What defines a good horror film in late twentieth century conservative American thought? Is it purely subjective, or are perceptions of artistry and entertainment shaped by ideology? This article explores these questions by focusing on the horror genre, analyzing how conservative critics evaluated films during the last quarter of the twentieth century. By examining reviews from key conservative and libertarian publications such as the National Review, The American Spectator, and Commentary, this study identifies the cultural and cinematic themes that unified conservative perspectives, revealing the ideological and aesthetic underpinnings of their cinematic judgments. And, while the wide array of critics, some well-known within the world of cultural criticism like John Simon, Terry Teachout, or James Bowman, and others less so, may illuminate some differentiation of opinions, what becomes very clear are three points: first, demand for logic and rationality throughout a film; second, a portrayal of a world where both the temporal and ethereal are taken seriously, with good and evil understood as real concepts; and third, an exploration of the deeper truths of the human condition.

Before proceeding, this section offers a brief overview of the research and explores the complex interplay between the horror genre and conservatism as an ideological framework. First, for this study, a wide swath of conservative publications from 1976-2000 were reviewed for film reviews. The research goes in chronological order from the 1970s into the late 1990s, delving deeper into those films that received the most reviews by conservative critics, while commenting briefly on those that only received one or two, and ignoring those that were ignored by the conservative publications. While many films were indeed brushed aside by a whole host of conservative critics, there were still numerous films to interact with: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1979), Alien (1979), The Shining (1980), The Silence of the Lambs (1992), The Blair Witch Project (1999), and The Sixth Sense (1999). The twelve-year gap in the 1980s is noticeable and a hypothesis on the lack of reviews is formulated further down below. Nevertheless, this cross-section of horror provides ample leeway to form some substantive conclusions on what made horror truly horrifying for conservative critics.

Second, we must define what conservative means as the term is dynamic and ever-evolveing over time. For the purposes of this study, the term conservative is used broadly encompassing all the publications under review. The study does not seek to delineate between libertarians, the religious right, neoconservatives, paleoconservatives, or other subsets of conservatism. Instead, it considers conservative as either a self-applied label by the writers of these reviews or the publications themselves. A number of shared values can be identified such as a staunch revulsion toward communism, particularly during the 1970s and 1980s; resistance to domestic government expansion (and, in some cases during the late 1990s, foreign expansion as well); adherence to largely orthodox Judeo-Christian cultural views; and a general belief that social change should occur incrementally or, in some cases, be reversed entirely. This piece does not attempt to explore the nuances within each subset of conservatism but rather focuses on the unifying ideas of this multifaceted ideology. ¹

Some may wonder why choose horror to flesh out an understanding of conservative film criticism? Author and film critic Brad Weismann touched on the importance of the genre in his work Lost in the Dark when he explained that horror was "as old as death and the unknown" (3). No matter the civilization or society, belief in the macabre and the fear of ghosts, monsters, and the otherworldly has permeated every culture.² In literature, one could turn to Beowulf, The Epic of Gilgamesh, or Dante's Divine Comedy for examples of man having to face the horror of beasts, gods, and even eternal damnation. In the more modern Western tradition of horror, there is no less a rich heritage. Indeed, the Professor of English at St. John's and the film critic at the paleoconservative Chronicles of Culture from 1999 to present, George McCartney believed horror had "an honorable tradition, with "[w]riters as diverse as Shakespeare, Poe, Hawthorne, and Henry James [who] have rung changes on its conventions" ("Intimations" 47). Many acknowledge Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764) as one of the first horror novels with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) coming a generation later and being the forerunner to the modern genre (Dixon 2). The genre continued to expand within the medium of film, usually building off horror works from the past, with classics like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Nosferatu (1922), Frankenstein (1931), The Wolf Man (1941), The Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954), Psycho (1960), and The Exorcist (1973). But the last quarter-century witnessed the revival and arguably restructuring of the horror picture. Between 1975 and 2000 almost four dozen horror franchises were created including Halloween, Alien, Predator, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Child's Play, and many more, creating a bonafide horror palooza (Weismann 154). In 1987 alone, nearly 100 horror films were released in America (Weismann 154). By the early 1990s when The Silence of the Lambs became the first horror film ever to win the Best Picture award, horror was once more acknowledged as a legitimate artistic genre.³

In addition, horror films embody certain qualities that would arguably place them within the conservative-libertarian paradigm. Stephen King, the world-renowned author of horror seemed to think so when he said as much in Danse Macabre his nonfiction work about the genre. He called horror "innately conservative," and later explicitly expounded on this theme (185):

