Elevate Me Later | John Semley
When the actress Maika Monroe first laid eyes on costar Nicolas Cage in caked-on Tiny Tim makeup as the titular Satanic serial killer of the recent hit horror-thriller Longlegs , her heart rate peaked to a hyper-tachycardiac 170 bpm.
当女演员麦卡·梦露第一次看到配角尼古拉斯·凯奇在最近大热的恐怖惊悚片《长腿》中化着浓妆的小蒂姆扮演的撒旦连环杀手时，她的心率峰值达到了 170 次/分钟。
We know this because we were told as much, in a viral trailer cut by the film’s producer, NEON.
我们之所以知道这一点，是因为在电影制片人 NEON 剪辑的病毒式预告片中，我们也了解到了这一点。
As movie marketing goes, “Nicolas Cage looked so weird that he almost made a woman’s heart explode” may seem gauche, but it was effective.
用电影营销的话来说，“尼古拉斯·凯奇看起来很奇怪，几乎让女人的心爆炸”可能看起来很俗气，但它很有效。
Longlegs was the indie horror sensation of the summer, and NEON’s most profitable release ever—surpassing Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning Parasite .
《长腿》是今年夏天轰动一时的独立恐怖片，也是《霓虹灯》有史以来最赚钱的影片——超过了奉俊昊的奥斯卡获奖影片《寄生虫》。
Pushed by cryptic trailers and the promise of a late-career Nicolas Cage as some kind of weird-looking serial killer, Longlegs drew massive crowds.
在神秘的预告片和职业生涯后期尼古拉斯·凯奇饰演某种长相怪异的连环杀手的推动下，《长腿》吸引了大批观众。
It did, in the parlance of the industry trades, “boffo b.o.” So, a colossal success.
用行业术语来说，它确实是“boffo b.o.”。所以，取得了巨大的成功。
But was it scary?
但这可怕吗？
Written and directed by Osgood Perkins (son of original Psycho killer Anthony Perkins), Longlegs casts Monroe as a maybe-clairvoyant FBI agent tasked with tracking down a mysterious killer connected to a string of family murders that have roiled the Pacific Northwest for decades.
《长腿》由奥斯古德·帕金斯（原《惊魂记》杀手安东尼·帕金斯的儿子）编剧并执导，梦露饰演一位可能具有千里眼的联邦调查局特工，负责追查一名与一系列家庭谋杀案有关的神秘杀手，这些谋杀案已经扰乱了太平洋西北地区数十年。
A promising first act—replete with some tantalizing table-setting, a truly shocking kill, and an understated performance by Monroe—quickly fizzles, as Longlegs sinks into a dense, messy mire of generic cliches: satanic panic, spooky dolls, cryptograms, sinister nuns, mysterious Phantasm -style-orbs, cycles of family trauma, and an anguished FBI profiler whose gift is her curse.
充满希望的第一幕——充满了一些诱人的餐桌布置，真正令人震惊的杀戮，以及门罗低调的表演——很快就失败了，因为长腿陷入了一个密集、混乱的陈词滥调的泥潭：撒旦的恐慌、幽灵娃娃、密码、险恶的修女、神秘的幻影风格的球体、家庭创伤的循环，以及一个痛苦的联邦调查局侧写师，他的礼物是她的诅咒。
Watching it alone at a $5 cheapie Tuesday matinee, I felt myself retracting into the sticky pleather plush of the theater seat, my wide-eyed excitement curdling into an annoyed grimace as the film unfolded, one hackily preposterous turn after another.
在周二一场票价为 5 美元的便宜电影中独自观看这部电影时，我感觉自己缩进了剧院座位上粘乎乎的皮革毛绒里，随着电影的展开，我的睁大眼睛的兴奋凝结成恼怒的鬼脸，一个又一个荒唐可笑的转折。
I silently reckoned with the reality that Longlegs was just another inspired advertising campaign with a crappy movie tacked onto it.
我默默地接受了这样一个事实：《长腿》只不过是又一个充满灵感的广告活动，上面附加了一部蹩脚的电影。
Horror cinema has always relied on such promotional gimmickry to lure audiences.
恐怖电影一直都是靠这样的宣传噱头来吸引观众。
Hitchcock famously stipulated that no audiences be admitted to Psycho after the film began, lest its first-act twist be spoiled.
希区柯克有一句著名的规定，《惊魂记》电影开场后，观众不得入场，以免破坏第一幕的转折。
Consummate carnival barker William Castle issued $1,000 life insurance policies (backed by Lloyds of London) with tickets to his 1958 fright-fast Macabre in the event that audience-members be scared to death.
完美的嘉年华叫卖者威廉·卡斯尔 (William Castle) 签发了价值 1,000 美元的人寿保险单（由伦敦劳合社支持），其中附有他 1958 年制作的恐怖惊悚剧《Macabre》的门票，以防观众被吓死。
The casts of Cannibal Holocaust and Blair Witch disappeared for months to juice rumors that they had actually been murdered.
