A woman’s domain is her home – it’s an archaic idea, but it’s one still perpetuated in today’s horror films, especially the subgenre of home invasion horror. These films serve to scare us because they take place in the one setting we’re supposed to feel safe, and their horror is much more realistic than ghosts or monsters. But how does a home invasion affect men and women so differently?
A woman’s domain is her home – it’s an archaic idea, but it’s one still perpetuated in today’s horror films, especially the subgenre of home invasion horror. These films serve to scare us because they take place in the one setting we’re supposed to feel safe, and their horror is much more realistic than ghosts or monsters. But how does a home invasion affect men and women so differently? In home invasion films, the female characters are often the ones trapped helplessly in their homes, making them the unlucky prisoners of their own supposed domain.
One of the most suspenseful films of all time, 1967’s Wait Until Dark, was one of the first home invasion films to hit the silver screen. It was also one of the first films to present a heroine who was absolutely helpless, even in her own home. Susy (Audrey Hepburn) is blind after a car accident, making her the perfect vulnerable target for a bunch of criminals trying to find a drug-stuffed doll that Susy’s husband may have. This film prisons Susy in her home to fend off these criminals, keeping her passive while her husband is removed from the drama. But the film’s portrayal of Susy is not negative – in fact, even though she’s vulnerable, Susy manages to outwit the criminals and show her strength when she needs it most.
In 1997, the famously misanthropic director Michael Haneke made Funny Games, one of the more brutal, violent films in the home invasion genre. Two murderous young men entrap a mother, father, and son in their vacation home to torture and eventually murder them with their sadistic games. Anna is the last surviving victim, forced to watch the brutal slaughter of her husband and son before she herself is killed. Funny Games plays into sexist ideas of women in that it does now allow Anna any agency at the end – she is not allowed to fight for her life at all.
Sometimes female characters are put into situations that limit their agency, but they end up outwitting the foes in their path to come out on top. This is the case in 2002’s Panic Room. The two main victims are a mother and daughter who are trying to make a life for themselves after a rough divorce. The film initially makes Meg (Jodie Foster) out to be a woman scorned, angry about her failed marriage and trying to win the trust of her daughter (Kristen Stewart), but once the burglars break through their security system and enter the home, she must fight to survive in the titular panic room. This enclosed space offers no communication to the outside, making it both a literal and metaphorical prison for Meg – she’s trapped, and the only way out is through violence.
In other cases, home invasion films seem to want to keep women in roles lacking agency. In 2008’s The Strangers, a couple on the verge of a breakup must face an intense night battling a group of masked killers who keep finding their way into the house. James, the boyfriend, is the one who consistently takes action while Kristen, his girlfriend, is left screaming and hiding. He’s the one who shoots the gun and calls the shots, and when he can no longer help, Kristen is totally helpless. This is an example of a film that perpetuates the stereotype of the woman who cannot fend for herself.
Luckily, the past few years have given us horror films with kick-ass heroines who can fend for themselves. In 2011, Sharni Vinson played a survivalist “final girl” in You’re Next who refused to let a group of masked killers assault her in her boyfriend’s country home. Even though the odds were against her, she used her wits and courage to get herself out of trouble, proving that home invasion films don’t always have to trap their heroines in an inescapable situation. However, it’s almost inevitable that the horror genre will continue to perpetuate stereotypes of women and place them in vulnerable roles and in inescapable situations of unnecessary violence. Let’s just hope we’ll see at least some films that go against this outdated trope.
Maria Ramos is a writer interested in comic books, cycling, and horror films. Her hobbies include cooking, doodling, and finding local shops around the city. She currently lives in Chicago with her two pet turtles, Franklin and Roy. You can follow her on Twitter @MariaRamos1889.
Pinning down what makes the camera use a female gaze can be a little tricky, as we have all lived within the male gaze for so long. It is commonplace to see women on display disproportionately while male characters go fully clothed. The gaze’s assumption of heterosexuality also carries over to the infrequently used female gaze, making it slightly more visible. It is this consumption of the male body in ‘The Guest’ which initially establishes the film’s gaze as female.
