What separates splatter films from other horror subgenres are their postmodern underpinnings as they embody the violence associated with our changing world and minds, says Michael Arnzen. Many splatter films tend to make visual references to one another. By calling attention to themselves as art forms, splatter films call filmic texts into question.
In a similar fashion, the music videos for The Weeknd’s After Hours album era reference classic horror movies. The music video for his single In Your Eyes, for example, references Halloween (1978) and other similar slasher films as the artist emulates the character of Michael Myers and other fictional serial killers. So too is the music video’s ending reminiscent of the final scene of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974).
In Your Eyes – Content Warning: graphic violence
https://youtu.be/dqRZDebPIGs?si=RwTvPPhRz1IdLHpO&t=218
TCM
https://youtu.be/jxi2dwXHJZY?si=tFLR6gbc8_cKjx8o
Furthermore, the events which take place in the music video for Too Late are a continuation of the events from the In Your Eyes music video, as The Weeknd’s decapitated head gets reattached to another man’s body
Too Late – Content Warning: sexual material, graphic violence and necrophilia??
https://youtu.be/Wh8DT09QCHI?si=RTMR6cBaHoDvEwPd
This video references American Psycho (2000) as both the video and the film are social commentaries on the superficiality of consumerist American culture.
American Psycho – Content Warning: graphic violence
https://youtu.be/kI_ukqMO3lk?si=AeevWn2R1Qbss4iE&t=20
Noel Carroll categorises the horror genre as involving the emotional response of abhorrence, disgust or revulsion in consequence of a monster’s impurity. The killer duo’s identities are hidden as they have just undergone plastic surgery. Their ‘unnatural’ appearance and physical impurity deem them a subject of fear and aversion to the audience. So too is categorical incompleteness and formlessness commonly found within many horrific monsters, according to Carroll – this can be applied to both the nameless women, as well as The Weekend’s decapitated head. Yet, Carroll claims that in order to transform horror into laughter, the monster’s threat to human life must be sublated or hidden from our attention, as fear and fearsomeness are not part of the comic universe from the point of view of the audience. The video’s comic element comes from the women’s unconventional reactions, as the site of a severed head elicits arousal within them, rather than disgust or fear. This drives them to create and sexually engage with a Frankensteinian creation, a duality of oppositions – another feature Carroll claims many fictional monsters possess.
The beginning of the “In Your Eyes” video has a very jumpy, rapid montage editing which complements Arnzen’s description of splatter film editing as “fragmentary” and “manic”. Comically, having not seen these before, beyond the beat-drop decapitation and ensuing dance, I really enjoy Abel’s choice to just… loom throughout the video.
This is a fantastic application of Carroll—especially the idea that horror becomes comic when the monster’s threat is displaced. The Frankenstein’s Monster motif made me think about the ways in which Gothic fiction is inoculated by multiple reproductions, detaching it from its original meaning.