‘The Hateful Eight’ May Not Have Intended to Be a Horror Movie, But It Was

The Big Picture

• The Hateful Eight has an inherently terrifying premise, with evil characters trapped in a confined space, resulting in intense and unsettling moments.
• The film pays homage to the horror classic The Thing, with similarities in the isolated setting, constant distrust, and tension among the characters.
• The level of violence in The Hateful Eight exceeds many horror movies, with brutal and bloody scenes that make it a suspenseful and disturbing viewing experience.

Movies that are intended to be one thing but come across as something else entirely are always interesting to watch and analyze. This is perhaps clearest when it comes to the idea of so-bad-they’re-good movies, which are generally supposed to be taken seriously, only for viewers to find the films work better when seen as accidental comedies. Unintentional horror movies can also cross over with so-bad-they’re-good films, given something like The Polar Express or Cats – for two examples – weren’t supposed to be frightening, but kind of were, thanks to their undeniable uncanniness. But what of movies that are intended to work as one genre, and do function within such confines, but also happen to be frightening enough to function as works of horror as well? One only needs to turn one’s eye to Quentin Tarantino, who’s never made a full-fledged horror movie, yet showed himself entirely capable of making one, given how tense and unnerving his 2015 Western The Hateful Eight is.

Crossing over into various genres like many Quentin Tarantino films tend to do, The Hateful Eight is a particularly chilly and cold-blooded Western that’s both darkly funny and remarkably intense. The premise sees a group of characters confined to a single location, and as the title implies, they’re not good people (“hateful” is an understatement, for the majority of them). In various ways, Tarantino homages one of the greatest horror movies of all time, John Carpenter’s The Thing, and pits these rather ruthless characters against each other after trapping them, at which point grisly violence seems inevitable. And when The Hateful Eight wants to let loose with blood and gore, it’s able to rival even the messiest of splatter films. It might not be enough to label the film as a straight horror movie, but there are enough elements here to ensure The Hateful Eight can deliver some of the same feelings one might get from watching a more traditional scary movie. That it can do this without being an example of a so-bad-it’s-good movie is indeed worth celebrating.

‘The Hateful Eight’ Has an Inherently Terrifying Premise

In 2012, Quentin Tarantino released the excellent Django Unchained, which was a remarkably violent Western, sure, but ultimately less persistently tense. It was also a film that had a revenge-focused storyline, and characters one could root for. The premise in The Hateful Eight provides few opportunities for traditional cinematic catharsis, and though there is conflict with clear villains (eventually), it’s more a case where evil people are pitted against slightly less evil people. That being said, it does take a little while for things to get properly horrific and gory. The film opens with two bounty hunters crossing paths and sharing a tense stagecoach ride. One of them, played by Samuel L. Jackson, has various corpses he needs to take into town to collect the bounty money, while the other, played by Kurt Russell, takes pride in always bringing the criminals he goes after alive. This doesn’t make him any less ruthless, however. He’s shown to treat the fugitive, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), he’s handcuffed himself to rather terribly. Right from the beginning, though, viewers will probably catch on that she’s not going down without a fight, and more than earns the right to be considered one of the members of the titular hateful eight.

Tarantino pulls no punches in exploring racial tension and depicting violence against women during these opening scenes, but things get far more confronting later on. Though the cabin the traveling party (that also picks up a supposed sheriff played by Walton Goggins) eventually takes shelter in isn’t as confined as the stagecoach, it’s one where tensions are even higher. Furthermore, the possibility of getting out is non-existent, thanks to a brutal blizzard that’s just rolled in. There are four additional men already at the cabin (Demián Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and Bruce Dern), which brings the total number of shady characters to eight. For a little while, the cabin does technically have nine inhabitants, owing to the stagecoach’s driver (James Parks) being there, but he doesn’t seem too hateful, all things considered, and kind of gets caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. The four already at the cabin seem to be suspicious in their own ways, there’s tension due to different inhabitants being on different sides of the recently concluded Civil War, and then once the bodies start hitting the floor, things get particularly intense and disquieting.

There Are Numerous Shout-Outs to Horror Classic ‘The Thing’ in ‘The Hateful Eight’

The fact that The Hateful Eight has some similarities to The Thing when it comes to its premise and primary setting didn’t seem to be lost on Tarantino. Though that 1982 film combines horror and science fiction and doesn’t have any Western elements, it does have a set-up that involves all of its main characters being confined to one location. In both films, that isolated setting is one where the characters have to deal with freezing cold weather, as in The Thing, the lead characters are all researchers who are situated in Antarctica. In that film, it’s paranoia on the part of one character that makes escape or contact with outside individuals impossible. Then, in both The Hateful Eight and The Thing, there is constant distrust and tension, given no one can be trusted to say who they really are. The characters in The Hateful Eight generally hold their cards close to their chests, and many seem to be planning something nefarious, while in The Thing, characters are gradually assimilated by an alien life form that can mimic human beings and other creatures almost perfectly.

