Are Marshmallows Mandatory At Witch Burnings?

SO! 

It's been a while since I had a tropefest post, huh?  Let's fix that.

Before we get started, though, I have to include a disclaimer.  I know that you guys are all used to me talking about gore and sex and turning the air blue with my insistence upon using words my mother said never to use in polite company and generally being offensive as fuck.  Today, however, is different. 

Today, we're discussing religion in horror films and how Christianity in general has lent itself to many a macabre plot.  I am an atheist but I am not attempting to denigrate spirituality.  I am not pointing fingers at a particular sect.  I am not saying that anyone's belief in particular is wrong.  I am not going to argue religion or the existence of divinity (that's being handled on my personal Facebook page).  This post is strictly about how religion is depicted in horror films and, I gotta tell you, it's never pretty.

Much like Christopher Walken.

See, in horror there are three uses for religion.  Exploit for Good, Exploit for Evil or Debunk.  Obviously, we've got pretty much any vampire movie as an example of exploiting for good since religious symbols are pretty much universally accepted as defense against them as long as your faith is strong (as long as you're in a movie where the vampires don't fucking sparkle).  There are also the movies where there is a definitive battle between good and evil such as The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Last Exorcism, The Possession, The Omen, The Devil's Due, The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby.  In all of these films there is a very clear distinction that Satan is the bad guy and he's taken over an innocent in some way or another and the forces of good gather to stop him.  These movies tend to be very... Catholic (Except for ThePossession which was very Jewish).

Your child should never be doing this.  Seek medical attention.

So, those are all well and good but MUCH more prevalent are the films where religion or religious figures are depicted as evil.  In Legion, god decides that we're just not worth it and sends the Heavenly Host after us to just toss the board in the air and go home, which was fuckin' stupid because they all went after the woman carrying the second coming which, as we all know, was God so God is apparently schizophrenic and suicidal.  Most of the time the religions that are depicted in these stories are entirely fictional such as in any adaptation of a Lovecraft story or the Necromongers in Chronicles of Riddick and there's usually little to no mention of a "good" counterpart.  The very best examples, in my opinion, of this kind of film are Children of the Corn, The Mist and Red State which was a very clear statement by Kevin Smith in regards to the Westboro Baptist Church.  I will not give them the satisfaction of linking to their site.

*shudder*

And to a much lesser extent, we have the movies that try to debunk religion.  Even Constantine, which, ostensibly, was a good versus evil story, was decidedly anti-religion on all counts.  It was all about how good and evil are two sides of the same coin and the struggle for power has casualties.  Plus, Shia LeBeouf is the fucking anti-christ, anyway..

Most depictions of religion in horror films (See the "Exploit for Evil" section above) come from a few different belief systems.  Maltheism is the belief that if there is a God, it is either utterly incompetent or outright malevolent.  Related to that is hypothetical maltheism wherein the problem with the existence of Hell, or the existence of evil itself, is the fact that if there is a true force for good in the world, why wouldn't that omnipotent being eradicate evil (war, sickness, poverty and the social problems they solve, some of which are mortal sins) so that there wouldn't be a need for Hell? 

Pretty sure that Hell is back-to-back viewings of Nicolas Cage's filmography.

And then there's Misotheism which is hatred of God which is a further extension of Maltheism in which case the deity in question done you wrong and you actively hate them for it..  This isn't seen in film so much, anymore, but it's pretty prevalent in sword and sandal flicks and it's VERY prevalent in mythology through the ages where it was often a source of hubris.  See the character of Riddick.  Along those same lines, Richard Dawkins is quoted as saying that "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."  It seems that a lot of horror directors agree even if they choose to make up a religion rather than state their intentions toward Christianity right up front.


Finally, there's Dystheism where the deity in question isn't wholly good or evil but their behavior is such to make a character question their divine motives.  Hellenistic and Norse mythology kinda relies on this because their gods were more "human".

Not a god.  Not Hellenistic or Norse.  Why is she praying?

All of these differing beliefs give us some very rich soil in which to plant plot seeds.  Questioning the tenets of religion is why there are so many of them out there.  There are hundreds of offshoots of Christianity alone and some of them have beliefs that are disagreeable at best which make them a prime target for a skewering in a horror flick.

This isn't symbolism at ALL...

Obviously, this topic is WAY too complex for me to cover in a simple blog post and there are a HOST of other belief systems that dig into this sort of thing (such as Gnosticism, Luciferianism and, hell, Judaism), but it seems that as long as religion exists, horror authors, directors and screenwriters are going to use horror to explore religion, their experiences with it as seen through their own particular twisted imaginary lens and what it means to them.  

And it will scare us shitless.