Horror can be easily described as a genre defined by blood and gore and a bastion of monsters and murderers.  But, that’s mostly been a result of more recent entries in the genre that have leaned more heavily in the direction of graphic violence.  In reality, the horror genre has gone through a significant evolution through the whole history of cinema, dating all the way back to the silent era and all the way up to now.  And what you’ll discover about the horror genre by looking back on it’s history is that it didn’t always need to spook it’s audience in order to make them terrified.  For the most part, most horror filmmakers weren’t allowed to go as far as they are now with depicting blood and gore on screen, so they often relied on using cinematic language to suggest terrifying elements within their movies.  Looking back on some of the first horror films ever made, like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922), it is quite amazing to see how well they are able to convey a feeling of absolute terror with only light and shadow, as well as some truly Gothic imagery.  They still remain some of the most terrifying films today, even almost 100 years later, and that shows just how powerful the visual image is at conveying terror.  Though the filmmakers were certainly working under limitations, it still enabled them to be creative and allow imagination to fill out the gaps.  Movies that give the audience the opportunity to imagine the unseen horror often stand out more as the most terrifying kind of horror movies, because nothing on screen could ever match up to the worst things that we can think of.  Our imagination can go into surprisingly dark territories when put to the test by these kinds of horror movies, and one thing that I’ve noticed in more recent horror films is a return to that kind of interplay between the filmmakers and the audience.

At the same time, we aren’t seeing horror films with graphic violence and supernatural monsters going away either.  IT: Chapter Two is still performing well at the box office, and that movie is what you’d expect as the atypical Hollywood horror flick.  It’s got scary monsters, jump scares, and a whole lot of blood and gore.  At the same time, it’s also apparent to the viewer that it’s not an entirely scary movie.  In fact, I’d say that half of the movie works as a comedy.  Is the film entertaining, yes; but not all that scary.  Sure there are some genuinely terrifying parts, but I don’t think that you’ll fnd anybody who’ll describe it as the most terrifying movie that’s ever been made.  It’s interesting to note how this contrasts with another Stephen King adaptation, The Shining (1980), which is described by far more people as the most terrifying movie ever made.  The Shining, though it works with the same standards of gore and violence as IT, comes through as far more consistently terrifying.  Why is that?  I believe it has to do with more consistency of tone.  IT bounces back and forth between the goofy and horrific, while The Shining builds it’s feeling of dread towards it’s ultimately horrific ending.  Most filmmakers tend to not like that slow burn style of storytelling and prefer to grab a hold of their audience right from the outset.  But what Stanley Kubrick revealed through his own telling of Stephen King’s classic novel is that by allowing the audience to absorb the movie before pulling the rug out from under them, you intensify their sense of terror as the movie goes along.  It’s that slow march towards the horrific that feels all the more rewarding, because as the movie goes along, the audience grows more and more anxious, knowing that something right around the corner will come out to shock them.

There are two schools of thinking that have developed around how you approach a horror movie, and they follow that divide that we’ve seen between the differences in the aforementioned Stephen King adaptations.  There are some filmmakers that choose to withhold moments of terror in favor of building up the atmosphere, while there are others that don’t waste a single moment in showing you every horrific thing it can.  The latter is usually what you’ll find coming from the major Hollywood studios, because they are the safe and predictable choice.  Taking the former approach is not as ideal for studios to invest in, because it requires far more faith that the audience will jump on board and accept the unpredictable.  But, playing it safe when it comes to horror has it’s pitfalls too, because if there is one thing that a horror movie fan hates, it’s complacency.  You scare someone once, they become guarded for what comes next, so if you just repeat the same kind of scares over and over again, they audience just grows numb to it.  You could see this play out very clearly in the decade long glut of slasher flicks that we got during the 2000’s, with movies like Final Destination (2000), Jeepers Creepers (2001), Valentine (2001) and many others trying perhaps way too hard to follow in the footsteps of Scream (1996).  Eventually the box office returns for these kinds of movies dried up and the studios began abandoning them.  It wasn’t until Blumhouse Productions stepped in the 2010’s that we’ve seen a revitalization for the genre, thanks to the indie producer’s more manageable production budgets.  And by setting the genre on more grounded footing, it allows for more filmmakers to experiment with the pacing of their horror, which itself garners up some interesting results.