David and his beautiful baby blues.
This guest post by Deirdre Crimmins appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.
Whether you consider it an homage to 1980s thrillers, or a throwback to action films of the 1990s, it is clear that The Guest has much more meat in it than your typical fast-moving fun flick. Watching the film unfold before you—with both literal and metaphorical guns blazing—it feels intentionally crafted to simultaneously occupy the same space as action films and to also coyly toy with the audience’s expectations of those films. One of the ways that The Guest intentionally subverts audience expectations is its assumption of the female gaze.
Pinning down what makes the camera use a female gaze can be a little tricky, as we have all lived within the male gaze for so long. It is commonplace to see women on display disproportionately while male characters go fully clothed. The gaze’s assumption of heterosexuality also carries over to the infrequently used female gaze, making it slightly more visible. It is this consumption of the male body in The Guest which initially establishes the film’s gaze as female.
Dan Stevens plays the main character, David. Stevens was most well-known to audiences as the romantic and strong cousin Matthew in Downtown Abbey. Matthew made many women in the television show swoon with his soft blond hair and blue eyes. Stevens’s role in the program was decidedly British. From the accent to the tuxedos to living in an honest castle there was a level of exoticness to him. His casting in The Guest adds a level of this “otherness” to a firmly American character.
Just your average American psycho coming home from war.
David is a good old boy. Returning home from Afghanistan he first visits the family of a fallen soldier to pay his respects and carry out the dying man’s wishes. While staying with the Peterson family David quickly establishes himself as their protector, whether they want the help or not. The daughter, Anna (Maika Monroe) seems uncertain at first, but one thing wins her over to David’s good graces: his body.
A quick encounter in the hallway before heading out to a friend’s birthday party put Anna face to pecs with David’s patriotic and glistening muscles. He was just getting out of the shower before dressing for the party, though his timing seems more intentional than fortuitous. David’s towel is slung low, below his hips, and the hot shower has left his body shining in the hallway lights. Anna stutters and can barely get a few words out before recoiling to her bedroom.
With David in his towel the camera’s gaze is firmly female. Not only does it linger across his body, slicing him up into distinct regions of rippling muscle rather than showing him as a whole person, but the entire experience is filmed with sympathy to Anna’s experience. It is in Anna’s reaction we see to the hunk in the hallway. The editing and music in this scene are clearly geared toward aligning with Anna’s pleasure in the sight. She is delighting in seeing this beautiful man in her own home. Though she is slightly embarrassed by her inability to concentrate when faced with such a specimen, she is not ashamed by her desire. Anna’s sexual longing for David’s ripped abs, paired with the audience’s similar want, is presented as a certainty.
This is the most striking visual representation of the female gaze in The Guest, but there are elements in the story that also align the audience with the female characters, rather than the male characters.
When we first meet David he is running. Running down an empty road, toward the Peterson’s house. The mother, Laura (Sheila Kelley), is the only one home to meet him for the first time. As David is an outsider coming in to their town and home, the film establishes itself as coming from the perspective of Laura. The first shot we see of David is from her view of opening the door to meet him. The film’s frame is the same as Laura’s gaze. During their first conversation we follow Laura in and out of her kitchen and we too are initially suspicious of this handsome stranger. As David wins over Laura with his charm and stories from her dead son, we too are won over.
Near the end of The Guest, the film’s tone shifts from that of a thriller with escalating tension to something that resembles a slasher film. It never fully mutates into the horror genre, but the final stand-off between Anna and David is very similar to a cat-and-mouse chase that you would find between serial killer and final victim. Shifting Anna from an actively sexual female gaze to being a near final girl works especially well here because she was never the one being objectified in the film. The audience has always associated its gaze with that of Anna. The typical final girl story first associates itself with the killer, but then pivots to identifying with the last living character. This final girl then bests the killer, with the support of the audience. But in The Guest we have never associated with the killer. We have always kept an emotional distance from David and seen the story from the female perspective.
David’s final stand.
