Hooptober... And Then There Were Nine

59th Kill

Sex and death. The essence of a good slasher film. Hell, it's the essence of a bad slasher film, more often than not. In recent years, revisionist analysis of 80's horror tropes has led to the idea that these films were in truth deeply conservative, apparently. I'm sorry, but guys... really? Does anyone really think the slasher film producers of the 1980's were pushing an anti-sex agenda? I find that idea fucking ludicrous.

I think horror films reflect social fears back at us. That's what makes them endlessly fascinating to me. I'm not saying slasher films from that era are necessarily profound in a deliberate way. But it doesn't need to be deliberate. If a good horror film manages to generate unease, dread or fear in its audience, the fact is, it has hit on a nerve - and that's precisely what the exploitation producers of the day were attempting. So for me, the preoccupation on sex in slashers and the trope of the horniest characters dying - usually mid-coitus - is not some kind of finger-wagging or bizarre propaganda that promiscuity will lead to your death via axe-wielding maniac. It's just exploitation canniness that their drive-in, teen audience think about sex all the time, found depictions of it on screen mesmerising, and also were aware that their society of the day frowned upon it. That was never going to stop them having sex, but the idea of bloody retribution coming down upon you, right when you are at your most vulnerable, catching you doing something you know society sees as wrong, is tapping into that most jugular of primal reactions.

All that aside, sex and death are just intertwined in our minds. Biologically, you could argue sex only exists because life doesn't last. It's the eternal war raging between life and entropy - it's the only way entropy can be conquered. All life on Earth has achieved immortality as a species via reproduction of some sort - at the expense of immortality for the individual, because the law of entropy makes that impossible.

Anyway, Jesus, I'm about to implode in on myself at any moment with all this - it's supposed to be a movie review, FFS.

So, sex and death. This is what I love about X. Ti West has seen all these modern allegorical horror films whose reaction against the old trope of sex equalling death - in the desire to avoid that so-called conservatism, that predictability - is to make their films as sexless as possible. Maybe that's why indie horror film makers keep making so many boring horror movies these days. Where's the sex, guys? Have we really lost interest in sex? I know attitudes to sex and gender have changed, but surely not at the expense of horniness? Say it ain't so!

So old Ti comes along and, instead of making a sexless slasher, he makes the psycho killers HORNY AS FUCK. And he remembers he's making an homage to 70's exploitation so he makes it gnarly. The Tobe Hooper tributes come thick and fast here. The opening scenes feel so Texas Chain Saw Massacre, it hurts (it's frankly amazing that this was filmed in New Zealand - in the same region that most of Lord of the Rings was filmed!) We even get an Eaten Alive gator!

This movie is fucking beautiful. Give me more. I'm going to get to Pearl as soon as possible.

Best Kill (may contain traces of spoiler)

God, so many to choose from, this movie does not hold back on the carnage. But I have to say, my favourite is the gator kill. It's just so sudden and brutal. "Bitch!" LOL