Viscerality
what the resurgence in practical gore tells us about the Now
MILD, VAGUE SPOILER WARNING FOR:
The Substance, A Different Man, Alien: Romulus, Maxxxine, Late Night with the Devil, Love Lies Bleeding, I Saw the TV Glow, Oddity, Heretic, Terrifier 3, and In A Violent Nature
The audiences, they yearn for blood!
For the better part of a decade now, the common refrain among moviegoers is how sick and tired they are of CGI — greenscreens, deepfakes, VFX, and so on. There’s been a resounding response to Hollywood in the last few years, proclaiming that filmmakers need to go back to the way movies were…At least in how they looked.
Part of this is the prevailing medium of digital filmmaking, which continues to transform and change its aesthetics frequently, and can often come across as uncanny or unrealistic, and another part of this is indeed a reliance on computer-generated-imagery…Often times a decision made by the filmmakers due to time or budget restrictions beyond their control.
As previously discussed, there’s been a wonderful new wave of low-budget and mid-budget films in the last few years, brought on by independent studios like A24 and Neon, and with the rising popularity of those models, come with it the rise of movies that respond more immediately and precisely to consumer needs.
Horror movies really had another golden year — perhaps the strongest yet. While blockbuster franchises are failing to capture audiences and prestige pieces don’t last in theaters long, independent horror films seem to be flourishing.
There are LOT of analytical reasons for this; escapism, sublimation of fear and anxiety, the need for [safe] excitement in trying and numbing times…
But one prominent shift in the last few years is that filmmakers are returning to more practical forms of visual storytelling. Not to say digital filmmaking or computer-enhancements aren’t still implemented, because it’s safe to say they absolutely are. BUT it’s becoming clear that more and more films are going back to making movies that feel real. Tactile, tangible, and interactive.
Horror is perhaps best suited to illustrate this, as the genre lends itself almost entirely to make the audience feel irretractable sensations like palpable fear, dread, and even nausea. These reactions are almost always at their peak when confronted by something that feels real as opposed to digitally manufactured, and the contrast between the horror movies of the 2010s vs the horror movies of the 2020s is a perfect microcosm of that disparity.
Take two of 2024’s most beloved films; The Substance and A Different Man. Two sides of the same coin, the films deal directly with the feelings of identity in an uncaring world. In The Substance, an aging actress is seduced into injecting herself with a miracle drug that will make her young again at a heavy cost, and in A Different Man, an actor with a significant deformity undergoes a miraculous surgery to become conventionally handsome and land bigger roles at the expense of his only friendship.
Both films make a point to not shy away from the sheer horror of their transformations. The Substance by and large is a satire, using extreme imagery with huge prosthetics and gooey gore to illustrate the significance of Demi Moore’s physicality vs Margaret Qualley’s. A Different Man, on the other hand, only really has one or two scenes that could be considered ‘gory’, but nonetheless effectively use bloody facial busts to create the morbid imagery of a man tearing his ‘deformed’ face apart and revealing the conventionally beautiful Sebastian Stan underneath.
Hearken back to the 2010s, where transformation scenes certainly existed, but were almost done exclusively in post-production. I’m not trying to argue that those movies are inherently worse because of this decision, but I do think digital effects (especially in relation to the human body or its transformation) tend to have a less visceral reaction from audiences than practical. Especially given the praxis that ALL CGI tends to age very, very poorly. Regardless of the absurdity of The Substance, there’s never a moment where we don’t fully believe that the character(s) are absolutely experiencing this horrifying transformation in full. We’re no longer worried about the literal transformation mechanics and how it’ll look metatextually (because audiences are all too aware of CGI nowadays) but we can instead focus entirely on the thrust of the scene and understand implicitly that Demi Moore is absolutely interacting with a real, practical — albeit artificial — prosthetic from hell.
I rambled a lot about this in regards to Star Wars and their reliance on the Volume technology to create their modern worlds — which I have a hard time enjoying because I think its artifice is both incredibly clock-able and creates a strange effect wherein the actors are trying to interact with the Volume while also simultaneously never being able to touch it. Most modern Star Wars media feels implicitly cold and distant because of the digital methods at play (Marvel, DC, and most mega-budget productions fall prey to this as well.)
This all lends itself to why movies like Alien: Romulus, Maxxxine, and Late Night with the Devil were so well received in 2024.