It is not surprise that The Guest takes on a female gaze, given the history of the filmmakers. Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett have collaborated on many films over the last five years. They first worked together on A Horrible Way to Die and more recently on You’re Next. You’re Next has been widely discussed as not only one the best horror films of the last decade, but also one of the most feminist.
Wingard and Barrett’s creation of these feminist films (that are still damn good and fun too) can be read as refreshed vision of films made by filmmakers with the female gaze. The female gaze in The Guest makes for a more natural story than the converse. (Objectifying and being seduced by David, the exotic “other,” in the secluded hometown has more likely narrative flow than gazing on Anna or Laura.) And in the end, that should be the goal for any filmmaker. Have enough respect for the story and belief in both your characters and the audience to tell the story as it should be told, from the appropriate perspective, regardless of the gendered gaze.
Deirdre Crimmins lives in Boston with her husband and two black cats. She wrote her Master’s thesis on George Romero and is a staff writer forAll Things Horror. You can find her on Twitter at @dedecrim.
It has been dissected time and time again on the way the horror genre has misrepresented women both on the screen and off, but whenever a film comes along and represents a female character as something different, we immediately bring praise to the filmmakers. While this practice is admittedly problematic, the only reason we stress the importance of these “strong female characters” is in large part due to the lack of positive female representation.
This woman comes from a land where they eat Vegemite by choice. Of course she’s tough.
This guest post by BJ Colangelo previously appeared at her blog Day of the Woman and is cross-posted with permission.
It has been dissected timeandtimeagain on the way the horror genre has misrepresented women both on the screen and off, but whenever a film comes along and represents a female character as something different, we immediately bring praise to the filmmakers. While this practice is admittedly problematic, the only reason we stress the importance of these “strong female characters” is in large part due to the lack of positive female representation. The “weak” female character has proven to be a safe staple within the horror genre, and somewhat of a requirement in the slasher genre. Simply put, no one ever wants to do anything interesting. Witness Simon Barrett, Adam Wingard, Sharni Vinson, and the creation of You’re Next.
I wonder what George Orwell would say about this…
We’ve all seen the advertisements, a majority of us own those damn animal masks, and some of us horror geeks have giant boners for AJ Bowen and Barbara Crampton. You’re Next was the talk of the horror world, and the overall consensus is that the film kicks all sorts of ass. (It does, trust me.) People keep bringing up how You’re Next has taken the home-invasion sub-genre and spun it on its head. Most importantly, however, is the fact You’re Next may very well be one of the most empowering horror films for women, ever.
(NOTE: If you haven’t seen You’re Next, you need to 1. stop what you’re doing and see the film and 2. understand that this piece is an analysis and events of the film WILL be spoiled.)
Oh my god, adopt me.
Starting with the matriarch of the family, we have horror demi-goddess, Barbara Crampton as “Aubrey.” While this character on the surface seems to be following the trend of every other not-exactly-sober mother in a slasher film, Aubrey brings something that few other maternal horror figure has: heart. Aubrey is one of the most well-constructed mother characters because of her undeniable love for her family. Mothers in horror films are often seen as skeptical, heartless, drunk, or cruel. Aubrey is very protective of her family and showcases this throughout the entire film. She questions things when no one else will and despite the obvious dysfunction of her children, she dedicates herself to them just the same. What struck me as the most empowering, is the fact Aubrey actually mourns. Most horror movie mothers are seen as women flying off the handle with absolutely no control of their lives. They panic and make stupid decisions. Aubrey on the other hand realizes the situation at hand and mourns for her family. Her true dedication and love for her family is admirable, and unlike most of the mothers we see in horror films.
But bringing home a starving artist was my extent of rebellion!
Aimee, the golden daughter of the family (played by Amy Seimetz) is one of the more minor characters and is killed off early because of it. The daddy’s girl and “princess” of the children appears to do no wrong. She is immediately shown as the least liked of the siblings, but the most adored by the parents. Her death brings out the strongest reaction from the parental units, but the weakest reaction from the rest of the family. Her good-girl persona seems to be something she uses to her advantage (overly excited introductions to other people, extreme affection towards her father) but is also something she desperately wants to rid out of her life (meet my starving artist/filmmaker boyfriend wearing the douchiest scarf this side of a Bright Eyes concert played by Ti West, TAKE THAT DAD!). However, she represents an ideal that a lot of women strive to possess. How do we treat ideals, ladies and germs? WE KILL THEM OFF AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. Ideals are boring, one-dimensional, and unrealistic.