《食人者大屠杀》和《女巫布莱尔》的演员们失踪了几个月，这引发了他们实际上被谋杀的谣言。
The difference between then and now is not just the advertising but the results.
当时和现在的区别不仅在于广告，还在于结果。
The gulf between Longlegs ’s carefully keyed marketing publicity and the film’s actual merit is so wide that Grandpa Munster could gun his souped-up Dragula hot rod through it without scratching the paint.
《长腿》精心设计的营销宣传与电影的实际价值之间的差距是如此之大，以至于蒙斯特爷爷可以用他的强化德拉古拉改装车穿过它而不会刮伤油漆。
Even if “elevated horror” (or “prestige horror,” or “post-horror,” or, god forbid, “hipster horror”) is essentially a made-up term, it describes a real thing.
即使“高度恐怖”（或“声望恐怖”或“后恐怖”，或者上帝禁止的“时髦恐怖”）本质上是一个虚构的术语，但它描述的是真实的事物。
Yet its anticlimactic disappointment—in its very badness— Longlegs is revealing.
然而，《长腿》的虎头蛇尾的失望——最糟糕的是——却很能说明问题。
More than another boring, letdown of a movie, it signals the exhaustion of a trend in cinema that has long worn out its welcome.
它不仅仅是另一部无聊、令人失望的电影，它标志着一种早已不再受欢迎的电影趋势的疲惫。
It is a nail in the coffin of so-called elevated horror.
这是所谓高度恐怖棺材上的一颗钉子。
It’s a term deployed uneasily and almost always in quotation marks.
这是一个不太容易使用的术语，而且几乎总是用引号引起来。
“Elevated horror”: part marketing idiom, part abused critical byword.
“高度恐怖”：部分是营销用语，部分是滥用的批评用语。
It’s a slippery, contested, obnoxious term that can be tricky to define.
这是一个难以捉摸的、有争议的、令人讨厌的术语，很难定义。
To paraphrase another notorious non-definition, you know it when you see it.
套用另一个臭名昭著的非定义，当你看到它时你就知道它。
Even if “elevated horror” (or “prestige horror,” or “post-horror,” or, god forbid, “hipster horror”) is essentially a made-up term, it describes a real thing.
即使“高度恐怖”（或“声望恐怖”或“后恐怖”，或者上帝禁止的“时髦恐怖”）本质上是一个虚构的术语，但它描述的是真实的事物。
Over the past decade-or-so, a cycle of films has emerged that share common thematic and visual preoccupations.
在过去十年左右的时间里，出现了一系列具有共同主题和视觉关注点的电影。
They also share something harder to dissect and easier to sniff out: an attitude.
他们还分享了一些更难剖析、更容易嗅出的东西：态度。
The designation emerged in the mid-2010s, to describe movies like Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014), Robert Eggers’s The Witch (2015), Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017), and Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018).
该名称出现于 2010 年代中期，用来形容詹妮弗·肯特的《巴巴杜克》（2014 年）、罗伯特·艾格斯的《女巫》（2015 年）、乔丹·皮尔的《逃出绝命镇》（2017 年）和阿里·艾斯特的《遗传厄运》（2018 年）等电影。
These films were all driven by the sensibilities of their “auteur” writer-directors and prized aesthetic sheen and psychological depth over typical hallmarks of the genre, like gore, jump scares, or heavy-breathing serial killers in dinged-up goalie masks.
这些电影都是由“作者”编剧兼导演的情感驱动的，他们更看重美学光泽和心理深度，而不是该类型的典型特征，如血腥、惊吓或戴着破旧守门员面具的喘息连连的杀手。
For their deliberate appeal to higher sensibilities, they won considerable critical acclaim, which further distinguished their ambitions as loftier than more standard horror fare.
由于他们刻意吸引更高的情感，他们赢得了相当大的好评，这进一步表明他们的野心比更标准的恐怖片更崇高。
Like most genres, horror cinema evolves in cycles: distinct trends in style and storytelling that chime with the moviegoing public, begetting strings of sequels and shameless imitators.
与大多数类型一样，恐怖电影也在循环发展：风格和故事讲述的独特趋势与电影观众的呼声相呼应，催生了一连串的续集和无耻的模仿者。
Think of the gothic-inspired Universal Monster movies of the 1930s, the moody atmospherics of Val Lewton’s horror unit at RKO Pictures in the 1940s, the slasher flicks of the 1980s, and the post- Blair Witch boom in “found footage” horror.
想想 20 世纪 30 年代的哥特式环球怪兽电影、1940 年代雷电华影业瓦尔·鲁顿 (Val Lewton) 恐怖片的喜怒无常氛围、1980 年代的恐怖片，以及《女巫布莱尔》之后“发现的镜头”恐怖片的热潮。
The contemporary vogue in elevated horror constitutes such a cycle, born of the winking, postmodern, meta-textual horror movies of the 1990s.
当代恐怖片的流行构成了这样一个循环，它诞生于 20 世纪 90 年代眨眼的、后现代的、元文本的恐怖电影。
Films like Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994), Scream (1996), Funny Games (1997), and The Cabin in the Woods (2011) riffed on generic conventions.