I've tried to suggest throughout this book that the horror story, beneath its fangs and fright wig, is really as conservative as an Illinois Republican in a three-piece pinstriped suit; that its main purpose is to reaffirm the virtues of the norm by showing us what awful things happen to people who venture into taboo lands. Within the framework of most horror tales, we find a moral code so strong it would make a Puritan smile. (King 421)⁴

While King may not have had a refined sense of conservatism and all its nuances, his take on the connection between it and horror must not be overlooked. One of the forefathers of conservatism, Russel Kirk, was an admirer of the supernatural tale who "lamented" the "decayed art" of ghost stories so much that he became an author of various paranormal stories (Panero). Kirk's horror style "[i]nsinuates a chain of being that connects the living and the dead, reminding us of our duty and obligations to the past …[and] is at its heart an imaginative exploration of morality" (Beauchamp). The larger horror genre, Bruce Frohnen wrote, "is not about gore," bloodshed, or the shock value too often synonymous with the genre, but "about the human soul; its capacity for depraved conduct, but also its capacity to recognize the natural order of our existence and to work to re-establish that order at great sacrifice and in the face of evils born of hubris, self-divinization, and even tragic error" (Frohnen 12). These definitions of horror and sci-fi will be significant as this research unfurls. Many of the critics in the following pages viewed these two genres through the perspectives just described.

We start with a remake of the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), a story centered on outer space and the creatures who inhabit it. Unlike E.T., which would come a few years later, these aliens were not of the friendly Reese's Pieces loving variety. The plot follows a government food inspector (Donald Sutherland) as he slowly begins to discover that aliens are turning people into "pods." The criticism begins with one of the most central themes throughout the review literature: logic in the film. The ex-presidential libertarian candidate and film critic John Hospers in the libertarian bulwark Reason called the storyline so extremely implausible as to make people who are located in the real world dismiss the film as "two hours of damn fool nonsense" (Hospers, "Movies" 1979c 44). Film reviewer from 1978-1982 in Chronicles of Culture, Eric Shapearo made points regarding reason as well. One followed Hospers, that the logic in the film and the reality of life are too far separated. He pointed to the fact that sometimes the pods can talk, and other times all they can do is howl and that "San Francisco is totally devoid of the premier power of American reality – the ubiquitous media," which would have undoubtedly noticed this odd occurrence (Shapearo 24). In addition, he argued, "what's repugnant is not necessarily scary, and there's a distinction between nausea and horror which seems to elude the artists who created this one" (Shapearo 23-24). This last point was reiterated by the most well-acclaimed conservative culture critic John Simon of the National Review when he wrote that some of the special effects turned "horror in to mere nausea," a growing theme in the 1970s and 1980s with the explosion of slasher and gross-out films (Simon, "Idle Hands" 370).

Simon also touched on the fact that the "remake is far surpassed by the original" which he considered "scary in the profoundest sense: morally" ("Idle Hands" 370). In the first film, a "decent young man" had to deal with never knowing who was human and who was not and even had his girlfriend lure "him into abjuring his soul" (Simon, "Idle Hands" 370). The psychological struggle of the protagonist appealed to this reviewer, not the storyline or anything genre-related, a common theme thoughout his work. Oddly enough, Simon never broached the logic or believability aspect and neither did film critic Ben Yagoda in The American Spectator. Unlike his colleagues, he found the movie "wittier, more sophisticated, and more entertaining" than "the sentimental Close Encounters of the Third Kind." He also enjoyed how the movie takes "potshots at psychobabble, cultism, and self-help…theme[s] [which] mesh with the late 1970s culture of feeling" (Yagoda, "The Talkies: Invasion" 22). Even though he believed the film "falls short…things are definitely getting better in the big-budget sci-fi wars" (Yagoda, "The Talkies: Invasion" 23).

Yagoda's categorization of the movie as sci-fi while others clearly believed it to be in the horror mode showcased the apparent interconnectedness of the two genres. Nonetheless, the assertion by Yagoda that things were "getting better" in the sci-fi/horror genre is a curious idea to explore and one that was seconded by a number of critics. The summer of 1979 saw a plethora of sci-fi and horror films released with Simon going so far as to say, "This summer may go down in cinema as the summer of the horror movies," and he was not alone ("The Soil" 980-983). Hospers called late 1979 and early 1980 "the season for terror, horror, monsters, blood, gore, and interplanetary aliens" (Hospers, "Movies" 1980a 42, 47). Only David Brudnoy, who throughout his career reviewed films for Libertarian Review, Human Events, The American Spectator, and others, believed, "We've fallen on lean times in the horror flick category of late" and that "[t]hey just aren't making them like they used to" ("Things" 94).

