"I never thought I was doing the same thing as directors like John Carpenter, George Romero, and sometimes even Hitchcock, even though I've been sometimes compared to those other guys. We're after different game"
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Cronenberg’s refusal to join the Carpenter-Romero-Hitchcock lineage is less modesty than boundary-setting. He’s not denying influence so much as rejecting the critical habit of filing directors into neat genre drawers: horror guy, suspense guy, exploitation guy. Those comparisons are tempting because they share surface DNA - shocks, dread, bodies under threat. Cronenberg’s point is that the surface is the least interesting part.
Carpenter and Romero use horror as a social alarm system: paranoia, consumerism, the collapse of civic trust. Hitchcock engineers anxiety with clockwork control, turning the audience into accomplices to their own nerves. Cronenberg, especially in his peak “body horror” run, isn’t primarily after fear or suspense. He’s after destabilization. The body becomes a philosophical argument: technology, sex, disease, and identity melting into each other until “normal” stops being a stable category. His monsters aren’t intruders; they’re developments.
The slightly awkward phrasing - “We’re after different game” - reads like a tell. He’s talking like someone tired of being explained by other people’s maps. Critics often treat genre as a ladder of seriousness: Hitchcock at the top, splatter at the bottom, and anyone weird in the middle gets measured by proximity to prestige. Cronenberg swats that away. The subtext is control over authorship: don’t compare my moves; look at my target. In a culture that loves brand-name lineage, he insists on intent as the real differentiator.
Carpenter and Romero use horror as a social alarm system: paranoia, consumerism, the collapse of civic trust. Hitchcock engineers anxiety with clockwork control, turning the audience into accomplices to their own nerves. Cronenberg, especially in his peak “body horror” run, isn’t primarily after fear or suspense. He’s after destabilization. The body becomes a philosophical argument: technology, sex, disease, and identity melting into each other until “normal” stops being a stable category. His monsters aren’t intruders; they’re developments.
The slightly awkward phrasing - “We’re after different game” - reads like a tell. He’s talking like someone tired of being explained by other people’s maps. Critics often treat genre as a ladder of seriousness: Hitchcock at the top, splatter at the bottom, and anyone weird in the middle gets measured by proximity to prestige. Cronenberg swats that away. The subtext is control over authorship: don’t compare my moves; look at my target. In a culture that loves brand-name lineage, he insists on intent as the real differentiator.
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