When it comes to creating horror scenarios, statesmen and -women have always out-classed the creators of fiction. Now they’ve done it once again. As in some clichéd movie script, you go to bed one night to find the next day that the world has irreparably changed. Human rights are now “privileges.” People are not considered fellow human individuals but state-owned virus-transmitters. Soon a new passport could reconstruct and reshape an underclass defined by lack of an immunity which scientists can’t even confirm. Lockdown may well last forever. At least for those disadvantaged by one of the most momentous accelerators of systemic injustice ever. No matter how much you love horror, you don’t want to live it. Still, there are examples of filmic horror conveying some of the radically changed parameters of an utterly frightening reality. Their often perplexing plots, themes and systemic critique can help reassess an unhinged present, providing reflections on and analogues for the mechanisms of a new “normal” which is anything but.
