Ariel Powers-Schaub was one of the primary contributions to the online outlet, Ghouls Magazine. Sadly, earlier this year, the website ceased to be, but Powers-Schaub has had plenty to distract her, namely writing her first film analysis book, Millennial Nasties: Analysing a Decade of Brutal Horror Film Violence. The book, which is available via Encyclopocalypse Publications from 17th September, rebrands the term ‘torture porn’ to a more inclusive and accurate descriptor of ‘Millennial Nasty’.
Millennial Nasties is available to preorder now and is a must have for fans of films from the decade. Ahead of the book launch, THN were able to spend some time with the author herself as we delved into the lengthy book-writing process, what it is about noughties horror that speaks to her, and where those new to the era should start their viewing.
When did you realise you were a fan of horror?
I don’t remember a time in my life before being a horror fan. That sounds like a made-up answer, but it’s really true because my parents were horror fans, I have an older brother who was into horror and so I just remember being a little kid when Stephen King books were in the house, and we told scary stories around the campfire. We would watch the Stephen King miniseries that were on TV, because if it’s on TV, it’s appropriate for kids. I don’t remember when I got into horror because I feel like it’s just always been there.
Writing a book can be a daunting prospect; what made you decide to give it a go?
Well it started because I was looking for a book like mine. I’m really interested in 2000’s horror. The reason I started writing anything about horror in the first place is because I was re-watching the Saw franchise a lot during lockdown and I was having some thoughts about it that I wanted to kind of pick at, but I couldn’t find any analysis of it that matched what I was thinking, so I decided just to write my thoughts out. That turned into me writing for Ghouls for three years. During that time I was like, “okay, I can write, I have a lot to say” and I was looking around for deep dives on 2000’s horror and there just aren’t a lot. There are some, and there are some very good ones, in particular Alexandra West’s book about New French Extremity is great. But I was like, “well if this book doesn’t exist yet, maybe I should write it and make it exist.”
How long was the process and at what point did you get involved with your publisher?
I didn’t go to a publisher right away because in the beginning it was almost like a secret test for myself. I was like, “I’m going to try to write a book and see what happens, and if it doesn’t work out, I won’t tell anybody.” Early 2022 I started really thinking what would this look like If I did it. I started thinking about the movies I would want to include, and I just started watching those movies a lot to try to get my thoughts together. Like do I have enough to say? What would I say? Then I started writing in the spring of 2022. I pitched to Encyclopocalypse December of that year. It was maybe one third to one half drafted at the time. I sent them a few sample chapters along with my cover letter to pitch and they said yes to me in early 2023, and then I had to actually finish writing the book. The process took maybe a year of actual writing; researching and getting my thoughts together took another six months, and now I’m spending all of 2024 promoting the book. It feels like it’s been going on for years, but it was maybe like a year of actual writing.
The time it takes is something that people often overlook, like the movies themselves, these things don’t just happen…
No they don’t. It was a lot of me declaring to my husband and the people around me, “okay today is a book day.” I’m grateful that everybody in my life was super supportive. I would just lock myself away. It’d be like a beautiful summer day and I would just be watching horrible movies and writing about them. I would take time off from my day job and just go to the public library and write all day. Then I had to have days where I was like, “I’m not doing any writing today. I’m not thinking about it. I just have to step away.” I really learned a lot because I didn’t have any idea what I was doing when I started.
How have Enclylopocalypse been to work with?
They’ve been really great to work with, really supportive, especially for a first time author. I read all the different kinds of pros and cons of self-publishing versus going with a publisher, and it seems like a lot of people who do self publishing are interested in having complete control over their project, which makes sense. But for me, I felt like I wanted support more than I wanted control, just because I don’t really know what I’m doing. I feel like I kind of do now, but at the time I didn’t. There’s so much with cover art and editing and arranging the format of the book. I can write it, but I needed someone else to help me make it real. What’s been great about working with Encyclopocalypse is that I feel very supported. My decisions are mine to make. They’ll say, “it’s up to you, here are some things we can do, let us know what you want” or if I have a question, they’ll say, “well this is what we advise, but let us know what you decide.” It really feels like I still do have the control that I want over this project, but I also have people who know what they’re doing in my corner. More power to people who self publish because it’s got to be incredible to see the thing through yourself. I just didn’t think the book would exist if that’s what I had to do. I’m also just very lucky that a publisher said yes to me because that wasn’t a guarantee.
Out of all horror cinema, what was it about genre films from the turn of the millennium that spoke to you?
I was a teenager in these years and so a lot of the horror that I had access to was this horror. It’s what came out when I was really interested in going to the cinema with my friends. So some of it just has to do with what do you like when you’re coming of age, but it’s always stuck with me. I really enjoy the ability of these movies to be bleak and gory and nasty, and sometimes almost a hopeless feeling, but they still have a lot to say. That’s kind of the point of what I wanted to make with writing Millennial Nasties – don’t dismiss these films. They have a lot to say. I can watch something that satisfies the gore hound side of my brain, but also gives me a lot to analyse. I think that’s really special.
