How Horror Movies Channel Our Trump-era Anxieties
If screwball comedies provided the comic escape people needed in the Great Depression, these days some Americans want to scream.
With a second Trump presidency imminent, a few of the most popular films of the year come in the horror genre — allowing viewers to channel apocalyptic fears into the warm embrace of the movie theater.
There’s body dysmorphia in The Substance that, in addition to its primary theme of female aging, feints at transgender struggles; scathing media satire in Smile 2; plenty of evil for its own sake in Terrifier 3; and the allegory of abortion-rights anxiety in Nosferatu. Where in the 1930s the laughter of movieslike It Happened One Night and My Man Godfrey allowed people to imagine a world less bleak, the 2020s often lean on horror films and their scares for emotional release.
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And while not all of these films are in the race — with its growing pile of nominations, The Substance seems increasingly destined for an Oscar best picture slot — these movies can confront some of the most alarming subjects of contemporary society as much as any traditional Oscar bait.
Consider the surprise box office hit Terrifier 3, which with its $18 million opening weekend leapfrogged Joker: Folie à Deux on that film’s second weekend. Both movies feature a killer clown, but while Joaquin Phoenix’s grinning menace suffers from delusions of grandeur and an unspecified mental illness, the hideous ghoul from hell in Terrifier known as Art hacks away at his victims with no discernible motivation beyond the grisly acts themselves. The clown, a kind of psychopathic silent movie character who never utters a peep, bludgeons his victims in vicious murder sequences that operate as gory punchlines each time out.
The most startling aspect of Terrifier 3 is that the brutality has no firm meaning beyond the immediacy of its shock value. Yet it left Joker in the dust, suggesting that moviegoers would rather enjoy the sheer mania of an evil force than confront it head on.
Meanwhile, Smile 2 reignites the disturbing thrills of the first movie, in which a demonic presence transfers itself to a new host by forcing the previous one into suicide while staring its target in the face with a devious grin. Here, the afflicted soul is pop star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott, in one of the most haunting and memorable performances of the year), whose woozy grip on reality doubles as a metaphor for the trappings of fame. Without spoiling too much, the movie builds to a cartoonish finale worthy of Looney Tunes auteur Frank Tashlin, with a public execution witnessed by the masses that wears its rhetoric on its sleeve. In an era of extremely online narcissism, Smile 2 asks if we are amusing ourselves to death.
Looming above even Terrifier and Smile, however, is Nosferatu, a vivid epic that confronts the loss of bodily autonomy while never calling it such. Nosferatu — which has nabbed four Critics Choice Awards noms and landed on multiple Oscar shortlists — embodies horror’s ability to smuggle in its big ideas, making powerful arguments without overt reference to the background political realities. It’s an abortion movie without ever uttering the word.
With his story of Transylvanian Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard), Robert Eggers has made a rich gothic mood piece that builds on the eerie foundations of the original vampire myth — an evil worse than death that lurks beyond the limits of human understanding and can only be destroyed through personal sacrifice. The new saga unfurls much like the 1922 original, as the count journeys across a haunted countryside with his sights set on Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) as she falls prey to his spell.
This, of course, opens itself up to timely interpretations. The vampire spreads disease as he gets closer to his target, overtaking the village and challenging its resolve to a degree that has COVID allegories all over it.
But the even more pungent subtext comes with the movie’s exploration of the “your body, my choice” threat, with Ellen haunted by the invasive forces of an evil that attempts to overtake her free will. “He is my shame,” she tells her baffled husband (Nicholas Hoult), who can’t seem to grasp the reality of the situation until it’s too late. Ellen’s lack of free will in the face of a toxic masculine force has undeniable resonance in a post-Roe landscape.
However, it’s the lack of specifics in Eggers’ work that speaks volumes for those who care to hear it. Evil has always walked among us, Nosferatu says — and when we least expect it, that same force can sneak in the window and leave even the most vigilant utterly drained. It’s a cautionary tale for the next year, but also one in which the future is still worth fighting for, no matter the cost.
This is not the first time horror has tapped into Trump-era emotions; it happened even more explicitly in 2016. As the presidential election catapulted the country into a sharply divisive moment, Get Out emerged as the year’s greatest genre achievement without an ounce of subtext.
As Hollywood grapples with an identity crisis and speculation swirls about whether it might curb its progressive instincts, Nosferatu suggests a keen path forward: Bury the ideas in tone and style. And it’s a master class of visceral effects, replete with jump scares and horrific imagery.
In those 1930s films, the fast-talking lovers and schemers acknowledged the struggling world around them, if quietly (few films beyond Gold Diggers of 1933 made explicit reference to economic turmoil). Nearly a century later, movies are offering a similar chance for audiences to work out their troubles with an external form.
Like some of its counterparts, Nosferatu doesn’t say anything precise about the disturbing possibilities that await America in 2025. Audiences who want a spooky good time can simply revel in the audiovisual goods. Yet for those who nervously desire a more substantial experience, these films offer a chance to confront horror with the comfort of a plush chair and the assurance that, once the credits roll, it’ll all be over.
This story first appeared in a January stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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