What do ‘X’, ‘Men’, ‘Hereditary’ and ‘Barbarian’ all have in common? Horror fans are discovering a new trend
There’s a disturbing new trend emerging from modernity horror, something so evil that you’ll wonder what happened behind the scenes. We are of course talking about naked old people as villains.
It is difficult to fully understand the origin of the trend, which dates back to Stanley Kubrick. The brilliant, but put on ice and left to ferment over the next few decades. Since 2018, there have been at least four major horror movies with naked old people as villains.
This year alone has already seen four cases of naked old people harassing young people and sucking their youthful flesh, with Men, X, Hereditaryand Barbaric all bent on this particular new movie trend. For years superhero movies have ended with a big blue light in the sky, are naked old people the equivalent of the horror genre?
Is Kubrick guilty? We lean for yes, absolutely. But given other things he’s shown in his films (looking at you, A clockwork Orange) it’s far from the most incendiary or shocking.
Barbaric probably made the best use of the naked old people trope, managing to add depth to it with a gruesome story. However, we still don’t know how several generations of inbreeding managed to lead to a super soldier. If a geneticist could get in touch and let us know if this is a real thing, that would be great.
2014 It follows also sees another naked elderly person, although the movie is about a sexually transmitted disease freak who loves John Carpenter synth music, that seems about right. It should be noted that the monster in the film is an allegory of the trauma suffered by victims of sexual assault.
If this new subgenre interests you, The elderly should be right up your alley. It’s nothing but killer old men unleashed on the young; it’s almost beautifully one-dimensional. There are probably metaphors and subtext to such a plot, but subtext is for cowards as Garth Marenghi once said.
If you read this Hollywood, can we suggest that the subgenre is called Crone Zone? Either that or an octogenarian odyssey.
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