Macbeth and Horror Cinema

This chapter establishes that Roman Polanski's Macbeth used the conventions of the horror genre to represent William Shakespeare's play on screen. It considers how Macbeth is placed in the wider historical context of the horror genre itself. It also examines how Macbeth fits with the Folk Horror The Wicker Man (1973) or slasher classic Halloween (1978) and shows how the film is situated within the history of the horror genre. The chapter illustrates how Polanski managed to combine an eleventh-century setting and William Shakespeare's poetic idiom to illustrate some very modern concerns in Macbeth. It analyses how Polanski used William Shakespeare's play to form a critique of contemporary society, exploiting and anticipating an emerging trend in horror of the film as social commentary.