Rabid Love (2013) and 1980s Throwbacks

Horror is an ever-evolving genre of film.  Different subgenres take starring roles at different times, leading to a wide landscape of spooky stories.  The 1930s and 1940s had the monster films that Universal recently tried to resurrect with the Dark Universe.  The 1950s had the rise of the science fiction horror.  The 1980s had science fiction return, but also saw slashers take the spotlight.  The 2000s brought gore and body horror, as well as remakes.  Then we ended up in the current decade where ghost stories, demons. and possessions have been the top dog.

Those big trends in horror haven’t been the only things going on.  While ghost stories, demons, and possessions have been the main, driving force of horror with the help of Paranormal Activity, The Conjuring, Insidious, and Sinister, there are still other subgenres whetting the appetite of horror fans.  The slasher genre is still around.  The animal attack movie is still kicking it.  Vampires, zombies, and werewolves make their annual appearance. There’s a lot of horror to go around.

Many times, the subgenres morph into something a little different.  There are still the standard, straight-forward versions of each subgenre.  But new times mean that new filmmakers will try new things.  Kevin Williamson in the 1990s re-energized the slasher subgenre when he wrote Scream.  It was a new horror masterpiece that directly played on the tropes of older slasher movies from the two decades that preceded it.  The current generation of horror filmmakers have also managed to put their own stamp on things.

The slasher genre has been the most noticeable in terms of the malleability.  Changes have been made on a regular basis that freshen up the story being told because the basic concept is so simple.  There’s someone trying to kill people, one by one.  Scream had fun with the tropes that the subgenre had built up.  Happy Death Day took the concept and placed a time loop onto it.  Tucker and Dale vs. Evil made the villains into misunderstood country boys who were prone to accidents.  What has become apparent in the subgenre, though, is a love of what came before.

Rabid Love was one of the many throwbacks to the slasher subgenre.  More specifically, it was a blend of the slasher subgenre with the cabin-in-the-woods subgenre.  John (Paul J. Porter) was taking everyone up to his family cabin.  He brought his girlfriend Heather (Hayley Derryberry), his sister Julie (Jessica Sonneborn), his best friend Adam (Josh Hammond), and Adam’s girlfriend Summer (Hannah Landberg).  They quickly ran into a photographer named David (Brandon Stacy).  Some strange things started happening, leading to death and changes in personality.

On its face, it might not seem like the story being told was that much of a throwback.  It’s a fairly timeless idea that could work for any generation of slasher movies.  Watching it, however, it was easy to tell how influential the 1980s slasher and cabin-in-the-woods movies were upon it.  Nearly every element harkened back to that era.

The story was the most apparent.  Though the slasher concept has been one of the most enduring horror ideas over the past few decades, the one used for Rabid Love played into the 1980s storytelling.  Horror movies set in a camping situation were popular following the release of Friday the 13^th.  Other slashers started using the summer camp setting.  The Burning and Sleepaway Camp found some success by copying the location.  Other filmmakers morphed it a little bit into the popularity of the cabin-in-the-woods slasher.  The Evil Dead, some of the Friday the 13^th sequels, and lesser known movies like Iced set their slashers in cabin locations.  Camping became a major element in 1980s horror.

What makes camping such an interesting setting for horror movies is the isolation element.  That’s very apparent in the cabin movies.  The cabin is typically in the woods but could be in the Northern snowscape or on an island as well.  The surroundings of the cabin make it so that nobody is within close proximity.  The outside world can’t stumble upon the horror.  The characters are stuck in their situation alone.  Rabid Love showed this by having the characters stop in the small town on their way for a last bit of shopping, having the threat of a possible bear near their cabin, and having them only end up in the woods when they went outside.  Their cabin was isolated.

For the summer camp movies, the isolation worked a little bit differently.  The camps tended to be in the woods, which kept up that whole trapped with no neighbours element of the cabin movies.  There was an added element with the people in the camp, though.  In many cases, there was a character who felt out of place.  This is typical of summer camp movies of any genre.  There’s a sense of isolation with one of the main characters because they don’t fit in with everyone or they are the victim of bullying.  This makes them feel more alone than just simply camping in the woods.  Even within the people they are there with, they feel alone.  The isolation grows.  The isolation is why so many people have made camp-based horror movies, and why they rose to prominence in the 1980s.

