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The Creator – What we probably need to be scared of.

Thanks for anyone who suffered through the Jurassic World post. We are still shaking off ring rust here.

One of the secret commandments of Horror-Writers has always been authenticity over all else. The site was established originally during times when such websites were numerous and there was a low-key community of horror commentators all racing to be the first to post a review of new releases and briefly forgotten classics, all trying to make that big clickable statement to stoke engagement.

With all of this jockeying, even with the more playful and laidback groups, led to a lot of gatekeeping and mudslinging. This forced content to become defensive, contrarian, or to fall in line until I swear I was reading the same “hot” tweets from dozens of accounts.

Why do I bring any of this up? Two reasons. One, in that environment I would have never dared to risk the reputation of the Horror-Writers team by writing about 2023’s science fiction film The Creator on a horror site. Two, I think The Creator has a lot to say about the sort of horror to come, in real life if not fiction.

First off, let’s get the review out of the way. The Creator is a gorgeous movie. It just looks incredible. Gareth Edwards’ touch is all over this, from his use of humor between hold-your-breath tension, to the credulity and detail of the world behind the story. The actors and pacing all help elevate the movie from the usual sci-fi dungeon of B Movie effort and green screen “we’ll do it in post” design.

The script itself unfortunately fails to be consistently great. It borrows so heavily from other movies that even the moments that should carry emotional or philosophical weight feel like we’ve been there before. Apocalypse Now, Akira, Blade Runner, Aliens, Ghost in the Shell, Avatar, Tales from the Loop, District 9, Terminator, on and on and on it goes.

It keeps this movie from warranting fandom, and the box office sort of reflected that. Being released in a cold era for the neighborhood theater didn’t help, neither did the “Is it an action flick? Is it a love story? Is it a kids’ movie?” approach to marketing. It didn’t lose money, which is a minor miracle in itself.

It is a little bit of a conundrum because more than any other genre, sci fi has been forced into a ghetto where it either needs to be obtuse and intellectual, or ripe for Funko, cosplay, and video games. The ambitious releases feel cold, the flashy stuff feel too popcorn. The Creator is exactly the sort of sci fi release a lot of us have been wishing for, but because of it walking that line between commercial and academic, it struggles to find the wide audience.

But where The Creator shines is in the portrayals that will become much more common in horror. Horror, for lack of any real authoritative definition, is a reflection of the fears and anxieties of the readers.

Horror looks back at past fear, explores the fears of today, or worries over the fear of what is to come. Very rarely does horror ever teach us new things to fear. Jaws claimed to, but anxiety over the sea and the predators of the world that man cannot tame is coded into our primitive genetic code. We just had to be reminded that beach day could go sideways.

The Creator is an intelligent mix of horror elements disguised well in robots and high-tech war machinery. It trades pretty heavily in the fear of the alien – not of the xenomorph, but of the age old “other.”

The villains of the movie are propped up to be AI entities, but the film does a pretty good job of showing that AI is just the new avatar for the distrust and disconnect between the West and the East, with China loosely serving as the enemy superpower due to their granting “human” rights to AI constructs. America, who has suffered a tremendous tragedy in the form of an AI triggered attack (a nuclear weapon detonated over Los Angeles), finds a unified identity in hawkish pursuit to violently eradicate AI from the world rather than do a true post mortem on the event for lessons to be learned.

The movie deals with some fantastic fears – the creeping fog of posthumanism, the deterioration of Western world primacy, the seemingly bottomless terror of technology, the hair trigger of war on an increasingly crowded world, the lack of harmony in ideology, and the detachment from what we once understood to be reality.

One of my favorite impressions in the movie are the image of the US’s NOMAD arial battleship looming forever in low orbit, a technological nightmare out to protect the world from technology. This hypocrisy reflects the theme common in horror of “who is the real monster?” The other tasty morsel is the idea of weaponizing our children, planting within them the seeds to destroy everything once and for all while their innocence itself has the power to be just as globally transformative if we would just see the wisdom in it.

The setup for all the exploration of these delicate and alluring modern topics is a little hammy, but it is all there for anyone patient enough to think outside the set pieces and the forced inclusion of Radiohead tracks. The Americans are not whitewashed saviors, but it remains concerning to see the “enemy” (the “them” to our “us”) be a conglomerate of Southeast Asian culture… a melting pot of Thailand, China, Japan, Vietnam, India, and all points between. America looks isolationist and exceptional as ever, with its modernity and urban sprawl, whereas this theater of war is rural and traditional. I worry that this intentional dichotomy might blow the wrong whistles.

Is it a stretch to call it horror, probably. Like calling a hot dog a sandwich. But watching The Creator will give you a peak at where horror will be going as we enter the next decade. Personhood will continue to be an issue, with a renewed sense of loneliness and alienation driving modern existential ponderings. The disconnect from reality will also be a driving premise behind fiction to come, as will the inevitable fracture between humans and ideals, and the blind loyalty to factions being at odds with personal truth. And, like so many great ghost stories, we’ll never grow past the need to explore the mystery of mortality and the pain of letting go.

Mark my words. The Creator is a spoiler for horror to come. On screen and under your roof.

The Creator (2023) 4/5 Stars

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