Green Horror: The Use of Environmental Themes in Modern American Horror Cinema

Abstract

This study began with the question of what environmental themes may be present in contemporary American horror media and what any trends in these narratives or works may suggest about American understanding of, beliefs towards and fears about the potential environmental future. With guidance from current and former staff at the Askwith Media Library at the University of Michigan, I conducted a review of films that elicit much of their audience engagement through horror while having clear environmental themes or narratives, then selected twelve cinema-released films for critical analysis. Each shared a central premise in which nature shows a widespread response to collective human abuse of the natural world. My criteria excluded numerous examples of works with similar themes, but which did not have as direct a message. I also privileged films that were critically acclaimed and more widely discussed. Finally, I honed for comparative analysis of tropes and themes on storylines with an overall sense that the environment itself is not as much of a threat as other humans when it comes to survival. My results and discussion raise concerns with some of the messaging in recent environmentally progressive discourse that uses a similar framing of threat to bolster environmental support. While there has been an understanding that specific discussions of human threat in relationship to the environment compels people emotionally, it is not the result of greater environmental care or understanding, but often heavily influenced by other fears, including anxiety about increasing human mobility, demographic pressures, and cultural differences. Such rhetoric aligns not only with progressive environmental campaigns, however, but also with recent examples of media use by white nationalist and supremacist groups, specifically in an attempt to demonize immigrants to the United States of America and Europe. As such, I argue that the critical analysis of popular cinematic narratives is crucial to having a political and cultural awareness of the social fears that exist during this time of rapid environmental change