Women in Horror

Delving through the many sub-genres of horror, an almost unifying trait seems that horror loves female leads. Be it Alison Lohman in this year's exceptional Drag Me To Hell, or Mia Farrow in the classic Rosemary's Baby, women are more often than not at the forefront of the scary and the disturbing. From The Exorcist to Halloween, Blair Witch Project to Hellraiser, we delight at scary movies with female leads, and this is something that's true across the world. [Rec], The Orphanage, Ring, A Tale Of Two Sisters--they all feature women as the focal point. I get myself to thinking, why is this? Let me give you my perspective.

Some people would have you believe that Horror hates women. That the depiction of a male killer dominating female victims is a misogynistic expression of what young male audiences feel. Now, that's not something I believe for a second. It's a fallacy to think that the depiction of a woman's death in film is attacking women as a whole, when a film like Die Hard kills off an entirely male cast yet isn't believed to make any anti-male statements.

No, I find that the opposite is in fact true. Horror has brought us the idea of the Final Girl, the Scream Queen. A Nightmare on Elm Street features Nancy defeating Freddy, Halloween has Laurie overcoming Michael, and while often enough horror films can be more bleak in their endings, I do think that girls fare better than the boys a lot of the time. Johnny Depp didn't fare so well against Freddy, for example.

With that said, I do find that there are gender roles at play. Why, with Horror having such a huge male following, do women make such compelling leads? Action is another genre aimed towards the boys, and that still features predominantly male characters kicking the crap out of other males. I'm of the opinion that for a horror film to work, it needs to have a lead character that engages us, we need to connect with them and to feel afraid for them, and if we're not emotionally invested in them, the film loses it's power to scare us. I think that it's easier for us to be sympathetic towards and to feel afraid for a female lead than a male one. When watching Rosemary's Baby, we as an audience are concerned for Mia Farrow, and through her character's fear, the film affects us.

In the Korean horror A Tale of Two Sisters, our lead is a mentally unbalanced young girl who is deeply haunted by a past trauma. She seems so troubled and fragile, so vulnerable that she has our every sympathy and we do feel for her. It's perhaps this vulnerability that makes this female archetype so compelling for us as horror fans, and by comparison, it seems rare to find a male lead that we feel for. Donald Sutherland in Don't Look Now and George C. Scott in The Changeling are two that I would say exemplify male leads that we connect to. They've both suffered horrendous losses at the beginning of both films, so we are sympathetic to them because they have had a part of their lives shattered.


In Satoshi Kon's deeply psychological animated film Perfect Blue, the main character is a young woman whose sense of reality and sense of self is falling apart piece by piece. She's a pop star turned actress who's having to deal with threats against her, a mysterious stalker, and a website that describes her life with frightening detail. It's a film that works so well because of how strong a character she is, continuing to push forward with her career, but she is under a lot of strain and we can't help but feel threatened for her. I don't think I would've felt as strongly had it been a male character in her place.

Now, that's not to say that having a female lead is the sure-fire way to success in Horror. There's been plenty of terrible pieces of fluff like the awful Lindsey Lohan vehicle I Know Who Killed Me, or the spectacularly bad Captivity with Elisha Cuthbert. You still need a good film, and well written characters in order for it to engage the audience, and the fact that there's plenty of throwaway fluff in the horror genre is a testament to that. But an awful lot of the best Horror films, the ones that do engage us and make us genuinely frightened for the characters, are the ones with female leads.

This is something I find equally true with children. The Shining or The Sixth Sense for example, part of why we're afraid is because of how concerned we are for the child characters. The Exorcist is rather disturbing because of how sweet and innocent Linda Blair is. Guillermo del Toro's films The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth work extremely well because both child leads are placed in a dangerous place where they're scared, and we feel great sympathy for them.

Now, that's probably not true of everyone, but I do find that the characters I engage with the most personally are often women and children. What do you think? After all, there's no doubting female leads are a popular archetype in horror, what do you feel is the reason? Be sure to leave a comment and let my know your thoughts.

This is Karl Hungus, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.

[Editor's Note: For more on the feminine side of fear, be sure and check out another Vault affiliate, Day of the Woman.]

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An exploration of fear, what disturbs me.

Greetings once again Vault dwellers, it is Karl Hungus of karlhungus.com here, so do not adjust your set, I am now in control of the transmission. It's amazing how much excitement can be derived from exploring our own anxieties in this way, with a good Horror film, we come face to face with so many negative emotions, and come out thrilled at the end. The genre itself is a multi-headed beast, and there are so many different feelings it can stir, many films have to many different ways to scare, disturb, unsettle, sicken, repulse or otherwise tap in to our subconscious. I'd like to talk to you about my own fears and what strikes a nerve with me when I'm deep in the experience. For me, it's not always the things that go bump in the night.

One thing that's always sure to creep the bejesus out of me is Body Horror. Films like The Fly or Tetsuo will always unsettle me deeply, no matter how many times I've seen them, the physical transformation that the main characters go through set my skin crawling every single time. I don't quite know why, perhaps it's an innate or subconscious fear of disease, of something malignant that's going on beneath the surface, the notion of helplessness that our own bodies could betray us. Whatever it is, this frightens and sickens me very deeply.