One of the most interesting things about horror as a genre is how it’s very much driven by cinematic vision.  Indeed, the success rate for a horror film is determined by how well the filmmaker uses the medium to convey terror on screen.  This is where the groundwork of the pioneers of early cinema becomes so important, because they are the ones who wrote the language of visual horror in the first place.  We have visionaries like F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, James Whale and Tod Browning to thank for making us afraid of what lurks in the shadows at night.  Even when the genre shifted to more graphic violence thanks to the slasher flicks of the 1970’s and 80’s, the influence of those early films can still be felt.  Just look at how John Carpenter lights Michael Myers in Halloween (1978), almost completely in shadow with his mask being the one illuminated element.  Whether we know it or not, we are conscious of the rules of horror film-making, and adhering to those rules is what can make or break the effectiveness of a horror movie.  It’s especially interesting to see this play out in horror franchises, when the cinematic vision is dramatically shifted between films.  For instance, there is such a dramatic shift in tone between William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) and the John Boorman directed sequel, Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977).  The original Exorcist is deliberately paced, almost procedural drama that smacks it’s audience hard when it arrives at it’s most horrifying moments, while Exorcist II is overblown, showy and decided less terrifying.  One director wanted to take his time building tension while the other wanted to show off, and that difference shows just how important it can be to give you audience the chance to absorb the film before being terrified.  This is one example of where a franchise was derailed by loosing it’s grip on subtlety, but more recently, we’ve seen an example where the opposite was true.  In 2014, Universal and Hasbro made the very cynical move of turning their Ouija board game brand into a horror film franchise.  The result was a standard, cliche ridden mess that did nothing to help promote the game nor make a splash within the genre.  However, when they planned to make a sequel, they turned to an actual horror filmmaker named Michael Flanagan who had previously won raves for his breakout film Oculus (2013) and he crafted a far more subtle, well thought out, and more importantly, scary follow-up with Ouija: Origin of Evil, which was far better received by critics and audiences.

More recently we’ve been seeing movies that have followed that pattern, straying away from fright by the minute tactics and choosing to use atmosphere and tension to terrify their audiences.  One company in particular that seems to be delivering that example is independent outfit A24.  Their catalog of films spans a variety of genres, but what is particularly interesting is how they are delivering in the horror genre.  They seem to favor very artistic horror films, with a very deliberate directorial stamp on them, helping them to stand out among others in the genre.  Indeed, it really is hard to compare an A24 film with anything else in the genre.  They were the ones who put out Kevin Smith’s foray into body horror film-making with Tusk (2014); they released the Robert Eggers period set The Witch (2015); and most recently they made a splash by putting out Ari Aster’s controversial cult movie Midsommar (2019).  Midsommar in particular stands out within the genre, because stylistically it goes against so many horror film-making rules.  Nearly the entire movie is bathed in sunlight, eliminating any use of shadows to hide terrors hiding within view.  It’s also a movie that doesn’t rely on jump scares or significant moments of graphic violence.  It instead plays by the same principle that movies like The Shining and The Exorcist built their moments of horror on, which is to build a sense of growing terror over time, allowing the audience to grow comfortable with the movie before the terror begins to envelop them.  By the end of the movie, the audience has reached a level of unease that may not have shaken them to the core, but nevertheless has left them emotionally drained and petrified.  It’s that kind of horror that really appeals to filmmakers, because it makes the film stick longer in the audiences memory.  Like I said before, audiences grow numb to consistent scares thrown at them, but slowing pulling them into a state of unease is something that leaves a lasting impact, and that’s something that Midsommar relishes in doing.

However, it may surprise you that a movie doesn’t even need to be about something supernatural or horrific to be terrifying.  Sometimes, a real life moment can create a sense of terror that is equal to what we see in any horror movies.  I can tell you that one of the most tense experiences that I had watching a movie this year was in watching the documentary Free Solo on an IMAX screen.  The movie is just about a free solo rock climber named Alex Hannold who tries to be the first person to ever scale the face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, without the assistance of safety ropes.  You know already just by the fact that the movie exists that he made it through alive, but even while watching the movie you feel this sense of dread that he could fall to his death at any moment, and that just fills you with this feeling of absolute dread while watching the movie; helped greatly by the you are there with him placements of the cameras.  And that’s just a movie that feels like a horror movie while being something else entirely.  There is another movie I saw this year that on the surface wouldn’t typically be looked at as a horror movie, but to me was absolutely the most terrifying thing I’ve seen all year.  That movie would be Gaspar Noe’s new film Climax.  The French auteur is notorious for breaking cinematic conventions and assaulting his audience will sometimes overwhelming imagery.  With Climax, he presents a very unconventional horror movie by mixing it into the world of dance.  Imagine if Step Up (2006) had a drug trips in it, and that is basically what Climax turns into.  Members of a dance troupe discover that their after party punch has been spiked with LSD, and the remainder of the film becomes something of a bad trip turned into a nightmare, and Noe never holds back.  You feel the overwhelming dread that spreads throughout the movie as the characters are trapped in their inescapable drugged state, and you are right there in the middle of it too.  That to me was more horrifying to watch play out than anything in IT: Chapter Two, and that’s because it’s rooted in a very human horror of a waking nightmare that you can’t escape until it’s run it’s coarse.