The reason for most of this adulation is that 1978 and 1979 witnessed the release of Dawn of the Dead (1978), Halloween (1978), and Alien (1979). Dawn of the Dead, about a zombie apocalypse, was only reviewed by Hospers and Brudnoy with the former calling it an "exercise in the macabre…[which] never quite takes off" while Brudnoy labeled it as "sleaze and it is imaginably successful at making sleaze work" (Hospers, "Movies" 1979b 41; Brudnoy, "Things" 96). Meanwhile, Halloween, the horror classic about a masked and seemingly supernatural serial killer on the loose on Halloween night was also reviewed by the same two critics. This time Hospers called it "more than usually scary" and although "no Psycho…it is the nearest approach to it that has appeared in recent years" ("Movies" 1979a 48). Brudnoy saw this film as evidence that "super horror flicks are still being made in the grand tradition" (Brudnoy, "Things" 94). But it was another outer space film that would fill up the pages on many conservative film critics' pads, Alien.

Alien, the original in a myriad of sequels and spin-offs, centers on a space crew who, when investigating a distress signal, find themselves in danger when an alien species sneaks aboard their ship by parasitically hiding within one of the crew members. The crew, led by Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), must survive while also uncovering the sinister truth behind their mission. Alien received both positive and negative reactions. Yagoda called it a "likeable movie" with "commendable performances" even if the "effects are rather more disgusting than necessary" and the slow and tedious killing off crew members "soon wears thin" (Yagoda, "The Talkies: Alien" 30). Yagoda, as with the vast majority of his reviews, offered his readers a very balanced approach touching on the good and the bad while leaving the reader unsure of exactly where he stood in the end. Brudnoy also offered a mixed response. Unlike the "shlock horror like Halloween, or trash horror like Dawn of the Dead," Brudnoy argued that Alien was "a very contemporary, very hip version of the old monster-behind-the closet-door thriller of blessed memory," a "neo-gothic horror tale" that plays into both "our paranoia" and "our legitimate fears" ("Things" 96-97). However, in horror, ultimate acceptance always came back to logic and believability. Dubbing it "unforgiveably sloppy," Brudnoy declared, "It plays by no rules…[and] makes its characters do absurd things like take solo expeditions through dangerous territory on board the ship when it is manifest that the buddy system is essential to survival" ("Things" 97).

Brudnoy found a kindred spirit in Simon whose opinion of Alien and the entire genres of horror became crystal clear in his article, "Our Aliens and Theirs." Unlike the libertarian Brudnoy who seemed to enjoy horror movies, Simon did not count himself one of the "fanciers of horror," with the reasons becoming apparent rather quickly (870). Alien, he observed, contained "the usual number of inconsistencies, improbabilities, and outright absurdities characteristic of the sci-fi and horror genres," but is "recommendable" for those "free from hypocrisy and finicky stomachs" (870). Hospers too found it to be a "dreadful bore" and verbatim to Brudnoy a "game without rules" (Hospers, "Movies" 1979c 44). Hospers expounded on his and his fellow critics' displeasure:

There have been fine science fiction thrillers…in which the viewer knew what the odds were and was kept abreast of every development, pro and con. Armed with this knowledge, the question was whether he could make a plausible prediction or an educated guess and in some way outsmart the plot-twisters. In Alien there isn't much point in trying to outguess them, since what one faces here is simply an Unknown. One can wonder what form the unknown kind of life will assume next, thanks to the special-effects department; but in a game without rules, there isn't much a viewer can do that could be called playing. One can guess with some probability the human reaction of the characters to whatever happens, since this is something within our ken, something we can deal with and empathize with (though the characterizations in this film are of the most superficial and noninvolving sort). But to try to anticipate what The Incomprehensible is going to do is a hopeless task. (Hospers, "Movies" 1979c 44)

Hospers, although a libertarian, did not enjoy the sci-fi or horror genre as much as many of his libertarian peers. Rather, he fell more in line with critics like Simon, who explained why he emphasized the importance of logic in the films he reviewed in a September 1979 issue writing, "absurdism on the screen…always fails because it clashes with the basic realism of the medium, the naturalistic scenery and objects" ("From Pigskin" 1166). For Simon at least, his objection may not have been about the genre itself, but about his preference for a sense of reality in movies.