Maybe it's not something innate though, maybe this is a fear that was set in early? In which case, Ron Howard has a lot to answer for, because the scene in Willow where the evil Bavmorda turned everyone into pigs was pretty horrific for a kid's film. Or it could be earlier than that, I remember watching re-runs of The Incredible Hulk as a child and hiding behind the couch whenever Dr. Banner turned into a green Lou Ferrigno.

I suppose that also has to do with why I find there are very few good Werewolf movies. An American Werewolf in London was the pinnacle merely because of the chilling and amazing shapeshifting scene, and I've never seen another that has effected me so much. I feel kind of cheated sometimes when a film depicts someone turning into a werewolf as a quick change, or where it will happen offscreen. AAWiL set the standard, and if it's not a horrifying change, it just isn't a proper Werewolf movie.

Now, I don't really believe in desensitization, at least not to a huge degree. What's scared me for many years before still scares me now. I don't mean that I'd watch Willow and be as freaked out as I was when I was just a wee nipper, but that Body Horror still effects me as it always has. British Sci-Fi series Doctor Who has had some pretty creepy moments, the episode Blink was one of the most genuinely terrifying things I've seen on TV in a long time ("Don't blink, blink and you're dead!"), it was creepy stuff. But it wasn't that episode that freaked me out the most, it was a later episode called Planet of the Ood, and towards the end, one of the characters was turned into a grotesque cthulhu-like alien lifeform. True to form, I was utterly creeped out and the scene left me with a knot in my stomach. I'd say the old fears just don't leave us.

One film that certainly left it's mark on me was Stephen King's Pet Sematary, it effected me two-fold. First of all, the scene with Rachel's sister Zelda, just looking at her had my senses screaming, it was horrific. I later found out that the character of Zelda was played by a man, because they couldn't find a woman skinny enough for it, and that made a lot of sense. I'd say it's because a man has a broader frame, this made the character look that bit more emaciated, the bony shoulders and elbows that bit more exaggerated than if it had been a woman playing the role. A recent horror film pulled the same trick (I won't mention which as it's a bit of a spoiler, but if you've seen it you'll know the film I mean) of having an extremely thin man playing a female character, and it still had the same unedging effect on my senses.

The other thing in Pet Sematary that effected me was the scene where Jud Crandall gets his achilles tendon cut. The very thought of it makes me wince, it really unsettles me, and no matter how many times I see a scene of tendon-trauma in various films, it's something that I have never gotten used to. That's another reason that I don't truly believe in the idea of desensitization, I just can't see myself ever getting used to violence to that particular area, it cuts through me and sets my teeth on edge. There's a scene in Hostel where one character's achilles tendons are cut, and we don't even see it happen, we see is a reaction shot and the aftermath, but to me that was by a vast margin the most disturbing scene of the entire film.

That's not to say that any old scene of body horror or scene of physical violence against the ankle area will make a good horror for me. I would say that to make a truly great horror film, it can't just contain something that will scare or unsettle you. Pet Sematary is a great film in its own right, even without the scenes I've mentioned, and I've seen elements of what scares me in other films and they've fallen completely flat. I think a film has to engage you first and foremost, and that's why The Fly or An American Werewolf in London are absolute classics. If it doesn't have interesting characters that you care what happens to, then the film will fail.

I know it's not exactly a popular choice, but Hostel: Part II was an absolute triumph for me, and I think Eli Roth is a far better director than people give him credit for. The whole bloodbath scene was something that left me absolutely shaken, it was one of the most downright horrific things I've seen in a film in recent years, and it worked so well because Roth starts off with the characters. It was because he wrote Lorna (played so sympathetically by Heather Matarazzo, who was by far the best actor in the film) to be someone we empathised with, not some cut-out cheerleader that nobody cared about. When the above scene finally comes, it has all the more impact because we're emotionally invested in the character. The gore itself was very disturbing, and just thinking about the sound of the blade against her skin sets my teeth on edge, but it's not why the scene has such impact, and seeing it again it doesn't get any less disturbing, simply because of the character of Lorna.

Violence and gore certainly isn't everyone's bag, but I think in the right context it can be extremely effective and provide for a truly powerful film experience. That's not to say I don't love the more traditional ghost story, because the likes of Don't Look Now and Ringu count as some of my all time favourites. There's simply nothing like a good horror that piles on the atmosphere and doesn't really on cheap shock-tactics to scare the audience. The Others and The Blair Witch Project were two films that built up the tension slowly, and they were truly fantastic horror films.

Atmosphere is one of the hardest things to put your finger on. David Lynch is one of my favorite directors by far, and you couldn't really call any of his film Horror exactly, yet some of them can be so wholly unnerving and disturbing, more so than many Horrors. Lost Highway (above) is a perfect example, so much of it can be greatly unsettling, and watching it can really set me on edge. A lot of the time I can easily see why something disturbs me, I can point it out and say it's that, but here I don't know quite what it is, whatever magic Lynch works just gets to me. It was the same with Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire, something just had me on edge. Roman Polanski's The Tenant is another film that had me very unsettled throughout, much in the same way that Lost Highway did, something I can't quite explain, but very potent none the less.

I hope this has been an interesting read. It's been fun for me trying to lay out my fears, to relate what disturbs me, and what makes a powerful Horror experience for me. I'm sure that just as everyone has their own preferences when it comes to the genre, we've all got different things that will scare and disturb us, things that we've never gotten used to in films and things that can still freak us out. I'd love to hear from you, what is it that effects you most in a Horror?

What scares you?

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