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-Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
How global warming and our friends in Hollywood are changing horror movies |
2018-06-12 |
[Polygon] A new genre of horror has begun to emerge over the last decade: eco-horror, stories in which the planet itself is the monster. Prior to the early 2000s, when Nature was the monster in a horror movie, it was either animals run amok, like Jaws or The Birds, or plant-creatures, as in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Little Shop of Horrors. Except that the plants in question are actually aliens that just happen to look like plants. That’s an important distinction, because until recently, we just assumed that if a plant were going to kill us, it must have come from outer space. Our trust in our own planet was so intrinsic, we never even questioned it. But that’s been changing since 2006, when An Inconvenient Truth was released and raised climate change awareness across the planet. Since then, we’ve seen more and more eco-horror, such as The Happening, The Ruins, The Last of Us, The Girl with All the Gifts, and Annihilation. Each of these movies involves deadly plants that are ... just plants. They’re not aliens come to destroy us; they’re just terrestrial species that have evolved to target humans. Eco-horror represents the new existential dread we feel about the irreversible damage we’ve done to the planet ‐ and the knowledge that Earth is increasingly less hospitable to us on a basic level. Watch the video above to learn more about the evolution of this new existential dread. |
Posted by:Besoeker |
#10 80s were filled with nuclear holocaust and mutant movies as well. I'm amazed we haven't seen a bunch of them now that Trump is President. |
Posted by: rjschwarz 2018-06-12 16:07 |
#9 ...get it done in 30 days or no grant money. |
Posted by: Procopius2k 2018-06-12 15:53 |
#8 Using the standard climate model extrapolation Tel Aviv will be flooded by constant rain for the next 200 years... Where's my research grant? |
Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2018-06-12 14:00 |
#7 It rained in Tel Aviv today - first summer rain in like 50 years. Your planetary atmosphere is precipitating out and falling to the ground? Dude, that's seriously horrifying. What if it doesn't stop? |
Posted by: SteveS 2018-06-12 13:33 |
#6 TOLIS landed on a planet with vegetation that talked. It tried to kill Angela Cartwright. I was scarred for life. |
Posted by: Clem Kadiddlehopper9000 2018-06-12 12:10 |
#5 More like Eco-stupid. |
Posted by: DarthVader 2018-06-12 12:05 |
#4 Flood those tunnels baby! |
Posted by: Skidmark 2018-06-12 09:51 |
#3 It rained in Tel Aviv today - first summer rain in like 50 years. |
Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2018-06-12 09:17 |
#2 In the 60s it was the horror of nuclear war which seemed to be concurrent with the anti-bomb, unilateral disarmament wing of the Left (and thus Hollyweird). |
Posted by: Procopius2k 2018-06-12 06:55 |
#1 any eco horror film actually made any money? Thought not. |
Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2018-06-12 06:39 |