Sometimes I’ve found that the most terrifying movies ever made are the ones that are grounded in reality, which is probably why those kinds of movies endure longer than others.  Some of the greatest examples of the genre in fact ignore the cliches of the slasher killer or the supernatural monster, and instead remind us that the worst monsters of all are the ones around us.  To this day, only one movie from the horror genre has won Best Picture at the Oscars, and that’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991).  Lambs on the surface isn’t exactly a horror movie by traditional standards.  It’s more of a police procedural, with FBI agent Clarice Starling hunting down a serial killer.  Though there are graphic elements in the movie, there are also very few onscreen deaths as well.  Most of the gore is shown after the fact, with only one scene in particular that you would describe as traditionally horrific; Hannibal Lector’s escape scene.  This is a prime example of not playing tricks with the audience, but instead allowing them to absorb the movie and take in the growing tension before it’s released.  When we think of The Silence of the Lambs, the most terrifying moments to us are not the scary moments, but rather the quiet dialogue scenes, where the camera is uncomfortably close to Anthony Hopkins face as he stares directly at us.   Again, it’s using atmosphere to deliver the best effect for the moment.  A similar approach also resonated in David Fincher’s Seven (1995), where much of the terrifying elements are suggested to us and never shown.  We never do see what’s inside the box, but we can paint a terrifying picture in our mind, and that’s just as effective.  It’s all about knowing that right balance to get the audience to feel the dread even when they are not seeing all of it.  And in turn, it shows how we are still using the shadows to deliver the most terrifying of frights on the movie screen.

Horror goes through it’s many different phases over the years, but in the end, several principles still endure to help keep it in line with it’s roots.  That’s the reason why even the silent era movies still manage to scare even all these years later.  The loosening of standards has helped filmmakers get away with a lot more, but as we’ve seen, sometimes it helps to show restraint as well when making a horror movie.  Indeed, one thing that has proven true over the years is that trusting your audience to fill in the gaps has been beneficial to most horror movies, and that by trying to force a scare through too much will end up dulling their senses over time.  That’s why movies like The Shining, The Exorcist, The Silence of the Lambs and Seven are still terrifying today, no matter how many times people have seen them.  They give their audiences a full experience, and reward them for their patience.  I am encouraged to see movies like Midsommar try to follow that example.  Sure, there are the standard Hollywood horror films that serve their purpose, but the real force driving the horror genre into the future are the ones that are being produced on the fringes.  They show that a horror movie can come from any type of style and can be just about anything, like the movie Climax has shown.  Just chasing after scares is not the way to succeed in horror film-making.  It’s finding that right balance between terror and atmosphere, and also just having a story worth telling in the end.  And most of all, it helps to have a genuine human connection, because as real life has shown us, horror is all too real in our lives, and sometimes the worst kinds of nightmares are the ones that we dream up ourselves.

As we stand now, 3 months away from the end of another decade, it’s interesting to see how far the last ten years have advanced the way that we consume content.  Looking back at the year 2010, when you heard of somebody watching a video online, most likely they would have been referring to short 10 minute clips that had been posted on YouTube.  The fact that the internet would soon be the primary source of our daily media intake was almost an inconceivable idea back in those days.  Back then, online videos were short little diversions, movies were still primarily destined for the big screen, and Netflix was still operating completely through their by mail servicing.  But, as the decade moved ahead and newer advances in communication made it more possible to download and process large files of content faster and cheaper than before, it suddenly changed what was possible in the realm of entertainment.  Now, people are able to watch what they want wherever they want, whether at home or on the go.  And through these advances, a new market in entertainment has opened up that has not only grabbed the attention of all the major studios in the business, but has become their primary in recent years.  This is the beginning of the Streaming Era in Hollywood, where the new cache is having a platform where people will pay a monthly fee to watch movies and shows that can only be seen on the specific channel.  This is a new frontier for the industry, as it enables them to bring content direct to the consumer in ways that have been impossible up to now.  Before, movie studios needed to work with the movie theater chains or the cable providers in order to have their catalog of content presented to the public.  But with streaming, the power is put into the studios hands, as they are now allowed a platform where they can bypass all other channels and bring the content directly into the home through an internet connection.

