Monster State of the Union 2024 movie

As the year comes to a close, I thought it would be interesting to provide a sort of State of the Union on the current year Movie monsters– Quick analysis of what is still considered scary. However, after reflection, it was visualized what the 21st century is Animals It’s starting to look less like Dungeons & Dragons Monster Guide And more like the aisles of my local Walmart. As the old world dies and the new struggles to be born, it seems that the monsters of 2024 may represent the same fears, but taken on a more mundane tone. Since I’m not sure what to do with this information, it’s been submitted for your approval for io9’s 2024 Monster Revue edition.

Fashionable

In a year that saw a former president re-elected to office, an ongoing war in the Middle East, escalating nuclear brinksmanship, and the return of bird flu, 2024 brings with it a grim sense of repetition. The feeling that we’re going to be doubling down on what we’ve tried previously, but even more so, with a whole trilogy of material in mind, so it’s bound to pay off like never before, right?

It is no coincidence, then, that it was a year that saw new differences Quiet place, alien, The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, Beetlejuice, Ghostbusters, Godzilla, Hellboy, Salem’s Lot, The Crow, The Outsiders-until Witch paintingwhich we haven’t heard from since the release of a direct-to-video sequel in 1995.

For now, there seems to be no end in sight to the return of last year’s recognizable IP, along with the new Saw, The Conjuring, Insidious, Fear Street, and I Know What You Did Last Summerand final destination Movies scheduled for release next year. Not to mention After 28 yearsanother piece of nostalgia featuring a trailer on track to become the most-watched horror trailer of all time.

As we head into 2025, this “devil you know” attitude will extend to Universal once again doubling its lineup of classic monsters, replacing the company’s previous attempt at a shared cinematic universe with dedicated offerings frankenstein, bride of frankenstein, wolf man, and The mummy From no less than the likes of Guillermo del Toro, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Lee Whannell, and Lee Cronin, respectively.

Today even sees the release of the new one Nosferatupacked with a marketing campaign that hopes to turn its cozy gothic decorations into a new Christmas tradition. It’s interesting, then, that movie audiences have largely rejected vampires – with emphasis on that this Vampire, in particular, in the last few years with films like Abigail Renfield, and Demeter’s last journey Failure to make a significant cultural or box office impact.

Distinctive features of Dracula wow Nosferatu– Feeding on the blood of others, self-isolation, while maintaining enormous wealth and influence over others – these are good things that the entire culture endorses. The kids call it “Sigma”.

But what seems particularly new about this ongoing trend of sticking with what we know is the surprising reverence we’ve developed for this lowly horror genre, which is officially viewed as the bottom of the horror barrel. Although yesterday’s cultural detritus has become the darlings of tomorrow’s critics, it’s nothing new (recent Best Picture winners have included stories about a fish-man who falls in love with a human woman; a world where people developed pork products instead of phalanxes; and a socially-minded ). abc movie of the week, Ronald is bad), nothing that has achieved this level of cultural significance has focused on gory effects. Two and a half hours horrifying The films have more in common with the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis than the films of Dario Argento. In violent nature, Who reimagined a movie like Friday the 13th or crazy From the point of view of the undead killer, he adds an experimental flourish to the genre’s simple, classic narrative, emphasizing the thin wall that distinguishes films like this from the French New Wave, which are, indeed, occasional splashes of blood.

Although pushing the envelope horrifying While the franchise may seem like a litmus test of human empathy, it’s worth noting that people legitimately love Art the Clown and his unrated Harpo Marx-meets-Freddy Krueger routine. Anything too subversive will not be able to find this audience. Which is why I’m legitimately fascinated by a movie that didn’t come out this year: Macon Blair’s remake of Toxic avenger. There was something about a politically motivated judge, jury, and executor of major corporate assets that was considered too radioactive to be published. I wonder why…

Media

Coinciding with the continuing popularity of the slasher film has been the taboo-shredding tactic of making them stars in children’s characters that has only recently slipped into the public sphere. Last year, new slasher rides starring Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan, Bambi, Popeye, Steamboat Willie, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid and the Mad Hatter were announced. There’s something about character transfers meant to draw as much revenue as possible into the world of bloodthirsty killers that feels “right” in a way that’s both inescapable and timely – not to mention punk rock. Once an IP falls into people’s hands, isn’t that the only ethical thing to do to turn into a monster? Especially if all roads lead to 2024, the consensus has to be that Mickey and company sold us the bill of goods the first time around.

