AJA AND MARSHALL: THE ODD (EUROPEAN) MEN OUT

Amid the celeb–auteur presence of Eli Roth, the rock-star persona of Rob Zombie and the seemingly endless stream of Saw media products, two names that seem to get drowned out in the Splat Pack clamour are Alexandre Aja and Neil Marshall. Ironically, Aja and Marshall loomed large in Jones's original article about hot young horror directors, with just as much ink devoted to Aja's and Marshall's observations on horror and its relationship to the current historical moment as to Roth's and Zombie's. When the term ‘Splat Pack’ migrated to the United States, however, Aja and Marshall seemed to fade into the background. Their films would be mentioned alongside Roth's and Zombie's films and the Saw movies but rarely would much attention be lavished on Aja and Marshall by interviewers or reporters. One possible reason Aja and Marshall may have become lost in the shuffle when Splat Pack articles began to emerge in the United States is that they were non-American members of the Splat Pack, with Aja hailing from France and Marshall from Scotland. While Wan and Whannell were from Australia, perhaps the financial success of the Saw films made the two seem more ‘home-grown’ than Aja and Marshall, whose lower-grossing films could be quite challenging.

Their European origins are not the only similarity that Aja and Marshall share. In Jones's article, both film-makers profess an admiration for hardhitting, survivalist horror films of the past, from Craven's Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes to Peckinpah's Straw Dogs and Boorman's Deliverance. Accordingly, both of their breakthrough films – Aja's Haute Tension (released in France in 2003 and in the United States as High Tension in 2005) and Marshall's The Descent (released in Britain in 2005 and in the United States in 2006) – are metacinematic exercises in horror film-making.

Aja's and Marshall's allusion-heavy films have made them darlings of more film-literate, ‘hardcore’ horror fans, a group of fans who have not necessarily embraced the rest of the Splat Pack. Indeed, while Roth and Zombie have gained more mainstream attention and the Saw films have made more money, their success has caused them to be held in less esteem than film-makers such as Aja and Marshall.