Why do Millennials Love Horror?

*Just a warning, this essay contains spoilers for a range of 90s horror films*

What’s your favourite scary movie?

A simple question but one that might send instant chills down your spine as you remember the first time you watched Scream, and saw Drew Barrymore (yes Drew Barrymore!) as Casey Becker, quip with a sly little smile that her favourite scary movie was Halloween, lazily fingering a butcher’s knife that she probably should have taken with her.

I was 11 when I first saw Scream. Picture the scene: it’s 1998, your friend’s mum has gone to Blockbuster to hire this new horror, directed by Wes Craven of Nightmare on Elm Street fame. You’re at a sleepover and you and your friends are suddenly exposed to the most horrific violence inflicted on people not much older than yourselves. Everything you assumed was safe in your childhood is now called into question. You have a landline, your parents occasionally go out and leave you alone so that means you are definitely next. You have so much Casey Becker potential that you may never sleep again. And so you all lay in one room together that night, utterly terrified, but wanting to be Sidney Prescott so badly - not just so you can date Billy Loomis.

It has been over 25 years since I first watched that movie and yet it still does something to me that other movies don’t. The terror is no longer there but the familiarity with the characters feels like I’m with old friends. I know who is going to die, I know when and who does it but it doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of a franchise that I come back to again and again. There are other branches of the genre that move me in similar ways: I Know What You Did Last Summer (but please, please do not watch the new one, I implore you!), Point Horror, Are You Afraid of the Dark and anything written by Stephen King. They moved me into a space that was uncomfortable yet exhilarating and I could not get enough.

This week on a long walk with my best friend who has a similar affinity to the horror of the 90s, we discussed why millennials love horror so much. We pondered on whether all generations love the genre. Is there something unique about our experiences of 90s horror that makes it different for millennials? These are some of the ideas we came up with - I’d love for you to comment below and let me know your thoughts.

We all love Billy Loomis and want to be Sidney Prescott

I do not think I’m alone in feeling that one of the sexiest bits of on screen action ever was Skeet Ulrich as serial killer Billy Loomis licking corn syrup from his fingers. Wearing his tight white t-shirt over jeans with his slightly floppy hair falling into his eyes, he is a teen dream, despite the fact that he is also covered in corn syrup and blood. Hell, even his psycho sidekick Stu Macher is likeable! We both want them to be caught and want them to get away with it. I think this is a phenomenon that is quite unique to 90s horror. So many of the killers in the Point Horror series were the boyfriends of the protagonists - the boyfriends that at 11/12 years old I wish I had! Stephen King writes about sex within horror - it’s terrifying how we can be drawn into the sex appeal of some of the most vile and murderous antagonists - it is trickery on the highest level. Gone are the monsters of Nightmare on Elm Street and Hellraiser, these new monsters are teenage boys and girls and they are hot.

But what about I Know What You Did Last Summer? I hear you cry. The antagonist was an undead fisherman who slaughters teenagers and looks pretty…well soggy…most of the time. True - but isn’t he supposed to be the victim? Wasn’t he the man that a bunch of drunk teenagers ran over on the way back from a 4th July party? Aren’t the teens played by Freddie Prince Jr, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ryan Phillipe and Sarah Michelle Gellar actually the murderers? Isn’t it true that the very people in the movie we should hate are actually the ones we end up rooting for? I rest my case.

Which brings us to what I shall call the ‘Sidney Prescott Effect’. To millennials, Sidney Prescott was the epitome of cool. She was popular but comfortable in her own company, she had amazing style but not in a Cher from Clueless kind of way, she punched Gail Weathers in the face! But I think one of the most striking aspects of her character was her status as a virgin. As Randy reminds us later in the film, as soon as you lose your status as a virgin in a horror film, you die. Those are the rules! This is why virgins, historically tend to survive in horror films. But Sidney is a virgin through choice and it is a choice that becomes central to the storyline and central to our love for her. She has been with Billy Loomis for a couple of years and despite his obvious frustration that they haven’t moved beyond a PG-13 style relationship in a while, despite the fact they are THE high school couple, she sticks to her guns and clearly states the parameters of what she feels comfortable with in terms of sex. This is so unlike other female protagonists who are virginal, who are deemed either too unattractive to have the prospect of sex on their radar, or who are protected by an overbearing male presence in their life who prevents them being able to access boys in the first place. Sidney is a lone wolf, her mother is dead and her father is frequently absent. She is sexy, she is popular, she is dating the hottest guy in high school and we watch her make a CHOICE and say no. But even when she does decide to go all the way at the end of the movie, it’s an act of defiance - she should now die. Billy is trying to fit her into a narrative that justifies his anger: he has slept with her so now he can call her a whore. But she’s Sidney ‘fucking’ Prescott. Of course she can’t die.

Plus - we all want her house. Have you seen her house?

The 90s was a vibe and horror played on it

Have you ever listened to the soundtracks of 90s horrors? Unlike horrors of previous decades, you won’t just hear creepy backing tracks every time the killer emerges. Instead you’ll hear familiar bands and songs that were popular and part of the playlists of teens all around the globe. Bands like The Offspring, Republica, Kula Shaker, Korn for example. As Scream ends and the sun comes up over the valleys of California, Moby’s First Cool Hive plays and it’s the coolest most atmospheric end to a horror film I’ve ever watched. By mixing pure horror with popular culture, movie directors of the 90s were sending out a clear message: our films are aimed at young people and we want them to recognise themselves in them.

