Horror's plot thickens: are we all trapped in a streaming maze?
Remember the simple rules of survival in 1996's Scream? Abstain from sex, ditch the drugs, and never utter the phrase “I’ll be right back.” It was a straightforward contract with the audience, a roadmap through the carnage. Two decades later, navigating a horror series has become a far more perplexing ordeal, a mental labyrinth rivaling the most elaborate Saw traps.
The curse of complicated narratives
Take Netflix’s Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, for instance. The premise? Our protagonist must marry her soulmate by sundown or face dire consequences. The twist? Determining who that soulmate is constitutes the entire narrative. And if she fails, the curse jumps to the groom's family. Finding a loophole seems as likely as surviving a jump scare, and spoiler alert: no one does. The Duffer Brothers, masters of intricate plotting thanks to Stranger Things, have set a new bar for convoluted storytelling.
But they aren’t alone in the trend. HBO Max's IT: Welcome to Derry, while initially praised for its genuinely chilling atmosphere, introduced a perplexing twist in its finale: Pennywise experiences past, present, and future simultaneously. “Tomorrow, yesterday, it’s all the same for little Pennywise!” Skarsgård’s clown proclaimed, adding another layer of temporal complexity to an already formidable foe. The showrunners are now promising to “flesh out” this new concept over the next two seasons, a prospect that feels less like a promise and more like an admission of initial overreach.
The cycle continues. MGM+'s From, frequently likened to Lost in its atmospheric dread and unresolved mysteries, exemplifies this trend. A town traps its inhabitants, monsters prowl at night, and each answered question spawns a dozen more. It’s a formula that, while undeniably engaging, risks drowning viewers in a sea of unanswered queries.
Why this obsession with increasingly intricate plots? While shows like Yellowjackets prove that mystery and dread can captivate audiences, the modern horror landscape seems to prioritize complexity over clarity. Perhaps creators are mistaking convolution for depth.
A return to simplicity: lessons from the big screen
The indie horror scene, meanwhile, is quietly demonstrating a more effective approach. Films like Barbarian, Weapons, and Nope have achieved critical and commercial success by embracing simplicity. Barbarian hinged on the terrifying premise of a monster lurking in an Airbnb basement. Weapons revealed itself to be a story about witchcraft. Nope delivered a classic alien reveal. These films understood that viewers don’t need exhaustive exposition; they need a good scare. Ari Aster’s Hereditary, for example, allowed its unsettling lore to simmer in the background, creating a pervasive sense of dread without resorting to convoluted explanations.
The modern horror series would benefit from looking beyond the streaming maze and learning from the big screen’s recent successes: provide a compelling premise, build suspense, and deliver the scares—without turning the viewing experience into a homework assignment. The audience craves a chilling story, not a dissertation on temporal paradoxes and inherited curses.
The current trajectory suggests a future where discerning a monster from a metaphor is as terrifying as facing the monster itself. And that’s a truly frightening prospect.