Have many modern filmmakers fallen out of love with plot?

Posted On January 23, 2025January 23, 2025

When David Fincher‘s seminal serial killer masterpiece Seven was recently re-released in 4K, I made a point to make the pilgrimage to my local IMAX cinema to watch his nihilistic tale on the biggest screen imaginable. Naturally, it was terrific, and Fincher’s insanely influential vision played beautifully on the immersive platform. As I watched the film unfurl, though, one thought kept repeating: “Man, this is such a great script”.

Andrew Kevin Walker’s screenplay, which was written when he moved from Pennsylvania to New York for the first time and experienced the extreme culture shock of a big city, has it all: great characters, a setting that feels like a character in and of itself, a true point of view, and a tone of dread that just won’t quit. The thing that stood out the most to me about it, though, was how expertly the plot is doled out to the audience and how the many twists and turns were still satisfying even when I knew they were coming.

Walker and Fincher spend a significant amount of Seven’s runtime establishing the cinematic atmosphere and making the audience care about its characters, but they also never forget that the investigation into John Doe’s sadistic killings needs to have momentum. It’s not precisely crackerjack plotting with unassailable logic, but it is always intriguing, exciting, and illuminating, and that propels the film toward its memorably bleak ending.

Why am I so hung up on the plotting of Seven, though? Well, because watching it again made me think about how plots like this are so rare in cinema today. Take, for example, Oz Perkins’ 2023 horror thriller Longlegs, the creation of which Perkins himself admitted was inspired by The Silence of the Lambs. That all-conquering 1991 thriller, based on a gruesome airport novel by Thomas Harris, also boasts an incredible screenplay by Ted Tally – one with a plot that ticks over like a Swiss watch. Lambs, like Seven, also has great characters and atmosphere for days, but these are married to a plot that keeps the audience invested for the entire runtime.

Longlegs, on the other hand, felt indicative of many modern movies that prioritise style and atmosphere over everything else. It’s undoubtedly an effectively frightening movie at times, and Perkins creates several scenes dripping in suspense. The story unpacks generational family trauma in interesting ways, and Nicolas Cage is memorably batshit as the titular Satan-worshipping dollmaker. However, here’s the problem I had with Longlegs: Perkins clearly didn’t care all that much about the plot, and it showed. It meant the movie had very little momentum from scene to scene, and when it was finished, I felt somewhat empty.

For a film that was pitched as a successor to 1990s serial killer films like Seven and Lambs, it displayed very little interest in the investigation spearheaded by Maika Monroe’s FBI agent. In fact, early in the movie, it’s revealed that she has a psychic connection to Longlegs, and that’s how she knows where to go next in her case. Is this Perkins’ way of subverting the genre by adding a supernatural element, or could he simply not be bothered to write a proper mystery? The answer is likely ‘a little of column A, a little of column B’.

In truth, Perkins was open and honest in interviews, saying that he mainly used the serial killer thriller tropes as a Trojan horse to get audiences interested in his story. “The Silence of the Lambs stuff, it’s like your admission ticket,” he told IGN. “It gets you through the door. It’s like a vampire. Once a vampire crosses the threshold, then anything’s fair game at that point.” That’s fair enough, in theory, and I’m sure lots of people embraced Longlegs for what it was. However, I couldn’t help feeling disappointed.

To me, lots of modern films, especially in the thriller and horror genres, play predominantly like tone poems. Sometimes, that’s just what the doctor ordered, but sometimes, it leaves me wanting more meat on the bones of the plot. If a film’s story is defined as encompassing the characters, themes, and setting, then a film like Longlegs would score highly. Plot, however, is generally defined as the sequence of events in a story and why they’re happening – I can’t help feeling like many modern filmmakers have fallen out of love with the idea of putting time and effort into these plots.

As Julia Donaldson conclusively declared in her BBC Maestro course, “I find a lot of people look down on plot as something a bit mechanical. But actually, plot is incredibly important.” Hopefully, there are more filmmakers out there who feel like she does, and plot can be shown some love again.

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