Head smashing is starting to become a problem in elevated horror, and I don’t know how much further the concept can be explored before it becomes old hat. It’s quickly becoming the new jump scare, as seen in films like Hereditary, Longlegs, and most recently, Weapons.
On one hand, I get it. Watching somebody get their dome caved in with a blunt object is such a visceral way to depict the destruction of a mind on screen that it’s an easy way for filmmakers to get their point across while shocking their audience to the core.
But like jump scares, we start to get desensitized to them. Personally, I’ve had my fill because the sound of gray matter and bone splatting against the floor triggers the same kind of discomfort people pretend to feel when they hear the word “moist.”
Funny enough, the word moist and a smashed head aren’t mutually exclusive.
The Literal Destruction Of A Mind
Peter Graham’s head-smash in Hereditary.
Self-inflicted head-smashing in elevated horror serves a very specific purpose: to show the audience that a character has lost control of their faculties. This happens twice in 2018’s Hereditary.
The first instance involves a nearly catatonic Peter Graham, who starts face-flopping onto his desk and shrieking in the middle of philosophy class. There’s maybe a one-percent chance he took the “punishment brings wisdom” message on the blackboard too literally, or that he was just hungry and protesting the only way he knew how while waiting for the lunch bell. But by this point, the film has already established that the demon Paimon is slowly taking over his being.
Was the head smashing necessary, or could Peter’s mental state have broken down in a less literal way? The most likely reason is set up for the film’s final sequence, when his mother Annie, fully possessed, jackhammers her skull against the attic door in one of the movie’s most jarring sequences.
Longlegs And Weapons
Similar to Peter Graham, Longlegs’ title character meets a more final fate during the interrogation scene, when he reveals that he works for “the man downstairs” before smashing his face into the table until he delivers the fatal, self-inflicted blow. Having been a conduit for a satanic force since the 1970s, Dale Ferdinand Kobble may very well have been freeing himself from the mental torment that hollowed out his mind decades earlier.
I thought Longlegs’ interrogation room sequence was the cinematic peak for head smashing in elevated horror because it was so unnerving that I’m still talking about it. That is, until I saw Weapons. Playing with our fear of the unknown in similar ways, Weapons saves its head-smashing for its third act. This time, it’s not one person slamming against a table, but two heads colliding repeatedly on the kitchen floor until one of them stops screaming.
The Popularization Of Head Smashing
If I had to pinpoint when head-smashing became a go-to plot device, I’d look at The Walking Dead’s Season 7 Premiere, “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be.” This is the episode when Negan kills Abraham and Glenn with his barbed-wire-wrapped Louisville Slugger named Lucille. Not exactly elevated horror, but its impact on audiences was massive.
“The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be” is one of the highest-rated episodes of the series, and Glenn’s grisly end remains one of the most polarizing moments in modern TV horror. I never watched a single episode of The Walking Dead, but I still heard chatter the second the episode aired because of how upsetting it was to its fanbase back in 2016. When I finally looked it up to see for myself, it ruined spaghetti night for a week.
Glenn Finally Gets His Flowers (Sort Of)
Glenn Rhee in happier times on The Walking Dead.
It makes sense that filmmakers would want to chase the same reaction Glenn’s death got. The entire sequence is horrifying and lodged itself into our collective consciousness, one wet splat at a time. Elevated horror thrives on those reactions; head smashing is a reliable way to get them.
I don’t see the trope going away anytime soon. It does too good a job of dropping jaws, even if the effect weakens each time. At some point, it’ll lose its edge, but until then, Glenn, I’m sorry this is what you’re remembered for.
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