2. No More Happy Endings
Itd be a stretch to say that horror films had, until recently, provided happy endings, but typically they at least reached some form of catharsis before the credits rolled. The demon was defeated at the end of The Exorcist, Michael Myers was at least staved off at the end of the original Halloween, and likewise for many other horror films of the past. Thats not to say that there werent exceptions; The Blair Witch Project, Night of the Living Dead, and The Omen all ended on a down note. But by and large, the evil was defeated more times than not. Not so anymore. In recent years, the endings of American horror films have taken on an increasingly bleak perspective, with the protagonists routinely defeated, outsmarted, and killed by their enemies. The end of nearly every found footage movie features the camera operators and main characters dying (leaving the footage behind to be found by someone else). The Saw films, especially the early installments, show the Jigsaw killer outsmarting and outlasting his victims. And while their are survivors in Hostel, they only survive by becoming as bad as their enemies. Even in the remakes or revisions of classic horror films, the killer seems to win (see: the Friday the 13th remake, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning). Hardly anyone gets away alive, and if they do, they dont get away clean. Where does this newfound bleakness come from? More than likely, its from the persistent threat of terrorism and random violence that hangs over our society. Even discounting terrorism, there has been an upswing in random acts of violence throughout the country over recent years. Combine that with the fact that the victims of these acts are almost always innocent civilians, targeted at random, and you get a somewhat hopeless outlook at what it means to be an American today. Now, obviously most of us will (hopefully) never fall victim to one of these incidents, but the reality that they do and can happen still lingers in the back of our collective subconscious, and so our horror films have taken it upon themselves to explore that fear, wondering if maybe everything isnt going to be okay after all.