Some more direct connections were unlikely to be coincidental. Sure, Quentin Tarantino had worked with Kurt Russell before, for 2007’s Death Proof, but Russell was also the star of The Thing, and so perhaps having him play a lead role here was a reference of sorts. Then there’s also the fact that Ennio Morricone (best known for his collaborations with Sergio Leone) composed the score for The Thing as well as for The Hateful Eight. One could argue Morricone’s involvement might’ve had more to do with the fact that his Western scores are legendary, or because Tarantino himself was a huge fan (and had used Morricone’s previous music before), but the connection goes further. Some of the music for The Hateful Eight was made up of pieces Ennio Morricone had originally written for The Thing, so the spirit of that film lives on in The Hateful Eight in that way, too. There are certainly connections between one of the most legendary horror movies of the 1980s and The Hateful Eight, and, knowing Tarantino and his tendency to reference older movies, it’s unlikely many of these similarities were unintentional.

The Hateful Characters of ‘The Hateful Eight’ Make Things Extra Intense and Unpleasant

The Hateful Eight might not have a killer shape-shifting alien at its center like The Thing, but it arguably has something worse: a cast filled with various nasty characters. Those who are introduced before the film gets to the cabin (which does take a while) are no angels, and those inside already are arguably worse. Samuel L. Jackson’s Major Marquis Warren is probably the closest one to likable, at least at first, though he’s responsible for the first death of the movie. Whether he did the heinous act he describes in detail or not, he did want Bruce Dern’s General Sanford Smithers to draw his gun on him, thereby giving him a reason to shoot him dead. It’s hard to shed tears for Smithers, given what the audience learns about him and his racist attitudes, but the commotion caused does allow someone to poison a pot of coffee. This leads to the deaths of Kurt Russell’s character (also not a great guy, but perhaps not the most evil) and of the stagecoach driver, O.B. Jackson.

From there, The Hateful Eight becomes like a truly ruthless whodunnit, and of the six remaining, four end up being in cahoots (and there’s an extra villain, played by Channing Tatum, waiting in the cellar). From there, Jackson’s and Goggins’ characters become the most likable, especially since the others are shown in flashback to murder the various other people who work at the isolated cabin (none of whom seemed to be hateful, it has to be said). Nothing looks certain for them, though, and whether they’re trying to figure out who poisoned the coffee or blast the others to death before they get blasted down, it’s always either intense or horrifically violent. There might not be demons keeping the main characters trapped, like is the case with The Evil Dead and other “cabin in the woods” type horror movies, but murderous criminals and deathly cold weather prove terrifying in their own ways. In The Hateful Eight, both the level of tension and the body count are remarkably high.

The Level of Violence in ‘The Hateful Eight’ Goes Further Than Many Horror Movies

Quentin Tarantino’s no stranger to violence, but even those who’ve survived his past movies might find the level of bloodshed in The Hateful Eight to be alarming. It’s safe to call it one of the most brutal and bloody Westerns of all time, and the length of the film, as well as the way it draws things out for maximum tension, ensures the violence hits extra hard when the deaths start coming (and they don’t stop coming). Dern’s character dies a fairly clean death early on, but the poisoned coffee mentioned before? It makes those unlucky enough to drink it vomit almost comical levels of blood, and after that point, all bets are off. When people get shot – and many do – there are explosions of blood with every bullet that hits its target. Those characters who don’t die straight away end up drenched in blood, and it’s difficult to find a shot in the last half-hour of the movie that doesn’t contain at least a little bit of visible blood. It’s like Reservoir Dogs, but instead of just Tim Roth bleeding out for most of the final act, it’s everyone (including Tim Roth again!) bleeding out for much of the final act.

Of course, horror movies don’t have to be violent to be scary, or even to be classified as horror movies, but it is a genre that’s known for getting grisly fairly often. The level of immense bloodshed, which exceeds certain Tarantino movies in the past, is another thing that gives The Hateful Eight a horror feel. Gore and confined spaces were combined to expert effect in the aforementioned horror movies like The Thing and The Evil Dead, and The Hateful Eight isn’t afraid to provide a similar viewing experience at times to the former. Add to that an unpredictable narrative, constant paranoia, and genuinely evil characters, and you’ve got the recipe for something surprisingly terrifying. The Hateful Eight might not be a full-blooded work of horror, but its level of bloodshed is full-on, and it’s plenty suspenseful, disturbing, and unsettling. For those who’ve already seen the confronting Bone Tomahawk and want another Western to scratch that horror itch, The Hateful Eight is a solid pick.

The Hateful Eight can be streamed on Netflix.

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