As was the case in the 1970s and 1980s, key metapoetic horrors are being created - both in America and in Europe - within emphatically authorial perspectives. In many interviews Craven has stated that he drew inspiration for his films from dreams, and in his last good film he elevated it to the level of a substantial meta-slasher. In Wes Craven's New Nightmare (New Nightmare, 1994) all the actors play themselves, just as the origin of the horrific events lies in the head and nightmares of the director who reawakens the demons of the past, that is, Freddy Krueger: thus the viewer is put in a position where he cannot distinguish how far the film reaches and from which point reality extends, which is the foundation of genre suspense.
Quality New Nightmare is most clearly seen when following the development of Freddy's 'fame': at the beginning he is a television star, celebrity (Craven's direct criticism of what he has become A Nightmare on Elm Street series), so that in the end he would once again be a monster devoid of glamor who broke away from the actor who embodied him all these years, Robert Englund.
On the other hand, another one Ferrarina religious parable after Bad lieutenant (1992) The Addiction (Zavisnost, 1994) sees vampires as a form of negative transcendences which is an extremely fruitful starting point for the director's obsessive ethical consideration of the issue of evil. Lili taylor plays a philosophy student who is bitten by a vampire (Annabella Sciorra). The already pessimistic perspective through which Ferrara tells his story (not only related to the use of black and white photography), then takes on an even more depressing intonation: the oppressive atmosphere it possesses The Addiction is not only a consequence of the authentic depiction of urban decay in New York, but also of the heroine's ever-deeper immersion in a space where power, seduction, knowledge, and pain are diabolically intertwined.
But in Ferrari's Catholic interpretation, only a man who has reached existential rock bottom is ready for - this common phrase should be taken literally - resurrection. At a graduation party, the heroine initiates and participates in a mass bloodbath. She is hospitalized, and before she dies, a Catholic priest gives her - with her words: Amen - last communion.
The most intriguing European metapoetic horror comes from a seemingly unexpected address: Hanekeov the best movie, F (Funny Games, 1997), not coincidentally for the director's trajectory, is also the most difficult to 'accept' and 'explain', since it additionally focuses on the issue of violence, its 'function' and purpose, its signification in an aporic universe. Consequently, the story is simple: an ordinary family that goes to the countryside for the weekend is suddenly terrorized by two young men whose motivations we learn nothing about.
F with unbearable precision, he follows the gradualness, detail and self-sufficiency of the violence committed, the humiliation and destruction of the unfortunate family: what is a struggle for life for this family, for the young men is a means andaliveIn the end, one of them turns to face the camera in a sudden revelation that this is not a sociologically induced evil, but something much more horrific, precisely because it is - inconceivable. F is transformed into essential horror by such a hermeneutic: the ontology of evil has no descriptive causal mechanism.
However, the two best films with essayistic consideration of metatextual issues are found in the oeuvre Johna CarpenteraThe world of manipulation from They Live (1988) is in In the Mouth of Madness (In the Mouth of Madness, 1994) is discursively and in-depth outlined, and thus we have moved from dystopia to the very epicenter of horror. In the director's oeuvre, In the Mouth of Madness is the achievement of scrupulous metalinguistic analysis. Carpenter functionalizes the fabula for the exciting postulation of the question: which ontological regions are reality, and which are (literary) fictions. While, for example, in A Nightmare on Elm Street tension arose from the inability to distinguish between dream and reality, until then in In the Mouth of Madness horror emerges from the absence of parameters for establishing demarcating lines between events in a literary work and the real world. It's as if Carpenter in this case decided to draw horror consequences from the famous Derrida's of the dictum that 'there is nothing outside the text'.
Essentially, the author again uses reception ambiguity to emanate fear. Directed in In the Mouth of Madness suggests that our empirical coordinates are insufficient: once parallel worlds now inevitably coincide, creating a new 'reality' - a living space in the form of a madhouse where anything is possible. Cane's (Jurgen Prochnow) books are 'produced' by reality and the credits of the film with printing presses working frantically give us an image of that apocalyptic Genesis. In the end, Trent went crazy (Sam neill) goes to watch everything that happened to him before on the cinema screen: the director did not leave out the medium in which he works, nor his own author's inscription.
While the irony in Wes Craven's New Nightmare primarily focused on bad sequels, so far Carpenter u In the Mouth of Madness, among other things, undertook a multi-directional critique of the scope and effects of film itself, its place in the contemporary world. Thus, horror was once again used as the most suitable genre framework to validly speak about the nature, generic conventions, and essence of the seventh art.
In yet another film with a strong autopoietic definition, Carpenter boldly chose to oppose the prevailing axiology primarily by deciding to stick to an orthodox reading of the genre: Vampires (1998) can be seen as a reaction to the standard interpretations of the vampire figure that were given in the nineties. When the main character of the film (James Woods) says to the padre (Tim guinee) to forget about the usual - that is, recent - representations of vampires, it is clear where the director's cynicism is heading: the critical edge is aimed at Coppola Bram Stoker's Dracula who created Dracula as a sensitive and tragic being in love, as well as Jordanov Interview with the vampire (1994) which focused more on the homosexual implications of the association of 'contemplative' bloodsuckers than on intimidation, the basic intention of horror.
In a completely opposite strategy, Carpenter does not - because that would disintegrate the genre structure - relativize vampires, their ontological and ethical constitution, their otherness: they are once again dangerous creatures of darkness. The only relationship between man and vampire is a fight in which there is no mercy. That is why Woods' character, the leader of the so-called Slayer, is extremely conceived: perhaps his methods - his dedication to killing vampires - are politically incorrect, but he still stands on the side of justice. By setting the action in Texas, in a typical rural milieu of Westerns, the director emphasizes the bitterness of the existential conflict in an epic perspective: Carpenter in Vampires It keeps the viewer in suspense until the cathartic ending, in which the spiritual-political dimension of the film is revealed.
Starting from Hockian axiology, Carpenter was thus able to fundamentally offer a congenital, superior ideological 'prescription' to horror, and to present himself as one of the key and unfortunately last heirs, reaffirmers and innovators of the essence of Old Hollywood. This is precisely the author's point: only in this essential interweaving of various genre spheres, some explicit, others only hinted at, does Carpenter believe that a valid interpretative mechanism will be obtained that can point to paradigmatic and thus binding moments of current (American) issues, and the director does not hesitate to view them through a visor that includes issues of politics, economics, capitalism, as well as those related to the quintessence of life understood in activist terms - issues of morality, self-respect and responsibility.
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