Apigtail-wearing Jenna Ortega walks up to a towering statue of Edgar Allan Poe and snaps her fingers twice - *snap, snap*. It’s a rhythm familiar to most, and instinctively our brain connects the sound that should precede it: tara-ra-ra snap snap, the theme song to The Addams Family, first written in 1964 by Vic Mizzy for the television series. Since its debut as a cartoon in The New Yorker in 1938, Charles Addams’ incantation of a spooky take on the quintessential American family has enchanted the world, from the small screen in the 1960s then as two cult classic films in the ‘90s. The latest iteration focuses on our alt-heroine Wednesday Addams, as brought to life by Ortega, in the Netflix show Wednesday.
There is a general outline to who Wednesday is: sassy, precocious, and brilliant, with a penchant for guillotines and a ubiquitous uniform of jet-black pigtails and a fang-like white collar peeking out from the neckline of a little black dress, symbolizing her precise dedication to discipline and perfection. Twenty-year old Ortega might be a newer name to people who grew up with past Addams adaptations, but like her screen alter-ego, she is disciplined, witty, and highly intelligent, with a career that’s already half her age.
Her break as a child actor came with her turn as young Jane in Jane the Virgin, where she was able to hone her chops. She then graduated into more complex roles, creating buzz with a noteworthy stint on the stalker-core favorite show You. school shooting and its unfolding impact where she was able to give.
a broad range performance. “I’m excited by the human experience and all that you can contribute [to it],” she says of the role. “The idea of making people feel something and being able to put myself in the shoes of other people and
see the world from a different perspective is so fascinating to me.” With You and Wednesday, Jenna adds to a list of projects that are clearly defined by their spooky nature, including The Babysitter: Killer Queen, X, and this year’s Scream, where she
Wednesday is, off the jump, a fresh take on a familiar character. Although we see new takes on Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones), Gomez (Luis Guzmán), Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez), and Lurch (George Burcea), the show centers on Ortega’s Wednesday, marking the first time a member of the oft-costumed family flees the nest (or perhaps spider web would be more appropriate) to become a lead character. Deep in the throes of adolescence, Wednesday’s misbehavior at a normie high school lands her in Nevermore Academy, a gothic boarding school for gifted misfits, including vampires, mermaids, werewolves, and other members of the fantastical. Wednesday is an outcast’s outcast, a sardonic genius with deadpan wit, big eyes, and savage quips ready to fire. Ortega is part of an array of Latina actresses breaking the ceiling and creating space in the industry, including Melissa Barrera who plays her older sister in the latest Scream series. “There aren’t a lot of leading lady Latinas in the industry – not because they’re not out there, but because they aren’t given the same opportunity,” she explains. “Growing up, I was always told that I had to take absolutely any job that I could get.” Now, she notes, “Listed ethnicity for jobs is not as strict as it used to be… for the most part, I feel like they give everyone an opportunity, which is really wonderful.” One of these
opportunities is Wednesday, which is a big deal. I tell her as much, saying that the child me in Mexico would’ve geeked if the iconic character was Latina.
There are two key collaborators of the show who helped authenticate the endeavor. The first is the aforementioned Ricci, who guest stars as a Nevermore teacher and mentor/counselor to Ortega’s Wednesday. The second is Tim Burton, who, by his successful construction of worlds that are strange and unusual, fits nicely as an architect of the Addams universe. Burton serves as executive producer and director of four of the eight episodes. “It was an honor. It’s hard to find an actor’s director, who knows how to speak to an actor and is curious to know what they genuinely think. That was something Tim would always do,” Ortega shares, noting they would overview the character, her markup, her intentions, together. “We’d be doing setups for shots and he would just show me drawings that he did for each,” she adds.
More recent slashers often have to remove characters’ cellphones as the first order of business before getting the story started. After weapons and cars, cellphones are the most important item when it comes to surviving a killer.
These characters’ deaths often deliver a sense of justice amidst the senseless murders that can help endear a killer to fans. Fans might cheer when they see a jerk die, and their deaths are the best guilt-free kills in a horror.
There’s nothing more careless than a horror movie character finally obtaining a weapon, only to drop it. In some movies, a character will even get ahold of a gun, giving them a major advantage over the killer, only to drop it before murdering their attacker.
Many horror characters could have avoided their fates by continuing driving. As Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Hitcher proves, the best things a character can do is just keep driving and phone the police if they’re concerned. Also, picking up a hitchhiker will seal a victim’s fate.
Never split up.
Large groups of characters often split up in horror movies, which is easily one of the most foolish decisions. Splitting up means it becomes significantly easier for killers to pick off their victims and corner the survivors. Many characters are quick to point out the idiocy of thinning their numbers.
