Ask JKM a Question: What kind of horror film would I like to see come back from the dead?

A regular reader named Jason writes:

"I read your Horror Films FAQ book and your descriptions of all the different types of horror movies. My question to you is: what form of horror film would you like to see revive or rebound today?”

Jason, that’s a terrific question about the horror genre and its current direction.  

My answer is simple: I’d love to see a revival of the rubber reality horror film.

I’m talking about films like Phantasm (1979), Altered States (1980), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Hellraiser (1987), or Candyman (1992), specifically. 

In horror films of this type, the villain is able to rewrite reality as we understand it, and the barriers between realities seem to fall all around us.   I love this type of horror film when it is done well, and I think all the above-listed films manage that feat.  Even Wishmaster (1997) was entertaining as hell.  

In particular, I enjoy the imaginative nature of the rubber reality films (and productions such as Craven’s The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) and Shocker (1989), because I think they capitalize on the link between horror films and dreams/nightmares.  Phantasm, after all, plays as an adolescent boy’s dream about death.  Altered States is like a drug trip gone wrong, and so forth.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe that rubber reality as a horror sub-genre is going to make a comeback anytime soon, and that’s because -- as I’ve written before -- the general movement of film history is from the theatrical or artificial to the realistic or natural.  

You can detect that trend in the kind of horror films made today, mostly of the found-footage genre.  I happen to love and adore the found-footage horror film, and think that it has a lot of life in it (particularly in films such as The Bay, or REC, Lovely Molly, or BWP). 

But because horror movies are trending more realistic, a step in the opposite direction -- back towards “rubber reality” -- doesn’t necessarily make a lot of sense. Rubber reality isn’t really “where we are” in terms of the Zeitgeist. 

Some clever writer out there would need to “re-imagine” the rubber reality film for our era today in a fashion that resonates the way Wes Craven’s Elm Street resonated in 1984.  I’m not sure I see that happening…and believe me, I’ve tried!

For example, I wrote a rubber-reality script some years back called The Dead Side of The Street, and it had some (little) interest from agents and producers, but ultimately nothing happened with it.  And I think that has to do with:  a.) my own failures as a writer, but also b.) the fact that nobody is making rubber reality films anymore, especially ones that boast the kind of jaunty humor we see in the Elm Street sequels, or Phantasm sequels.

So, I would really love to see more of the rubber reality I loved as a teenager and college student, but, frankly, I don’t see how it would fit in with today’s culture.  

My only take on the material now would be to consider how nobody sees facts or "truth" anymore, but rather facts and truth through the prism of a pre-existing world view.  In other words, many Americans tend not to believe facts if they come from a political person/party they don't agree with.  Hence, many of us live in very different realities from our neighbors.  A good rubber reality horror movie might find a genre-specific way to take into account that uncomfortable premise of modern life, and twist it into something truly terrifying.

What we need, frankly,  is for someone to do for rubber reality what Kevin Williamson did for slashers in the mid-1990s. The whole approach needs to be re-imagined for the 21^st century in a way that we all “get” immediately.

I think it’s do-able, but again, not terribly likely.