韦斯·克雷文的《新噩梦》（1994）、《惊声尖叫》（1996）、《有趣的游戏》（1997）和《林中小屋》（2011）等电影都重复了通用惯例。
But the trend toward self-aware, meta-textual, “postmodern” horror had broader, more deleterious effects on the genre.
但自我意识、元文本、“后现代”恐怖的趋势对该类型产生了更广泛、更有害的影响。
These films trained audiences how to watch (or see through) horror movies.
这些电影训练观众如何观看（或看透）恐怖电影。
Generic tropes were openly parsed as a form of subversion.
通用比喻被公开解析为一种颠覆形式。
In Scream , a dorky superfan played by Jamie Kennedy interrupts a screening of John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) to deliver an animated, half-soused harangue on “the rules” of horror movies (“Never, ever, ever under any circumstances say, ‘I’ll be right back’”).
在《惊声尖叫》中，杰米·肯尼迪饰演的一位傻乎乎的超级粉丝打断了约翰·卡彭特的《万圣节》（1978）的放映，对恐怖电影的“规则”进行了一场生动、半醉的长篇大论（“永远、永远、永远在任何情况下都不要说‘我马上回来’”）。
Certain codes and clichés that had long governed the genre were exposed, immediately diminishing their power.
长期统治这一流派的某些准则和陈词滥调被曝光，它们的力量立即减弱。
It’s like a magician giving away the secret to his trick.
这就像魔术师泄露了他魔术的秘密。
Once the viewer is primed to it, all they see is the method, not the magic.
一旦观众做好准备，他们看到的只是方法，而不是魔法。
Audiences wise up and spoil in turn.
观众依次明智和破坏。
Before long, these sorts of self-conscious contortions become agonizing.
不久之后，这些自我意识的扭曲就会变得令人痛苦。
By the time of its seventh installment, the Scream franchise had devolved into the sort of murder-by-numbers storytelling the original satirized.
到第七部时，《惊声尖叫》系列已经演变成原著讽刺的那种以数字谋杀的故事。
Likewise, Cabin in the Woods functions less as a horror movie than as a movie about horror movies.
同样，《林中小屋》与其说是一部恐怖电影，不如说是一部关于恐怖电影的电影。
Horror’s meta turn had lumbered on long enough.
恐怖的元转向已经缓慢进行了足够长的时间。
In this light, the artier pivot of the elevated horror was initially refreshing.
从这个角度来看，提升恐怖的艺术中心最初是令人耳目一新的。
Here was a crop of thoughtful, capably directed movies that wrung genuine terror out of their premises without all the wink-nudge stuff that had needled audiences for over a decade.
这是一批深思熟虑、导演得力的电影，它们从影片的前提中榨取了真正的恐怖，而没有十多年来一直困扰着观众的所有眨眼式的东西。
They also functioned as a corrective to the super-violent “torture porn” provocations of the early 2000s and the even more lamentable string of classic horror remakes ranging from Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead (2004) to Samuel Bayer’s offensively self-serious A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010).
它们还对 2000 年代初的超级暴力“酷刑色情”挑衅以及一系列更可悲的经典恐怖翻拍作品起到了纠正作用，从扎克·施奈德的《活死人黎明》（2004 年）到塞缪尔·拜尔的令人反感的自以为是的《猛鬼街噩梦》（2010 年）。
Elevated horror abjured torture porn’s gore and nudity.
高度的恐怖放弃了酷刑色情片的血腥和裸露。
And the films drew from a broader base of generic touchstones.
这些电影借鉴了更广泛的通用试金石基础。
The Witch borrowed from British folk horror trends of the 1960s and 1970s.
《女巫》借鉴了 20 世纪 60 年代和 1970 年代的英国民间恐怖趋势。
Get Out was a wickedly funny satire drawing equally from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and its 1978 remake, The Stepford Wives (1972), plus that Eddie Murphy joke about how black people would react if plunked into a haunted house movie (“I got the fuck out”).
《逃出绝命镇》是一部邪恶搞笑的讽刺作品，同样借鉴了《盗尸者的入侵》（1956 年）和 1978 年的翻拍版《史蒂福妻子们》（1972 年），再加上艾迪·墨菲关于黑人如果陷入鬼屋电影会如何反应的笑话（“我他妈的出去了”）。
Most noticeably, these films tread freely in the realms of the psychological and social.
最引人注目的是，这些电影在心理和社会领域自由行走。
Like plenty of other genre movies, horror was (incorrectly) accused of not being “about” much.
与许多其他类型的电影一样，恐怖片被（错误地）指责为“关于”不多。
With elevated horror, the about-ness is never in question.
随着恐惧的加剧，其相关性是毫无疑问的。
Ari Aster’s auspicious feature debut proves a particular exemplar in this regard.
阿里·阿斯特（Ari Aster）的吉祥长片首映证明了这方面的一个特殊典范。
Hereditary may not be the first film in the elevated horror cycle.
