GAMESRADARCOM/TOTALFILM APRIL 2020 | TOTAL FILMElisabethMossandLupitaNyong’o
haveablyprovedthathorrorisn’t
merelythereserveofB-moviestarletsCAN WE TALK ABOUT...?
UN
IVE
RSA
L
I
n recent years there have been a slew of impressive female-fronted
horror films which opened to critical acclaim, with Toni Collette
(Hereditary), Lupita Nyong’o (Us) and Florence Pugh (Midsommar) all
wowing audiences... before each going unrewarded for their work
when awards season came around. So with Elisabeth Moss delivering another
fantastic turn in Leigh Whannell’s nerve-obliterating The Invisible Man, the
questions are why have these women been overlooked, and will Moss be the
one to change that?SPOILER
ALERT!
Historically horror doesn’t generally
do well when it comes to handing out
statues. Genre-adjacent titles may
score big (Parasite, The Shape Of Water
and No Country For All Men all have
horror beats), but one has to go back to
1991’s The Silence Of The Lambs to find a
scary movie win Best Picture at the
Oscars. In terms of actress awards Jodie
Foster of course secured a golden baldie
for Lambs too, but aside from her,Kathy Bates (Misery) and Natalie
Portman (Black Swan) that’s basically
it for the last 30 years.
The trouble is those films still play
broadly, straddling thriller/drama
categories as if horror were a dirty
word. More modern releases are
less coy: no one could argue that
The Invisible Man – a film based on
a Universal monster – is anything
other than a fright flick.The thing is, and what fans have
always known, is that the horror
genre is incredibly rich. The way
Whannell’s movie reframes The
Invisible Man as being about
domestic abuse just shows its aptitude
for social commentary (while
Hereditary is about grief; Us class
inequality; and Midsommar the
mother of all break ups). Moss, too,
is sensational, deserving every plaudit
going for her portrayal of a survivor
being gaslit by the literal phantasm
of her violent partner.
Who knows, 2020 could be the
year things finally course correct.
With release schedules still reeling
from the coronavirus pandemic
(see our feature on p54), an upshot
could be that awards attention
refocuses on previously overlooked
films. With some of the best
actresses in the world doing their
best work in horror, it’s an
adjustment that’s long overdue. TC‘HORRORSHOWSITSAPTITUDE
FORSOCIALCOMMENTARY’
RECOGNISING HORROR PERFORMANCES
Discussing the invisible women leading a revival in genre cinema