The faux fem­i­nism of the hagsploita­tion boom

So far, 2022 has been a dis­ap­point­ing year for hor­ror. Every high­ly antic­i­pat­ed hor­ror that has been laud­ed as ​‘female-led’ has end­ed up rife with horror’s most misog­y­nis­tic tropes. Ti West’s X, Alex Garland’s Men and Zach Cregger’s Bar­bar­ian have all been pro­mot­ed with the insin­u­a­tion that there will be pos­i­tive female rep­re­sen­ta­tion, as they tack­le the porn indus­try, the threat of male vio­lence and promised to extrap­o­late the gen­dered dif­fer­ence in expe­ri­ence in patri­ar­chal society.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly these films have as much to offer female empow­er­ment as the bizarre 2014 trend in which male celebri­ties posed in ​‘this is what a fem­i­nist looks like’ t‑shirts – that is, noth­ing at all. The female-led hor­ror films these male direc­tors have pro­duced not only fail to offer the cathar­sis I seek from final girls, but they return to the tired trope of the fem­i­nine as monstrous.

This tri­fec­ta of pseu­do-fem­i­nist films come after the roar­ing suc­cess of female-led hor­rors such as Mid­som­mar and The Witch, in which Ari Aster and Robert Eggers demon­strat­ed the restric­tions of patri­ar­chal soci­ety, through gaslight­ing boyfriends and puri­tan­i­cal fathers, and we watched as the female pro­tag­o­nists were even­tu­al­ly freed of sex­ist soci­etal pres­sures. What we see now is a dilu­tion of this trend.

Ti West’s X may claim to pro­mote sex pos­i­tiv­i­ty, but its empow­er­ment has an age lim­it. The psy­cho­path­ic killer chop­ping up sexy teens is revealed to be the horny old hag from the creepy house, because what could be scari­er than an old­er woman with a sex dri­ve? One scene involves the killer caress­ing Pearl (Mia Goth) as she sleeps, her sag­ging skin jux­ta­posed with Pearl’s perky body, seem­ing­ly designed to evoke a feel­ing of disgust.

A few months ago, a Tik­Tok cir­cu­lat­ed of Mia Goth trans­form­ing into Pearl, the elder­ly killer in X, with view­ers com­ment­ing on the remark­able, unrecog­nis­able result. It is a devalu­ing of old­er women in soci­ety, as it’s intend­ed to tick­le the audi­ence to watch the youth­ful Mia Goth be trans­formed into an old woman. Goth’s cast­ing as both Pearl and Max­ine has no bear­ing on the film’s plot, oth­er than to deval­ue old­er women by reduc­ing them to a punch­line, as we watch the youth­ful, beau­ti­ful Goth trans­form into a wiz­ened, shuf­fling crone. Pearl is not even a role to be cast in X, instead reduced to a lay­er of prosthetics.

Men is Alex Garland’s attempt at ham-hand­ed­ly say­ing ​‘Yes All Men’, but its final scene revolves around a series of bloody vul­vas form­ing on men’s bod­ies, with a rapid­ly repeat­ed graph­ic birthing sequence. As this is the most pro­longed bloody scene of the film it shows that while Gar­land want­ed to jump on the fem­i­nist band­wag­on, as Men focused on the con­stant threat of male vio­lence, it’s a per­for­ma­tive mis­fire. Gar­land only suc­ceeds in demon­strat­ing his Freudi­an fear of the vul­va, which he por­trays as a gap­ing wound.

Zach Cregger’s Bar­bar­ian start­ed off with an aware­ness of the gen­dered dif­fer­ence in response to a stranger, shown with Tess’ (Georgina Camp­bell) con­scious lock­ing of every door and sus­pi­cion of Kei­th (Bill Skars­gard) who she encoun­ters when they both book the same AirBnB. The film’s fem­i­nist angle is quick­ly kneecapped by the reveal that the hor­ri­fy­ing mon­ster that hunts the sub-base­ment lair is a naked mid­dle-aged woman, with grey­ing hair and sag­ging breasts.

The clinch­ing scene to induce ter­ror being when AJ (Justin Long), an accused rapist, is forced to suck­le from the sag­ging tit of the mon­strous woman who has trapped him. It’s sup­posed to be a pun­ish­ment, but all I see is a reminder that even when men agree rape is wrong, their fear of being con­front­ed with the age­ing female form out­weighs the threat of male violence.

While these thrill films attempt to enter the female-led hor­ror canon, all that they suc­ceed at with their ​‘fem­i­nist’ fawn­ing is per­for­ma­tiv­i­ty. Any attempt at a posi­tion that under­stands how misog­y­ny affects women’s lives is brought down by their wield­ing of the female body as a tool to hor­ri­fy. Sag­ging breasts and bleed­ing vagi­nas are not their hor­ror obses­sion – they are our nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring reality.

This year’s high­ly antic­i­pat­ed hor­rors have been a tor­rent of male direc­tors pat­ting them­selves on the back for broach­ing the top­ic of sex­u­al assault. But the one film that has deft­ly han­dled this sub­ject – Char­lotte Colbert’s She Will – has for the most part flown under audi­ences’ radar. It’s an empow­er­ing piece where Veron­i­ca (Alice Krige) taps into her mag­ic at the burn­ing site of Scot­tish witches.

In the High­lands, away from the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry eyes of Hol­ly­wood, Veron­i­ca finds new life and realis­es she is not the with­ered hag the press por­trays her as. In many ways these are not the same kinds of hor­ror films but it’s notable that a film where the age­ing female body is han­dled with respect has been large­ly ignored. Veronica’s body in She Will is not cause for overt cel­e­bra­tion because it doesn’t have to be. The age­ing body can sim­ply exist on cam­era with­out abjection.

In the last ten years we have seen a surge of unique hor­ror films that do not rely on clich­es to ter­ri­fy their audi­ences. So why then are these films, with their out­dat­ed tropes still her­ald­ed as the best hor­rors of this year? Is it sim­ply that they can­not undo the objec­ti­fy­ing gaze in their head and that male priv­i­lege still allows old­er women to be the most mon­strous thing they can imag­ine? Ageism against women is not exclu­sive to the hor­ror genre. From Kim Kardashian’s dras­tic state­ment that she would ​‘eat poop every sin­gle day’ if it restored youth, to the pop­u­lar­i­ty of memes con­cern­ing the young age lim­it of Leonar­do DiCaprio’s dat­ing his­to­ry, it is still a major part of pop­u­lar cul­ture. Our age is still large­ly detri­men­tal to our sex­u­al viability.

I am dis­ap­point­ed by the direc­tors who have tak­en Bar­bara Creed’s The Mon­strous Fem­i­nine as a blue­print instead of cri­tique. This year’s most antic­i­pat­ed hor­rors suc­ceed­ed in hav­ing me writhe in my skin, but their reliance on the hag deliv­ered a crush­ing blow. I don’t want to see our bod­ies con­tort­ed, our wrin­kles exag­ger­at­ed, our breasts drooped for cheap jump scares. The hag’s rise from the cin­e­mat­ic dead, and the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the films in which she fea­tures, serves as a trag­ic reminder that fear of the age­ing woman is deeply ingrained in our minds. We don’t ques­tion her sud­den appear­ance, we only scream as she emerges from the dark.

The best of hor­ror doesn’t rein­force soci­etal dis­crim­i­na­tions and we shouldn’t praise it when it does so, we should demand bet­ter. Hor­ror is capa­ble of explor­ing gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty and yet when it relies on its misog­y­nis­tic crutch­es, it debas­es and demeans a genre ooz­ing with ter­ri­fy­ing cre­ative possibility.