Netflix was the first to dip their toes into this new form of distribution.  First off, they added their streaming option to their monthly subscription plan as an alternative for people who thought the through the mail servicing was not fast enough.  As the streaming option became more popular over time, Netflix added more and more content to their streaming package.  What particularly became popular on their streaming platform was the television shows, as people were watching shows like Friends, Seinfeld, and many other classic shows that they had missed out on in their initial runs.  This created a new behavior for audiences which we know now as “binge watching,” as it was discovered that most people were watching multiple episodes all at once; sometimes even entire seasons in one sitting.  As Netflix saw their subscriptions rise because of this new streaming option, they suddenly came up with a bold idea; why not make our own shows, exclusive to our platform.  It a short amount of time, they put together a plan to stream original programming on their platform, which in turn would change the industry in a dramatic way.  Their first show, the short lived Lilyhammer (starring Steven Van Zandt) was not much to talk about, but their second exclusive series, the critically acclaimed House of Cards, became the talk of the town.  Suddenly, people took notice and Netflix emerged as a real contender in Hollywood.  With several more shows like Orange is the New Black and Stranger Things having an almost perennial presence in the Awards races, not to mention garnering devoted fan-bases,  it was only a matter of time before Netflix would look to conquer the original film market as well.  This is where the platform has seen the most push back from the industry, as movie theater chains have aggressively fought Netflix’s day and date release model, barring them from screening their movies in most chains across the country.  But, as Netflix has welcomed in more and more prestigious talent to their burgeoning studio, the pressure has risen on the industry to consider what place streaming should take as a part of the legacy of the business.

Though Netflix was the first to put their assets into the streaming market, they certainly weren’t the last.  In the years since, online retailer Amazon would launch their own platform through their Prime membership, giving exclusive content to their customers as well.  Though they have been competitive with Netflix on the television series end, with their own award winning shows like Transparent and The Marvelous Ms. Maisel, they have not followed their rival in the original film race as much, instead opting to form an Amazon Studios division to produce movies for theatrical distribution.  Hulu, which had already been streaming broadcast television shows before Netflix, decided to follow their lead and make exclusive content as well, both for television and film.  In an interesting confluence of events, both Netflix and Hulu even had competing films covering the same subject released days apart, namely the Fyre Festival documentaries, which I covered here.   Though all these channels have done a lot to innovate and move the industry towards creating a streaming market, we still refer to the format itself as the “Netflix” model.  And this is because out of all the competition there is in the streaming world, Netflix has positioned themselves as being the industry leader.  Amazon and Hulu are massive platforms in themselves, but Netflix has become a part of the culture in a way that the others quite haven’t reached.  As of right now, much of the maneuvering going on within the industry is in direct response to what Netflix has been doing.  Netflix has already conquered the video rental business, and even put Blockbuster out of business as a result.  They are dominant in the television market, which has forced cable companies to change their way of doing business as many people have opted out of their cable plans in favor of the more affordable Netflix.  What’s to stop them from taking on the movie studios as well.

That is why this year is a big turning point for the streaming era.  In one month, two new streaming platforms from two of the most formidable media companies in the world are going to be launching; Disney+ and AppleTV+.  For the first time ever, Netflix will be seeing competition that may actually affect their dominance in the streaming market.  Disney+ for one takes advantage of their extensive library of always popular content, and they are also bring a lot of exclusive stuff to the table with new shows based on their Marvel and Star Wars properties.  And then you have AppleTV+, which is going to benefit from the world’s largest corporations seemingly bottomless supply of funds for exclusive content.  They are also launching with subscription plans significantly less costly than Netflix currently is.  Netflix has certainly been planning for stiffer competition, as they’ve been signing exclusive contracts with some of the industry’s hottest producers right now, like American Horror Story’s Ryan Murphy, Game of Thrones‘ David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, and many more.  Not to mention, they’ve been pushing to get due recognition from the film community by campaigning hard for year end awards.  They made their best case yet with Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma last year which took home several Oscars and nearly won the top award as well (and probably should’ve).  They are again making their run for Awards season this year, with movies like Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman being heavily pushed, stating once and for all that Netflix, and by turn streaming itself, is an essential part of this industry and should be recognized as such.  Despite how this year will turn out, the streaming market is only going to keep expanding, with platforms like HBO Max, Peacock, and the short form channel Quibi all premiering in the next few years, so indeed, Netflix’s drive to change the industry is actually happening.

But what is that going to mean for the industry itself.  We have already seen a big shift happen with theatrical distribution as a result.  There has been a noticeable decline in recent years with regards to mid range productions making it to the big screen.  By mid-range, I mean movies that aren’t tent-poles but at the same time are not indies either.  These are typically comedies, romantic dramas, and the modest budgeted action flick.  They are disappearing from the multiplexes, where only a decade ago they once dominated.  This is mainly due to the fact that most of them have moved over to streaming, where these kinds of movies are much less of a financial risk if they don’t perform well.  What we’re left with at the local box office is big tent-pole films on one end and small budget indies on the other; mainly the only movies that the industry deems worthy of the big screen because they are the only ones that can turn a profit in the end.  In order to compete, movie theater chains have in a way adopted a model not unlike their streaming competitors, with many chains now adding their own subscription service to their patrons.  But even still, the options at the local multiplex are not as diverse as they once were, because streaming has soaked up so many of the mid-range films that used to drive a wider variety of people to the box office.  With more and more studios beginning to set up their own exclusive platforms, you may see even more of those types of movies taken out of the theatrical market and made available exclusively online.  It’s all going to depend on whether movie theaters are able to retain their appeal as an alternative to the home viewing experience.  The subscription model, first brought to the industry by the now defunct MoviePass, may be the key, but up until now, it was only Netflix they had to contend with, and not a whole industry of streaming studios.