There are few horror locations as terrifying as a basement. The Evil Dead franchise centers on Ash Williams and his friends’ terrible decision to explore a basement and its secrets. In horror, characters are always better off staying above ground.
In many slasher movies, intimacy and sex are death warrants. The characters who sneak off are already at risk of being attacked, but it’s even worse when characters are naked and vulnerable.
Drugs and alcohol are almost always a firm death sentence in slashers. When being stalked by a serial killer, the biggest weakness a character can give themselves is to dull their senses. Some meta horror movies even discuss the running joke that the ‘stoner’ character or, as Cabin in the Woods put it, “the fool” will face almost certain death.
Even in isolated settings, like Midsommar’s commune or Halloween’s Haddonfield, there’s always a character who insists on staying in town, even though their friends usually protest this choice. Once things start to go wrong - especially in an unfamiliar location - leaving is the only sensible option.
If there are any firm rules in horror, it’s that the characters most sure of their survival are the ones who will die first. Fans can expect that anyone who promises to be right back, especial ly side characters, will die within moments.
Do you ever re-visit your iconic Psycho role to perform in Halloween?
Occasionaly I take myself back there, but not to really use it to perform, more to rekindle and think about my life’s work. It helps me put everything into persepective and really take a step back and indulge in.
How was the experience reuniting with your co-stars from the original film?
Iremembercarrying Kyle Richards on my back on the last day of filming in 1978. She was a little girl on that set and suddenly there we were, 40 years later as two grown women with families of our own. And my beloved Nancy [Stephens] is such a fierce, progressive badass. When she and I ran into each other in our trailers we just immediately started sobbing. We’ve lost a lot of friends over the years and there we were together again–and not dead! It was all extremely emotional.
Had you been itching to revisit Laurie Strode after she was killed off in Halloween: Resurrection?
Youwanna know the truth? I was sitting at home in the mountains during the summer of 2017 minding my own business—probably reading a book and thinking about what I was gonna make for dinner. The phone rings and it’s my godson Jake Gyllenhaal, saying, ‘My buddy David wants to talk to you about a Halloween movie.’ I thought his movie with Jake was incredibly moving so I told him to give David my number. He called and I just told him to send me the script; I read it and I called back that afternoon to say I was in. It had everything to do with the integrity of what they were focusing the story on. Everything they were interested in was what I tried to bring to the H20 movie.
So those retirement comments were your way of getting out before you were asked to leave, so to speak?
I’mthe type of person who’ll be gone before you ever consider not wanting me. I kept thinking, “Have I done enough?” But it was nothing more than being the child of very famous actors who one day didn’t get to act anymore.
Was it appealing to you when David Gordon Green proposed making direct sequels to the 1978 original?
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When the 2018 Halloween came out, you spoke a lot about how the film was a labor of love for everyone involved. How’d it feel to see it be so rapturously received by fans?
Tohave that movie receive that reaction 40 years after the original was an indescribable experience. What I love about it is that we made it just like the first film. The original was made so fast for so little money by a small group of people, and David similarly lightened the load so we could make these fast and furiously. Nobody got paid upfront, including yours truly. It’s not because we knew we’d make a lot of money on the backend—those numbers were certainly unexpected. And traditionally horror films don’t get great reviews; so given my history with this character, it felt pretty amazing.
Over the course of a century, film horror has gone through many peaks and troughs, leading us into the somewhat contentious period we find ourselves in today. The history of horror as a film genre begins with—as with many things in cinema history—the works of George Mellies.
Just a few years after the first filmmakers emerged in the mid1890s, Mellies created “Le Manoir du Diable,” sometimes known in English as “The Haunted Castle” or “ The House of the Devil,” in 1898, and it is widely believed to be the first horror movie. The three-minute film is complete with cauldrons, animated skeletons, ghosts, transforming bats, and, ultimately, an incarnation of the Devil. While not intended to be scary—more wondrous, as was Mellies’ MO—it was the first example of a film (only just rediscovered in 1977) to include the supernatural and set a precedent for what was to come. Where the genre will go over the next hundred years is anyone’s guess, but sometimes it’s good to look back on the long road we’ve traveled to get to this point.
After the first horror movie, sometime between 1900 and 1920, an influx of supernatural-themed films followed. Many filmmakers—most of whom still trying to find their feet with the new genre—turn to literature classics as source material.
The first adaptation of Frankenstein was released by Edison Studios in these early days, as well as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Werewolf (now both lost to the fog of time.) Things were starting to roll at this point as we moved into…
Widely considered to be the finest era of the genre, the two decades between the 1920s and 30s saw many classics being produced and can be neatly divided down the middle to create a separation between the silent classics and the talkies.
