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I realized that if I wanted to understand the modern horror flick, I needed first to consider its backdrop, the grotesque.

I started with the seminal work of the German critic Wolfgang Kayser, The Grotesque in Art and Literature, written in 1957. In his book, Kayser identifies four premises for understanding the grotesque in medieval art. I found that I could use his framework to make sense of the behavior of horror movies, and that was a happy moment on the quest.

Premise #1: The grotesque is the estranged or alienated world.

Frankenstein clearly had the whole 'grotesque' thing down

In this world the margin swaps places with the center. The teenage freak, the ostracized weirdo, Carrie White in Carrie, becomes prom queen. Here the four ocular monsters of Revelation 4 roam freely. Here the victims of deformation, the Minotaur, the Wolf Man, Frankenstein's Monster, are at home. Here it is the fear of life—rather than the fear of death—that overwhelms.

Premise #2: The grotesque is experienced as an incomprehensible, inexplicable impersonal force that has no name—

none, that is, that can be identified by scientific man. The grotesque defies logical and physical categories that humans use to make sense of things. Twenty doctors and psychiatrists in The Exorcist cannot explain to Chris McNeil what is wrong with her daughter, Regan. After all of their horrific needle-puncturing and radiation baths, they still cannot name the ailment. She's possessed. But no instrument seems capable of finding the demon. It lies "beyond."

Premise #3: The grotesque is at play with the absurd.

I've always wondered why people laugh when they watch horror movies. I usually found them, well, profoundly un-funny. Why so much comic relief in Shaun of the Dead or Night of the Living Dead? The Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin suggests helpfully that the grotesque as a form of carnival sought to expose the inordinate sense of self-importance among the cultural aristocracy and the religious establishment. Clowns, fools, gargoyles and masks, costumes and games and laughter—all of it was a search after freedom. A freedom for what? To be whole. The only way to heal, it seems, was to laugh at our disintegrating pretensions.

Premise #4: The grotesque is an attempt to invoke and to subdue the demonic.

Warner Brothers describes its latest action/suspense/horror flick Constantine in the following way:

Constantine waging war on the earthbound minions

"Born with a gift he didn't want, the ability to recognize the half-breed angels and demons that walk the earth in human camouflage, Constantine (Keanu Reeves) was driven to take his own life to escape the tormenting clarity of his vision. But he failed. Resuscitated against his will, he found himself cast back into the land of the living. Now, marked as an attempted suicide with a temporary lease on life, he patrols the earthly border between heaven and hell, hoping in vain to earn his way to salvation by waging war on the earthbound minions of evil."

The earthbound minions of evil. From the cult of Shiva to the professional exorcists of the Roman Catholic Church, humans have endeavored—by whatever means possible—to protect themselves from demonic evil. In the age of the grotesque, artists "tamed" the demonic by way of colorful metaphors and exaggerated figures.

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Related Elsewhere:

Horror: The Perfect Christian Genre	Printer view
Scott Derrickson, co-writer and director of the upcoming film The Exorcism of Emily Rose, says horror movies are an excellent way for a Christian filmmaker to address things of faith.