《遗传厄运》可能不是恐怖循环中的第一部电影。
But it demonstrates its broader gist, for better and worse.
但无论好坏，它都展示了其更广泛的要旨。
The film stars Toni Collette as a miniaturist whose life is derailed following the passing of her mentally ill mother and the subsequent death of her young daughter.
这部电影由托妮·科莱特饰演一位细密画家，她的生活在她患有精神病的母亲去世和随后的小女儿去世后出轨。
To process her grief, she joins a support group that leads her deeper into a cult conspiracy entangling her mother, daughter, son, and whole family.
为了缓解悲伤，她加入了一个支持小组，该小组让她更深地陷入了一个将她的母亲、女儿、儿子和整个家庭卷入其中的邪教阴谋。
The film reeks of quality, from the performances to the cinematography.
这部电影从表演到摄影都散发着高品质的气息。
It also abounds with more abject horrors: a woman garrotting herself with piano wire, a little girl’s severed head crawling with bugs, and Gabriel Byrne aflame.
它还充满了更悲惨的恐怖：一个女人用钢琴线绞死自己，一个小女孩的头颅上爬满了虫子，还有加布里埃尔·伯恩着火了。
The shot of a grieving Toni Collette heaving back and forth blubbering, “I JUST WANNA DIE!” rings true to anyone who has ever ached, inconsolably, to end it all.
悲伤的托妮·科莱特 (Toni Collette) 前前后后抽泣着，“我只想死！”的镜头。对于任何曾经痛苦地、无法安慰地想要结束这一切的人来说，这都是真实的。
The issue is that Aster plays with these bigger, realer feelings—with troubling matters of suicidality, schizophrenia, familial (or “hereditary”) mental illness—in a way that comes across as careless, bordering on cruel.
问题在于，艾斯特以一种粗心、近乎残忍的方式玩弄这些更大、更真实的情感——自杀、精神分裂症、家族性（或“遗传性”）精神疾病等令人不安的问题。
Their very realness is diminished by the film’s implausible climax.
影片令人难以置信的高潮削弱了它们的真实性。
Turns out the materfamilias whose death kicks off the haunting proceedings wasn’t actually controlling, or emotionally manipulative, or even mentally ill.
事实证明，那些因死亡而引发的令人难以忘怀的过程的母亲实际上并不是在控制，也不是在情感上操纵，甚至是患有精神疾病。
Rather, she was a literal bride-witch betrothed to a demonic hell-king invoked by a coven of callow, buck-ass-naked cultists.
相反，她是名副其实的女巫新娘，与恶魔地狱之王订婚，而恶魔地狱之王是由一群幼稚、赤裸的邪教徒召唤出来的。
It’s like all that mental illness and trauma stuff (and the powerful performances behind it) is merely there to add voltage to a story that’s deceptively hack.
就好像所有精神疾病和创伤的东西（以及其背后强大的表演）只是为了给一个具有欺骗性的黑客故事增加电压。
Aster’s pretensions of emotional or psychological realism are revealed to be just that.
埃斯特对情感或心理现实主义的自负被证明正是如此。
In this sense, many of the elevated horror pictures recommit to the most grating postures of their meta-horror predecessors.
从这个意义上说，许多高级恐怖片都重新呈现了其元恐怖前辈最令人毛骨悚然的姿态。
A film like Scream rises above its status as a self-conscious genre “exercise”; it is a totally worthwhile horror film.
像《惊声尖叫》这样的电影超越了其作为一种自我意识类型“练习”的地位；这是一部完全值得的恐怖片。
But it mainstreamed the idea of a slasher villain having recognizably “human” motivations informed by family trauma and petty grievance.
但它主流化了这样一个观念：一个杀人狂的恶棍具有明显的“人性”动机，其动机是家庭创伤和琐碎的不满。
Are these sort of movies really any more clever than the existing slashers that had been self-consciously fiddling with the genre since the 1970s without making a big show of it?
这类电影真的比自 20 世纪 70 年代以来一直有意识地摆弄这一类型而没有大张旗鼓的现有恐怖片更聪明吗？
Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) constitutes its own winking, cartoonish critique of its predecessor.
《德州电锯杀人狂 2》（1986）对其前作进行了眨眼、卡通化的批评。
Even earlier, Slumber Party Massacre (1982)—scripted by Rita Mae Brown, the lesbian activist and author of the classic queer bildungsroman Ruby Fruit Jungle —functions simultaneously as a bloody, horny slasher movie and a feminist disquisition on the same.
甚至更早的时候，由女同性恋活动家、经典酷儿成长小说《红宝石水果丛林》的作者丽塔·梅·布朗编剧的《睡衣派对大屠杀》（1982）既是一部血腥、淫荡的恐怖电影，也是一部女权主义专题论文。
Audiences who enjoy such entertainments were in on the joke and were generally much smarter than critics gave them credit for.
