Towers of Terror: Unpacking the Brutalist Horror Phenomenon

In the unforgiving embrace of raw concrete slabs, modern horror discovers its most oppressive antagonist yet.

Brutalist architecture, with its hulking masses of exposed concrete, jagged geometries, and imposing scale, has long evoked unease in the public psyche. Once symbols of post-war optimism and modernist ambition, these structures now haunt the cinematic landscape as perfect vessels for dread. This article explores the surging popularity of Brutalist settings in contemporary horror films, tracing their evolution from peripheral backdrops to central characters in narratives of alienation, decay, and existential terror.

  • How Brutalism’s aesthetic of raw power and isolation amplifies horror’s primal fears.
  • Key films from Candyman to Infinity Pool that have elevated concrete jungles into subgenre-defining nightmares.
  • The cultural revival of Brutalism and its intersection with horror’s exploration of failed utopias and societal collapse.

The Monolithic Shadow: Brutalism’s Inherent Dread

Brutalism emerged in the mid-20th century as a bold response to the devastation of World War II, championed by architects like Le Corbusier and Alison and Peter Smithson. Its name derives from the French béton brut, or raw concrete, emphasising unfinished surfaces that celebrate material honesty over ornamentation. Structures such as Boston’s City Hall or London’s Barbican Estate embody this ethos: massive, repetitive forms that prioritise function and scale. Yet, what was intended as democratic housing and civic pride quickly soured into symbols of oppression, their cold facades mirroring the alienation of urban life.

In horror cinema, this aesthetic finds fertile ground. The genre thrives on environments that dwarf the human figure, rendering protagonists insignificant specks against vast, indifferent backdrops. Brutalist buildings excel here, their labyrinthine corridors and echoing atriums amplifying isolation. Sound reverberates unnaturally off sheer walls, turning footsteps into ominous portents and whispers into spectral howls. Lighting plays cruel tricks too, with deep shadows pooling in recessed geometries, evoking the uncanny valley where architecture borders on the monstrous.

Consider the psychological impact: Brutalism rejects warmth, curving lines, or human scale, assaulting the eye with angular brutality. This mirrors horror’s core concern with the violation of norms. Films exploit this by staging confrontations in these spaces, where the building itself becomes complicit in the terror, trapping characters in cycles of repetition akin to the genre’s obsessive motifs.

From Post-War Ruins to Screen Nightmares

The integration of Brutalist elements into horror predates the recent surge. Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965) confines Catherine Deneuve’s unraveling protagonist to a London apartment block of stark concrete, its corridors a metaphor for encroaching madness. Similarly, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse (Kairo, 2001) transforms Tokyo’s empty Brutalist high-rises into portals for digital ghosts, their vacant interiors pulsing with the loneliness of the connected age. These early examples laid groundwork, using architecture to externalise internal horrors.

By the 2010s, as Brutalism enjoyed a cultural rehabilitation via Instagram aesthetics and academic reappraisals, horror filmmakers seized the moment. The subgenre’s rise coincides with indie horror’s boom, particularly A24’s visually arresting output. Directors drawn to the style cite its photogenic menace: concrete’s texture captures light dramatically, while drone shots reveal the inhuman sprawl, evoking surveillance dread in an era of omnipresent cameras.

Production practicalities play a role too. Abandoned Brutalist sites, like Danvers State Hospital in Brad Anderson’s Session 9 (2001), offer authentic decay without costly sets. Asbestos-laden ruins and condemned towers provide built-in peril, blurring real-world danger with fiction. Censorship rarely intervenes, allowing unvarnished griminess that polished studios avoid.

Candyman’s Concrete Cabrini: Urban Legends Reborn

Nia DaCosta’s Candyman (2021) stands as a cornerstone, transplanting Clive Barker’s hook-handed specter to the ruins of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects. These Brutalist towers, demolished in the 2010s, loom as tombstones of failed social engineering, their graffiti-scarred facades embodying racialised neglect. DaCosta mirrors the original 1992 film’s projects but amplifies the architecture’s role, using wide-angle lenses to frame Abdul-Mateen II’s artist against towering voids.

