With mainstream horror seemingly, and finally, making a tremendous comeback, effective modern-day horror seems to always be an ode to the classics, cleverly reintegrating the best of horror’s tropes and adding progressive elements made to kick the socks off of this century’s box offices. And with the genre’s progression, scream queens have transcended the legacies of hunted, impenetrable damsels in distress to now becoming the epitome of female badassery
A modern-day scream queen like Samara Weaving (POTENTIALLY) will make you claw at your seat with fright as you root arduously for her. This is psychotic, crazy-eyed charisma that you will never peel your eyes away from, and--as Ready or Not has shown us--she may well be on her way to joining the time-honored ranks of Jamie Lee Curtis or her mother, Psycho actress Janet Leigh.
Here’s how she’s won our achy-breaky, racing hearts.
The word of the millennial season is AESTHETIC, and if this doesn’t scream an intensely macabre horror aesthetic, we don’t know what does. Ready or Not is a horror-comedy about a young bride (played by Samara) being subject to the ultimate game of Hide and Seek by her new family members in the board game business: the Le Domas family. The rules? The bride is to hide and the Le Domas are to seek her and offer her as a sacrifice to Satan.
Samara plays the hunted Grace, a child of numerous foster homes who longs for a steady family more than anything. She reacts very logically, never hesitating to wield a weapon or two, beating her disgustingly outdated and newly acquainted ‘family’ down without a second of hesitation. Samara’s performance in this role is so powerful and logically perverted that it’ll make you feel ecstatic just watching. If your wedding day goes awry, this is the finesse and style that you’ll want to possess.
A babysitter has her friends over at the house she’s babysitting at the moment the child she’s taking care of goes to sleep. How typical. Did I mention she’s blonde? If we’ve learned anything at all from Halloween, it’s that something trashy’s definitely about to happen and that the misbehaving babysitter’s going to get exactly what she deserves. Sike. Instead, the babysitter and her friends embark on a satanic ritual.
Samara, who plays the stunning babysitter Bee is caught in an inevitable showdown with her ‘baby’, Cole who has found out about her misdemeanor and wants to get the police in, stat. Samara plays mysterious evil-but-kind-and-also-super-geeky babysitter with inexplicable talent, and she’s definitely got the unpredictable strength in action and charisma that’s required of scream queens. She could carry practically any horror film.
Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead franchise is one of those things so iconic that it needs no introduction, transcending the horror universe and ingraining itself comfortable in modern-day pop culture charts. Ash vs Evil Dead is a spin-off TV series that follows Ash after the happenings of Evil Dead, as a monster hunter!
In the series, Samara is Heather who ends up trapped in the Cabin with her friends. Samara’s character ends up getting tortured and possessed alone in the Cabin until she finally dies. Playing the tormented character with unsettling capability, this marks Samara’s capability of being the true Scream Queen: playing a good, gorram victim.
Ready Or Not is a mark of Samara Weaving’s presence in the horror industry being potentially transcendent and very unconventional, with proven talent playing roles on multiple sides of the creepy ouija coin. The era of feminist-aware horror is here, and we’re all for it.
Catch Ready Or Not while it’s still in theatres. Get your tickets on the Popcorn App now!
