around—in one way or another—doppelgängers. Whether already as an unknown biological entity the cuckooas a demonic presence Never let go And father’s heador voluntarily engineered proxies as such substanceThe concern at the heart of these stories is not with becoming a monster personally, but with being left out by one—and perhaps missing out on the great things a monster can do.

night beachA recent film in which Amy Adams transforms into a dog as an expression of her repressed rage, has been touted as a net positive. The idea of ​​losing control has had tremendous appeal lately. Just like Demi Moore’s fear of irrelevance substanceThe real fear is being left behind.

Speaking of which, if 2024 can be defined by an incessant boogeyman, the title must unanimously go to old men. Like movies Heretic, Apartment 7A, And Alien: Romulusfeatured adults (if not directly late, Like the ghost of poor Ian Holm Romulus) harassing youngsters for a variety of reasons, from financial gain to just proving they’re still relevant from the comfort of their own booby-trapped homes.

People often fail to see the difference between a mummy and a zombie, but the difference between them is noticeable. Mummies differ from zombies in that a zombie is something that is clinically dead, but somehow still behaves as if it were alive. A mummy is a thing that should be dead after all, yet biologically so is Still alive—as Kharis’s heart beat to the beat of Universal’s drawn pages Mummy’s hand, Mummy’s Tomb, mummy ghost, and d Curse of the Mummy.

Upon release Nosferatu Today, in Count Orlo we have a familiar, older, copyright-infringing ghoul who refuses to budge from the beginning of the film. Right man for the times, indeed.

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