In the midst of the horrorfest fest of 1980, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980), which was "financially successful but not…[a] blockbuster," was released in the summer (Sklar 326). Adapted from a 1977 Stephen King novel, Kubrick cast Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall as the two main characters. The plot follows a family who moves to a haunted hotel over the winter to act as caretakers. In the process, the husband is slowly driven insane by the ghosts in the hotel, leaving his supernaturally gifted son and wife to fight for their own survival from him and the spirits. Hospers provided one of his few positive reviews for a horror film calling it "a masterly work of cinematic imagination and technical expertise [that] could not be seriously denied" ("Movies" 1980b 45). The movie was successful, he reasoned, because "the psychological and not the supernatural...provides the real terror" (45). This was indicative of Simon's thinking concerning the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers in which the viewer's fear was derived from the inner struggle of a character and not the special effects or sudden camera movements.

By August of 1980, future head of the neoconservative movement, John Podhoretz, had become a member of the editorial staff of The American Spectator where he wrote seven film reviews in just under a year. Podhoretz compared The Shining novel, which he enjoyed, to the film, which he ultimately found "neither very frightening nor very interesting" (Podhoretz, "The Talkies" 23). The novel, he contended, portrayed a "devoted husband and an adoring father" who tragically turned against his family. But even early on in the movie, "there is still something hateful about him," taking "very little to turn him into a homicidal maniac" (23). In the same vein, the wife "is a dull, stupid woman" so much so that Podhoretz "cannot help feeling a little sympathetic toward Jack when he takes off after her with an axe" (23). This criticism is a familiar one for Kubrick who was habitually criticized for his inability to depict people in any realistic or sympathetic fashion. Podhoretz emphasized this aspect when he wrote, "Never before has Kubrick so effectively demonstrated his hatred of all things human than in The Shining" (23).

Simon went once more into the breach of the horror genre explaining his disregard for what seemed to him a genre that lacked any semblance of rationality. The Shining, he wrote, is "bad in many different ways," but most of all "its horror abides by no rules" (Simon, "Horrible" 795) Like his review of Close Encounters, Simon listed a cross-section of inherent logic flaws within the film. He found the fact that the hotel would shut down rather than turn into a ski resort is "as preposterous as anything that follows"; he then pointed out that the ghost helped him with one locked door but not others, that the two dead girls who appeared to Danny were "the wrong ages" and spoke with British accents, and that the wife's lack of action when she read hundreds of pages of her husband's descent into insanity was unforgivable ("Horrible" 795-797). The importance of logic in horror as well as tethering to reality has been repeated consistently by conservative critics. Simon once more explained the need for logic at the start of his review: "Except for mystery, no genre requires more rigorous logic than the horror movie" in which there is a need for "rigorous consistency" to provide the films with a "modicum of credibility" ("Horrible" 795). Shapearo seconded Simon with his own thoughts on the topic:

A good scare as art and entertainment…has always been induced by its relation to realities…The departures from realities into fantasy, cruelty or dramatic suspense must never lose their link to factualities by flouting logic – which is a part of reality – lest shoddiness overcomes the supernatural, and a horror tale simply becomes idiotic. (Shapearo 23)

Clearly, a few points are necessary precurors in the opinion of these reviewers for a good horror film: logic, some grounding in realism, and consistency. With every film mentioned, these points have reverberated. In addition, gender roles and the value of internal psychological struggles become more important story elements as we move through this study.

Between The Shining and the next film widely evaluated, over a decade passed with hardly any reviews. The reasons are likely a culmination of the following: first, it may be due to the downfall of libertarian magazines, which were some of the most reliable periodicals when it came to reviewing horror; second, high-brow critics in the National Review and Commentary were weary of reviewing a genre they rarely spoke positively about; finally, as libertarian publications became less ubiquitous, the rise of the religious right took their place with their own publications that steered clear of horror as it showcased more violent, grotesque, and explicit, material not suitable for their subscription base.⁵ For whatever reason, it was not until the early 1990s and the rise of Hannibal Lecter that conservatives would once again write prodigiously on horror.