I may look like Olivia Wilde in TRON, but I will bone you in ways Freud could never interpret.
Wendy Glenn as “Zee” makes for an incredibly interesting female villain. Most female villains are seen as nothing more than pure evil, while Zee represents the true complexity of the female mind. Although she is originally viewed as an unenthusiastic familial girlfriend being dragged against her will to a gathering with her dysfunctional potential in-laws, we quickly discover her character is actually quite unique. It’s important to note that throughout the entire first 3/4 of the film, Zee is acting. She is playing into the roles assigned to her and does them effortlessly. Once the big twist is revealed, Zee is no longer the doting girlfriend. She is 100 percent handling her instincts and her motives. At this point, her boyfriend, Felix, is no longer her motivator. She has done her best to comfort him in his time of need, but her demands are her demands. She tries to seduce Felix while laying next to the corpse of his dead mother, and when he declines she responds, “You never want to do anything interesting.” While it may be a bit exaggerated, Zee stomps on the idea that women are not sexually aggressive and the idea that women aren’t as sexually creative as our male counterparts. Hate to out my lady friends, but women are just as big of perverts as men. Showing this sexually progressive woman was refreshing to see (even if her kink was a little TOO far for my comfort zone). This progressive attitude is thanked by being the only female character not murdered by an animal, but instead by her fellow woman.
OH MY GOD! I WILLINGLY WORE A RUFFLED COLLAR TO A DINNER PARTY!
The snobbish WASPy lover of Joe Swanberg, Kelly, is played beautifully by Margaret Laney. Kelly is the woman everyone knows and plays nice with even though they can’t stand her. Entitled, selfish, judgmental, and a total prude, Kelly represents that rich girl who lives off of Mommy and Daddy’s money and therefore feels like she’s better than everyone else. She completely hits the panic button when disaster strikes and runs purely off of emotion, a very stereotypically “girly” reaction to chaos. She also serves as the two-sided opposite to Zee and Erin. Zee and Erin both want what Kelly and Aimee have (money and an established life of stability). This is represented physically by the fact that both Kelly and Aimee wear their hair up (a symbol of a dignified and “put together” lady) while Zee and Erin don their hair down. Although, Kelly is not perfect as she DOES show the most skin of any of the characters in the film, and does pop pills. How is this woman thanked for her attitude? The judgmental bitch is thrown like a stone in a glass house — through a glass window.
Don’t let Step Up 3D fool you, she’s a bonafide badass.
Most obviously, we were given the most bad-ass final girl this side of Nancy Thompson. Sharni Vinson’s “Erin” ushered in an entirely new form of female final girls. Unlike the virginal final girls that only survived because they fell into the trope of being pure and exactly what society wants women to be (sexually attainable without having sex), Erin was a strong-willed female character capable of defending herself using a combination of beauty, brains, and brawn. She remains cool and collected when necessary but not without the guts to completely bludgeon to death anyone that crosses her. With the booby trap preparation skills that would make Kevin McAllister proud, Erin understands that in this life, you’ve got to take care of yourself.
Erin is never once dressed scantily (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and she’s never over-sexualized. She’s merely your everyday woman living the way she chooses. She’s progressive in that she left a TA position (meaning, this is where her mentioned student loans are coming from as this would forfeit any scholarship) to be with the professor she had fallen in love with. Whether or not Barrett made this intentional, there’s also a remarkable feminist analysis of Erin’s strength.