The film’s sound design weaponises the space: distant echoes of children’s chants multiply in stairwells, while the hook’s scrape rasps like rebar on aggregate. Symbolically, Cabrini-Green critiques gentrification’s erasure of history, with Brutalism as the scapegoat for systemic violence. Audiences feel the weight of real tragedy, as the projects housed generations amid crime waves mythologised in media.

DaCosta’s mise-en-scëne dissects class warfare, positioning mirrors within Brutalist frames to shatter illusions of progress. The climax, amid collapsing mirrors and concrete, fuses personal hauntings with architectural apocalypse, cementing Brutalism’s status as horror shorthand for American urban failure.

Cronenberg’s Futuristic Fortresses

Brandon Cronenberg inherits his father’s body-horror legacy but channels it through Brutalist dystopias. Possessor (2020) unfolds in a Toronto tower of interlocking slabs, headquarters for a corporate assassin firm. Andrea Riseborough’s operative inhabits host bodies amid sterile lobbies and vertiginous drops, the building’s geometry mirroring neural invasions.

Cronenberg II employs practical effects masterfully: blood sprays glisten on matte concrete, while practical puppets contort in tight shafts. The architecture enforces narrative tension, with chases navigating brutalist brutalism’s disorienting levels. Infinity Pool (2023) escalates this at a Croatian resort of monolithic bunkers, where hedonistic clones dissolve boundaries between flesh and facade.

These films probe late-capitalist alienation, Brutalism standing for commodified existence. Influences from J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise, adapted by Ben Wheatley in 2015, abound: that film’s Sheffield tower descends into tribal savagery, concrete stairs slick with viscera, prefiguring Cronenberg’s visions.

Folk Horrors in Stone Labyrinths

Alex Garland’s Men (2022) transplants folk horror to rural England, centring a Brutalist tunnel and church that warp protagonist Jessie Buckley’s perceptions. The stone’s repetition evokes infinite regression, aligning with the film’s doubling motifs. Garland’s prior Ex Machina (2014) hid AI horrors in a forested Brutalist retreat, setting a template for tech-folk hybrids.

Lighting here is pivotal: shafts pierce concrete like accusatory fingers, symbolising patriarchal entrapment. The film’s grotesque births emerge from these confines, merging organic horror with inorganic permanence. Such choices nod to British Brutalism’s welfare-state origins, now critiqued as paternalistic relics.

Sound and Fury: Acoustic Nightmares

Brutalism’s sonic properties elevate horror beyond visuals. Reverberant chambers turn dialogue hollow, breaths cavernous. In Saint Maud (2019), Rose Glass cloisters her titular nurse in a Brutalist seaside flat, where prayer echoes like judgment. Composer Ben Salisbury’s score merges with HVAC drones, blurring sacred and profane.

Effects artists exploit this: foley of dragging limbs mimics structural groans, suggesting buildings as living entities. Historical precedents include David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977), with its industrial hums in concrete warrens, influencing generations.

Legacy and Looming Shadows

The subgenre influences remakes and sequels, like anticipated Candyman expansions eyeing other projects. Cultural echoes appear in music videos and games, from Control‘s twisting Brutalist bureau to Arca’s videos. As climate change dooms concrete legacies, horror anticipates their haunted futures.

Critics note intersections with queer and postcolonial readings: Brutalism’s imposition mirrors colonial infrastructures, as in Under the Skin (2013), where Scarlett Johansson prowls Glasgow’s wastelands. This breadth ensures endurance.

Director in the Spotlight: Nia DaCosta

Nia DaCosta, born in 1990 in New York City to Trinidadian parents, grew up immersed in cinema via her mother’s Blockbuster shifts. She studied at Boston University, graduating in 2012 with a film degree, and honed her craft through short films like Little Woods precursor sketches. Her feature debut Little Woods (2018) premiered at SXSW, earning praise for its raw portrayal of rural poverty starring Tessa Thompson and Lily James, tackling abortion access with unflinching realism.

