A kingdom of horror

This chapter, as a means of closure, will reflect briefly on the key issues that have been addressed over the last six chapters, before considering some of the directions that the study of British horror cinema could – or, indeed, should – take in the future. It is hoped that this chapter will provide a springboard for further scholarship that will be as dynamic as the films themselves.

Nasty resurrections

Chapter 3, in light of the broader international concerns outlined in the previous chapter, works towards locating cultural specificities within British horror at a time when it has drifted from its better known ‘English’ heritage. By considering the social and historical context during which many contemporary filmmakers grew up (namely, the late 1970s and 1980s), I reassess how recent British horror’s ‘heritage’ may be more immediate than we initially presume. To do this, I argue that several films responded to the typically negative British critical response to horror cinema (Petley 2002a), and, through textual analysis, argue that such films are products inspired by nostalgia for the video nasties panic of the 1980s. Through doing so, I consider how cultural specificity can be extracted from films by directors who not only have a passion for the horror film (that is, are self-confessed fans of the genre), but are also aware of how British horror (and horror in Britain) has been figured and derided within British culture.

British film production and the horror genre

Chapter 2 contemplates why British horror was revived at the dawning of the new millennium, and also considers some of the reasons why British horror films produced in the 2000s and 2010s can be viewed as constituting a distinctive aspect of contemporary British cinema. I discuss the establishment of the UK Film Council (UKFC) in 2000 and contextualise the contemporary British horror film in the international film marketplace, drawing parallels between British horror and British film production more broadly, British horror and international horror production, and the audience demographics targeted by distributers and film production companies. This involves examining British horror’s shift from a theatrical genre to one associated primarily with the home video and online market.

Let the quiet ones in

Chapter 6 returns to industry, and charts the re-emergence of Hammer Films, which, after thirty years, finally went back into film production in the 2000s. Drawing from primary sources such as the industry trade press and interviews, the chapter reflects on Hammer’s recent history, considering briefly the tumultuous 1980s and 1990s, before assessing the company’s market positioning between its re-launch in 2007 with the web serial Beyond the Rave (Matthias Hoene, 2008), through its theatrical success with the blockbuster The Woman in Black in 2012, up until the release of its lower-budgeted ghost story, The Quiet Ones (John Pogue) in 2014. Ultimately, taking into account Hammer’s prominence in much discourse around classic British horror, I use its millennial incarnation to assess its relevance (or not) to the identity of British horror in the twenty-first century.

In the doghouse

In Chapter 4, I extend some of the issues surrounding fan filmmakers as discussed in the previous chapter, and deliberate the representation of masculinity and cult film fandom within a series of horror-comedy hybrids. Through acknowledgement of the ways in which cult film fandom has traditionally been gendered as ‘male’, and often as immature, crude and boyish, I draw parallels between recent horror-comedies that use these stereotypes as ironic self-critiques of the filmmakers’ themselves and their desired audience. I ultimately locate these films within discourses surrounding ‘New Lad’ culture of the 1990s, which has similarly been linked to contemporary cult film fandom (Hollows 2003; Read 2003). Through a discussion of themes, industry statistics and textual analysis, I show how films such as Shaun of the Dead, Doghouse and Lesbian Vampire Killers satirise the social marginality of laddish behaviour by placing fannish ‘New Lad’ types within a horror film environment, thus literalising many of the stereotypes that have figured within contemporary academic writing on cult film audiences.

Long time dead

Contemporary British Horror Cinema: Industry, Genre and Society charts the rebirth of the British horror film in the twenty-first century, paying close attention to both the cultural and economic factors that contributed to the horror genre’s buoyancy amid UK film production. Using primary research – including data from funding institutions and primary interview material with key industry players – and detailed film analysis, this book will show in what ways horror offered a significant contribution to British film production post-2000, and how it evidenced diversity across a broad spectrum of filmmakers, industrial trends, technologies and social issues.

Heartless hoodies

The practice of stereotyping is also the focus of Chapter 5, which considers a cycle of films that are designed to elicit fear from media representations of the contemporary working classes. Through analysis of films in the ‘hoodie-horror’ cycle, which typically presented the youth of the white British underclass as feral and monstrous, I analyse the social context from which these films stemmed and examine how they tapped into current anxieties surrounding contemporary fears of British youth (an apparent groundswell in gang culture that culminated in the ‘August Riots’ of 2011).