Another thing that may drastically change in the years ahead is the value that is put on available content.  For one thing, Netflix has recently been on a shopping spree in order to lock up exclusive streaming rights to content that they know is going to drive people to their platform.  Seinfeld, the now 20-plus year old, just sold it’s streaming rights to Netflix from parent company Sony for a mind-boggling $500 million.  This was in direct response to Warner Brothers opting to take their shows Friends and The Office off of Netflix so that they could stream it exclusively on their platform, HBO Max.  Decade prior, you could probably expect studios to sell broadcasting privileges to cable outlets for a few million here and there.  But now, to have exclusive streaming rights, a single show now carries a half billion dollar price tag, and that’s only because it’s a big part of the way audiences consume content now.  Whoever has the sturdiest library will be the ones who make the most money, and though Netflix has a respectable collection of content to their name already, they don’t have the decades worth of movies and TV shows that the big studios do.  So, before Sony gets an idea to start their own exclusive streaming channel, Netflix is making sure that their prized properties find a home with them beforehand.  With Disney set to launch their platform in November, they carry an already built in library of not one, but two major studios (themselves and Fox), so the need for exclusive content with name recognition is pretty much the most valuable thing to have right now in the industry, and it’s only going to get fiercer in the years ahead; especially if some of these studios have to spend a lot more in order to compete.

One thing though that hasn’t really factored into the discussion of the upcoming streaming wars is how much of an impact will it put on the customer themselves.  For right now, there is a lot of excitement for what’s coming down the line, especially when it comes to all the properties that have been announced in the past few months.  But, as more and more channels are being announced as being in the works, people are going to start wondering if they are going to be able to afford all of it or not.  Right now, cable TV packages can cost in the range from $100 a month to $500, depending on how many channels they offer.  Streaming platforms are not part of those packages, and operate in a separate way; unless they make a deal with cable companies for a tie in promotion, like Amazon and Netflix sometimes do.  Some people have opted to leave their cable subscriptions behind and just do streaming instead, which has hurt cable providers a little bit, but not much as streaming still needs broadband internet to function.  But, when you look at all the streaming channels that are coming over the horizon, the cost of leaving cable for streaming may not look like the bargain it once was.  Netflix has already raised their basic streaming package over time, from a modest $8 a month to a now $12 fee, with possibly more increases down the road.  Disney and Apple are starting out with a relatively low $7 and $4 a month respectively, but again, the price might change over time.  And with HBO Max, Universal’s Peacock, and multiple other platforms having yet to announce their introductory monthly rates, you may in the end having a streaming bill in the $100 a month range all by itself, in addition to your internet fee.  Thankfully, cancelling a streaming subscription is easier than exiting a cable package, but as content becomes more and more exclusive over time, people are going to be hard pressed to make tough choices about which platforms they choose, and that might mean that some of these platforms may not survive as well as hoped over time.  Even Netflix may lose part of their subscriber base, if they are unable to compete.

What is fundamentally interesting about this point in time in the entertainment industry is all the uncertainty.  We don’t know how this upcoming streaming war will play out.  We just know that it’s about to get a whole lot bigger in the years ahead.  Already we are witnessing a change in the industry that may or may not benefit the quality of the content we watch.  I for one think that competition is a good thing for the industry, as it allows for more  creative risks to be taken, but even this comes at a price.  I certainly want the movie theater experience to survive the competition from streaming, and hopefully their own subscription based system might be the key to that survival.  Also, the added cost that it’ll put on the consumer might have a negative effect over time, as exclusive content might remain out of reach for those who can’t afford to add on that one extra channel.  We may end up living in a world where people only watch their movies and shows from one studio and nowhere else, which is kind of already happening at the worldwide box office, with Disney taking an almost 40% share of total theatrical ticket sales.  But, even with all that, we are also witnessing a flourishing of creativity in Hollywood now that we haven’t seen in a long time.  This Golden Age of television that people have been proclaiming recently has been largely fueled by the risk-taking new shows that have come from streaming, and that same flourishing is beginning to extend into films as well.  I love the fact that Netflix has invested in prestigious talent and given them free reign to do whatever they want.  It’s a refreshing change from the more budget-conscious, focus group driven model of the last few decades.  Despite what it may do to my wallet over time, I have already signed up for Disney+ and am considering adding more streaming platforms into my daily options instead of less.  There’s a reason why so many film studios are jumping on board, because streaming allows them a direct connection to the audience that they’ve never had before, and with a solid stream of revenue coming from monthly payments, many of them can return to making movies and shows the way they want to make them; with renewed confidence.

