Session director Simon Barrett on how to get ‘funny’ in horror movies

From 2010 A horrible way to die, director Adam Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett made a series of horror films together that made them one of the most trusted duos in the genre. Projects like 2011 Autoerotic and You are next, along with its segments for V / H / S, The ABC of death, and V / H / S2, earned them a reputation as smart and self-aware horror creators who didn’t fear the nastier side of the genre. From 2014 The guest It was something completely different – an eighties horror movie pastiche that’s clever, scary, and memorable enough to help make Dan Stevens a major star.

Barrett also directed horror shorts for V / H / S2 and 2021’s V / H / S / 94, but he made his own directorial debut with 2021’s Session, another throwback horror feature set in a remote girls’ boarding school. When a student’s suicide makes room for a new girl at school, she quickly faces the same bullies who abused her dead predecessor. The newcomer is lured into a séance to summon the dead girl, and events follow from there.

Session it’s constantly surprising, and it’s a joke throughout, luring viewers down a couple of different paths through the use of conflicting tropes. Is this a ghost story? A slasher story? A story of revenge? Or something completely different? It’s such a satisfying and unusual way to tell a family story that Polygon thought Barrett would be the perfect punchline for our Trick or Tropes horror week, exploring the roots of horror movies and the question of why horror keeps coming back again and again. time to reinterpret the same images and ideas.

Sessions are a satanic panic horror trope from the 1980s. Why did you want to start there?

Simon Barrett: I have always liked this kind of ritualism, which leads to a spell. I think there is an inherent atmosphere in those situations and devices that you can play with and ideally set them up for surprises. I’ve always liked these kinds of narratives, particularly the Oujia movies and seances. I always thought they were really cool. I’ve never been in one and have no interest in the supernatural in the real world, but I love fiction.

You’ve talked about wanting to make your directorial debut a fun horror movie, rather than something heavy on current anxieties. Was going back to an older trope potentially part of that?

I think that’s true. I don’t know if it was ultimately the right creative decision for me, given the form Session it’s been received – it feels like people are a bit, “Why would you want to honestly do this anachronistic thing?” But I had the idea that I wanted my first feature film to be a horror movie to feel good about it. You are next It was kind of a feel-good horror movie, but it’s a pretty cynical movie about relationships. Certainly The guest it is also, although both are very silly movies. I wanted to do something a little less cynical and a little more hopeful about humanity.

I realized that I was inherently thinking in such a cheesy direction that the movie would have to be inherently dated and timeless. I’m trying to go for a very cheesy old-fashioned kind of romance. I was trying to make something that looked a lot like the kind of young adult content I was consuming, which was mostly Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer novels, and the Nanny Club and Sweet Valley High School books. That was what I grew up on. When I became interested in movies, I translated it into slashers. He was trying to do something a little more calm and lighthearted than the current horror vibe felt.

What is the difference between a funny horror movie versus a not funny horror movie?

Yes, that is an important thing to examine. It is obviously very subjective. But for me, it all comes down to the movie’s relationship with its characters and how it treats them. I think it’s a question of “respect for the characters.” It’s easy for me to say that some horror movies are sadistic on their characters, but it’s a very specific sensibility.

For example, I think the movie Dynamite napoleon he’s sadistic with his characters, to the point that it makes me feel viscerally uncomfortable watching that movie. I despise it. But that’s an extremely personal reaction. So some of this is very subjective. But overall, I think if you’re taking your characters seriously enough as individuals, you care about their outcome. And he treats it with due respect, given the tone and themes of the narrative. With You are nextI quite liked some of the characters, but they still had to die bloody on screen for the narrative and humor we were looking for.

But with Session, I thought it was different. They were young women, and I thought, “There is a not fun way to do a slasher game between young women in boarding school.” I wanted to go a different path, where the only characters who die in blood are the villains, so that you can embrace the narrative and enjoy the humor on that level. So I guess that’s just my definition of fun. Are the scenes designed to induce discomfort or a negative feeling in the audience, Michael Haneke kind? Funny Games feeling? I have relied on that in some of my work. Or are you meant to be, like, “Oh, that was cute, and kind of what I wanted?” I wanted how what House on Sorority Row it was for me. I love the cozy and slasher atmosphere.

