Women Icons of Modern Horror

 

The Faces of Modern Horror

Women always have a role on-screen to play in horror. But while there are so many iconic final girls, they are usually shown and talked about in relation to their male slashers and counterparts. As we see, when there is a male slasher paired with a female lead, the male character usually stands out as the face of the franchise or film.

When people think about a lot of the most iconic and culturally important characters of classic horror movies they note, in the majority, men. To draw on Freddy, Jason, and Michael as examples, these are all men that served as the faces of their respective franchises in series with prominent success and standing cultural relevance. This isn’t to say that there have only been horror franchises headlined by men until recently (ex. Carrie and The Rage: Carrie 2), but the majority do skew male.

But in modern horror films, we see more and more often that women are at the forefront of the films and become the standout images. Now, women have become the faces of modern horror films with their portrayals of different villains and leads, and are now the reigning icons of modern horror.

History of the Trend

Women have, throughout the history of horror, had portrayals as iconic villains in different films. An extremely popular early example of this is The Bride of Frankenstein from 1935. Elsa Lanchester’s performance as the title character has become an icon of horror cinema - the character’s costume, design, and hair still remain an iconic look almost 90 years later. It’s a huge cultural milestone for an iconic horror character, and for that film, she is its defining face even with her limited screen time.

Another is Linda Blair as Regan MacNeil in 1973’s The Exorcist. Blair’s performance as a possessed child made that film terrifying for audiences at the time and sold her as a force of nature to be reckoned with. The film went on to receive major box office prominence at the time and stands as the ninth highest-grossing movie of all time with a $1,011,798,348 adjusted gross.

From this point forward in horror as we get to modern times, there were major developments in women as the main icons and villains of horror films. Now, women and female characters have become the faces of many modern horror films (The use of modern that I’m running with for this presentation is 2000 onward). As we’re seeing happen more and more in modern films, women are positioned in the most prominent roles in front of the camera due to many different cultural shifts and calls for more representation from audiences, as well as changing audience tastes and the cultural climate.

Important Milestones of the Trend

Post-2000 we had a slew of horror films with popular women villains. To start, 2009’s Orphan introduced the world to Esther, portrayed by Isabelle Fuhrman. Orphan’s depiction of the troubled “child” delivered audiences an intense horror-thriller with an instantly recognizable face that is strongly in debit to Fuhrman’s strong and scary performance. Esther is a fearful and formidable horror villain in her own right and is the clear standout star as a villain. A prequel film, Orphan: First Kill, has also been filmed to be released coming soon as well as with Isabelle Fuhrman returning to play Esther, which cements Esther’s status as an important figure in modern horror and as the face of her own franchise.

You also can’t talk about modern women in horror without mentioning Jennifer’s Body, which is now a massive cult classic thanks to its fan following. Megan Fox turned the role of Jennifer Check into an enduring figure in horror. She’s a killer that audiences can see as one born out of seeking revenge on the injustices of men, and Fox’s show-stopper performance shows a touching side to the story as well.

“Elevated horror” is also dominated by women and images of women, such as The VVitch, Hereditary, and Midsommar. If we look at Midsommar, people instantly think of Florence Pugh’s Dani as the May Queen. It’s a strong example of an iconic face in a horror film being a woman, and the image of Dani at the end of the film has strongly resonated with younger audiences.

Starting in 2013, The Conjuring franchise is mostly built around female characters, whether that be its protagonists or antagonists. The mainline Conjuring series follows Lorraine and Ed Warren, a married couple working to investigate and exorcise paranormal forces. With regards to the leads, the franchise always puts Lorraine into the position of authority in their relationship. In each story, her supernatural gifts are the driving force with Ed supporting her leading to a healthy relationship for both of them as well as successful exorcisms. Beyond its leads, the franchise also introduced two iconic female villains: Annabelle the doll and The Nun. Annabelle was given her own spinoff trilogy and became an iconic franchise villain in her own right with her great prop design. The Nun is also notable for being the highest-grossing film in the Conjuring franchise with over $365 million at the box office and is one of the highest-grossing horror films unadjusted for inflation. Bonnie Aarons’ performance as the demon Nun makes the character terrifying thanks to the performance and visual effects. The Nun is instantly recognizable and terrifying in her own right as a standalone horror villain. The franchise also brought the myth of La Llorona to screen, alongside other non-Conjuring related films did, centering yet another spinoff film on a woman antagonist. The franchise first bucked blockbuster trends by showing a woman as the hero saving others and created a popular spinoff franchise and standalone films that both portrayed iconic modern horror female villains to major financial success. For the (unadjusted for inflation) highest-grossing R-rated horror franchise of all time, with over 2.12 billion dollars at the box office, to be centered mainly on women is a massive point of note for the trend of women being the icons of modern horror.