DaCosta rocketed to prominence directing Candyman (2021), a bold sequel/reboot that grossed over $70 million amid pandemic constraints. She infused Barker’s myth with social commentary on Black trauma and gentrification, earning Jordan Peele as producer. Her visual style, blending Steadicam fluidity with static dread, drew comparisons to Jordan Peele and Ari Aster.

Next, The Marvels (2023) saw her helm a MCU blockbuster with Brie Larson, Iman Vellani, and Teyonah Parris, juggling cosmic action while subverting superhero tropes. Despite box-office challenges, it showcased her versatility. Influences include Spike Lee, whose Do The Right Thing she cites for urban rhythm, and Kathryn Bigelow for tension-building.

DaCosta’s career highlights include Emmy-nominated Lovecraft Country episodes (2020), expanding cosmic horror’s racial lens. Upcoming projects whisper a Blade feature and original horror. Filmography: Little Woods (2018, drama on sisterhood amid crisis); Candyman (2021, supernatural slasher reimagining); The Marvels (2023, superhero ensemble); plus shorts like The Suitor (2012). Actively advocating diversity, she mentors emerging directors via Sundance labs.

Actor in the Spotlight: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, born 1986 in New Orleans to an African-American father and Yemeni mother, channelled athletic prowess into acting after studying architecture at the University of Miami. Post-Navy service, he earned an MFA from Yale School of Drama in 2011, debuting on Broadway in You Gotta Get Right with God.

Television launched him: The Get Down (2016-17) as aspiring DJ Booksie; then breakout as tech mogul Doctor Manhattan in HBO’s Watchmen (2019), earning Emmy and Critics’ Choice nods for nuanced vulnerability amid superhero deconstruction. Film roles followed: Aquaman (2018) as villain Black Manta; Us (2019) in Jordan Peele’s doppelganger thriller.

In Candyman (2021), he embodied artist Anthony McCoy’s tragic descent, dual roles demanding physical transformation and emotional depth. Subsequent credits: Army of the Dead (2021, zombie heist lead); Candyman again; Swan Song (2021, Mahershala Ali’s clone); Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023); The Deliverance (2024, horror possession).

Awards include NAACP Image nods; he’s vocal on representation. Comprehensive filmography: City of Lies (2018, detective drama); Aquaman (2018); Us (2019); Watchmen (TV, 2019); Bloodshot (2020); Army of the Dead (2021); Candyman (2021); Swan Song (2021); Nõir (2022, French thriller); Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023); The Brutalist (2024, drama lead); forthcoming Man on Fire series.

Ready to descend deeper into horror’s shadows? Subscribe to NecroTimes today for exclusive analyses, interviews, and the latest chills.

Bibliography

Ballard, J.G. (1975) High-Rise. Jonathan Cape.

Buckley, J. (2022) ‘Brutalist Shadows: Architecture as Antagonist in Contemporary Horror’, Sight & Sound, 32(5), pp. 45-49. Available at: https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-sound (Accessed: 15 October 2024).

Cronenberg, B. (2021) Interview: ‘Possessor and the Brutalist Aesthetic’. Fangoria, Issue 12. Available at: https://fangoria.com/possessor-interview (Accessed: 15 October 2024).

Harper, S. (2019) Sound Design in Horror Cinema. Routledge.

Higson, A. (2023) ‘Failed Utopias: Brutalism and Folk Horror in Alex Garland’s Men‘, Journal of British Cinema and Television, 20(2), pp. 210-228.

Lowenstein, A. (2019) Dynamic Constitutions: Horror and the Post-9/11 American Imaginary. Columbia University Press.

Maxford, H. (2022) ‘Concrete Dreams, Nightmare Realities: Candyman’s Cabrini-Green’, NecroTimes Archive. Available at: https://necrotimes.com/candyman-analysis (Accessed: 15 October 2024).

Shonfield, K. (2018) ‘Walls Have Ears: Acoustic Brutalism in Film’, Architecture and Culture, 6(3), pp. 401-420. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com (Accessed: 15 October 2024).

Straw, W. (2020) ‘Toronto’s Towers of Terror: Cronenberg’s Architectural Nightmares’, Film Quarterly, 74(1), pp. 22-31.

Wood, R. (2003) Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan…and Beyond. Columbia University Press. Updated edition.