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This article contains The Odyssey spoilers
The Odyssey is really impressive. The sheer scale of Christopher Nolan’s epic new movie is wowing audiences worldwide right now, but unfortunately—and inevitably—people will eventually start asking him how he will top it with his next film.
The answer to that question from any notable filmmaker tends to be the same: they’re not thinking about what’s next, they’ve only just brought this project to fruition, and it took a really long time. That’s understandable, yet we would argue that when Nolan is finally ready to make another film, he shouldn’t necessarily try to top the massive effort of The Odyssey and feel trapped by the expectations of escalation. Why go bigger when the real challenge could be going deeper into a genre he’s been circling for decades instead: horror.
Nolan recently told Empire that he’s always wanted to do a horror movie, but that so far he’s “never clicked with a particular idea or concept that worked” for him. He has, however, proven that he’s capable of creating some incredibly disturbing stuff. Leonard’s terrifying loss of identity and grip on reality in Memento made that film work beyond a traditional mystery. The Prestige hid elements of body horror inside its period drama. Scarecrow’s Batman Begins trips were arguably the highlight of that movie. Mal Cobb appears as a slasher killer-esque jump scare again and again in Inception. Then there’s The Odyssey, where Circe transforms Odysseus’ men into pigs during one unforgettable sequence. People can’t stop talking about how gross and unsettling Circe’s section of the film is, anchored by a stunning performance from Samantha Morton.
Still, Nolan already seems aware of how challenging it would be for him to fully embrace horror. “Of all genres, it is the most visceral,” he explained. “Where the direct response to the audience is the most important. That is to say, you’re trying to make people literally feel something in their bones about what’s going on on-screen.” He also added that he now sees a lot of horror movies with his kids and seems impressed by how risky they are. “You’ll see things in the first half an hour, 45 minutes of any horror film that you’d never see in another genre. Risks that are taken. Dangerous approaches to things and all the rest. Admittedly, a lot of movies can’t sustain that to the end. But in the horror genre, that kind of innovation is not just respected—it’s really demanded.”
He’s right to say it, and that’s why we hope he does finally find that elusive idea or concept to work with in the future. Though he believes there are “very few really great horror movies,” Nolan has already refined many filmmaking strengths that horror depends on, so they give him a much better chance of making one. Imagine his skills with time manipulation in Inception and Tenet applied to dread; the anxiety of Dunkirk being much more intimate; his ambitious logic grounded in the rules of the genre, making the unknowable that much more frightening.
Not only does Nolan have the skills to pay the horror bills, but the genre itself has freed itself from the unfair dismissal it was still subject to a couple of decades ago. Prestige horror has paved the way for critically and commercially successful movies, with Hereditary, The Witch, Get Out, and The Substance now discussed as major works of contemporary cinema rather than just cheap scares for genre lovers or the popcorn crowd.
Studios like A24 and Neon have also supported horror filmmakers who want to make visually distinctive and ambitious projects, and those vital concepts and ideas that Nolan refers to are consequently on the rise as low-budget fare like Backrooms and Obsession dominate both the cultural conversation and the box office. Nolan wouldn’t be “lowering” himself into horror; he’d be joining one of the most artistically challenging filmmaking spaces possible right now. He’d also be in the historically prestigious company of Stanley Kubrick, Jonathan Demme, and William Friedkin.
Now that he’s admitted he’s keen to make a horror movie, and he’s mastered spectacle, puzzles, historical drama, and mysteries, we’d love to find out if Nolan can add to the classics of this particular genre. He’s right that horror movies take risks and dangerous approaches that you just can’t find elsewhere. Making a great one could be his next big challenge.
The post Christopher Nolan Is Right About Horror Movies and That’s Exactly Why He Should Make One appeared first on Den of Geek.
