Horror in the Landscape of 2020

LOOMING SHADOWS, disembodied voices whispering, the startling crack of thunder. For some, the mere thought of these things makes the hair on their arms stand on end as goose bumps break out across their skin.

Others rub their hands together with glee.

I've been a lover of all things horror ever since I was a little girl. It sounds strange, I know, but while my friends were reading about ponies and princesses, I was reading about infamous hauntings and obscure paranormal phenomenon. That's not to say I wasn't scared. There were many nights spent with the bedside lamp on. Especially after reading my first Stephen King book when I was ten... Yet I always came back for the next scary book or scary movie, like so many of us do. Why, some might ask? Well, when it comes to reading and watching horror, there's always that part of you that's thinking "It's okay! It's not real! It’s just a movie/book.”

However, with the outbreak of the corona virus we’ve experienced unprecedented and sudden social changes the world over. We’ve become accustomed to words like lockdown, asymptomatic, isolation and quarantine—words that sound more at home in the synopsis of the latest horror offering than they do in our daily lives. Instead it’s become our new normal—a horror story which we’re forced to accept as reality. We can’t press pause or skip to the next chapter. We’ve become the main characters in a modern horror tale where we feel the walls closing in on us and every cough is cause for concern. Or where we stare at the clock, waiting for the one hour a day we’re allowed outside. Horror in the landscape of 2020 isn’t slasher films and copious amounts of gore. It’s more subtle, creeping towards you from all sides as it slowly chips away at your resolve while you gather as much optimism as you can and hold onto it with everything you have. It’s the unravelling of your sanity like yarn yanked from your favorite sweater. You know it’s happening, but you feel helpless to stop it.

Our modern horror story, like in any great apocalyptic tale, sees us stripped away of the things we took for granted —the things that if we’d only known we wouldn’t get to experience again (or at least for some time) that we would have taken the time to appreciate better. We are left looking at our reflections that don’t quite look the way they did before. There’s a slight hesitation in our smiles, the glint of anxiety in our eyes. We know there’s a monster moving beyond the safety of our homes, silent and nondiscriminating in where or who its victims might be. It weaves around us, unseen, unheard—a monster we don’t know how to defeat. Yet that’s not to say that we won’t. When the world records no more cases of the corona virus, the modern landscape may look a little different— we might feel a little different—but we’ll once again get to utter the words,

"It's okay! It's not real! It’s just a movie/book.”

Liz Butcher lives in Australia, with her husband, daughter and two cats. She’s a self-confessed NERD with a BA in Psychology and an insatiable fractionation for learning. Her debut novel, Fates’ Fury, released September 2019

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