And Us is my personal favorite example of putting women to the forefront of a massive horror film and making a woman the standout recognizable icon of the film in the wider popular culture. The design and costumes for the tethered, mainly Red, have become instantly recognizable for viewers. The film was a big financial and critical success, and it could not have happened without Lupita N’yongo’s wonderfully scary and layered performance. She perfectly captures the dual roles of Adelaide and Red, and the shifting perspectives that the audience gets along the way complicate the film’s narrative and communicate Peele’s greater themes of societal inequality perfectly. It’s a fantastically complex role that keeps you thinking about not only the film but the greater ramifications it has, and N’Yongo gave an unmatched, once-in-a-lifetime horror performance that stands as an all-time great piece of acting in a horror film. For a film that keeps you guessing what comes next until the final shot, N’yongo gave us the best horror protagonist and antagonist performances anyone could ask for, threading the line between women’s previous standing in horror as the “final girl” and their modern standing as horror cinema’s iconic villains.

Freaky also plays a lot with the idea of women’s roles in slashers. In the film, Millie (Kathryn Newton) switches bodies a la Freaky Friday with slasher The Butcher (Vince Vaughn). This switch upends a lot of gender norms in slashers with how both men and women are shown and make the physically intimidating Michael Myers-esque slasher the final girl role with the teenager in the slasher role. In the clip above, we get a key portrayal of how the film flips these ideas on their head, with the Butcher deciding it prefers embodying a woman as a killer against Millie’s current body as the Butcher.

Censor also does a great job at discussing women’s role in horror films today. In the climax of Censor as shown in the above clip, Enid’s constant search to save her sister from a non-existent male abductor/killer turns her into the villain. By presenting Enid as at first an understandable and sympathetic challenger with agency who turns into a terrifying and dangerous blood-soaked force that chases others in the woods, we yet again see the roles of women as the ones running in fear turning into the one chasing the innocent flipped on its head throughout a horror narrative. It’s a strong metaphor for how women have become the faces of danger, striking fear, that plays on the images of Enid in different lights directly in its narrative. Both Freaky and Censor both show an interesting duality in the past and present of women in horror films, making both Millie and Enid complex and interesting horror villains in their own right that act as the lead faces of these films.

Women taking over as the focus of horror franchise villains or mainstays shows another way the faces of modern horror have been moving to women from men. For example, Scream has always been an example of this with the story of Sidney Prescott at the forefront but has recently begun showing women as fans of film over the men in its last two entries like with the fun performances by Hayden Panettiere as Kirby in Scream 4 and Jasmin Savoy Brown as Mindy in Scream 5. They still market heavily with Ghostface but have moved in towards reverence to Sidney’s and Gale’s characters as a key tenant, which seems like it will grow even more given that both Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox are rumored to return for Scream 6 next year.

Halloween’s reboot is the strongest example of women taking the spotlight of horror franchises from villains. For decades, the marketed face of the Halloween franchise was Michael Myers. After Michael was brought back again and again under the assumption that the villain was the key to the franchise’s success, it has become abundantly clear over time that there’s no Halloween without Jamie Lee Curtis. Laurie Strode did return in Halloween 2, Halloween H20, and Halloween: Resurrection to varying success before 2018. To go to 2018, we were given yet another reimagining following only the original Halloween in Halloween 2018, Halloween Kills, and this year’s upcoming Halloween Ends. It is notable that H20 fully laid the groundwork for Halloween 2018 as a reimagining that focused just as much on Laurie as it did Michael, but the significance of these new ones now is that they have led to the biggest box office numbers for the Halloween franchise after fully positioning and marketing Laurie Strode as the face of the franchise. To compare the cultural reception of H18 and Kills, Kills was received much less by audiences than its predecessor. One core reason for this is how little screen time Jamie Lee Curtis has, especially for a film that is marketed heavily toward its female leads while delivering audiences a much more limited view of them compared to the first film. It shows that what audiences really connected to is the women in charge, and as many kills it put in style, it was a misunderstanding of what greater modern audiences wanted: a strong female face to lead the film.

Cultural Climate

Calls for representation for women in Hollywood have grown more and more over the years. This is exemplified by social media, and how support for marginalized groups has been able to mobilize online as the internet has grown. Movements such as MeToo and TimesUp have called for safer workspaces for women in the film industry and have raised awareness and discussion about this. The growth in social media has helped account for spreading awareness to influence attitudes on gender, feminism, and women, but the industry itself is adapting extremely slowly to change. 