Winner of 1992 Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Writing, and Best Actress awards, Silence of the Lambs (1991) recounts the attempt by a young FBI agent Clarice (Jodi Foster) to find a serial killer by enlisting the help of an imprisoned serial killer Hannibal (Anthony Hopkins). Two points stand out in the criticism, the praise for the acting and the variety of ideas about what critics found displeasing. In Human Events, Brudnoy awarded the four stars and called it a "terrific fright flick," but "not for the faint of heart" ("The RIght Movies" 14). Poet and film critic, David Slavitt, writing for Chronicles of Culture, called the film a "silly but successful horror," but what stood out for him was "Hopkins's performance – so suave, polished, and sophisticated as to be endearing. And that's what is supposed to strike terror into the hearts of the audience and impress them as evil" (47). Comparably, Simon found Foster's character "a persuasive Clarice, balancing strength and vulnerability, and producing a superb West Virginia accent" ("Horror" 57). He even stated how "unless, like me, you are among the impervious few – it can scare the bejeezus out of you: (Simon, "Horror" 55). Nevertheless, he could, of course, find fault. Discussing the scene when Lecter escaped from prison he pronounced, "one has to be as gullible as a five-year-old or one of my fellow critics if one is not to laugh the horror out of its efficacy" (Simon, "Horror" 56). The last point he made in the article was one that was uncommon for him. He commented on the morality of the film and the audience:

More disturbing to me than the violence and horror – which, for such a film, are handled with relative restraint – is the amorality of Lambs, the effect it has on the audience. I don't mind Lecter's getting away – such things happen in real life, alas. But that he should be presented as the wittiest and most ingenious character in the film, and that the further murder he plans should actually be cheered by the audience is morally wrong. In an age in which mayhem thrives, a mass medium should not be savoring one of the perpetrators quite so gleefully. (Simon, "Horror" 57)

Not known for his cultural takes, this glimmer into his thoughts about society as a whole gives a deeper understanding of Simon as a critic and conservative.

James Bowman, an English teacher before becoming the film critic at The American Spectator (1990 to present), the media critic for The New Criterion (1993 to present), the American editor of the Times Literary Supplement of London (1991 to 2002), and currently a Resident Scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center also reviewed Silence of the Lambs. It did not take long to discover where he stood: "If you find that being frightened, horrified, scandalized by the most appalling sort of human bestiality is an aesthetic experience, you should like this film. I don't and I didn't" (Bowman, "Someday" 34). Bowman, like Simon, had a distinctive take on what he found objectionable. He plunged into his reasoning; a large portion of his distaste was strongly predicated on the implicit idea in the film of masculinity being an inherent threat. The following provides an example of his thinking:

I…object when the fright merchants, often for political or ideological reasons, dress up their melodramas as serious art on the specious grounds that life is like this. If you look closely at the critical praise that Silence of the Lambs has received, you will see that it is based on the assumption that the picture gives us not escapist fantasy but real life…it is male sex-violence which provides the ideological content [of the film] and hence the contact with real life…The mass murderer [Hannibal]…[is] only [an] extreme form of maleness, and it is the psychiatrist cannibal who calls attention to the more ordinary forms of that sickness which afflicts half the human race. (Bowman, "Someday" 34)

Throughout the review, Bowman seemed to be arguing that if one could deconstruct the film to its most fundamental message then it would be masculinity that was the true terror, and it was that which Hannibal exemplified. The male and female tensions that Bowman indicated here, or the belief that men or maleness was a problem and women were the innate "good guys" was a serious issue for a number of conservative critics.

In the late summer of 1999, two very different movies hit theaters: The Blair Witch Project (1999) and The Sixth Sense (1999). At the tail end of July, a low-budget film set film critics scrambling. The Blair Witch Project (TBWP) was made for a mere $30,000 and raked in over $240 million (Troy 256). Staging the film as a "true story," the plot centered on a group of twenty-somethings who went into the Maryland woods with handheld cameras to investigate the disappearance of some locals. Shot from a first-person perspective, the camera tracked the group as they slowly stumble upon the supernatural. Interestingly, Bowman advanced one of his few positive reviews of American movies as he praised the distinctiveness of the cinematography and less so the plot. TBWP "not only looks realer than any" movie "you will see this year but also, because of its authentic look, [it] comes tantalizingly close to making witchcraft look real too" (Bowman, "Reality" 64-65). In fact, the "illusion," he wrote, "works rather well, and unprepared audiences might almost believe that this is, as it claims to be, the film they shot while lost in the woods, looking for evidence of witches, since its drama seems to be more or less incidental and unintended" (Bowman, "Reality" 65). Yet, he was the sole voice of respect.

Rather than adulation, for Simon, the film once more stirred him to focus on the credibility of the premise and storyline. He asked, "Why are people so benighted as to think The Blair Witch Project a terrific movie?" (Simon, "Of Witches" 69). In order for this praise to be true, TBWP "would have to be, on some level, plausible; have characters that are, in some way, appealing." Simon found neither to be the case ("Of Witches" 69). "The very first absurdity," he noted, was that "as the two young men and one young woman each had a video camera, the film would really have to be three films. Edited into one, it predicates the work of editors, undercutting its documentary authenticity" (69). He went on to list several other issues including the throwing away of their only map, the "imbecile" infighting amongst them, not following a stream to civilization, and the continued use of their "cumbersome equipment" instead of just leaving it behind to escape (69).

