Molly Willis is a UK-based singer-songwriter who has spent the last six years transforming the madness and isolation of the early 2020s into her dreamy, horror-inspired debut album.
Horror Movie, an indie-rock and dreampop record that evokes Julee Cruise, Lana Del Rey and Marianne Faithfull, has been an intensive deep-dive into the history and philosophy of the horror genre, and an act of emotional alchemy distilling bipolar disorder and psychosis into something that feels appropriately wide-ranging yet cohesive.
“I confess I wasn’t a big horror nerd before I wrote this album, but after I’d written the title track, I realised I had the beginnings of an album. I spent the next several years educating myself on horror—I did mega-binges of 25 movies in a weekend sometimes, watching giallo, Hammer Horror, 90s slashers, 50s B-movies, and trippy, queer vampire movies from the 70s.”
“The track listing is designed to take you from the edges of the story right into the centre. People with psychosis can seem really normal at first. It starts with a crush, then it descends into something much darker going on. I’m very conscious that I’ve portrayed myself as the villain of my own story, and making this album has been a reckoning with the ways in which I contribute to my own disorder.”
We asked Molly to do an in depth track by track breakdown of Horror Movie for us. Read it below.
Groovy
The album opens with ‘Groovy’—a “psychedelic doo-wop ballad” about wanting someone you know you can’t have, but deciding to enjoy the fantasy of them anyway. ‘Groovy’ is romance with self-awareness. Crushes often come layered with shame, or with a feeling that you don’t have a right to feel the way you do, but here, the desire and fantasy is laid out un-selfconsciously, with several nods to the unreality of it all.
You’ve Been On My Mind
‘You’ve Been On My Mind’—produced almost entirely by Willis herself—arrives as a confession. The stripped-back production, consisting only of synths, some jazzy inversions on electric guitar and layered harmonies as the main vocal is deeply evocative of Lynchian soundtracks and Julee Cruise’s seminal Floating Into The Night. It carries the dreaminess of the opener, with a quieter vulnerability.
In theory, the story could’ve ended here. The truth has been spoken. But, as the album unfolds, it becomes clear that the romance and the fantasy are a red herring. The person who’s been on the narrator’s mind is just a distraction.
Hypocentre
‘Hypocentre’ represents a sharp left turn in the album. The listener has been lured into a false sense of security with soft, dreamy production and here, the alternative, desert rock sound leaps into the world of Horror Movie. Here, the lyrical content shifts to darker, more self-destructive material.
“I’m getting bored now, entertain me” is snarled at the listener, before the chorus talks of “never feeling better” than when isolated and “dying young or living dead”—the first of several obvious nods to famous horror films peppered throughout the album’s lyrics (this time to George A. Romero’s 1968 masterpiece Night of the Living Dead).
The production feels like a mash-up between Khruangbin and a Josh Homme side-project, with a riff that could get indie rock festival crowds chanting under any weather.
Horror Movie
The title track is the transition point between the album’s narrator directing her mania at others and towards her beginning to look inward. In the chorus, she declares that “you scare me more than a horror movie”, but it’s not clear if she’s talking, at this point, towards the lover of the first few songs, or about the face in the mirror.
The song is a mid-tempo indie rock ballad whose production ticks along between organic guitars and drums and tracks that are intentionally designed to sound programmed, before it swells into a guitar solo that feels like you’re being swept up in the fear and fantasy the song discusses. The whole thing feels like teetering on the edge between lucidity and madness, romance and obsession, reality and unreality.
Like A Lady
Every album needs that one song to act as an anthem. On Horror Movie, ‘Like a Lady’ is that song. A searing, satirical, and sad take on experiencing class difference while suffering with mental ill health during the COVID-19 pandemic, ‘Like a Lady’’s verses paint a picture of insecurity and envy. “Why d’you set me up like I’m a joke?” and “I want to be easy to love”. The song speaks of building dreams on fragile foundations, but reaching for the stars anyways, knowing the Earth beneath her could crack.
The chorus erupts into the fantasy itself: if I were privileged, would I have no worries at all? Of course, the thing about envy is that it flattens the subject of that envy to its most simplistic version. There would probably still be worries. But this track is something of a companion piece to ‘Groovy’ in that, for a second, it asks: “Who cares? Let me dream.”.
Older Eyes
‘Older Eyes’ is an abrupt but necessary comedown from the heights of ‘Like a Lady’. The latter’s glittering synths and pounding 80s drums are stripped back to just an acoustic guitar, a vocal, and the occasional glint of piano keys or hum of some strings. ‘Older Eyes’ is a lullaby-of-sorts. It unpacks a relationship that was both formative and toxic, where someone who was supposed to take care of you neglected or betrayed you, and you didn’t even realise until much later. What do you do with that pain then? Is it even worth talking about? The song seems to think not. But its existence seems to disagree.
What Kind Of Woman
With ‘What Kind of Woman’, we get another moment of the pain and darkness fuelling this whole project being directed outward. This time, it’s about gender.
Written in the shadow of a million social and physical media trends asking girls and women which pre-defined archetype of femininity they belong to and many, many years of experiencing and witnessing violence only to be told to cover it up with prettiness, ‘What Kind of Woman’ rages against the entire concept that womanhood can be defined.
The distorted guitars evoke contemporary indie rockers like Blondshell and Mitski, and their forebears Hole, Liz Phair, and the riot grrrl movement, and the vocal is designed to cut right through like a punch, before exploding into a wail: “What kind of woman am I?”. It’s a question no one has an answer to, and this song won’t let you forget it.
I’m A Liar
‘I’m a Liar’ is an interesting follow-up to a song whose central question is: “What kind of woman am I?”. Is ‘I’m a Liar’ the answer?
Maybe. Mostly, it’s a Grouper-inspired ambient indie track about self-reflection and accountability. The lyrics list all the ways a person might contribute to their own downfall, from indulging too many racing thoughts, to doing too many drugs, to believing that new age philosophy alone can rescue you. Like ‘You’ve Been On My Mind’, it feels like a confession, and like the album coming full circle on itself on a much deeper level.
Escape Routes
And, suddenly, after all that… it’s time to party. Horror Movie does its listener the service of not offering any concluding wisdom to the journey they’ve just been on. There are none, and to provide some would be trite. Instead, ‘Escape Routes’ mines italo disco and Prince to ironically celebrate the same escapism that started this whole mess in the first place. Positioned as the final song, it could feel like either self-forgiveness or the cycle starting all over again. Could it possibly be both?
