In Praise of Artisanal Horror

In Praise of Artisanal Horror

A few years ago, writing about Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity franchise, Ti West’s House of the Devil, and other experiments in craft-conscious, low-budget horror, I gave a name to the loosely defined style I saw these movies as sharing: “artisanal horror.” The term caught on only in my own brain, where it’s become a handy taxonomic classification for a subgenre that seems here to stay, even in the age of the big-budget, special-effects-laden franchise. The horror genre has always welcomed tinkerers—inventive filmmakers who are interested in taking genre’s conventions apart and fitting them back together in novel ways. If the desired effect of maximum audience creep-out has to be achieved on a minimal budget, so much the better. Artisanal horror directors place a high value on cheapskate ingenuity, the trick of scaring the audience pantsless with the simplest possible effect: an unexpected camera movement, a barely glimpsed shadow, a hand reaching for a doorknob. And they tend to pay some sort of tribute to the genre’s roots in low-budget exploitation, sometimes by citing their B-movie forebears outright (as did Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods, which was artisanal in spirit if not in budget), sometimes just by letting the seams in the monster costumes show.