One only needs a light dusting on YouTube these days to get an endless stream of video essays about the dark Pokemon Theories or an unusually scary PlayStation 2 game starring Piglet. In these circuits, there is a missing Cartoon Network bumper or unproduced episode SpongeBob SquarePants It is spoken of with the same silent reverence as an unexploded nuclear decree. When everything becomes available online, suddenly something innocuous, no matter how innocuous, becomes suspicious and mysterious. If we used to tell children scary stories so that they would not venture into them In the woods alone, lost media hunters should at least prevent each other from sharing their credit card information with unnatural media collectors on the dark web.

Recent films like I saw the glow of the television Understand the kind of fanatical devotion that investing so much of yourself in children’s media can bring, the kind people used to describe as “Lovecraftian,” but are now referred to with terms like “Disney Adult.” For a generation in which Cthulhu was available as a plush toy their entire lives, perhaps the great old ones were Garfield and his friends all along. Smile 2 is another film from last year to understand this, following films like The ring and He followswhere curses spread in the form of transmissible memes and move like viruses, and even our celebrities are not immune.

As of 2024, “cosmic” horror is strictly Earth-bound, and although the beliefs of its media-savvy followers may seem absurd to you, you don’t need to believe in the destructive powers of their own fanbase as long as they do.

technology

Last year also saw a number of films that embody artificial intelligence and cutting-edge technology – films such as Dependency and scaredin which machines intended to personally improve our quality of life are invited into the home, like vampires, only to reveal some of their unsavory appetites.

However, as much as we are terrified of robots taking our jobs, we have paradoxically also collectively lost faith in the concept of technological progress. We’ve made movies about killer robot nannies, toys, smart homes, and personal assistants, but we haven’t yet reached that “singularity” where this burgeoning technology does anything scarier than being better at the thing you’ve so outrageously defined yourself. He is.

As our government continues to acknowledge that our airspace was and continues to be occupied by aircraft that defy physics beyond human comprehension, I’m reminded of Jordan Peele’s 2022 film nowhich suggests that UFOs are some kind of hungry, insatiable atmospheric beast, which our zoologists have not yet identified or classified. Somehow, it’s easier to believe that. Which brings us to…

Life itself/older people

Just as artificial intelligence has replaced us in the workforce, one of the most intriguing trends of the past year has been a series of monster movies that focus – more or less – on doppelgangers. Whether it is a biological entity is not yet known as in Cuckooa demonic presence as in Never leave and Daddy’s heador an agent willingly designed for himself as in ArticleThe anxiety at the heart of these stories is not about becoming a monster personally, but about being replaced by another monster—and perhaps missing out on the wonderful things the monster can do.

Bitcha recent film in which Amy Adams turns into a dog as an expression of her pent-up rage, is pitched as a net positive. The idea of ​​losing control has tremendous appeal lately. Just like Demi Moore’s fear of irrelevance ArticleThe real fear is that we will be left behind.

Speaking of which, if 2024 can be defined by one persistent bogeyman, the title should be unanimously awarded to the seniors. Movies like Heretic, Apartment 7A, and Alien: Romulusand the elderly have appeared (if not explicitly late, As in Ian Holm’s poor man’s ghost Romulus) torture young men for a wide range of reasons, ranging from financial gain to simply proving that they are still relevant from the comfort of their bombed-out homes.

People often fail to distinguish between mummies and zombies, but the difference between them is worth noting. Mummies differ from zombies in that a zombie is something that is clinically dead, but somehow still acts as if it were alive. A mummy is something that should by all accounts be dead, but somehow biologically so He is He’s still alive – just as Kharis’ heart continues to beat thanks to Universal’s Tanna Papers Mummy’s hand, Mummy’s tomb, mummy ghost, and The mummy’s curse.

With the release Nosferatu Today, in Count Orlok we have a familiar, elderly, copyright-violating ghoul from the dawn of film who simply refuses to go away. Right man for the time, indeed.

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