Production design has felt like a lost art for a lot of ‘bigger’ movies in recent years. Not to say the award-darlings didn’t still have great design behind them, but very few popcorn movies as of late seemed to have a lot of interesting designs going for them that weren’t done entirely in a digital atmosphere — often times rushed or robbed of necessary finances, leaving the end product looking vacant or flat or dull.
Alien: Romulus truly shined in this regard, as so much of the environment, across planets, space stations, vessels, and xenomorph nests were very clearly built in real space and filmed in-camera properly. This is a large part of why Romulus has quickly become one of the most beloved movies in the vast Alien franchise — because it actually feels like the first few Alien movies again, in that every scene is littered with real corners of real derelict machinery, littered with real menacing shadows, populated by real animatronic xenomorphs.
By extension, Maxxxine proved this equally effective as the film exists in a myriad of massive set-pieces. From old Hollywood soundstages and 80s Skid Row to a mansion in Beverly Hills, the difference between watching Mia Goth in a real, historic environment as opposed to watching Chris Evans pounce around a greenscreened version of WW2-era Germany is painfully obvious. It builds a relationship with the audience; the more they can feel the world of the film interact and react to the actor in real time, rather than digital renderings respond to programming post-facto, the more they become invested and suspend their disbelief entirely.
Late Night with the Devil does this to a smaller effect, by having the film take place over one (deceptively) small set that transforms throughout the story and reveals more behind its thin walls. But when you compare the aesthetic of this film to some of the previous attempts at ‘nightmare endings’ done by larger budget productions that relied on computer generative software to create the imagery after the fact, it becomes apparent why those latter movies were so quickly forgotten and why Late Night with the Devil has been such a major talking point of 2024.
Then come the films that can best be defined as ‘weird’ in the best way; Love Lies Bleeding, I Saw the TV Glow, Oddity, and Heretic.
Each thematically fascinating and resonate in their own separate ways, but also bound by the sensation of ‘small movies that feel incredibly large.’
Love Lies Bleeding is a contained thriller that mostly takes place in a gym or the desert, yet the exploration of the spaces makes the whole piece feel like a grand-scale Michael Mann film. Its reliance on bloodshed and explicit content only bolstering its tone. I Saw the TV Glow on the other hand, feels completely fever-dreamish, as the characters are moving in and out of liminal spaces across their hometown in search of a calling that they’ll never find. Even as the fictitious universe of their favorite tv show intersects with their real lives, the Lynchian production (primitive sets, theatrical costumes, minimal effects, overly dramatic lighting) lends itself to the “not quite the same reality as ours” tone that the film thrives in.
Oddity and Heretic are both centrally focused on the interiors of uniquely designed homes, each of which were clearly constructed as clever set pieces by the filmmakers. As previously noted, this is a huge plus for allowing actors to interact with the scene and create a general sense of believability in the narrative, but it also simply lets our eyes and subconscious brain more easily accept what’s going on.
To the point of all four films, it means that when the [practical] blood inevitably spills — someone gets shot or a monster is gutted or a man’s head is twisted off or an immortal deity spews black bile — it actually follows the laws of gravity and stains everything it touches. It has as permanence to it, and a sort of implied odor when it lingers on the character’s clothes. It FORCES the audience to squirm, rather than ask politely.
And then there are the splatter films. Terrifier 3 being chief among them. It’s hard to really explain or understand how the Terrifier franchise exploded in the way that is has, but one inarguable facet of the film that everyone adores is its reliance on good old fashioned practical effects. To a degree that I would argue is almost comical, and that’s kind of the point.
Art the Clown rips off people’s faces, saws people in half, and literally blows children up with explosives. And the team behind Terrifier have always consciously decided to show every single bit of it. You’re meant to engage with the viscera and take note of just how many body parts are flying across the set. The franchise wants you to confront just how grotesque this scenario and take note of your sick reactions as you laugh. It’s almost an exercise in venting, as you project your deepest angers and insecurity onto Art and let him go hog-wild on the town.
In A Violent Nature is ripped from the same clothe here. The film explicitly follows the POV of a Jason Vorhees-like killer who stalks teenagers through the woods. And while the film is (correctly) praised for its eerie tone, methodic pacing, and beautiful cinematography, it’s also revered as one of the most merciless and brutal slashers in recent years. Because, just like with Terrifier, the filmmakers make an explicit point to do everything as realistically as possible. Every kill (yes, even THAT one) are done in camera and with prosthetics and fake blood. Its all shown in slow, painstaking detail. Even when the killer has left the scene, the camera purposely lingers on the bodies for several extra minutes so the viewer can completely consume what horrors they’ve just witnessed. And it only really works if what we saw is really happening on stage.
