“Midsommar” opens July 3, and it’s the latest of a long string of horror films in theaters this year. Director Ari Aster, who helmed last year’s surprise hit “Heredity” with Toni Collette and Gabriel Byrne, brings to the screen a set of friends who venture to Sweden for a mid-summer festival that only happens every 90 years. The trip comes a nightmarish voyage in the hands of a Scandivanian cult.
Horror has worn many faces, from Jason Voorhes’ hockey mask in the “Friday the 13th” series to Michael Myers’ mask in “Halloween,” but the main characters, murderers and most of the victims have looked the same: young, fit and white. Wes Craven, who first rose to infamy with “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and other scary flicks, went so far as to satirizes his own genre with the “Scream” franchise. No matter, those at first did little to change the formula to attract audiences: let the heroine have fair skin and preferably blond hair and the killer be a straight white male of strong stature. Minorities are fine as long they are in surrounding roles and add to the casualty/body count.
But it’s 2019, and as the push for more diversity in Hollywood has taken hold, so has the genre. It was once about rebellion with George A. Romero and “Night of the Living Dead” but became rubber-stamped with formulaic sequels and quick cash grabs in the 2000s and 2010s. This year, horror movies have explored other audiences and stories. Here’s a look at some titles that are changing horror.
“Velvet Buzzsaw”
Director Dan Gilroy goes from the terror of being a news junkie and wanting to be first to the horrific world of art and snobbery with “Velvet Buzzsaw.” Starring “Nightcrawler” cast members Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo, the Netflix movie shows greed’s destructive nature as art gallery owners and their worker bees fight over a dead man’s paintings. However, these masterpieces have diabolical plans of their own. The supporting cast includes Daveed Diggs, Zawe Ashton and John Malkovich, and the personalities aren’t like other seen in horror flicks. “Velvet Buzzsaw” is not for everyone, as it’s the only movie that I have rated five stars but I would not recommend to anyone. It’s a truly bizarre but beautifully told film take I enjoyed, but there may be only three people on earth I would expect to like it.
“Happy Death Day 2 U”
The sequel to the 2017 box office hit takes a sci-fi turn to retell the original movie. It has the typical blonde in Jessica Rothe as the heroine Tree, the repeated victim of a rotten birthday. Tree is, however, not the woman who waits to be saved by someone as she helps a team of science nerds (played by Phi Vu, Suraj Sharma and Sarah Yarkin) calculate an equation to get the time loop to end. As a sequel, it feels like it’s a repeat of the first movie, but it changes its storytelling.
“Us”
Before Jordan Peele directed this film, there were very few examples of blackness in horror. The most iconic roles come from Duane Jones in “Night of the Living Dead,” William Marshall in “Blacula” and Tony Todd in “Candyman.” Craven even mocked this unfortunate stereotype with Jada Pinkett and Omar Epps in the opening minutes of 1997’s “Scream 2.” With “Us,” Peele puts the Wilsons, a middle-class family, front and center with Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke facing a terrorizing group of doppelgangers. The film shows the country’s economic and political divide through the eyes of a black family — not used as props for the killer to slash or a money grab for minorities to see the movie in theaters. Each Wilson has a distinctive personality, and the film is full of commentary on society and film.
“Ma”
The Tate Taylor movie takes the tired formula of a high school outcast wanting to get back at their bullies by aging up its hero and changing their appearance. Taylor teams up again with his star of “The Help” and “Get On Up,” Octavia Spencer, with the actress as the unlikely ally-turned-tormenter of Mississippi teens in an unexpected turn for both of them. It hits on race relations, class, and social roles a bit, but it falls flat overall. It makes a well-deserved jab at Tyler Perry and his Madea creation. While it’s not well executed, the existence of “Ma” in the horror realm adds to the genre as an example that not all killers have to look alike to be entertaining.