喜欢这种娱乐活动的观众都在开玩笑，而且通常比评论家所认为的要聪明得多。
The rest could enjoy the baser delectations of an enormous chainsaw or power drill being bandied about wantonly without meditating on the phallic implications.
其余的人可以享受巨大的电锯或电钻被肆意挥舞的基本乐趣，而不用思考阳具的含义。
Countless films think through the machinations of their own genre without showing their work.
无数的电影在不展示自己作品的情况下思考了自己类型的阴谋。
They are also extremely generative in the sense that they can be read in multiple ways.
它们还具有极高的生成性，因为它们可以通过多种方式阅读。
Films like Get Out foreground their thematic and intellectual work at the expense of being, you know, scary.
像《逃出绝命镇》这样的电影突出了他们的主题和智力工作，但代价是令人恐惧。
By contrast, a great many of the postmodern and elevated horror flicks feel as if they’re knotting in on themselves.
相比之下，许多后现代和高端的恐怖电影感觉就像是在自我纠缠。
They’re hermetic in the negative sense.
从消极意义上来说，它们是封闭的。
There is not much to do with Scream, or The Cabin in the Woods , or Get Out, or Midsommar other than to say, “I get it.” Where many of the classic horror films felt like they were smuggling meanings into them, these new cycles pushed (or “elevated”) any buried subtext to the level of text.
除了说“我明白了”之外，与《尖叫》、《林中小屋》、《逃出绝命镇》或《仲夏夜惊魂》没有太多关系。许多经典恐怖电影感觉像是在向其中走私意义，而这些新循环将任何隐藏的潜台词推向（或“提升”）到文本水平。
Even when these movies are obsessively parsed by fans, such interpretive work almost inevitably points back to basic, clearly stated themes.
即使这些电影被影迷痴迷地解析，这样的解释工作也几乎不可避免地指向基本的、明确表述的主题。
I am reminded of savvy viewers pointing to a scene in Get Out where Allison Williams’s character carefully separates her multicoloured Froot Loops from her glass of white milk, a detail that does little beyond confirming that, yes, this is a film is about racism and the cognitive dissonance of the liberal class.
我想起精明的观众指出《逃出绝命镇》中的一个场景，艾莉森·威廉姆斯饰演的角色小心翼翼地将她的彩色果圈和她的一杯白牛奶分开，这个细节除了证实，是的，这是一部关于种族主义和自由阶级认知失调的电影。
And when such ideas are not painstakingly telegraphed, italicized, and double-underlined, some handwaving about “generational cycles of violence” will typically satisfy lingering questions regarding what a given movie is up to.
当这些想法没有被煞费苦心地传达、斜体和双下划线时，对“暴力的代际循环”的一些挥手通常会满足有关特定电影的意图的挥之不去的问题。
At worst, such films foreground their thematic and intellectual work at the expense of being, you know, scary.
在最坏的情况下，此类电影突出了他们的主题和智力工作，但代价是令人恐惧。
At best, they play like their own term papers; as someone who used to lecture on the genre, I’d give the whole cycle a B-.
最好的情况下，它们就像自己的学期论文一样；作为一个曾经讲过这一流派的人，我会给整个周期一个 B-。
Regardless of these films’ individual merits, the elevated horror boom has gone a long way to legitimating the genre.
不管这些电影的个人优点如何，恐怖热潮的兴起已经为该类型的合法化做出了很大的贡献。
Films like Rosemary’s Baby (1968) , The Exorcist (1973) , Possession (1981) , and Jacob’s Ladder (1990) had edged the genre towards reputability.
《迷迭香的宝贝》（1968）、《驱魔人》（1973）、《占有》（1981）和《雅各布的天梯》（1990）等电影使这一类型的声誉不断提升。
But such films—artfully conceived, bigger-budgeted, starring more recognizable actors—were always exceptions to the rule.
但这类电影——构思巧妙、预算更大、由更知名的演员主演——总是例外。
Now, they’ve become the dominant mode.
现在，它们已成为主导模式。
They earn rave reviews.
他们赢得了好评如潮。
They win awards.
他们获奖了。
They’re even respectable.
他们甚至是令人尊敬的。
But what does the average horror hound care for respectability?
但普通的恐怖猎犬到底在乎什么尊严呢？
Horror (and genre movies in generally) are sometimes termed “ghettos” for their sequestering from mainstream cinema.
恐怖片（以及一般类型电影）有时被称为“贫民窟”，因为它们与主流电影隔绝。
(The video store I frequented as a kid had its own “Horror Cave” in an alcove that previously housed pornographic video cassettes.) As a genre, horror has long nurtured its own constellations of stars and personalities.
（我小时候经常光顾的音像店在一个凹室里有自己的“恐怖洞穴”，以前存放色情录像带。）作为一种类型，恐怖片长期以来一直培育着自己的明星和个性群。
“Kane Hodder” and “Tony Todd” may not exactly be above-the-title, marquee names down at the multiplex.
“凯恩·霍德”和“托尼·托德”可能并不完全出现在标题上方，而是在影院下方的大屏幕上。
But sit them at a folding table at an over-lit convention center and watch as fans queue in droves to press the flesh of the guys who played Victor Crowley and the original Candyman.
