South African Horror Films: A Sign of the Times?
As a self-proclaimed scaredy-pants, I’ve never really indulged in horror. When simply glancing at my unanswered emails sends fear and dread into my soul, why am I looking to get that from a film? But as a film-lover, this gaping hole in my viewing history is starting to become embarrassing.
In discussing this journey of mine with a friend, I commented that my entry into horror was probably TV. In 2020, during the pandemic, I was assigned to review the television series Evil. Now, mind you, when I was a child I got scared simply at the adverts of The X-Files that came on SABC 2, but I was a fan of the creators Robert and Michelle King and the lead actor Mike Colter and thought this was probably going to be a good show. It was, but it was still scary as hell.
It’s about a priest-in-training, a psychologist and a tech specialist who investigate cases of demonic activity to decide if the Catholic Church needs to do an exorcism. When watching season one, it became so bad that I couldn’t watch it at night anymore because I was having nightmares. But I still enjoyed it. Perhaps it’s because I knew that the main characters would survive, maybe the TV format had me feeling safe, but it was a thrilling show.
Since 2020, I’ve been casually watching more entry-level horrors, some thrillers, some scary films made in the 1920s - 1940s, and been making my way to the modern ones. I noticed the change in my tolerance level when I decided to catch up on Evil this year and found that I could stomach a lot more. I could watch it at night, and it didn’t scare me as much as before.
In my quest to watch more South African films, I have been noticing that there has been a rise in South African horror. And one day people are probably going to write long research papers on it but for now, I just wanted to speculate a little.
Firstly, I think that more investment in South African films means that there is more money for special effects. Also, the way technology has been developed with green screens, and good quality cameras it is more accessible to create horror films.
Secondly, there is a host of South African folklore that fits so neatly into the horror genre without us needing to remake films from other countries. And while the storylines and beats might be similar to what we have seen before, the characters and the ‘monsters’ feel different.
And lastly, there’s also a psychological aspect to this. Even though we have had horror films since the dawn of cinema, the golden ages have often been at a time when humanity is going through a process of trauma.
“We don’t fear monsters only because they’re physically threatening; they’re cognitively threatening, too. They’re horrifying because they don’t fit into categories neatly. They threaten our fantasies of categorization.” - Film scholar and philosopher Noel Carroll writes in The Philosophy of Horror.
There is a reason why perhaps the biggest horror movement, German Expressionism was born out of Weimar Germany between World War I and World War II. In times when we feel like we cannot understand or explain, it is rife for horror films.
For example, in a time when we are increasingly confused about climate change and the future of the world, there has been a rise in eco-horror. This has resulted in two quite well-made South African films that were released in 2021: Glasshouse and Gaia.