George McCartney, the still current film critic for Chronicles of Culture, went to the movie with high expectations. He was "looking forward to a horror film that employed suggestion and wit, rather than slime and explosions, to engage its audience," but found himself "shaken…with laughter," not fear (McCartney, "In the Toyshop" 48). He struggled to see what was scary about the film but hoped that the popularity among the youth demographic portended a shift away from the gory, limb-losing, horror they had grown accustomed to, to a more character-centric horror genre. Meanwhile, Terry Teachout in the conservative Catholic Crisis Magazine touched on an important feature that impacted nearly every genre in the 1990s. Commenting on the metanarrative nature of the movie, he observed it was "a near-perfect exercise in postmodernism, a horror film whose subject is film itself" (Teachout, "Film: Beast").

Bowman was the critic most vocal in his acknowledgement of this trend but nowhere near the sole critic. In early 1992, he described the change he had witnessed, "Hollywood discovered postmodernism that self-conscious, self-referential, ironic style which now seems to have entrenched itself in the American film industry forever" (Bowman, "Hit List" 77) Applied directly to the horror genre, he explained postmodernism's impact and the decaying effect it had.

Somewhere between Werewolf of London (1935) and An American Werewolf in London (1981), it became impossible to play horror straight anymore. That's what postmodernism has done. Like the miasma of evil from an old-fashioned horror film, it has consumed in turn each of the old genres – Western, gangster movie, family melodrama, and so forth – and turned them into jokes…The result is a crop of cinematic pod people: more or less clever comedies but bland, anodyne, and self-referential, endlessly sending up the conventions of the half-remembered genre to which they now bear only the most superficial resemblance…The only question for the critic to ask in this brave new, postmodern world is this: Is it any good as a joke? (Bowman, "Not Up" 63-64).

A larger study would undoubtedly delve deeper into the pervasive presence of postmodernism in the 1990s.

Postmodernism aside, Teachout seemed to accede to the fact that TBWP was indeed "hugely entertaining," but "not especially scary" ("Film: Beast"). His explanation for the latter was tied into his second point and referred to one of the foundational ideas concerning horror; namely, that horror was reliant on the belief of evil and not just evil in the temporal everyday sense, but the kind of ever-present ethereal evil. Therefore, the belief in good and evil as naturally opposed forces by those involved in the writing and directing portion of filmmaking should be sincere enough to come out in the narrative. If it did not, the film then could seem disingenuous. Teachout put it this way: "because…[TBWP] was all too clearly made by people who do not believe in the demons whose presence they have so cunningly implied," the film does not work on the same level as those classic gothic horror tales ("Film: Beast"). Good horror needed to take its subject matter seriously enough to present the audience with a reality they could recognize and an evil based on that in actual existence.

Now, it is fitting to close with a film that was the only one that received no negative reviews. The Sixth Sense (1999), starring Bruce Willis as shild psychologist Dr. Malcolm Crowe and Haley Joel Osment as Cole, a child hiding an eerie and torturous secret. Cole, a young boy haunted by ghosts from his past as well as in the literal sense confides in Malcolm and seeks to find a remedy. In The Weekly Standard, Podhoretz dubbed the film, "a masterpiece – original, spooky, funny, literate, thought-provoking, and profoundly moving" ("Good" 39). Delving a bit deeper into the analytical than usual, he believed that even though the film did "deal with the supernatural, it could be the story of any extraordinary child emotionally ill-equipped to deal with the insight and knowledge of the world his giant intellect remorselessly provides, and whose flashes of freaky genius make him a mystery to his peers and an inscrutable burden to his elders" (Podhoretz, "Good" 39).

Comparably, McCartney was also drawn to the human struggle within the film more than the horror itself writing, "The Sixth Sense has been marketed as a horror story. But…it uses its hocus-pocus to mesmerize us in order to suggest more than we would expect from a thriller. Once under its spell, we discover a story as old as the Odyssey: a boy in search of a father, and a man trying to be that father, both struggling to come to terms with the losses natural to the mortal condition" (McCartney, "In the Toyshop" 48) Even Simon who was "by temper disinclined to sympathize with movies of a mystical bent" seemed struck, if not by the story, which he found derivative of Robert Enrico's 1961 film An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, adapted from the Ambrose Bierce short story, but at least by the acting of Osment who was "spookily good, scarily adult for his age, with a face that can seamlessly go from being three years younger to being as old and tragic as time itself" ("From Crown" 54). Podhoretz went so far as to call Osment's acting "the greatest performance by a child actor ever captured on celluloid" (Podhoretz, "Good" 39).