但是，让他们坐在灯光明亮的会议中心的折叠桌旁，看着粉丝成群结队地排队，压榨饰演维克多·克劳利和原版糖果人的演员们的肉体。
Filmmakers and technicians are likewise revered.
电影制作人和技术人员同样受到尊敬。
There was a time, not so long ago, when legendary makeup artist Tom Savini would appear on Letterman to show off some gnarly prosthetic head or prophylactic filled with prop blood .
曾几何时，不久前，传奇化妆师汤姆·萨维尼（Tom Savini）会出现在莱特曼身上，展示一些粗糙的假肢头或充满道具血液的预防剂。
Periodicals and web pages interviewed these sorts of minor celebrities, playing directly to the hardcore fans.
期刊和网页采访了这类小名人，直接迎合铁杆粉丝。
Many of the directors and distributors strip-mining the horror movie landscape can feel like vampiric tourists sapping the mana of the very movies to which they condescend.
许多对恐怖电影景观进行剥采的导演和发行商感觉就像吸血鬼游客正在消耗他们所欣赏的电影的魔力。
Robert Eggers, director of The Witch and The Lighthouse , has admitted as much, telling an interviewer , “I wouldn’t have the incredible opportunity to be making cinema if it wasn’t for genre.” Eggers’s next film is star-studded remake of F.W.
《女巫与灯塔》的导演罗伯特·艾格斯也承认了这一点，他告诉采访者：“如果不是类型电影，我就不会有这个令人难以置信的机会来制作电影。”艾格斯的下一部电影是众星云集的翻拍版 F.W.
Murnau’s German expressionist classic Nosferatu , starring one of the Skarsgård brood as Count Orlok.
穆瑙的德国表现主义经典作品《诺斯费拉图》，由斯卡斯加德家族成员之一饰演奥尔洛克伯爵。
It concentrates so many of the cycle’s more obnoxious postures: remaking a movie produced as a cheap (but incredibly atmospheric), unlicensed rip-off of Bram Stoker’s novel, subsequently accepted as a masterpiece following decades of dissemination and reappraisal.
它集中了该周期中许多令人讨厌的姿态：重新制作一部廉价（但令人难以置信的氛围）、未经许可抄袭布拉姆·斯托克小说的电影，随后在经过数十年的传播和重新评价后被接受为杰作。
With its ashy color palette, keyed-up Willem Dafoe performance, and big-ticket Christmas Day debut, Eggers’s version feels like a mothballed masterpiece-on-arrival.
艾格斯的版本凭借灰暗的色调、威廉·达福的紧张表演以及圣诞节首映的高价首映，感觉就像是一部被封存的杰作。
Here, the difference between elevated horror and its ground-level predecessors recalls the late film critic/painter Manny Farber’s distinction between “white elephant art” and “termite art.” As outlined in a 1962 Film Culture essay, white elephant art is that which amounts to a “yawning production of overripe technique shrieking with preciosity, fame, ambition,” whereas termite art “leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity.” Termite art (or “termite tapeworm-fungus-moss art”) typically reveals itself where the “spotlight of culture is nowhere in evidence.” Termite art is proudly beneath esteem; its very lack of cultural worth corresponding, in inverse proportion, to its preciousness among those eager to receive it.
在这里，高架恐怖与其地面前辈之间的区别让人想起已故电影评论家/画家曼尼·法伯（Manny Farber）对“白象艺术”和“白蚁艺术”的区分。正如 1962 年《电影文化》文章中所概述的那样，白象艺术相当于“一种令人打哈欠的成熟技术的产物，尖叫着珍贵、名誉和野心”，而白蚁艺术“除了热切、勤奋、不整洁的活动的迹象之外，没有留下任何东西”。白蚁艺术（或“白蚁绦虫-真菌-苔藓艺术”）通常在“文化的聚光灯无处可见”的地方展现自己。白蚁艺术很不值得尊重；它缺乏文化价值，与它在那些渴望接受它的人中的珍贵程度成反比。
There’s a reason some particularly grungy horror fans praise the bozo-auteurism of Rob Zombie’s Halloween II (2009) or Lords of Salem (2013) while eye-rolling at the new Ari Aster: the former comes by his wacky indulgences honestly, as a lifelong fright flick freak who legally changed his last name to “Zombie.” Maybe a better term than “elevation” is something like “gentrification.” These films capitalize on the ideas, images, and stock characterizations of the genre, re-present them as slicker and more serious, and peddle them to “savvier” audiences who wouldn’t be caught dead renting a Dimension Extreme DVD, or paging through a dog-eared edition of Fangoria or Famous Monsters of Filmland .