But for women working in these spaces, there is still work to be done behind the camera as acting jobs grow. The film industry actually regressed in 2021 with women comprising 17% of directors on the top 250 grossing movies, down from 18% the previous year. When narrowing it down to the top 100 most popular movies at the box office, women comprised 12% of directors on those films, down from 16% in 2020. (As cited by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University).

The percentage of women of color directors did not change during the 15 years surveyed by USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, as well. They accounted for less than 2% of all top-grossing directors since 2007, indicating a greater inequality of women of color even within the extremely low numbers of women directors of top Hollywood films.

Challenges

Failed attempts like Halloween: Resurrection and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022 show themselves as strong examples of studio mishandling of female characters. Halloween: Resurrection’s downright embarrassing Laurie Strode kill combined with the cringe-worthy Michael Myers-Laurie kiss undoes everything that made H20 great just in its opening. All the agency given to Laurie in that film was swiped away, and only in my darkest nightmares do I fear they go in this direction for Halloween Ends. Another example is Netflix’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022, which featured the literal and figurative butchering of Sally Hardesty (played by Olwen Fouéré this time around) as well as its general sense of meanness which is an admittedly fun note for a slasher to hit when getting to its kills, but when it’s evoking school shooting imagery and story beats as this film does with its female leads, it feels unnecessary and gross and dampens the experience even more. Both of these films show a general mishandling of its horror leads and show the bottom of the barrel that this trend could hit.

The big challenge to this trend is the need for more female representation behind the camera. While the industry has gained in having women work in front of the camera and as the faces of modern horror films, this is not the same behind the camera. Though many of these films had strong and notable portrayals of women in horror, the majority of these, which are bigger studio horror tentpoles, are still directed by men. This does not negate the fact that these women are icons in their own right, but it doesn’t distract from the fact that there needs to be a larger presence for women in the workforce behind the camera. 

As Debadrita Sur writes in her analysis asking “Is the representation of women in horror changing gradually?”, “The problem of representation and diversity still plagues the cinema industry at large. Horror films have been extraordinarily misogynistic and reductive in their portrayal of women, but with the help of the likes of Ari Aster and Jordan Peele, the landscape is gradually changing. While people of colour still need far greater representation in horror films where they remain more or less forgotten, no longer do female viewers have to witness the terrifying and flawed representation of their image on-screen. No longer must they suffer the masochism of watching a film where the female body is either possessed, betrayed, stalked or killed.” While the numbers have been steadily increasing throughout the years, there is still a major gap in women directors being offered tentpole films and an even larger gap for women of color.

The big message that we should take from this as a challenge is that seeing women in front of the camera and on-screen should not distract us from the lack of representation for women behind the scenes. While this is a notable trend, and it is important to see how women have become the face of horror in a lot of cases, it should not be used to say women are now on equal footing with men in horror. The film industry is still stacked against women.

Impact

To build off of that, I think we should consider the impact and importance of the dichotomy between women being the “face” of modern horror versus how well studios are working towards putting women in integral positions behind the camera and on film sets.  The impact of this trend on the horror genre as we see it today is its massive shift in the representation of women in horror on-screen. Horror films now focus much more on the female protagonists as much as they do on the slashers themselves. Female characters are grown agency beyond scream queens or final girls. Female empowerment and the feminist viewpoint are now the standard trends for horror. Horror fandom for a younger generation gets to focus on identification in escapism by seeing these films too, with a new appreciation for horror growing out of it.

But with the way Hollywood and the film industry work as capitalist businesses, we still see inequalities behind the scenes regardless of what we are seeing on screen. I think it is a telling sign that women are the faces of these films but still struggle to get equality in behind-the-scenes work. Escapism for women can be a positive force for release, and with constant portrayals of this in studio horror films we deserve to see more being made by behind-the-scenes talent that reflects it. Independent films are a great example of where to take this trend next. The Love Witch written and directed by Anna Biller, and Master, written and directed by Mariama Diallo are both perfect examples of how well this pays off for a film.

As its seen today, you would not have horror without the contribution of women, and the major studios making them need to be working not just in front of the camera but behind it as well. If women are the faces of modern horror, covering every poster and bit of marketing and social media trends, why can’t major studios put them behind the camera more? Putting actions to their words is one thing, but the next step of this trend needs to be that studios put actions to their images.