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
Not a horror, really, but this one is great:
Parasite
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