When people discuss the years that are considered among the best ever for movies, probably the most recent one to come into that conversation would be the year 1999.  Closing out the 20th century as well as the last millennium with quite a bang, we saw a year that banged out one classic after another, many of which have gone on to be highly influential 20 years later.  But the interesting thing about 1999 is the fact that so many of the best loved movies from that year were ones that at the time were not major hits upon release.  I already spotlighted one of those movies a couple weeks ago with my retrospective on Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant here.  I myself in particular have really found the legacy of these rising classics particularly interesting, because they go all the way back to when I started paying closer attention to the movie industry in general.  In 1999, I was a sophomore in high school who had just seen Lawrence of Arabia on the big screen and knew that my life’s path was going to be in the pursuit of film-making.  Because of this renewed interest, I began expanding my range of films to look out for, trying to open my perspective to include a wider spectrum of what the industry had to offer.  And in the early fall of 1999, I managed to catch a movie that not only hit the right spot, but would go on to become the first movie that I ever proclaimed to be the best movie of the year, since this was also the first year ever that I began to keep track of that distinction.  That movie would be the shocking, “in-your-face” spectacle that was David Fincher’s Fight Club.  Fight Club knocked me off my feet the first time I ever watched it, and even 20 years later it still packs a punch.   But the interesting I discovered while revisiting it was how different it plays today than it did back then.  The movie still holds up, don’t get me wrong, but the message takes on a whole different meaning in today’s cultural climate.

Much like The Iron Giant had in the weeks prior to the release, Fight Club was not financially successful right away.  It didn’t bomb as heavily as Giant did, since it was not a terribly expensive movie to make, but it still underwhelmed, given that it had an A-list star like Brad Pitt on the marquee, as well as two rising, Oscar-nominated names like Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter involved as well.  Critics were even divided at first.  Roger Ebert notably gave the movie a thumbs down review, stating that he found the movie an unfocused mess.   But, as with most movies that become classics long after their initial theatrical release, Fight Club found it’s audience on home video.  Fight Club came out at just the right time to take advantage of this new technology called DVD, and it was the first cult hit to rise on this new format.  In time, the movie became a best-seller and critics were starting to change their tune.  For a lot of people, the movie was a revelation, as well as a breath of fresh air after a decade of polished, studio fare.  Like it’s fellow 1999 alum, The Matrix, Fight Club brought a notably punk style to the medium of film; changing the way movies looked, sounded, and even edited.  But while The Matrix had a sleek cyber-punk aesthetic to it, Fight Club was grungy, dank, and even rotting at the edges at some points.  It was a movie that was held nothing back and presented a decidedly anti-Hollywood aesthetic to the big screen.  And a lot of people started to ask themselves; is this movie the future of film-making?  Is this the start of an American New Wave?  Did Meat Loaf actually give an awards worthy performance in a movie?  No matter what anybody said then or in the years after, Fight Club had left a mark on the film industry.

Perhaps one of the things that really started pulling in new people to the movie was the unexpected way it played a trick on it’s audience.  Again, the year 1999 had many noteworthy things that left an impact on audiences, but one that really stood out was the renewed popularity of the plot twist.  M. Night Shayamalan had earlier that same year stunned people across the world with his now infamous twist ending to The Sixth Sense, helping to propel that film to record breaking success.  But, at the same time, Fight Club had it’s own shocking plot twist that in some ways is even better executed than Shayamalan’s.  Had The Sixth Sense not taken so much of the thunder away in the weeks prior to Fight Club’s release, I wonder if the revelation in Club may have hit harder than it initially did.  For those of you who haven’t seen the film and don’t know what I’m talking about, well fair warning, but there are SPOILERS ahead.  The plot centers around a nameless protagonist known only in the credits as the Narrator (played by Edward Norton).  After a rough couple of weeks of working a thankless job and going to therapy, he runs into a quirky gentleman on a plane ride home named Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt).  After the Narrator’s apartment burns down, he crashes at Durden’s run down home in the bad part of town, and the two come up with a crazy way of letting out some of their aggression; they begin to fight each other.  In time, other people want to join in and both the Narrator and Tyler start what ends up becoming known as the “Fight Club.”  Over time, the Club becomes bigger with Durden making more demands of it’s members to declare their loyalty to the group, creating in away a cult like organization.  This troubles the Narrator who desperately tries to reverse the zealot like direction this club is going in.  But, in his efforts, he finds that he can no longer reach Tyler and the Club has transformed into a full on terrorist organization, all of whom look to him as their leader.  And then we get the bombshell.   The Narrator cannot locate Tyler Durden, because he is Tyler Durden.  The Tyler we’ve seen is just an imaginary friend that has manifested through the Narrator’s paranoid schizophrenia, and with that, the movie reaches it’s legendary peak.