On the silent side of the line, you’ve got monumental titles such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922), the first movies to really make an attempt to unsettle their audience. The latter title is one of Rotten Tomatoes’ best horror movies of all time and cements just about every surviving vampire cliché in the book.
Once the silent era gave way to the technological process, we had a glut of incredible movies that paved the way for generations to come, particularly in the field of monster movies – think the second
iteration of Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932) and the first color adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931).
The 30s also marked the first time that the word “horror” was used to describe the genre— previously, it was really just romance melodrama with a dark element—and it also saw the first horror “stars” being born. Bella Lugosi (of Dracula fame) was arguably the first to specialize solely in the genre.
Occult was the flavor of the day between the 70s and 80s, particularly when it came to houses and kids being possessed by the Devil. The reason for this cultural obsession with religious evil during this period could fill an entire article on its own, but bringing it back into the cinema realm, we can boil the trend down to two horror milestones: The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen (1976). Supernatural horror was now very much back in vogue, and harking back to its cinematic origins, literature once again became the source material. This time, however, it wasn’t a Victorian author whose work had fallen out of copyright but a gentleman named Stephen King. Carrie (1976) stormed
the gates, and The Shining (1980) finished the siege (with 1982’s supernatural frightfest Poltergeist following soon afterward). With these hallmarks in the history of horror now firmly established, the foundations were laid for…
The state of the horror industry is hotly contested. With the genre seemingly relying on churning out remakes, reboots, and endless sequels, many
argue that it’s languishing in the doldrums once again with little originality to offer a modern audience.
The resurgence of ‘torture porn’ is also derided as a subgenre, having come back into the fore in the wake of the 2000s Saw and Hostel franchises with no signs of slowing down.
With perhaps more subgenres than any other branch of fictional filmmaking, it’s difficult to see how anyone can expand or advance on
anything that has come before in cinematic horror. However, there’s no doubt somebody will, and that motivated and imaginative film school students become the Alfred Hitchcocks of tomorrow.
WesCraven is the name behind some of the most iconic horror movies of all time. Taking inspiration from Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring (1960), Craven made The Last House on the Left (1972) in his feature film debut.
Much like Tarantino’s early beginnings, Craven’s style was lambasted for being overly explicit, both in terms of
physical and sexual violence. However, he continued to make cult classic after cult classic, including The Hills Have Eyes (1977) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).
His later work on Scream (1996) dabbled in comedy and made his films more palatable for a commercial audience, but his earlier work remains among the most visceral horror out there.
Whilehe may have only directed two “actual” horror films—Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963)—it would be a huge mistake to leave the great Alfred Hitchcock off of any list about horror directors.
Sure, there aren’t many traditional horror films in his resume, but he contributed so much to the genre’s establishment and evolution that we view him as a seminal and pivotal influence for horror movies.
Hitchcock’s ability to create suspense was unrivaled, able
to draw tension in any scene using his mastery of blocking and staging. That said, he stands apart from most horror directors in that he never dealt with monsters or ghosts. Instead, he explored the cold, callous nature that many people possess—and that’s just as terrifying. For key examples, check out Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), and Vertigo (1958). So skilled was he
that Hitchcock was able to make showers scary for the entire world. A true master.
To this day, John Carpenter’s films stand tall—not just among the greatest films in horror, but the greatest films of all time. Carpenter certainly made a name for himself in every genre he worked in, but his efforts in horror are appreciated the most.
From the iconic opening sequence of Halloween (1978) and the chilling theme in The Thing (1982), Carpenter immediately made a statement for how he would impact the horror genre. He had a hand in nearly every aspect of the filmmaking, including writing, directing, and composing. While underappreciated in his time, his films have emerged as cult classics in the modern era, and both Halloween (1978) and The Fog (1980) became revolutionary frontrunners of the slasher genre, inspiring a whole generation of independent filmmakers with a new realm to explore.
Mike Flanagan has been on the horror scene for the last ten years, directing films that focus on character psychology and the effects of trauma. His films Before I Wake (2016) and Gerald’s Game (2017) are prime examples, but he has also done features with supernatural elements, including Oculus (2013), Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016), and Doctor Sleep (2019).
Mike Flanagan stands out for his effective use of jump scares—in how he stays his hand when most directors would put in a jump scare, which makes his eventual jump scares that much more sudden and shocking. Tied into that is Mike Flanagan’s unmatched understanding of how to use camerawork to lull viewers into a false sense of security.
He’s lately been moving more into television—with standout series in The Haunting of Hill House (2018) and Midnight Mass (2021)—and he’s made it clear that he’ll be a horror genre mainstay for years to come.