This idea is exacerbated by the actors chosen to play the main characters. Sarah Michelle Gellar, for example had just started out as the infamous Buffy the Vampire Slayer before she appeared in I Know What You Did Last Summer. Jennifer Love Hewitt was in Party of Five, Skeet Ulrich and Neve Campbell had both been in The Craft and Drew Barrymore who got approximately 15 minutes of screen time in Scream had been in…well everything! These were people we already felt we knew from other cult 90s movies and shows and therefore these horror films blended our real, lived 90s experience with the fantasy world of the movies.

I have always wanted a programme on my computer like Cher does in Clueless, so my wardrobe can be analysed and a perfect outfit selected for the day. However, in reality, I’m not going to go out looking like Cher, her look was never attainable. But for the characters in films like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer that 90s coolness became, suddenly, accessible. In an interview with Cynthia Bergstrom who designed the costumes for Scream and Buffy the Vampire Slayer she reflects on the one thing Wes Craven asked her to do: “The only direction that he gave me was that he wanted the costumes to be timeless […] He said, ‘Cynthia, you never know, people may be watching this film 25 years from now, they may not, but I’d love for their costumes to not be too on-trend.” So Casey Becker isn’t dressed like a cheerleader in the opening scene, but rather jeans and a casual sweater. Sidney Prescott wears baggy t-shirts and sweaters from J.Crew. They might not be on trend but their style was attainable; we could go shopping in ordinary stores and come out dressed like our favourite 90s horror icons.

The transition between childhood and adulthood was exacerbated for millennials

In a a 1997 interview interview, Wes Craven described how horror movies played on the fears of the generations they were aimed at. For millennials growing up in the 90s, he defined this fear as the “deadliness of adults”. In the 80s, horror villains like Freddie Krueger were the adults to be feared. They preyed on the young and infiltrated their innocent dreams. But for millennials it wasn’t necessarily the fear of adults that was the issue, but the potential of what they themselves could become. For many millennials, their childhoods had been filled with unrestrained access to nature, freedom to go out of the house and not come back until the street lights came on, freedom to exist away from technology. In the late 1990s, the future seemed a little more scary. With rising technology and access to the internet, the world as we knew it was changing and growing up carried fears and responsibilities that we weren’t necessarily prepared for.

In films like the ones we have been looking at, in most of the Point Horror series, in books like Carrie, the teenagers are the problem. The “deadliness of the adults” is presented in the form of their neglect. Sidney’s parents have let her down in Scream: her mum was having an affair and her dad is constantly absent. Billy blames his psychosis on the breakdown of his parents’ marriage, Stu quips “my mum and dad are going to be so mad at me” in a comical breakdown at the end of the film but where are they? The reason Stu’s house becomes the ‘death house’ is because his parents are out of town leaving the house free with endless access to alcohol. Part of the tragedy of Casey Becker’s death is that inches away from her parents who have come back after leaving her alone all night, she tries to scream for her mum but can’t and her mum misses the opportunity to save her. Carrie’s mother is abusive, the teens in I Know What You Did Last Summer don’t seem to have parents. Where are the parents? Even Principle Himbry played by none other than The Fonz, is completely inept at understanding or controlling the teenagers in his High School, threatening two teenagers physically before meeting his untimely demise.

The films offer an uncomfortable truth - the nuclear family had reached crisis point and parents no longer knew or cared about what their children were up to. I was watching Scream at 11 because my friend’s mum rented it from Blockbusters for us. It was a real possibility that I wasn’t watching these films because I wanted to be scared - but because I was scared.

Millennial horror was more three dimensional

In the afterword to his 2010 collection of short stories Full Dark No Stars, Stephen King writes “bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do - to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street.” Similarly in an interview with Jonathan Barkan, Wes Craven said “personally, I don’t enjoy going to see a lot of horror films because it’s usually just, sort of, two-dimensional characters getting slaughtered.” Stu Macher and Billy Loomis are horrendous human beings with very little motive other than their dissatisfaction with the world and too much exposure to horror films. They kill in the most brutal ways, they target innocent victims who have had seemingly very little impact on their lives. But Stu is funny, Billy is edgy and sensitive, both are popular and well-liked in their friendship group. That’s why although I like the franchise as a whole and could talk about the sequels all day long, the killers will never be as believable as Stu and Billy because Stu and Billy are recognisable in our own lives, in our own friendship groups.

It was a trope that appeared in lots of horror films in the 90s. Even Buffy the Vampire Slayer had us questioning our relationship with vampires after the appearance of Angel, a seemingly good vampire who could turn at any minute back into a demon, while being simultaneously completely believable as the love of Buffy Summers’ life.

In her essay Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, Julia Kristeva speaks of abjection as a symptom of consuming horror. Abjection usually occurs when we see something that our bodies translate as dangerous such as excrement or a corpse. Our revulsion and fear of getting near it is designed to protect us and therefore can be a source of horror. In moral transgressions, the water is a little muddier. We go through a process of abjection because we see behaviour that is ‘other’ to our own. This ‘othering’ does occur in horror movies of the 90s but not in the same way as literature and media in the decades that came before. In Scream for example, the othering occurs right at the critical moment, the climax of the film. Because of our recognition of ourselves in the lives of the teenagers on screen, the violent separation of ourselves from these two mass murderers doesn’t happen in quite the same way as it does with say, Michael Myers. We’re left with a strange uncomfortable feeling of being misled and intrigued by people who we’ve grown to like, maybe a little bit let down.

In summary, I do think that horror films of the 90s had a specific effect on millennials that was unique to our generation. With the release of Scream 7 early next year, I have been voraciously re-watching the franchise with my best friend, eagerly anticipating the return, not just of Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox, but of Skeet Ulrich and Matthew Lillard as well. It feels like a homecoming - and I might just buy a J Crew sweater for the occasion.