The plot twist stems from the original novel of the same name from author (and fellow Oregonian) Chuck Palahniuk, but it’s execution is so well handled by director David Fincher and screenwriter Jim Uhls.  For nearly two-thirds of the movie, you have to buy into the belief that Tyler Durden and the Narrator are two different people, and not two personalities in one body.  The excellent chemistry between Edward Norton and Brad Pitt sells that dynamic perfectly, and you just have to admire the fact that the movie expertly keeps you in the dark until the bombshell drops.  But that’s not the only thing that makes the movie a classic.  This movie, probably more than any other, cemented the Fincher style.  David Fincher had won acclaim four years prior with the unforgettable thriller Seven (1995), and was able to deliver a compelling drama with The Game (1997).  But with Fight Club, we saw Fincher really begin to play around with the camera, utilizing CGI for the first time, which he pushed to the limit with what was possible in 1999.  This was the first movie where Fincher started using his high speed pans, which would take the camera across the plain of view at such incredible speeds and through impossible barriers that could never be done with a standard camera (like through concrete walls or even something as tiny as the ring of a coffee mug).  Such a technique has since become David Fincher’s signature, and it put him on the map as a filmmaker.   The movie also defies many cinematic conventions, like several points where it breaks the fourth wall, and reminds you that you are indeed watching a movie.  There’s a great moment where we see Pitt’s Tyler working as a movie projectionist, and while he is working with the Narrator speaking directly to the audience about what a projectionist does, Tyler points to the point of the screen to the reel marker appears just as it flashes on screen, referring to it as a “cigarette burn.”  When I became a projectionist myself in college, you can bet that I called those markers cigarette burns as well.  And it’s that free-wheeling sense of anything goes that made Fight Club so appealing to a young, blossoming film buff like me back in 1999.  Indeed, watching it only gain in popularity over the years has been very satisfying as someone who took to it so strongly from the very beginning.

But, after 20 years since it’s initial release, it’s interesting to see how differently it plays now than it did then.  In 1999, the world was a much different place than it is today, and it’s amazing to re-watch the movie in 2019 and see how far ahead of it’s time it was.  There are some things that both the novel and the movie couldn’t have foreseen, like the rise of social media and the radicalization of fringe political movements, but given how so many elements of the story feel so relevant today, it’s really amazing to see how prophetic Fight Club actually is.  Some would argue that Fight Club is actually partially to blame for some of the discord that we see in the world today.  The movie has been described as a textbook for how to start a radical terrorist organization, showing step by step how groups such as those form; preying on angered, disenfranchised civilians to join their ranks in order to spread chaos as a means of pushing forward a demented agenda.  While the movie never intends to endorse this kind of behavior, it nevertheless shows a detailed look into the formation of a powerful political movement formed around a dangerous ideology.  And some have argued that Fight Club glamorizes it as well.  It’s hard to not notice that some of the tactics that the followers of Tyler Durden enact within the movie bear many resemblances to actions taken by fringe groups today.  The mayhem of the Fight Club cult are in many ways akin to the pranks pulled by Internet trolls today, though many are much more malicious than anything that Tyler Durden came up with.  There’s also the unfortunate way that elements of Fight Club has been co-oped into some hate groups’ talking points.  You know the term “snowflake” that the Alt-right likes to use dismissively against their political rivals; that came from Fight Club.  Fight Club certainly, as a movie, wanted to stir the pot a bit to shake conformities within society, but it’s unfortunate that the movie has in some ways emboldened some of the worst in our society, who have taken the absolute wrong message out of the movie as a whole.

The thing that gets gets ignored the most with regards to Fight Club as a narrative is that it is first and foremost a satire.  In particular, it’s a scathing indictment on the societal definition of masculinity.  One thing that gets forgotten about the movie is how the character of the Narrator is defined.  The movie is about him trying to discover for himself what it means to be a man.  First the story attacks how corporations define masculinity, as the Narrator spends his money on things that society says should define his worth as a man, but it all instead makes him feel empty.  He only finds true happiness after he does the least masculine thing that society has defined; weeping openly in the arms of another man, or in this case the voluptuous “bitch tits” of his friend Robert ‘Bob’ Paulson (an unforgettable Meat Loaf).  Later, he creates the persona of Tyler Durden through a need to have an ideal, masculine friend to rely upon, and that relationship in turn leads the Narrator down the road to promoting an ideology where the ideal of masculinity is defined by how hard you can hit the man that you consider your friend.  This later evolves into the desire to destroy beautiful things, because they are a threat to a masculine ideal because they come from a decadent, corporatized place.  This leads him to nearly killing pretty boy Angel Face (a young Jared Leto), because of that desire to destroy something he found beautiful, which gets to another deep psychological underpinning of the story.  It should be noted, this movie called by many as a Fascist, testosterone fueled pro-male fantasy, was authored by a politically progressive, openly gay novelist who lives in the hipster capital of America; Portland, Oregon.  This story was never intended to celebrate the ideal of the Heterosexual, Macho, hyper-masculine American male; it was meant to be a scathing indictment of that kind of person, and for some reason or another, that seems to have been ignored by both some of the movie’s fans as well as it’s critics.