Teachout writing his last article for Crisis Magazine said there were only twelve movies over his two years of reviewing movies that he believed worthy enough to see more than once. The Sixth Sense was one of them (Teachout, "Film: Until"). He defended his support in a previous article where he reviewed the film:

If you're not floored by the last couple of twists in Shyamalan's script, you ought to consider taking up script-writing yourself. But The Sixth Sense, while it contains more than a few moments scary enough to make you grab a stranger's arm, is no ordinary horror movie, but the work of a greatly gifted director who has the power to make reality itself seem hallucinatory...Yet the film's impact arises in even larger part from the fact that unlike…every other horror movie made in the past quarter-century, it takes its own subject matter seriously….My guess is that a goodly percentage of its viewers, whether they know it or not, are reveling in the rare opportunity to see a movie that accords with their own convictions; most Americans, after all, believe in God, heaven, and hell. (Teachout, "Film: Beast"1999)

What drew nearly all differing varieties of conservatives to this film was no doubt the acting, but more so the film's ability to explore the deepest part of the human condition, our mortality, while having with it a sense of sincerity and morality. McCartney shared as much in his introduction when writing about The Sixth Sense: "At its best, the genre cuts to the mortal chase and confronts us with life's ultimate issues, tamed for the moment within the precincts of fiction…And if the writer has done his or her work, we may even find ourselves facing the next day with greater wisdom and strengthened moral courage" ("In the Toyshop" 48) This critic not only justified the attraction to The Sixth Sense but also led the reader closer to understanding what conservatives were looking for in the horror genre.

Brudnoy, more concentrated on the entertainment value over the cultural value, asked his readers in The Libertarian Review, "What makes a good horror film?" His response was telling in that it was less aesthetically or critically based than his peers may have defined it: "We ought to recognize on screen some plausible villain whose evil could touch us tomorrow; or we ought to see something, or some things, so hideous that we ask our companion to sleep over (and not for kicks); or we ought to be yanked into the unknown where our worst suspicions about tomorrow are confirmed" (Brudnoy, "The Right").

In Human Events, Jarvis praised the moralistic essence of the film and hit on one of the major themes awash within this study:

In the world of postmodern film, evil's on the loose and good is running for its life…In contrast, the classic Gothic horror tale, such as Bram Stoker's Dracula, contained certain themes that gave a framework to books, plays and, later, horror films: a timeless Good exists, the universe displays order, and destroying that order brings disaster. Evil exists and is clearly distinguishable from Good and unalterably opposed to it; evil is cosmic rebellion that disintegrates lives and communities, but Good is clearly superior. Truth is absolute, dependable, and has power to overcome evil, and life involves the call to energetic, concerted and courageous work against evil and its destructive effects. All of these elements are present to an extent in classic Gothic horror films...Evil is certainly real and powerful, but also defeatable by a Power more powerful. (16)

Stephen Macaulay in Chronicles of Culture and Bowman in The American Spectator seemed to agree. The former claimed, "Evil is seductive; it is not chic. Evil is to be opposed, not embraced" while Bowman contemplating the diminishment of horror's capacity to scare wrote, "I think what has robbed the Prince of Darkness of his power to scare us is also a general decline in our capacity for belief in good and evil and you've got to believe in one to believe in the other" (Macaulay 43; Bowman, "Presidentolotry" 60). All these men explain how essential the recognition of the spiritual world is, including true evil in horror, and that this evil must be dealt with seriously.

Teachout seconded these themes, but on a more rudimentary level:

[T]here is a difference between the stories that scared our great-grandparents and the ones that scare us. Nineteenth-century horror stories operated on the assumption, shared by reader and writer alike, that while ghosts and vampires might or might not exist in real life, there could be no doubting the existence of some sort of supernatural realm, meaning that devils might well walk among us…With the ebbing of the sea of faith, ambiguity crept into the ghost story, sometimes to striking effect. ("Film: Beast")

Here lies the crux of the matter. For horror to be truly horrifying, from a conservative perspective, it must believe that there is something beyond a mortal existence. A faith that an afterlife exists, that there are powers beyond our control, and that individuals have the capacity to decide what side of the battle they are going to be on. Without as much, evil is only a philosophy to be understood or debated and as easily dismissible as any other intellectual theory, not a ubiquitous presence to be fended off at each and every chance. Without the belief in absolutes and the presence of good and evil, horror is merely smoke and mirrors. This point was certainly one aspect of what made the literary gothic horror genre so appealing to conservatives, and they demanded the same belief as the genre moved into the medium of cinema. This view aligns seamlessly with conservative ideological philosophy, which often emphasizes the existence of absolute truths, a moral order, and the transcendent nature of human existence. By rooting horror in the reality of good and evil and the consequences of individual moral choices, the genre reinforces the conservative belief in personal responsibility and the necessity of aligning oneself with a higher moral framework. This aspect transforms horror into a meaningful exploration of the human condition, rather than a fleeting or trivial spectacle.