Stephen King’s supernatural horror novel became a classic scary movie when it was released in 1976, highlighting the horrors of adolescence, puberty, and high school in general.
The demonic possession film has become a sub-genre of its own and the OG entry in the category is 1973’s The Exorcist.
A monstrous murderer who comes for you in your dreams and kills you in your sleep? It’s a real nightmare and, appropriately, the premise for the ‘80s classic.
All work and no play makes people go literally insane and attempt to murder their families—at least, that’s the lesson in 1980’s The Shining. The Kubrick adaptation of Stephen King’s book is a psychological mind trip—in the best and scariest of ways, of course.
This modern classic about a family who moves into an isolated farmhouse is scary enough to have spawned a whole bunch of spin-offs (you can thank this film for the Annabelle series, for example) that will probably outlive us all.
Horror movies have all sorts of different characters that jump out at us and leave us hiding behind our cushions, from creepy kids to dolls with a life of their own. In the past few decades, creepy clowns have become a character type in horror movies and television shows that are consistently terrifying and fit quite well into the horror genre. Even without the chilling storyline of a horror movie, the shocking twists, or the unexpected jump scares, clowns alone have become a fairly common fear, especially in young children. Is this because of their increasingly popular association with horror
movies?
While we used to associate clowns with funny makeup, jokes and children’s entertainment, they have now taken on a darker and, in most cinematic cases, murderous disposition; from the scary clown panic of 2016 to the IT franchise and the recent film The Black Phone, clowns have gotten dark. So how did clowns find their role in horror movies, and what makes them go together so well to create a sinister atmosphere and generate such a deep fear within us?
Coulrophobia is the extreme or irrational fear of clowns, but how did this fear become so popular? While most clowns are trying to be innocent, silly, and fun, nowadays, most children actually don’t like clowns and find them weird. Yet, clowns were originally joyous and jolly characters — pranksters, jesters, jokers, and tricksters — which have been around for centuries and were important figures in cultural history.
They typically appeared in most
cultures long before the dawn of TV, and were used to serve as entertainment, even making Egyptian pharaohs laugh. Ancient Rome’s version of a clown was a stock fool called the stupidus, and in the 18th and 19th centuries, the clown figure of Western Europe became the pantomime clown. Not long after, they began to appear at children’s birthday parties. All these versions of clown were made to be fun or the butt of jokes, and the ultimate goal was to make people laugh,
so where did it take this modern horrifying turn? Well, clowns are silly and mischievous — and mischief can easily be dark. The clown’s manic behavior and urge to cause mischief (and their love and joy for causing it) can easily be associated with chaos, which can be seen with the Joker from Batman, the ultimate association of the clown archetype with chaos itself. Furthermore, the clown has recently become synonymous with malice and murder, which is exactly what has hap-
Theappearance of clowns in real life and on the big screen alone can be terrifying, especially when exaggerated. What lies behind that bright white skin? Why is the smile painted on so large? The features that we recognize have been amplified, and they appear almost human, but not quite. They essentially blur the lines between human and demon, as the makeup can distort their features. The reason we might feel scared they might unleash a creepy killer clown is that, behind the makeup, you can’t tell who the clowns are or what they’re feeling. That’s part of what makes Ethan Hawke’s performance so scary in The Black Phone, he perpetually hides his face, whether through thick clown-like face paint or terrifying masks.
For example, serial killer John Wayne Gacy was a beloved children’s entertainer, but soon became known as the Killer Clown. Something seemed incredibly but horribly appropriate about a serial killer disguised as a clown (something echoed in The Black Phone). Children are incredibly vulnerable, and clowns are endlessly associated with children, so we get scared when they become unpredictable. It is said that we only tend to feel scared when we’re confronted with the uncertainty of the threat; as such, part of what makes clowns so scary and us so vulnerable to them is that their behavior can be so unpredictable, which is why they work so well in horror.
Perhaps clowns do not deserve the horror they are now receiving, but maybe they’re just too creepy to ever turn back to their original jolly, silly persona as entertainers. The scares that clowns now create in the horror genre are extremely popular, and let’s admit, they can be terrifying. If we saw a man dressed as a clown, with that abnormal makeup and creepy smile (not to mention the weirdly large feet) walking towards us, we’d be creeped out. The union of professional clowns may be hurt by all this, but horror lovers cannot complain, because they make great villains and will likely continue to be for generations to come.
