10 Recent Horror Movies Which Broke The Fourth Wall To Scare You
These terrifying features went beyond the limitations of fiction to scare their audiences.
Breaking the fourth wall is not a walk in the park for most stories. If a movie fails at shattering the barrier between fiction and reality, it risks coming across as self-indulgent, unfunny and might lose its audience in the process.
This risk factor applies to the world of horror as well, whose entries have to terrify viewers without calling unnecessary attention to themselves. If done right, breaking the fourth wall has the potential to further immerse the audience into the spine-chilling events in ways a conventional storytelling approach would not be able to do.
Admittedly, the act of a character menacingly staring into the camera these days is seen as old hat but horror fare in the last few decades has gone out of its way to blur the line between the feature and reality in increasingly creative ways. This is the same for somewhat newer movies, as the likes of Cabin in the Woods and Tucker and Dale vs Evil serve as seminal examples of such pictures.
The features in this list are both relatively new in the horror genre and have learnt from their forebears extensively. Because of this, they have delivered moments and sequences that capably balanced being both meta and thrilling.
10. Tone Deaf
Part horror movie, part social commentary and part comedy, Tone Deaf has some interesting ideas but unfortunately falters under the weight of its sky-high ambitions. Despite a game performance from Robert Patrick and director Richard Bates Jr.'s genre experimentation, its boomers vs. millennials plot does not have as much narrative mileage as the creatives involved it hoped it would.
Olive Smith (Amanda Crew) decides to go on a weekend gateway after a series of setbacks in her life and during these two days, stays at Harvey Parker (Patrick)'s home. Unfortunately for Olive, Harvey has a strong disdain for millennials and she ends up staying at his home at the same time the elder man decides to resolve his grievances lethally.
Throughout the film as Harvey stalks Olive, the former frequently turns to the camera to belittle the millennials in the audience, constantly demanding that they get their act together as well as ranting about their perceived inadequacies.
As mentioned before, Patrick does commit to the role and Bates Jr.'s direction is intriguing, but the film's lack of subtlety and insight is what ends up being its downfall.