一些特别蹩脚的恐怖片粉丝一边称赞罗布·赞比的《万圣节2》（2009年）或《塞勒姆之王》（2013年）的愚蠢作者论，一边对新版阿里·阿斯特翻白眼，这是有原因的：前者诚实地源于他的古怪放纵，作为一个终生的恐怖片怪胎，他合法地将自己的姓氏改为“僵尸”。也许比“海拔”更好的术语是“绅士化”。这些电影利用了该类型的想法、图像和固有特征，将它们呈现得更圆滑、更严肃，并将它们兜售给“精明”的观众，他们不会因为租一张 Dimension Extreme DVD，或者翻阅卷角版的《Fangoria》或《Famous Monsters of Filmland》而陷入困境。
Elevated horror is not only a non-definition, but one that is negatively defined.
高度恐怖不仅是一种非定义，而且是一种消极定义。
It’s horror that’s not like that other horror.
这是一种与其他恐怖不同的恐怖。
Thankfully, the other horror persists, un-killable.
值得庆幸的是，另一种恐怖仍然存在，无法消灭。
It’s not all lofty elevation nowadays.
如今，这并不全是崇高的海拔。
A countervailing trend has also emerged.
一种相反的趋势也出现了。
Take as an especially gruesome exemplar Damien Leone’s Terrifier films.
以达米安·莱昂内 (Damien Leone) 的恐怖电影为例。
The original, from 2016, was a refreshingly cheapo, and gruesomely violent, Halloween-night slaughter fest.
最初的版本是 2016 年推出的，是一场令人耳目一新的廉价却又极其暴力的万圣节之夜屠杀盛宴。
The series’s villain is giddily cruel psychopath named Art the Clown (who by the time of 2023’s Terrifier 2 acquires some sort of supernatural qualities).
该系列的反派是一个令人眼花缭乱、残酷的精神病患者，名叫“小丑阿特”（到 2023 年的《恐怖片 2》时，他获得了某种超自然的品质）。
Art subjects his luckless victims to a brutal battery of stabbings, slicing, and dismemberments (no spoilers, plus typing them out may get me onto some sort of government watch list).
艺术让他那些不幸的受害者遭受残酷的刺伤、切片和肢解（没有剧透，加上把它们打印出来可能会让我进入某种政府观察名单）。
Indeed, these films are so nasty that early audiences at Terrifier 2 screenings reportedly puked and passed out—the sort of publicity not even A24 or Neon can buy.
事实上，这些电影实在是太恶心了，据报道，早期观看《恐怖分子 2》的观众都呕吐并昏倒了——这种宣传甚至连 A24 或 Neon 都买不到。
Such pulpy panoramas are Terrifier ’s main draw.
这种稀烂的全景是《恐怖者》的主要吸引力。
They are, foremost, showcases for Leone’s hyperrealistic practical effects: puppets, animatronics, and enough prop blood to fill an elevator at the Overlook.
最重要的是，它们展示了莱昂内超现实的实际效果：木偶、电子动画和足够的道具血液来填满瞭望台的电梯。
Leone is a craftsman of the Savini school, and his films exude a handmade, lunchpail quality that is both revulsive and charming.
莱昂内是萨维尼学派的工匠，他的电影散发着手工制作的午餐桶品质，既令人厌恶又迷人。
These films have also found a broad audience of aficionados and sickos.
这些电影也吸引了广大的影迷和病态观众。
Terrifier 2 grossed some $15 million worldwide, against its modest $250,000 budget.
《恐怖分子 2》的全球票房收入约为 1,500 万美元，而预算仅为 25 万美元。
A third entry (set at Christmastime) is due later this year—in time to square off against Eggers’s Count Orlok 2.0.
第三部作品（设定在圣诞节期间）将于今年晚些时候推出——正好与艾格斯的 Count Orlok 2.0 相抗衡。
Many of the directors and distributors strip-mining the horror movie landscape can feel like vampiric tourists sapping the mana of the very movies to which they condescend.
许多对恐怖电影景观进行剥采的导演和发行商感觉就像吸血鬼游客正在消耗他们所欣赏的电影的魔力。
Further north, a crew of Canadian filmmakers scored a recent indie hit with In A Violent Nature , a movie that mocks its snootier, elevated step-siblings.
再往北，一群加拿大电影制片人最近拍摄了一部热门独立电影《暴力的大自然》，这部电影嘲笑了其傲慢、高尚的继兄弟姐妹。
It’s a simple slasher setup: a mentally disabled burn victim named Johnny reawakens in a shallow grave and hunts down a group of young people who have snatched a precious locket.
这是一个简单的恐怖场景：一个名叫约翰尼的智障烧伤受害者在一个浅坟墓中苏醒，并追捕一群抢走了珍贵挂坠盒的年轻人。
What distinguishes the film is style.
这部电影的独特之处在于风格。
Realized with tremendous patience, and even beauty, by writer-director Chris Nash, the film drew facile comparisons to filmmakers like Andrei Tarkovsky, Bela Tarr, the Dardennes brothers, and sundry other practitioners of “slow cinema.” But such “Jason-meets- Journey-to-the-West ” evaluations risk making Nash’s film seem far shtickier than it is.