*I’m about to put on a psychoanalytical/psychosexual hat, you’ve been warned.* Erin is a female fighting a bunch of male animals with incredibly phallic weapons. In the Animal Kingdom, the alpha male is always seen as a dominant and physically aggressive creature while the alpha female is important for breeding purposes. Erin completely changes the game. Her male animal attackers are shooting arrows at her (reminiscent of the way animals “mark their territory” and determine things to be off-limits to other animals) or trying to insert overly long phallic machetes (hurray for wiener imagery) into her body. 99.99 percent of the time, female horror victims express pains in sounds that resemble an orgasm. Erin expresses pain with barbaric wails or subdued sounds of pain; never once does she sound post-coital. This simple action shows that Erin is a woman that is not defined by the male sexuality, but secure in her own identity. *Takes off psychoanalytical/psychosexual hat.*
The “strong female lead” we were promised with the Evil Dead remake and didn’t get was hand delivered on a silver platter in the form of Sharni Vinson. Kudos, Barrett/Wingard. You hit one out of the park for women in horror.
YOU’RE NEXT PASSES THE BECHDEL TEST. HOLY MOTHER OF GOD.
BJ Colangelois the woman behind the keyboard for Day of the Woman: A blog for the feminine side of fear and a contributing writer for Icons of Fright. She’s been published in books, magazines, numerous online publications, all while frantically applying for day jobs. She’s a recovering former child beauty queen and a die-hard horror fanatic. You can follow her on Twitter at @BJColangelo.
You’re Next is sick, and I mean sick like “disgusting” and sick like “badass” because somewhere in my 34-year-old brain, I’m also 12.
It’s no secret if you’ve been reading my posts over the past 6 years that I love horror films and, more than anything, I adore the Final Girl in horror films. I want to be the Final Girl, tripping my way through the woods with a shard of glass sticking out of my leg while the audience roots for me to kill the bad guy. The Final Girl, in fact, might be my favorite iteration of the Strong Female Character in that the writers allow her to show weakness—which makes her desperate acts of murder to save herself even more appealing; she gets to be both the freaked out damsel in distress and the hero of the story.
Erin, the Final Girl, wielding an ax
From a feminist perspective, the Final Girl’s combination of strength and weakness accompanied by the (often male) audience’s ability to identify with her plight, further emphasize her importance. The horror film genre in general affords men an opportunity to identify with a female protagonist, and that rarely occurs in other genres. Go horror.
In Carol J. Clover’s book, Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, she argues—to quote Wikipedia—“that in these films, the viewer begins sharing the perspective of the killer but experiences a shift in identification to the Final Girl partway through the film.” And in You’re Next, I couldn’t help but smile when Erin bashed in the head of a masked bad guy with a meat tenderizer while the audience cheered. (I smiled because the audience clapped for a female lead, not because I’m a sociopath.)
The quintessential animal masks
The film starts off like an average, run-of-the-mill horror film. The first woman character appears during what looks like pretty unfulfilling sex. My first thought? She’s about to die. Because women characters in horror films always get the death punishment for having sex—which is, I’ll admit, a problematic element of the genre. (A tiny part of me wondered if she might survive given that it wasn’t a steamy sex scene as much as a gross dude getting off while she lightweight grimaced.) Alas, she succumbs to the trope; then the words “You’re Next” appear in blood on the wall before the shitty bedfellow bites it … and so begins the latest incarnation of the Home Invasion journey.
Get ready for your sex punishment
It may take place in a mansion, but the kitchen and the basement are where shit gets real. The weapons include kitchen knives, blenders, meat tenderizers, and a slew of screwdrivers, as well as a machete (duh) and for some reason a fucking crossbow like it’s The Hunger Games. I liked that the terrorized family members needed to defend themselves with household appliances rather than a random gun they’d hidden for a rainy day. (I almost never buy it when victims pull out their stowed away guns, and those films lean a little too close to a dangerous message: Buy a gun to protect your home, America; otherwise you’ll die at the hands of lunatics, and it’ll be all your fault. The NRA told you so!)
Thank you, You’re Next, for avoiding that convention and making me look at blenders and meat tenderizers in entirely new ways.
