Horror is a tool to peal away the layers of ourselves that we use to hide, the masks that we put up for formality and to get by in modern society. When faced with our deepest fears though, pleasantries and masks are the last thing you’re worried about. Horror gives an insight into who we, as humans, at the very core of our beings, are. Horror is a commentary on society because it reveals our human nature and how we act when faced with our deepest fears.
Driving question; “why is horror an effective way to reflect and comment on our society?”
For this project our goal was to do this; make a horror movies that comments on an aspect of our society. Sounds easy enough, well news flash: it’s not. Coming up with a commentary on society was the easy part. In the end we decided to focus on cancel culture and how damaging social media and influencers can be. The hard part? Making a film that can portray our message clearly to our audience. We started off great with thanks to our incredibly organized producer Alex and our driven director Ciara. As a class we naturally fell into what we were good at; sound, camera, design, art, and story. I ended up as head of the script department and after much talk with Ciara and the rest of our crew, was left with a clear vision of what to write. However, it could never be that easy. With a time limit of one day to write the script I was given a team of 6 people to write the script with; Grace, Rhiann, Lavinia, Frenchesca, Ally, and Erika. I divided up the script into 3 acts and sent 2 of them to work on 1 Act together and send me the finished Act by the next day. That’s when things began to go downhill. Looking back on it now, I realize how many people were actually working on the script. Because I had sent them home to work on it, everyone wrote separately and when I was given the pieces the next day, they didn’t fit together, making no sense. What I should have done was have 3 people max writing the script and the other 3 become the editors the next day to proof read and give feedback for a second draft. Due to this our message became muddled and progress for the rest of the filming process became incredibly difficult.
Act 1 script
Act 2 script
Act 3 script
Thanks to our design team (Rhiann, Holly, Grace) we were able to create characters and plot lines that allowed the audience to visually distinguish the personalities of the characters that didn’t come through in the dialogue.
Going back to horror as a tool to unveil the masks we put up, that is what I wanted to convey through our horror movie. As influencers, your job is to put up an appearance to make people like you, and watch your content. People who enjoy watching this becomes your following and the number of people you influence increases. The more influence you have the more it matters what you put out into the world. This is where cancel culture comes in and the act you display to the world must be perfected to avoid public isolation. In our horror movie we show the dark consequences of cancel culture and why it can be so dangerous. Not only that but cancel culture can be like a roulette wheel where someone gets cancelled for something dumb while others can do much worse and get away with it. We filmed our movie to follow a group of popular influencers who were very extreme with their beliefs. In the final moments of their death there were moments where the masks they put up slipped and we got to see a side of their true selves. When faced with our deepest fears appearances really don’t matter.
