Final Rating: 3/5
1000 Women in Horror (dir. Donna Davies), a documentary led by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, is a broad, sometimes shallow, survey of womanhood and gender in horror films. The documentary is split into chapters based on age. The archetypal little girl, teenager, and old hag are each examined, primarily by Heller-Nicholas, who wrote the book the doc is based on. Further commentary is provided by a range of women: filmmakers, actresses, and critics, and demonstrative film clips act as punctuation and example.
Coming in at a brisk 96 minutes, it is a bit unwieldy. The subject is a big one, areas of which require nuance not allowed by the short runtime. For example, their choice to even touch on rape revenge films without a litany of caveats was a brave one, which I admired. I wish the film included a bibliography, though I am assuming the ultimate goal is to drive interested viewers to the book which will have more information and sources cited.
I am personally invested in this subject, as I have been fascinated by gender in horror since I attended a formative seminar in the WGS department at Indiana University my freshmen year. Horror is possibly my favorite genre, and using gender as a lens is my default. I am, however, not the target audience for this doc.
Because it is streaming on Shudder, they’re benefitting from an audience which has some passing knowledge of gender in horror but has never actually dug into the subject themselves, a worthy pursuit which places the filmmaker in a tricky position. One has to introduce subjects and define basic terms without talking down to the viewer.
All things considered, I was impressed with the way this documentary was balanced. It wasn’t too much of a slog as an educated viewer, and it didn’t suffer from a Feminism 101 introductory chapter. Most of the commentary felt worthwhile and well-founded.
Cerise Howard was a highlight, bringing a wider perspective that the documentary sometimes lacks. At one point, she mentions that the Final Girl as an archetype was more historically important than any particular iteration. This was a crucial moment of filmographic analysis. The doc mainly stays in the realm of literary analysis, e.g. adolescence and menstruation as sources of magical power. The moments where it steps back just a little to look at the genre’s role in mainstream filmmaking are key insights to the why of the documentary.
Why does the Final Girl matter? Because horror was one of the earliest genres to center women as protagonists while mainstream sentiment still held that a male audience wouldn’t identify with a woman on screen. I was happy to see this mentioned, and I wish there was more like it.
That isn’t to say I blame the filmmakers for the limitations of the format. The topic is very large, focusing both on fictional women in horror as well as real life women in the industry. The section featuring women filmmakers was unfortunately slightly off putting. The documentary itself seemed to transition from an I Love the 80s style, talking heads survey of the subject to a series of advertisements for some of the women featured. Each one of them gets a few minutes to sell their film to you.
On the one hand, I can see how this is a fair trade for the commentator, and their movies are at least tangentially relevant to the subject of the documentary. On the other hand, there’s a sense that a captured minority audience is being pandered to by women who, for whatever reason, market their films as Feminist and Empowering. I feel torn.
Something may be lost when the intention towards feminine empowerment is so primary for the filmmaker, even extending as far as their marketing strategy. If I had a really great conversation on this topic with someone I met at a party, and then she proceeded to recommend her new movie to me, revealing that she only attended the party to find a potential customer, I would feel used and lied to. Ultimately, I don’t think this is a dealbreaker, but it is the kind of thing that I think a viewer should know going in.
Overall, the bulk of the documentary was well-spoken with a wide range of worthy subjects discussed by educated commentators. I am happy that it was made, and I think this could spark a lot of new interest in gender analysis for some of the young women who have felt drawn to horror movies without knowing exactly why.
Maybe the most powerful part of the documentary for me was the camaraderie it celebrated. Each woman shares her experience of being drawn to the genre, partially because a woman was the center of the action more often than not. We’re in the midst of a new era, where mainstream horror films are overtly feminist, but the archives are rich with under-explored texts, films unwittingly imbued with femininity and queerness which reveal the subconscious of their creators and audiences.
If that is a subject you are interested in, I recommend “Men, Women, and Chain Saws,” by Carol J. Clover, “The Monstrous-Feminine” by Barbara Creed, and “Corpses, Fools, and Monsters,” by Willow Maclay and Caden Gardner. There has been a boom in feminist and LGBTQ+ horror analysis in the past 15 years or so which means there are more and more books and essays on the topic; if you are interested in digging in further, a search engine is all you need.
Thank you to Shudder and Brigade Marketing for the screener.
