Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

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thinks is a technician also dressed as Michael, when it is, in fact, Michael himself.
Through these elements, Halloween: Resurrection marks the dying out of the popular
postmodern slasher, and the rise of the use of victim-camera – a concept to be
explored in more detail in Chapter 2.
The other film from this period that initiated a popular trend in horror is Gus
Van Sant’s remake of Psycho (1998), bringing self-referentiality to its logical
conclusion, by overtly replicating known properties in their minutiae. According to
the official website for the film, “Van Sant was intrigued by the notion of taking an
intact, undeniable classic and seeing what would happen if it were made again-with a
nearly identical shooting script-but with contemporary filmmaking techniques.”
(http://www.psychomovie.com/production/productionwhy.html) Psycho ’98, while
eluding financial success 16 , was much publicised for its close shot-for-shot approach
to remaking. Although there was not an immediate wave of slasher remakes, Psycho
’98 generated public discourse about the possibilities of remaking, and marks a key
transition point between the tendency towards postmodernism in contemporary
horror and the potential to extend this into film remakes. The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre (2003; dir. Nispel) became the direct model for the trend of slasher
remakes that still comprises a large part of studio output for the genre. While not
precisely faithful to its source material, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre streamlined a
film that worked outside of the formal models of its contemporaries, and applied an
16 According to online Box Office Mojo, Psycho ’98 has earned a worldwide lifetime gross of $37.1
million on a production budget of $60 million. Whether or not this is accurate, Mark Kerins alludes
to the relative failure of the film, contrasting it with the success Disturbia (2007; dir. Caruso), a loose
remake of Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954). Kerins writes, “It is worth noting that Disturbia was
critically and financially successful, in sharp contrast to the negative critical reception and poor box
office performance of Gus Van Sant’s ostensibly shot-for-shot remake of Psycho from a few years
earlier.” (2011; 224)