The concept of “Cursed Films” and their productions is one that has been mythologized by social media and several documentaries. When a film has a behindthe-scenes story so disastrous that there had to be some kind of supernatural intervention. Having a fraught production is not exclusive to horror, of course. Across every single genre there’s going to be films with baggage, from something as minor as personal conflicts between actors, to major catastrophes, injuries and even deaths. Even a wholesome family feature like The Wizard of Oz can have a real dark side when you research
what the cast had to go through, but when it’s a horror film it almost becomes a selling point. The disasters add to the film’s mystique, that it was just as terrifying to make as it was to watch, a film so scary that it was demonic. The horrific helicopter crash in The Twilight Zone: The Movie; the mysterious deaths and human skeletons in Poltergeist; Cannibal Holocaust is more recognized for its horrific production than the content or quality of the actual film.
The Exorcist is one such film. Directed by William Friedkin and released in 1973, The Exorcist was part of a brand-new chapter of
horror films. There are films before it that are still regarded as great, but horror films of the 1970s, chiefly The Omen, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Exorcist, are still regarded as truly terrifying. The mass hysteria surrounding The Exorcist lives in infamy, the visceral and physical reactions it caused in those watching it, that no one had seen a film quite like it. The twisted possession of young Regan McNeil, played masterfully by Linda Blair, and the attempts to expel the demon inside of her, is still regarded as one of the most terrifying films of all time, even 49 years later.
The fact that it is one in the canon of cursed films only exacerbates this. The stories are very well known by this point: how the house they were shooting at caught fire and was burned to the ground, except for the set of Regan’s room; how they brought a priest to bless the set as a precaution; the amount of mass hysteria that spread across the audience worldwide;
and, as it is commonplace with cursed films, the misfortune that befell the cast and crew. Injuries, deaths, and the deaths of family members. Standard fare for a cursed film, unfortunate events that are connected through the production of a highly controversial horror picture.
However,injuries don’t just happen, and not all accidents are entirely free from blame. As academics of film and film production, it is our responsibility to demystify these cursed films, and give due credit to those who had to endure it.
Production starts in 1972, and it becomes clear to the cast and crew, as it becomes clear to anyone researching the production of this film, that most of the on-set chaos sits squarely on the shoulders of Friedkin himself. He had gained a reputation for his rather manic and irrational demeanor and his, to say the least, “peculiar” directing methods. Friedkin was known to fire guns or hit actors to elicit a real jump of fright. He was known to be incredibly intense and would do anything to get the take he wanted, including turning the set into an icebox for the camera to catch the fogged breath. There was clearly a method to this madness, but the authenticity of a scene meant more to him than the health and safety of the actors, which resulted in both Blair and Ellen Burstyn, who played Regan’s mother, receiving permanent spine damage due to faulty special effect riggings. The shots that end up in the film are usually the exact ones where the actors are really injured by the riggings and pulleys of early special effects setups, and Friedkin insisting on continuing despite those injuries, or encouraging further ones.
The cursed doll Annabelle was first introduced in The Conjuring (2013) and later the focus of a separate franchise with the films Annabelle (2014), Annabelle: Creation (2017) and Annabelle Comes Home (2019). The doll is based off a Raggedy Anne doll that was gifted to a young nurse. But after a string of mysterious events occur, including a traumatic experience with the nurse’s boyfriend, the nurse and her friend invited a medium over, who stated that the doll was inhabited by the spirit of a deceased 7-year-old named Annabelle Higgins. The doll, allegedly cursed by a demonic spirit, has been blamed for violent attacks and at least two near-death experiences. The allegedly haunted Raggedy Anne doll is kept in the Occult Museum owned by paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren with a message under her glass case reading: “Warning: Positively do not open.”
The 1982 classic co-written by Steven Spielberg tells the story of a family whose home was built on a burial ground and plagued by its violent spirits. The premise of the story was based on the Hermann family, who claimed that their Long Island, New York, home was haunted by a poltergeist due to objects mysteriously flying around the house. The family, who eventually moved, believe the events were due to the home being near a Native American burial site.
Bryan Bertino’s 2008 film, which starred Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler, chronicled a terrifying home invasion. The story was inspired by real-life violent crimes, including the murders committed by the Manson Family and the 1981 Keddie Cabin Murders, in which four people were killed by three masked assailants in a California resort town. It was announced Sept. 13 that The Strangers will be getting a reboot from Lionsgate, with Madelaine Petsch to star and Renny Harlin directing.
The 1974 film centered on chainsaw murderer Leatherface is loosely inspired by the life and crimes of killer Ed Gein, also known as “the Butcher of Plainfield” or “Plainfield Ghoul,” in the 1950s. Gein exhumed corpses from graveyards and made keepsakes from their bones and skin. Gein also had a history of wearing women’s clothes as Leatherface does in the original film.