Dude, you are SO next
The film follows a very rich, white, nuclear family whose matriarch (Barbara Crampton) and patriarch (Rob Moran) invite their children (and the significant others of their children) over for a nice, functional (ha) 35th Wedding Anniversary celebration and to see the brand new mansion they purchased. This brand new mansion happens to sit in the middle of nowhere with very limited cell phone service. Oops! And it also becomes clear almost immediately that the three brothers borderline despise one another, and the lone sister Aimee (Amy Seimetz), a total Daddy’s Girl, has been pretty much pampered her whole life. Of course the matriarch, Aubrey, hears a loud-ass noise that shakes the chandelier before the kids arrive, and the husband does that whole, “You’re a crazy bitch, but I’ll check it out anyway just to humor you” thing that always cracks me up in horror films. The message? Listen to women, dumbasses, because they know what’s up.
Little Sister and Daddy’s Girl, Aimee, freaks out when everyone starts dying
Aubrey, portrayed as a hysterical mess who can’t stop crying, gets a pass from me. I found her response to the creepy loud noises and then the subsequent deaths of her children via crossbow (and a slow-motion sprint that ended with a clotheslining to the jugular) the most normal response of the whole bunch. These take-charge mofos who mindlessly cover their dead family members with a sheet and move on need some serious psychoanalysis.
One of the masked men looks down on Erin after she jumped through a fucking window on purpose
The father, Paul, the former Man of the House, completely loses his shit at one point, going into a catatonic sob-state that made me chuckle in delight. The witty, suck-up, kind of dick oldest bro Drake (Joe Swanberg) makes incessant condescending comments to the middle brother, Crispian (A.J. Bowen), about his inability to do anything with his life; and Felix (Nicholas Tucci), the youngest, sits back with his girlfriend, rolls his eyes, and observes the dysfunction.
Just your typical dudbro family emasculation sesh.
It took me approximately ten minutes into the movie to realize this home invasion violence was all about money. Specifically white people with money. And the punishment of white people with money, a la The Purge. Can I just say kudos to Hollywood for taking a step back from the Mancession narrative for five seconds? Before the audience can identify with these rich white people and feel bad for their plight, we’re already laughing at them. They’re ridiculous. And the only seemingly respectable person of the lot is a darker-skinned young Australian woman named Erin (Sharni Vinson) who grew up in a Survivalist Camp and has a crapload of student loan debt.
Sorry, murderers. Your crossbow suddenly don’t mean shit.
Erin (Sharni Vinson) looking a little worn out
Erin rocks. Erin is possibly my favorite Final Girl ever. That’s right; I’m putting her right up there with Ellen Ripley in Alien and Laurie Strode in Halloween. This Final Girl, while more advantaged than her predecessors with her Survivalist Camp superhero skills, also doesn’t get boxed into what has become a Final Girl trope: a young virgin, or a woman who’s never shown having sex, who’s rarely sexualized, who often appears as the “androgynous nerd” stereotype—Jena Malone in The Ruinsis a good example of this—and who plays a straight-laced nondrinker or drug user (Erin insists they stop for alcohol). Erin is the new and improved Final Girl 2.0; the home invaders may run around in creepy Fox, Lamb, and Tiger masks, but Erin is the most animalistic of the bunch.
And that brings me to the women in the film.
Zee, Felix’s girlfriend, tries some sick shit in this scene
I didn’t like that Felix’s girlfriend Zee (Wendy Glenn), the mostly non-speaking goth chick, turned out to be a villain. Why couldn’t the sweet, blond sister, Aimee, be a villain? Change it up, Hollywood! But I did like, for what it’s worth, that a woman got to be a villain—a somewhat likeable villain in the end—and that the filmmakers gave the audience an opportunity to identify with both a woman protagonist and a woman antagonist … who, for once, weren’t fighting over a fucking dude.
All in all, I very much enjoyed every dude’s “um wait whut” reaction to Erin’s skillz with a meat tenderizer. I liked that many deaths at the hands of Erin took place in a kitchen, a space where women were—and occasionally still are—forced to serve and clean up after men and children. You’re Next makes Erin queen of the domestic space but in a way that gives her power over her captors. The entire film could, in fact, be read as a cautionary tale for keeping women locked up in the domestic sphere or otherwise. Erin may not have served them in the conventional sense, but they definitely got served.
“Lookin’ for the Magic” by Dwight Twilley Band: the theme song from You’re Next
