When it comes to horror, there are fewer things people find scarier than facing their own mortality.
By Dave Jones: Columnist
Ironically, it’s something we all have in common – we get older and our bodies change – but to many, this reality is more disturbing than any science fictional shadow-dwelling vampire or army of the ravenous undead. But perhaps, especially for those in certain spheres of influence, they have a right to be fearful?
If you’re rich and famous, you stand to lose much more than most to the aging process. You’ve heard about how Walt Disney supposedly had himself frozen in an attempt to ultimately cheat death, right? Well, that is just an urban legend, but it shows how much influence the threat of mortality has on celebrity.
The golden age of Hollywood is so rife with the terror of aging that the past-their-prime star or starlet – mostly the latter – has become a deeply-ingrained trope leveraged by many a fictional story. Take Targets for example, a movie in which Boris Karloff plays an aged actor called Byron Orlok who feels the pressure of mortality and despairs the lack of fright his dated horror movies bring. In some ways, art imitates life.
Male actors and celebrities aren’t immune to the negative effects aging has over their career, but they’re in an arguably better position than their female counterparts. When a man ages and goes grey he’s referred to as distinguished, or a silver fox. It can be more difficult to find work in the industry as the hunky male lead – sometimes, that is – but there are a bounty of other roles available. The wise mentor, the father figure, the attractive older man. But what about for women?
Hollywood is a lot more brutal on its female actors. They’re more often than not renowned for their attractive figures or stunning beauty, and when those things begin to “fade,” the opportunities dry up. In 2017, actress Jessica Lange informed AARP, “Ageism is pervasive in this industry. It’s not a level playing field. You don’t often see women in their 60s playing romantic leads, yet you will see men in their 60s playing romantic leads with co-stars who are decades younger.”
Jennifer Anniston told Yahoo Beauty in 2014, “There is this pressure in Hollywood to be ageless. I think what I have been witness to is seeing women trying to stay ageless with what they are doing to themselves… I see them and my heart breaks… They are trying to stop the clock, and all you can see is an insecure person who won’t let themselves just age.”
It’s a troubling concept, and nothing encapsulates that more than the horror genre. Age has often been the subject of fear, in real life as well as science fiction. Elderly women were a common victim of witchcraft accusations when fear of witches gripped the western world, and it seeped into our collective subconsciousness.
There are so many movies and TV shows that leverage old women in older buildings and mansions to elicit fear in viewers, but the best ones always have something to say about the subject matter. A great case in point is Old People, a 2022 movie about a family fighting for their lives against murderous pensioners whom society has forgotten. It leverages our fear of aging, but in a masterful twist it also holds a mirror up to how we treat our elderly and uses abandonment-based guilt to make us rethink our society.
M. Night Shyamalan's 2021 thriller Old is another age-centric horror movie that has a point to make. Based on the book Sandcastle, it tells the story of a holidaymaking family who find their lives shortened to just one day thanks to the mysterious properties of a beach they discover. According to Shyamalan, he has an emotional investment in the movie, and the material that inspired it.
He revealed, “The book gave me the opportunity to work through a lot of anxieties I had around death and aging, and things like my parents getting older.”
If you’re after something much more recent though, look no further than the newest addition to the body horror genre, The Substance. Lead actress Demi Moore has enjoyed an illustrious career in Hollywood and is continuing to do so with her newest outing. In the movie, Moore plays a celebrity called Elisabeth Sparkle who feels the crushing weight of Hollywood’s pressure to remain ageless, until she discovers the existence of a black market drug that can make her young again… after a fashion.
You see, the drug actually creates a younger clone of herself, which emerges from a hole in her back. And as you’ve probably guessed, the tension between Elisabeth and her younger duplicate soon reaches disturbing heights. It’s a fascinating subject and it’s impossible not to draw parallels to how aging is seen in the film industry, particularly for women. And those unrealistic expectations don’t just affect women in front of the camera on a daily basis.
Filmmaker Coralie Fargeat used her own negative thoughts and fears about how her industry - and indeed the world - has been known to view women as they age. “I really started to think and hide these voices in my head like, 'Now your life is over. No one is going to care about you,’” she revealed in an interview with Next Best Picture Podcast in 2024.
“So I definitely experienced it in an internal level,” she elaborated with NPR. “Like, starting to have those thoughts that because I wasn't going to be young, you know, and sexy, I was going to be erased from the public space, that no one was going to be interested in me, that, you know, I wasn't going to have any works anymore. I couldn't say that I experienced it in a real way in my life, but those thoughts were absolutely real in my brain.”
Fargeat also eschewed the work of several practical special effects artists which was too masculine, preferring Pierre-Olivier Persin’s vision of a more feminine approach to makeup and prosthetics that really emphasizes the reality of the film’s message. Well, as much reality as you can portray about a threatening body double that turns against its originator, of course!
The Substance was lauded by critics as a compelling piece of cinema, and when you strip away the fantasy horror elements of the movie it certainly makes you think about how deeply skewed towards youth and beauty Hollywood and the larger world is. It also raises another interesting question: should we fear the passage of time?
Western culture often sees age as a weakness, but many others across the world revere their elderly. Longevity in Japan is famously high, for example, and the quality of life of its senior population is just as impressive.
We could stand to learn a thing or two about how to respect and care for our own elders as the East does.
It’s an inevitability that we grow and we age, so perhaps it’s easier to just accept the reality than try and live vicariously through those who are younger. After all, they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Instead of being intimidated by age, we should consider all the wonderful things it can bring: experience, wisdom and the joy of simply seeing what life brings each day. All these things are beautiful in their own way, so perhaps beauty simply changes form as we age for those open-minded enough to appreciate it.
like this article? vote for the author below