编剧兼导演克里斯·纳什以极大的耐心甚至是美感完成了这部电影，人们很容易将这部电影与安德烈·塔可夫斯基、贝拉·塔尔、达内兄弟和其他“慢电影”的实践者进行比较。但这种“杰森遇见西游记”的评价可能会让纳什的电影看起来比实际情况要尴尬得多。
In a pan , critic Amy Nicholson grumbled that the film is “just as dumb” as other slasher flicks.
评论家艾米·尼科尔森抱怨说，这部电影“和其他恐怖片一样愚蠢”。
Precisely.
恰恰。
In A Violent Nature thrills not because it subverts shopworn, stock-and-chop tropes of the slasher movie but because it satisfies them.
《暴力自然》之所以令人兴奋，并不是因为它颠覆了恐怖电影中陈旧的、陈旧的、粗暴的比喻，而是因为它满足了他们的需求。
It is a sad comment on the state of the art that a such a film would draw comparisons to all manner of hifalutin arthouse fare simply because its director devised clever setups for his kills and novel ways to frame them.
对于目前的艺术水平来说，这样一部影片会被拿来与各种类型的hifalutin艺术电影进行比较，仅仅因为它的导演为他的杀戮设计了巧妙的设置和新颖的方式来构建它们，这是对现有技术的一个悲伤的评论。
For all its aesthetic gloss, Nash fundamentally understands the genre’s pleasures.
尽管具有美学光泽，纳什从根本上理解了这一流派的乐趣。
The film boasts one of the most stomach-churning, and memorable, offings in horror’s long history.
这部电影是恐怖片悠久历史中最令人反胃、最令人难忘的影片之一。
Nash does not hold himself, or his film, above such dubious delectations or the audience who enjoys them.
纳什并不认为自己或他的电影高于这些可疑的乐趣或喜欢它们的观众。
Here we knock into elevated horror’s biggest insult to the genre.
在这里，我们探讨了高级恐怖对该类型的最大侮辱。
These films cast implicit aspersions on the horror’s baser appeal.
这些电影对恐怖片的低劣吸引力进行了含蓄的诽谤。
And not just the jump scares, gore, and promise of co-eds going full frontal.
不仅仅是跳跃的恐惧、血腥和男女混合的正面攻击的承诺。
In their heavy psychologizing, and insistence upon their sophistication, they take for granted that terror, anxiety, and disgust are insufficient emotional responses.
在他们大量的心理分析和坚持自己的复杂性的过程中，他们理所当然地认为恐惧、焦虑和厌恶是不够的情感反应。
But a truly effective scare or gnarly gross-out is more difficult to put across the screen convincingly than some Psych 101 bunk about grief.
但真正有效的惊吓或粗鄙的恶心比《心理101》中关于悲伤的谎言更难令人信服地在屏幕上呈现。
Elevated horror’s recourse to “the real” diminishes the genre’s power, which has always fed on fear of the fantastic, the unknown, the unreal, and given it form in all the omnifarious creatures, creeps, ghouls, and brutes that go bump in the night.
高度恐怖对“真实”的诉求削弱了这一类型的力量，这种力量一直源于对奇幻、未知、不真实的恐惧，并在夜间出现的所有形形色色的生物、怪物、食尸鬼和野兽中赋予了它形式。
Horror’s ability to terrify is its art.
恐怖的恐怖能力就是它的艺术。
If the chilly response to a film like Longlegs —a film Frankenstein’d in a lab and publicized as a kind of ne plus ultra of every stock elevated horror trend—bespeaks anything positive, it’s the by now total expenditure of the trends themselves.
如果说对像《长腿》这样的电影的冷淡反应——一部在实验室里拍摄的《弗兰肯斯坦》，并被宣传为每只股票上涨的恐怖趋势的一种超强元素——预示着任何积极的事情，那就是趋势本身的总支出。
Elevated, gentrified, white elephant horror has worn out its welcome, won its plaudits, snagged its hardware, and can be sent shuffling off, stage left, as the violins in the orchestra pit spike and play it off, pizzicato, and the spotlight of culture drifts elsewhere.
高贵的、贵族化的、白象恐怖已经不再受欢迎，赢得了喝彩，抢走了它的硬件，可以拖着脚步离开舞台，离开舞台，管弦乐池中的小提琴在拨弦中演奏，文化的聚光灯也转移到别处。
Time now for something baser, gnarlier, and more challenging to gnaw through its polished alabaster bulk, gnawing, clawing, biting, gnashing, termite-like, zombified, slashing and chopping and stabbing and gashing, like a faceless, formless shape that lurks in bushes, stands stiff in shadows outside your window, haunts your dreams, and strangles them into the stuff of nightmares.
现在是时候让一些更卑鄙、更粗糙、更具有挑战性的东西咬穿它光滑的雪花石膏块了，啃、抓、咬、咬，像白蚁一样，僵尸化、砍砍、砍砍、刺伤、割伤，就像潜伏在灌木丛中的一个不露面、无形的形状，僵硬地站在你窗外的阴影里，困扰你的梦，并将它们扼杀在噩梦中。