Nosferatu and Lily-Rose Depp put a wacky hat on 2024's biggest horror trend

This article contains some spoilers for "Nosferatu".

For the most part, the trend that emerges during any particular year of cinema has nothing really competitive about it. Sure, there may be "Dante Peak" and "Vulcan" and "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" years where very similar projects are developed to compete with each other, but most of the trends that happen are less about intentional a duel and increasingly an indication of where the culture's head is. Remember 2017, when John Denver's song appeared in no less than five separate movies? While there is no unique explanation for such an occurrence, it is intriguing and potentially enlightening to identify the trend and see what, if anything, it speaks to in the modern real world.

When identifying a trend in art, especially in cinema, it is important to remember that films are made with a time lag - the films of 2024 were made, for the most part, in 2023, they were conceived even earlier than that, etc. Additionally, although news is delivered to us as current as possible, the effect of life-changing events also happens slowly. To use a relevant example, even though in 2022 we got word of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that gave women autonomy over their own bodies over unwanted pregnancies, the consequences of that retroactive decision are now starting to show up everywhere. Hence the trend of horror films in 2024 dealing with unnatural (and very unwanted) pregnancies, female oppression, female rage, etc.

Maybe it's because of this real-life trauma, along with the increased noise on social media (including news of a high-profile remake) that 1981's Possession it has only grown in stature and awareness over the last few years. Andrzej Żulawski's surreal, historical film about the destruction of a marriage (if not a country and/or the world) features one of actress Isabel Adjani's most famous portrayals of complex female rage and mental imbalance. Her performance also inspired a trend among 2024 horror films, culminating in Lily-Rose Depp's incredible turn in Robert Eggers' Nosferatu.

In Immaculate and The First Sign, the baby is the catalyst for possession

Ajani's role in Possession is as multi-faceted as the film itself. For one thing, it's a dual role, with Adjani playing both complicated ex-wife Anna and would-be new wife Helen. For another, Anna is dealing with some mixture of mental illness, emotional trauma, stress, and other factors that cause her to give birth to something in the subway, an organism that eventually matures into something else. That "birth" scene is the most talked about moment in the entire movie, and not only has it been turned into a meme, but it's now been married to several horror movies this year alone.

The Nunsploitation one-two punch of "Sinless" and "The First Sign" earlier this year involved corrupt sects within organized religion (if not society at large) to force women to carry unwanted (not to mention capital-evil) children to term. As such, both films depict a gruesome birth scene and, in the case of The First Sign, a supernaturally sudden pregnancy. The two protagonists, Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney) and Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), have to deal with their bodies being used and changed against their will. In other words, they become possessed, even if we are talking about a baby and not a ghost or a demon.

Directors Michael Mohan and Arkasha Stevenson wanted to explicitly pay homage to Zhulavsky; It is free to register saying that she and Stevenson used "Possession" as a reference and Mohan said that he showed Ajani the Sweeney subway scene before they shot the cultural moments of their film. The fact that both films use Adjani and Žulavski as touchstones, along with their outstanding performances (each indelible in their own way) and the many similarities between Immaculate and The First Sign under other circumstances, it would be seen as a curious moment of parallel thinking. It's Lily-Rose Depp's performance in Nosferatu that helps make this examination of female hysteria more of a trend.

Nosferatu and Lily-Rose Depp redefine hysteria

Nosferatu deals with themes that differ from Sinless and The First Sign, but some similarities emerge. Nosferatu doesn't have an evil child, but that doesn't mean pregnancy scares aren't in the film. Anna Harding (Emma Corrine), the pushy friend of Ellen Hutter (Depp) and the doting wife of Friedrich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), is happily pregnant with the couple's third child. So when Ellen's tormentor/predator/evil lover Count Orlok (Bill SkarsgƄrd) sets his sights on her, there's something extra offensive about the Orlok parasite draining both mother and unborn child.

However, the relationship between Orlok and Ellen shows homage to the movie "Possession" and the trend of historical scenes in 2024 horror. Trying to deal with Orlok's evil and his arrival in Germany, Ellen confesses to her husband Thomas (Nicholas Hult) that she has a nasty history with the vampire. She tells Thomas that she had dreams - or were they real encounters? ā€” involves Orlok from a young age and that these encounters are very physical in nature. The scene illustrates how much power Orlok has over Ellen, while also showing Ellen's own inner darkness, a quality that appeals to her husband, who ends the moment by trying to sexually replace Orlok in Ellen's mind.

The scene shows Depp demonstrating Ellen's struggle emotionally and physically, and is a culmination of her character's suffering from conflicting thoughts and feelings that manifest as some sort of illness to those unfamiliar. Through Ellen and Depp's performance, the film seems to comment on the outdated concept of hysteria, which was once thought to be a disease exclusively for women who wouldn't behave the way society (re: the patriarchy) wanted them to behave. Like a lot of social commentary in horror, the film has its cake and eats it too: Ellen does suffer from the terror of an evil entity invading her mind, but she also deals with desires and needs within herself that you won't publicly admit, at least at the beginning.

Horror should be a safe space for actors to run wild

The quality that Mohan wanted to convey to Sweeney when he was showing off her Possession while making Immaculate is that, in his words, "you're not going to go over the top." While it's probably just a coincidence that the three horror films released in 2024 seem to directly pay homage to Adjani and Zhulavsky's film, the trend is more about this principle than any kind of homage. More than just these three films, we've had a number of horror films released this year that feature leading female performances that display a remarkable lack of restraint or decency, which is exactly what these stories, these characters, and this genre call for. As Mohan noted, such unbridled performances "give the audience that sense of catharsis" that we all clearly need in such troubling and traumatic times.

Such historical performances are not and should not be outside the norm for horror. It is this ability to attack our deepest fears, evoke our strongest (and perhaps most repressed) emotions and express our deepest anger that makes the genre one of the strongest in cinema and, I would argue, one of the most necessary. . In a climate where there is even a movie set in the fantasy land of Oz visually tempered by its director to try to make it look more like a "real place", We need movies that boldly eschew the constraints of realism to release the tension and get to know the messy, horrible, weird, unpleasant and scary things we deal with every day.

Another exciting aspect of this trend is how much it's raising the bar for women in horror, a genre that already features a slew of legendarily sassy performances. While the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences traditionally doesn't tend to nominate genre films often, the skill, craft and courage on display in horror this year are undeniable and could make an Oscar nod irresistible. Whether these women are recognized with awards or not, their work will live on, and the precedent they've set this year alone means we're likely to have plenty of exciting, unchanging material in the future. For example, who knows who might end up being cast as the female lead in Robert Pattinson and Parker Finn's remake of Possession, but boy, do they have their work cut out for them.

Nosferatu is now playing in theaters.



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