Beyond Surveillance: Questions of the Real in the Neopostmodern Horror Film

Abstract

While discussions of postmodern horror films were well established by the late 1990s, two big moments in relation to postmodern horror occur in the second half of the decade. They are the highly self-conscious postmodern horror of the metaslasher franchises — such as I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997; dir Jim Gillespie) and Scream (1996; dir Wes Craven) — and the mainstream emergence of the docu-horror into American cinema through the overwhelming success of the independent film The Blair Witch Project (1999; dirs Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick). The role of surveillance in these two types of film can help us to understand a larger shift regarding the vital role of technology and paranoia in the neopostmodern horror film. At the centre of this chapter is a consideration of how the neopostmodern horror film becomes the location to explore the discomfort that happens when surveillance, something that used to be terrifying, is now part and parcel of the status quo.