Much like other misunderstood satires such as Blazing Saddles (1974) and Tropic Thunder (2008), the message seems to get lost in all the noise so that it appears to some that it’s participating in the very practice that it’s trying to mock.  The way that I look at the movie Fight Club today is not as a step by step breakdown of how terrorist groups are formed like some have described it, but as an extremely effective dissection of the root causes of toxic masculinity.  The brilliance of Chuck Palahniuk’s story is in the characterization of his Narrator.  The fact that he is never named in  the novel just illustrates the blank canvas that he is supposed to be in the narrative, and how that emptiness leads him down more dangerous roads in order to fill that empty void.  Tyler Durden is a fiction made reality through the Narrator’s deranged desire to find a better version of himself, and as the story shows us, the desire to be more manly in a way drives one to become a little more monstrous each day.  Palahniuk spotlights a very interesting point here, in how a pursuit towards a perceived ideal in masculinity sometimes drives men, even rational thinking men, into acting against their own self interest.  This sometimes manifests in some ways towards actions like men taking unnecessary risks in order to prove their manhood (such as the car wreck test halfway through the movie), or threatening violence against those who threaten their masculinity.  For the narrator, he’s on a dangerous journey of self-discovery, which ultimately leads him towards reconciling his perceived inadequacies with what he ultimately wants to be as a man; which is closer to being more compassionate.  In order to get there, he literally has to destroy a part of himself in order to excise Tyler Durden completely from his mind; bringing the self-harm metaphor right to the forefront.  You can see the same kind of toxic masculinity represented in those who same politically extreme groups that tout Fight Club as an inspiration, despite missing the whole point of the movie.  How many men have unnecessarily harmed themselves trying to prove their masculine worth.  How many of those men also attack other for not being masculine enough to their liking.  The same hatred can be found in all those closeted males who take their frustration over their own sexuality and channel it into persecution of openly queer people as a result.  Palahniuk, as a queer person himself, must have wanted to examine where that line of thinking might be coming from, and the narrative he found in the process did a brilliant job of helping to shed light on this issue in a meaningful way.

That’s why Fight Club feels just as relevant today, because we are currently in a climate where definitions of toxic and ideal masculinity are again beginning to stir heated debate.  In my opinion, Fight Club subverts what you might expect of it.  It presents this hyper-masculine pastiche on it’s surface, but underneath, it’s a biting satire of the destructive paths men take in order to reach an unrealistic ideal.  It’s just too bad that much of it’s message has been lost over the last 20 years, and in some ways has been unfairly misinterpreted by both some toxic fans and also by ill-informed critics.  It’s critique of toxic masculinity may be the most profound we have ever seen put on film.  It’s a shame that in the same year, the Academy Awards celebrated a different kind of examination of masculinity with the very overrated American Beauty (1999).  American Beauty also examines the psychological journey of a disgruntled American male, but instead of critiquing this kind of character, it almost lionizes his sudden transformation into a self-absorbed rebel, even making his lust over a teenage girl as a part of his awakening enlightenment.  It doesn’t help that he’s also played by an equally toxic human being named Kevin Spacey.  Suffice to say, American Beauty has aged terribly over the years and feels very much like a relic of it’s era, while Fight Club has become more relevant than ever.  No other movie really digs this deep into the root causes of toxic masculinity and shows it reaching such dire extremes.  What Fight Club shows is that much of the discord that arises from toxic masculinity comes from a dangerous sense of fear; fear of not being seen as manly enough by society and how that leads to destructive ends in order to compensate for those perceived weaknesses.  Tyler Durden is not a poster boy for the best of masculinity; he is a villain bent on destructive ends.  And the scary thing is, there’s a little Tyler Durden in every man, young or old, who feels like they are lacking something in their life.  Fight Club, even with the veneer of it’s revolutionary punk aesthetic, ultimately wants us the viewer to choose compassion over destruction, and that is why it continues to remain a beloved classic to this day.  Even 20 years later, I am still confident in my choice to have it top my list for the year 1999.  And by examining how it’s message resonates today, I am not just confident it’s the best movie of 1999, I think it stands as one of my favorite movies, period.  I am James’ complete lack of surprise.