A lot of the titles that you cover are often referenced by people as being ‘torture porn’. Why do you think that the term Millenial Nasties is a better fit?
Well, I wanted to move away from the term, torture porn. I don’t particularly mind it personally, but it was thrown out to be dismissive. It was never meant to be a compliment or a neutral descriptor. It was meant to be a put-down. I wanted to move away from that. It’s also not comfortable for people to say. The words torture porn together, if you say it, sounds quite unpleasant, especially to someone who’s not a horror fan and doesn’t know what that means. Whereas you can say, I’m a fan of zombie movies and people outside the horror community don’t automatically think that you’re sick for that. Torture porn is not all encompassing, some of the movies in the book have been called torture porn and I understand why, but there’s also a movies from around this time that just sort of get left out of the conversation because they’re not torture porn, but they’re not something else. So Millennial Nasties, I think is a more encompassing, a more neutral to positive term that isn’t embarrassing to say. I was doing a lot of brainstorming on what did I want the term to be and when thinking about it, I thought about the video nasty era and that is another set of films where yes, they were quite shocking, some of them were quite gory and bleak, but a lot of them had a lot to say and came out of a tumultuous time period where filmmakers were reacting to things going on in the world much like Millennial Nasties. I thought, “can I take the video nasty term and update it for this time period and it just kind of clicked.
Films such as Saw are also given this name when the first film is much more of a police procedural with a smattering more blood; due to the reputation, some people stay away from them. Were there any films that prior to writing you had shied away from only to realise that they’d been unfairly tarnished too?
If anything it was the opposite. Some of these movies I hadn’t watched in a while, and when I went back to revisit them I was like, “oh this is a lot less gory or violent then I thought.” I hadn’t shied away from anything. I think just because that’s my taste, but more so at the end of the day, I was like, there’s a few movies in the book that really can gross me out or make me look away, but not most of them.
Which films did you find easiest or hardest to write about?
So sort of not ironically, but interestingly, I found the Saw chapters really hard to write. I think it’s just because I’ve spent so much time with that franchise, I’m too close to it. In 2023 I think I talked about the Saw franchise for 40 hours across different podcasts; it was a week of work. So when I sat down to write about it I was like, “I have to get this right. This is my book. This is my definitive take on the Saw franchise.” I wrote it last because I was so nervous about it. It was fine once I started, but I was really nervous to get started. I found the chapters, ‘Punish the Bitches’, where I cover Black Christmas and Sorority Row remakes, and ‘Single Trapped Female’, where I cover P2 and Captivity, I found really easy to write. I think especially with a feminist lens, it’s really easy to have a lot of takes on those movies. They’re just rich for analysis of the way men treat women, and the things that women have to put up with. With those I had to stop myself from writing too much about them and keep it concise, make my point and move on.
For those that have avoided the sub-genre, what’s your recommended Millennial Nasties starter pack?
Definitely the first Saw movie because like you said, it’s placed atop the torture porn pedestal, but it’s really really not that. It’s not very bleak, it has cross-genre appeal. I would say dipping into the Final Destination franchise is another good place to start. Those actually look a lot more like the slashers of the late 90s with their glossy feel, but they really are quite bleak and gross and gory when you think about it, but there’s not as much on the screen. If you wanted to push yourself a little bit more, I would say Hostel or Hostel 2. I actually like Hostel 2 better. I would say check out at least a couple of the remakes like The Texas Chain Saw remake and The Hills Have Eyes. Whatever you think about the original films or the remakes, I think it’s very interesting that those two remakes in particular updated video nasties for a new generation, and both of those films oddly took out some cannibalism in the remakes. I would say if you’re going into any of these films completely not knowing what’s going on, maybe read content warnings, because there’s some nasty stuff in some of them.
Do you have any advice for aspiring book writers?
Yes I do, and it sounds a little cheesy, but it is honest. Nobody approached me and asked me to write this book. I just decided to do it and that’s what I had to do. I’m not saying that that was easy, but to be a writer you have to write. That meant carving out time in my life to decide to do it to actually get it done and then to see what happened from there. If you want to write a book, you have to be the one to decide. Unless you are already a famous author, nobody’s going to clamour for you to do that, you just have to do it. I think you should read about all the different pros and cons of self-publishing versus going with a publisher to decide what you think might be right for you. Talk to other authors that you know. I got so much valuable advice from other authors who gave me a boost.
What are your plans going forward? Is there going to be a second book?
I would love to write another book. I have a couple ideas, nothing that is fully fleshed out yet in my head. I think I want to stay in the 2000s for a while. I just really feel at home in that decade and there are some movies that I didn’t include in this book because they weren’t quite Millennial Nasties, but they were something else, and I think I want to explore what that something else is.
Millennial Nasties is available to pre-order now. For more information head here.
