Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Three Major Predecessors
- 3 The Fallow Years: An Assortment of Ghosts
- Seminal Films
- 4 Ghosts in the City
- 5 Ghosts in the Machine
- 6 Schoolgirl Angst
- 7 Childhood Abuse
- Evolution of the cycle
- 8 Generic Developments 1: Messages from the Dead
- 9 Spain and History 1: Politics and War
- 10 Hollywood Reinflections
- 11 Asian Variations
- 12 Generic Developments 2: Ghosts in the Woman's Film
- 13 Ghosts and Institutions 1: South Korea
- 14 Ghosts and Institutions 2: The West
- 15 National Variations
- 16 Anatomy of the Ghost Melodrama
- 17 Spain and History 2: The Franco Legacy and the Catholic Church
- 18 The Return of the British Ghost Film
- 19 Recent US developments and conclusion
- Filmography
- Illustrations
- Bibliography
- Index
- Film Culture in Transition
19 - Recent US developments and conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 December 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Three Major Predecessors
- 3 The Fallow Years: An Assortment of Ghosts
- Seminal Films
- 4 Ghosts in the City
- 5 Ghosts in the Machine
- 6 Schoolgirl Angst
- 7 Childhood Abuse
- Evolution of the cycle
- 8 Generic Developments 1: Messages from the Dead
- 9 Spain and History 1: Politics and War
- 10 Hollywood Reinflections
- 11 Asian Variations
- 12 Generic Developments 2: Ghosts in the Woman's Film
- 13 Ghosts and Institutions 1: South Korea
- 14 Ghosts and Institutions 2: The West
- 15 National Variations
- 16 Anatomy of the Ghost Melodrama
- 17 Spain and History 2: The Franco Legacy and the Catholic Church
- 18 The Return of the British Ghost Film
- 19 Recent US developments and conclusion
- Filmography
- Illustrations
- Bibliography
- Index
- Film Culture in Transition
Summary
Film cycles tend to follow a pattern: an initial burst of productions with certain common features; a period of innovation and expansion as new avenues are explored; then a waning of the films and/or a consolidation of their characteristic elements into a narrower range of movies. It is perhaps too early to tell whether the ghost melodrama cycle has definitively run its course, especially since Britain has contributed some relatively recent impressive examples. But the primary development in the US in recent years has been mostly retrogressive.
Return to Haunted-house Horror
Between THE SIXTH SENSE and STIR OF ECHOES in 1999, and HALF LIGHT in 2006, there were a number of promising developments in American scary ghost movies. Ghosts turned up in cities (THE SIXTH SENSE) and small towns (The Gift); in working-class houses (Stir of Echoes) and those of the wealthy (WHAT LIES BENEATH); in hospitals (DRAGONFLY) and prisons (GOTHIKA); and in a number of genres: thrillers, melodramas, the woman's film, even a war movie (BELOW). Equally, remakes such as THE RING and THE GRUDGE ensured the horror thread to the cycle was kept in play. However, after this burst of diversification, with just a few exceptions the American scary ghost film has returned to the low- budget haunted-house territory where it had traditionally found a place.
There are a substantial number of these films; I shall mention just a few. THE MESSENGERS (Danny & Oxide Pang 2006), the first English-language film by the directors of the stylish Hong Kong horror movie THE EYE (2002), at first seems promising. Again the pre-credits sequence shows an elliptical version of the primary traumatic event: a deranged farmer murders his wife and two children. The crime remains hidden and, several years later, a family whose structure replicates the earlier family moves into the farm. This family is damaged by its own past traumatic event: teenage Jess (Kristen Stewart) crashed a car whilst drunk, and her four-year-old brother Ben was badly injured – their savings were spent on Ben's hospital bills and he is still too traumatised to talk.
As the ghosts of mother and children haunt the newcomers, they focus on Jess and Ben. There is perhaps a sense that Jess's guilt for her past recklessness summons the ghosts – they attack her, but merely ‘entertain’ Ben.
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- Information
- Modern Ghost Melodramas'What Lies Beneath', pp. 415 - 438Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2017