Author: Heather Roberts | PhD Candidate in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies, Queen’s University, Ontario
Am excerpt:
When Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and fiancée Lauren Sánchez held their lavish three-day wedding celebration in Venice recently, it wasn’t just a party — it was a spectacle of wealth, reportedly costing between US$47 million and US$56 million.
Critics highlighted the environmental toll of such an event on the fragile, flood-prone city, while protesters took to the streets to condemn the wedding as a tone-deaf symbol of oligarchical wealth at a time when many can’t afford to pay rent, let alone rent an island.
The excessive show of opulence felt like the opening of a horror film, and lately, that’s exactly what horror has been giving us. In films like Ready or Not (2019) and The Menu (2022), the rich aren’t simply out of touch; they’re portrayed as predators, criminals or even monsters.
These “eat-the-rich” films channel widespread anxieties about the current socioeconomic climate and increasing disillusionment with capitalist systems.
In a world where the wealthy and powerful often seem to act with impunity, these films expose upper-class immorality and entitlement, and offer revenge fantasies where those normally crushed by the system fight back or burn it all down.
The article dives into it further
In films like Ready or Not (2019) and The Menu (2022), the rich aren’t simply out of touch; they’re portrayed as predators, criminals or even monsters.
Or in other words, they’re portrayed realistically and accurately.
Not a horror, really, but this one is great:
I took a couple friends to see it while working at a film fest.
One was so wrong about the intent and theme of the movie it was scary. Tried explaining it. Turns out they’d been listening to a lot of rw media.
They thought the film was about poor people being leeches - parasites.
From the writer/director
The capitalist… is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has one sole driving force, the drive to valorize itself, to create surplus-value, to make its constant part, the means of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus labor. Capital is dead labor which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.[53]
I liked Ex Machina for this reason. The billionaire’s belief that he is a god is his ultimate weakness and downfall.
I’m as anti billionaire as the next guy but “stabbed to death by your own sex robot” ain’t such a bad way to go, all things considered.
I love how even if you haven’t seen it, this spoils practically none of what makes the ending good.
Horror is written off by most people completely, but it has a long history of social commentary. It’s not all mindless gore and ghosts.
Came to say that! Horror films have always been a reflection of societal fears.
While I don’t agree with the initial premise, there’s much food for thought here:
https://www.cracked.com/article_19402_6-mind-blowing-ways-zombies-vampires-explain-america.html
Stuck the landing at the end:
That’s the most terrifying concept of all, that this other point of view that we find so ridiculous and inhuman is somehow contagious, that if exposed to it we might be forced to see the world their way, whether we like it or not. And neither a vampire or a zombie can be cured – once converted, you never go back. And that’s why they must be destroyed.
I took a film class years and years ago and we watched films from the 1930s to modern, and one theme we kept returning to was how the villains changed with the times. 40s obviously it was Germans, then in the 50s it became the Russians. 70s it became big nameless corporations, 80s went to the USSR. Popular media follows the current trends, whether those in charge like it or not. It mirrors modern life. It’s no surprise to me that modern film and media are showing the bad guys as ultra wealthy and corporations again.
Good article, but how can someone write about anti-rich horror and not include anything about Society (1989)?! It’s absolutely peak 80s practical effects horror on top of being about how the rich literally feed off the lower classes.
And, extremely politically topical, about their fucked up sexual predations.
Or Soylent Green from the 70’s!
Yeah, why doesn’t the article about recent trends in film include 30+ year old movies?? /s
Psst, there’s a whole article there if you keep scrolling. It even talks about movies older than that!
Blink Twice (2024) was in this vein as well. It also had a tech bro/misogynist angle, but wealth (and the power which comes from it) was definitely front and center.
Triangle of Sadness is another I think, a bit of a patchy film tho
I can’t wait to watch these.
You guys should watch Rich Flu (2024)
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