Don't Be So Dark
In post-Columbine Hollywood, the horror genre is up for grabs.
      by Sarah Kendzior

The X-Files succeeded initially in part due to the time in which it debuted -- a slowly recovering economy, severe government distrust, the Waco siege, the conveniently lively rock on Mars. The longing for Twin Peaks to come back on the air. But no series is so dated as Millennium, and not just because of that whole "There are X number of days remaining" thing. (Days remaining until what? Until Frank Black is reduced to a guest appearance on The X-Files?) Just as a warning, you are now reading an article by a previously undetected specimen of being -- the hardcore Millennium fan. According to media legend, I'm one of, say, three individuals. Actually, there are a lot more of us than you'd think, and you really won't meet a more disillusioned group of people in your life. Frank Black ain't got nothing on those of us who sat through season three.

That's what happens when you get too dark: Charles Nelson Reilly with Lance Henriksen on Millennium.

Oh, how I miss Millennium. Millennium, which took on themes of religion, the nature of evil, and the apocalypse. Millennium, which starred Lance Henriksen, and inspired a media boom in hyphenated descriptions: "gravel-voiced", "hollow-eyed", "crag-ridden". Millennium, which, especially in its bravura second season, had something I never see on television today -- a moral center. Millennium, which ended the world and then un-ended it again, causing everything to suck royally from that day forward. That last part notwithstanding, what a freakin' brilliant show! Now that's a horror series. Millennium was always frightening and depressing -- relentlessly so, many said -- but it was also touching ("Midnight of the Century"), suspenseful ("Owls"/"Roosters") and downright revolutionary at points ("The Curse of Frank Black", "The Time Is Now"). Unfortunately, you will never see anything like Millennium again, at least not for a long, long while. Because Millennium was an abysmal failure. And, therefore, we present to you, dear readers -- a scare with a smile! They're freaky, they're linky, they're freaky and they're linky...

However, Millennium will always endure in one sense. In 1997, Fox aired "Jose Chung's 'Doomsday Defense'", the Darin Morgan-penned story of the Selfosophy cult based around Onan Goopta, author of such classics as "How to Be Happy Even When You Shouldn't" (not to mention a bunch of suspiciously L. Ron Hubbard-esque mystery novels.) The Selfosophists will do anything to keep their happy guise and avoid the harshness of reality (and the independent thought that goes with it), even to the point of committing murder. The Selfosophist mantra? "Don't be so dark." Sounds familiar, doesn't it? (And not just 'cause I pilfered it for this article, either.) "Don't be so dark" -- isn't that what the MPAA told Mary Harron, or Tim Burton, or Darren Aronofsky? Isn't that what the WB warned audiences when they canceled Buffy's third season finale? Isn't that what horror entertainment is trying to tell us today?

The Cell: A lone bright spot in a dull genre world.

"Don't be so dark." Instead be mindless, be cynical, be funny -- just as long as you're not creative, thoughtful, or remotely controversial. Be crude and infantile -- but never be honest or mature. There are exceptions to this rule; The Cell is a recent one for films, and the new horror anthology series Night Visions has a breathtakingly smart and scary pilot. But overall, the horror genre is dropping out of sight -- and ironically, it's doing so as people become more and more scared. Because that's what this is about, you know. Fear. Fear of what did provoke the tragedy at Columbine high school, fear that it will linger on forever, fear that it could happen to us -- or that you could be held accountable. Fear to confront the parts of our lives or our selves that we might not like quite so much. The best works of horror -- Freaks, The Exorcist, Halloween -- came out of the notion that all may not be right in the world, and that things are not always what they seem. There is a constant theme of the weak or the weird defeating a seemingly indomitable and evil force. But that's been forgotten now, in the fear of evoking outcasts with trenchcoats and guns. Only the cool and strong will prevail, because they belong, and that's not very interesting, is it? Better just drop the genre altogether.

Don't get me wrong. There are much greater problems relating to Columbine than what it's doing to the entertainment industry, and there are a good deal of things worse in life than having to sit through a bad horror movie. (Well, unless it's The St. Francisville Experiment.) But horror movies have always served, in often unintentional ways, to illuminate a certain morality. They've gotten dark -- really, really dark -- when no other form of media would dare to. And if the horror genre is becoming the domain of the censored (or, more often than you would think, the self-censored), then we've got some problems. We've got a genre in a moral void. We've got a lot of people perpetuating a contrived, rather off-putting sense of glibness and well-being. And we all know what that means we've got in store for horror entertainment, right?

"I humbly add my own prophecy of what the dawn of the new millennium shall bring forth... One thousand years of the same old crap." Once again, Jose Chung's right on the money.

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