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To refer toSteve McQueensWidowsas a heist movie almost feels wrong.
It privileges emotion and imagery over thrills, character development over narrative machinations.
(Which is interesting, because it actually has a lot of narrative machinations.)
A thriller not entirely comfortable with thrills was howA.O.
Scott of the New YorkTimesput it.
Guadagninos film, needless to say, is a lot more divisive than McQueens.
(Vultures Emily Yoshidaquite liked it.
Vultures David Edelsteinquite, uh, did not.)
Elevated horror is certainly an inelegant phrase.
It seems to ignore the fact thatartistry, originality, and innovationhave been a part of horrorsince its infancy.
(If anything, its the cheap scares that came later.)
And besides, as many have argued, horrordoesnt really need elevating.
And it goes beyond horror.
(Next up: James Gray!)
But the trend has definitely accelerated of late, perhaps because space movies are easier to sell nowadays.
(Though thedisappointing box officeforFirst Mansuggests that trend may also be starting to wane.)
The demands of genre the jump scares, the spectacle, the pulse-pounding suspense, etc.
become secondary to the movies emotional undercurrents and the filmmakers aesthetic and thematic obsessions.
To put it another way: Auteurs have to go somewhere.
Some have opted for significantly lower budgets.
Some have migrated to television, where original comedies and dramas still seem to have real value.
That represents an interesting reversal as well.
Maybe thats the real reason that genre movies ultimately dont need elevating.
Its because in 2018, theyre already at the top of the food chain.