The need for logic within film became the fundamental tenet of conservative film criticism. When a film either began to falter by not playing by the rules or had too many idiosyncrasies, critics were quick to point to the flaws. For instance, if a ghost could walk through walls in one scene, but in another be trapped in a room, something was amiss, and there was no tether to the reality of the film. Or, if a character is a prisoner in a foreign jail, there should be guards who looked, acted, and talked like natives of the land they were in, not like Americans, or else logic in the film was lacking. Simon, the bulwark against illogic in cinema who made his plea in 1990 for a revival of "believableness" in film made his case:

There is one quality that more than any other could help revitalize the cinema: believableness. Characters in films must re-establish contact with social, economic, and political realities even where film style is non- or antirealistic. We should not have to ask questions such as: How come she has that much tree time? Where does he get his money from? Why would they have been so purblind as not to see that coming? And so on. It may sound like rather simplistic advice, but, if heeded, it could make for major improvements. (Simon, "Movie" 138)

This argument may have been Simon's pet peeve, but when it often appeared in other movie reviews, as we have seen in this article. Roger Scruton explained the conservative need for rationality and logic describing modern conservativism as being the "product of the Enlightenment" and thus founded on reason (9, 14). Indeed, while rationality may not be as high on the list of conservative precepts as pragmatism or individualism, it was nevertheless important.

Even more relevant was the need for tethering the film to some kind of reality, where universal laws were clear and evident, and chaos did not abound. Chaos was in direct opposition to conservatism. Kirk wrote about the necessity for a morally-ordered society in The Conservative Mind where liberty came from order, not the other way around, and Richard Weaver pushed back against the emerging leviathan of relativism in Ideas Have Consequences where he argued for the need for absolutes that guide not only temporal lives but more importantly our morality. For conservative critics then, a film had to reflect that it understood that it took place in a reality where absolutes existed, logic was followed, and rationality was valued.

In addition, conservative reviewers yearned for some truly human element to the storytelling and the horror. Conservative thought often valued horror films that delved into the internal struggles of human characters, seeing these narratives as a mirror to universal truths about human nature and morality. At its core, this perspective emphasizes that the essence of terror lies not in external spectacle or technical artistry, but in the confrontation of inner fears, moral dilemmas, and the fragility of the human psyche. Such storytelling aligns with the conservative appreciation for narratives grounded in the complexities of individual agency and responsibility. Philosophically, this preference reflects a broader conservative worldview that prioritizes the inherent dignity and flawed nature of humanity. Horror that explores psychological depth resonates with the belief that human beings are both capable of great good and prone to moral failings. It underscores the vulnerability of individuals in the face of temptation, madness, or evil, offering a cautionary tale that affirms traditional moral boundaries.

In sum, late twentieth century conservative critics of horror and film in general were united by a shared demand for narratives that adhered to logic, reflected an ordered reality, and explored the deeper truths of the human condition. The genre's appeal to these conservatives stemmed from its ability to grapple with absolutes – good and evil, life and death – while remaining tethered to a coherent and believable framework. Chaos, relativism, and disregard for universal laws stood in direct opposition to the conservative worldview, which valued order, rationality, and moral clarity as the foundations of a meaningful society. Furthermore, horror's most compelling offerings were those that illuminated the internal struggles of humanity, offering moral lessons and affirming the dignity of human life even in the face of darkness. By rooting horror in these principles, the best films in the genre resonated deeply with conservative ideals, transforming mere entertainment into a profound exploration of human nature and the eternal struggle between right and wrong.

Notes

1. For more on the differences within conservative film criticism, see Pinelli.
2. For examples, see Asma.
3. Jaws and The Exorcist were both nominated for Best Picture but lost in 1973 and 1975. A similar fate befell The Sixth Sense in 2000.
4. Robert R. Reilly explores the idea of a broken moral code and horror further in his 200 articles for Crises.
5. For more on the downfall of Libertarian film critics, see Pinelli.

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