Why is horror as a genre so trope-driven, even compared to other trope-driven genres?

Sadly, I’d say the answer is probably creative bankruptcy and finding a successful trope that can be monetized and mimicked over and over again, which is usually the way the horror genre has traditionally spread. I hope that is not the case in my own work. I tend to think that there is something funny about these iconic images that have an inherent atmosphere, like a Ouija board. These things have a certain meaning that creates an abbreviation for you. I don’t need to explain to people what is happening if it is something recognizable. You can get to the fun stuff sooner. I think it’s part of that. I think the horror is in the tropes, in these things that scare us.

I think personally, I’m probably done making horror movies for a while, not only because I’m attached to some Adam Wingard projects that aren’t horror movies, but as a director, I realize it could be a little bit. out of sync with the current environment. I am an increasingly elderly man. That is something that I am very sensitive to, it is at what point my brain will start to break down, because it seems inevitable to us. I’m thinking that I should probably take a little break before I get too repetitive and exhausted, because I’m realizing that what I specifically like about horror is the old-fashioned vibe of telling scary stories to friends in the dark.

Me V / H / S / 94 segment takes place during a thunderstorm at night. I like rain storms at night, and I know that’s very cheesy. It’s so much a trope that it was literally a cliché in 1930s horror cinema. But if you can pull off a cliché right, it evokes such a wonderful feeling of the way these things used to scare us when we were kids, the way they horror was probably a taboo genre for many young viewers. So you may get the feeling that these movies are a bit unsafe and you can safely have a cathartic experience with them. I love that particular trip, but I think my sense of humor is sometimes juxtaposed with that heartfelt kitsch in a way that makes people think I’m very confused.

Your horror movies seem to consciously recontextualize the tropes and play on the basis of them. Don’t you see it that way?

I look at it that way, but I try to do something else, which is to comply with those tropes, and then do something else on top of that. Horror fans are especially sensitive to not getting what they wanted from a movie. You know, if you have a movie called Session, you have to give them at least one session. I deliver three. Unbelievably, that hasn’t had a positive effect on my Rotten Tomatoes score. You would think that statistically alone, he would be over 50 years old.

But anyway, there is truth to that. With A horrible way to die In particular, that was a movie that people thought was going to be a certain kind of movie, and it was another kind of movie, and because of that, they mostly didn’t like it. It wasn’t until later that some people said, “Oh well, that’s an interesting thing on its own merits.” I wouldn’t say I’m changing the tropes, but I try to enforce them and then subvert them narratively, and I don’t know if that’s that much fun.

So much fun for you or for the viewers?

For the viewer. It’s definitely fun for me. Well, I mean, making movies is not fun. If you have fun making movies, you are not trying hard enough. And I mean it sincerely. But I like what I do and I am very grateful.

Do you care about the trope when you choose a movie to watch? Do you watch the horror movies that come out and think, “Oh yeah, I really love a haunted house movie” or “I’ll never miss a werewolf movie”?

It’s more about who does it and other things, but that’s because I’d like to think that at this point in my adulthood I’m quite a sophisticated viewer. At the same time, yeah, if a haunted house movie comes out, I’m excited. That’s the funny thing, because I don’t really like making haunted house movies, because I have a hard time understanding what is at stake and its rules. But as a viewer, I love them. And if there is a murderer or a mysterious murderer, I can’t wait. So I love tropes. And that’s probably the real answer to your question.

With Session, because it was my first feature film, I really wanted to work in a genre that I felt I understood intimately as a viewer, this kind of cozy boarding school Suspiria Kind of thing. I felt intimacy and comfort with that as a viewer, because I love those tropes. I felt like I could tell a story in that language that did some weird things, and I could still make it coherent. So yeah, the tropes get me. But the horror itself grabs me. There aren’t many horror movies that I miss in theaters.

Session airs on Shudder, Hoopla, and AMC +, and is available for rental or purchase on Amazon, Voodooand other digital platforms.