The other story element in Rabid Love that felt like it was pulled from the 1980s was the rabies element.  The 1980s had a resurgence of science fiction within horror.  The 1950s had done it with movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Blob, and Invaders from Mars among others.  Each of them were remade in the 1970s or 1980s.  Then there was the new wave of science fiction horror movies like Alien, Return of the Living Dead, and the lesser known Remote Control.  Science fiction had come back into horror in a big way.  Mad scientists, aliens, and military experiments gone wrong were all over the place.

Rabid Love had a character testing a rabies virus.  They were infecting people with the virus in order to see how it would break down their mental stability.  They were going to sample the people’s blood in order to… do something with it.  There was a makeshift laboratory in the woods.  People were being killed if they put the experiment at risk.  The science had worked its way into the story like it did in so many 1980s horror films.

The time in which Rabid Love was set was also a clear indicator of the 1980s influence.  The film was set in the 1980s.  The characters were dressed like they were in the 1980s.  The vehicles were 1980s vehicles.  One of the characters had a 1984 Reagan Bush shirt.  There was someone running through the woods with a Sony Walkman, or another tape playing device like it.  Everything looked like the 1980s.

The last piece of Rabid Love that made it a clear 1980s throwback film was the music.  The music felt like it was out of the 1980s, even though it was newer.  Gene the Werewolf had a couple songs on the soundtrack.  His music felt like 1980s hard rock ballads.  Knowing some of the other Gene the Werewolf music, his feel is like a hard rock act from the 1980s.  Then there was Ruby Faith & The Waiting World, who felt like a Pat Benetar or Scandal.  Every piece of music was a newer artist with a song that sounded like it came out of the 1980s.  It set a tone to much of the action.

Rabid Love was one of many movies in the past decade to be throwbacks to the 1980s.  Movies like Cabin in the Woods and The Final Girls called back to similar material in a much more meta-contextual way.  They played on the tropes directly, calling them out.  Rabid Love didn’t do the callouts, instead sticking to the tropes and becoming an addition to the 1980s subgenre produced in the modern day.  Throwbacks come in many shapes and sizes.  Subtlety or transparency are different ways they can be approached, but the original intention is the same.  The filmmakers love the movies that were made nearly forty years ago and wanted to make a love letter to that era.

The evolution of horror happens with a knowledge of the past and a growth to the future.  There can’t be innovations and new twists without a history to play on.  Many of the horror movies that come out now use the conventions that were set up by the horror movies of decades past.  They update the ideas for a modern audience.  They use expectations to fake people out and build suspense.  Horror movies grow through this process and new ideas come to the forefront.  They might not all be good movies, but they help build a history that can be looked at when invention and innovation are needed.  And that’s a good thing.

Here are some good notes for you:

• In this post, I mentioned Sleepaway Camp.  I covered all the Sleepaway Camp movies (week 150).
• I also mentioned Friday the 13^th.  Three Friday the 13^th movies have been covered for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (week 46) was the first, then I covered Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (week 85) and Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (week 294).
• Rabid Love featured Noel Thurman, who was in Transmorphers (week 130) and The Beast of Bray Road (week 176).
• Hayley Derryberry starred in Rabid Love.  She also starred in 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck (week 60).
• Finally, Alexandra Boylan returned this week, after previously showing up in Transmorphers (week 130).
• Have you seen Rabid Love?  What did you think of it?  What did you think of the 1980s horror throwback boom of the past decade?  Let me know on Twitter or in the comments.
• You can also use Twitter and the comments to let me know about movies that I should be checking out for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I’m up for any suggestions.
• There’s an Instagram account for the Sunday “Bad” Movies that has some interesting stuff.  Check it out.
• And to end things off, here’s a look to what’s coming up.  Back in the 1990s, there were a bunch of boy bands that became popular.  One of those bands, *NSYNC, ended up coming together to make a romantic comedy of sorts.  Well, all the members except JC Chasez.  Lance Bass and Joey Fatone took the starring roles.  It was a movie called On the Line and I’ll tell you all about it next week.  See you then.