Gaslighting, Captivity, and Trauma: Notes on MeToo Horror Films

Horror is a genre known to absorb and reflect extant social anxieties into its texts, including, most significantly for this chapter, issues of gender as they relate to the #MeToo movement. This chapter identifies three overlapping but thematically distinct cycles that are labeled MeToo horror films, including the gaslighting cycle, the captive women cycle, and the trauma cycle. In brief, gaslighting films wrestle with the psychological aspects of abuse and assault against women, captive women films deal with the violence against women, both metaphorical and physical, and trauma films confront the mid- and long-term consequences of the two. The chapter proceeds by articulating the sociopolitical landscape that helped birth #MeToo horror films, such as the politicization of misogyny as embodied by Donald Trump and the nomination and eventual swearing-in of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, as well as industry conditions that allowed horror cinema to turn back to the political and put more women in the director’s chair. From there, the chapter will provide synoptic overviews of each cycle, highlighting representative themes across a collective of films and their relation to the #MeToo movement.