SO — WHAT DOES THIS ACTUALLY MEAN?
I kinda just gave you a list of good horror movies from last year and repeated myself, over and over, trying to point out that 'practical effects good, CGI bad’.
Which isn’t really my thesis. CGI is totally fine in certain contexts and is likely doing a lot of good work behind the scenes of my favorite movies to help stitch together rough edits or wash out an error somewhere in the background. Digital photography is how we get such gorgeous color palettes in modern arthouse cinema and constantly evolving and improving generative graphics is how animated films, video games, and original shorts continue to push the boundaries of visual narrative.
I’m just more interested in WHY audiences are articulating this feeling so unanimously as of late. Because yeah, people complained about CGI and green screens throughout the 2000s, but never to this degree. The return to practical effects and real set pieces in 2024 isn’t JUST a reaction to Hollywood’s mishandling of blockbusters in recent years.
This return to primacy; this reversal of technology and wanting to bring back a sense of reality to filmmaking has a way more philosophical, emotional, and even sociopolitical application…In my estimation. (Go figure)
It’s because we all wanna rip someone’s head off.
Oh.
Huh.
I guess that was easier than I thought.
Okay, to unpack that a little bit more, you’ve probably noticed that I always like to make correlations between trends in modern media and culture with whatever is going on in the ecosociopoliticalethosphere or whatever.
If there is ANY singular, consistent feeling for the last few years, it is that of frustration. Sometimes it’s aimed at one particular piece of bad news or one individual who ruins things for the rest of us, but often times it’s just general angst. Financial duress, physical vacuity, mental drainage, emotional exhaustion, compounding anxieties, fear of losing whatever little we have left, worrying for the future…Everyone’s been so tightly wound up that we’re all poised to have our proverbial rubber bands snap at any moment.
And I think horror movies like this prove to be an excellent manifestation of that angst. While superhero movies were born in the wake of geopolitical conflict and a yearning for ‘justice’ or reconciliation by means of spectacle, and nostalgia-ridden shows became keypoints in the zeitgeist at a time where the future felt incredibly uncertain and the past felt traceably comfortable,
I think horror movies now are an immediate reflection of anger. I think audiences want a xenomorph to shoot at or a victim to cut in half or a creep to smash to pieces or an packed theater to spray blood across. I think there’s a great deal of expression that transfers from the filmmaker to the audience through the medium (hence MEDIUM eh?) and establishes a kinship based around the Now that transcends discourse. And to that point, I think that’s why filmmakers are reverting back to practical effects. It’s simply an implied understanding between creator and experiencer — a commonality that everyone is feeling on some base, lizard-brain level at every waking moment of the day.
The physicality of real blood and prosthetics and busts and set pieces and stunts and fiery explosions activates a primordial instinct in the audiences — not to say that it makes us violent, but that it allows us to sublimate that violence through a conduit of art.
This is obviously an old argument: it’s the key pushback to the old “violent movies and video games turn kids bad” stanza from the latter half of the 20th century.
But I can feel it now more than ever coming back in full swing. While horror movies became wildly acceptable as valid forms of media in the last few decades, I think a lot of the fans were still feeling as though the genre was a touch taboo or a touch less impactful, partly because of how studios were treating the medium as it related to blockbusters and other big-budget projects.
As it turns out though, audiences react more positively and much more enthusiastically when you show them the real thing.
That’s the other facet that’s been discussed to death: sincerity.
So much of the general public’s reaction to anything nowadays is based on how genuine something appears. Be it a celebrity, an artist, an athlete, or a politician. A decade or two of artifice behind the screens of phones and computers has made us humans crave real, genuine, personable interaction. And when our leaders or creators come off as robotic, programmed, or inhuman, we tend to cast them out.
So too do I think that’s the relationship between audiences and art. The more they notice the interference (digital manipulation) of the signal (art) the more they tend to ignore the message altogether. The backlash to generative AI, bot campaigns, deepfakes, and by extension green screens, volumes, composite shots, ADRs, and so on proves that moviegoers are wise to Hollywood’s tricks, new and old, and are begging for something more authentic.
We have become bloodthirsty beasts stuffed inside a cage, wondering why they’re only ever feeding us imitation meat.
Audience would rather you actually tear the actual meat off the real bones for them, and show every painstaking second — apparently.