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Horror Homeroom

Essays

Guest post · Gary Miceli

Trapped in the Replica: Industrial Exploitation, Spatial Memory, and Media Panopticism in Scream 3

Sidney Prescott’s entry onto the Stab 3 soundstage begins with a deceptive, everyday errand: finding a hairbrush dropped by an actress and stepping into the production space to return it. What begins as a mundane act immediately collapses into spatial and emotional disorientation as she crosses the threshold onto the set. She is instantly overwhelmed […]

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Guest post · Charlotte Troy

“He’s a wild creature. We can’t ask him to be anything else”: Marine Monstrosities in The Shape of Water

In 2017, renowned Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro released The Shape of Water, asking his audience to find comfort in his sympathetic monsters and further question the slippery boundary that separates the natural from the unnatural. Arguably, Del Toro’s filmography has been largely defined by his fascination with mythological and fantastical creatures including everything from […]

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Special Issues

Dolls and Their Houses

A creepy dollhouse depicting scenes explored in the issue's essays.

Artwork by Andrew Foley

Edited by Dawn Keetley & Elizabeth Erwin

Essays by Dawn Keetley, Elizabeth Erwin, Charlotte Yule, Linda Ganus, Dr Alice Sage, Sarah Fevri, Laura Wright, Raquel Souza, Tess Ezzy, Gabrielle Sinclair Compton, Emily Naser-Hall, Dr Lindsey Scott, Paul A. J. Lewis, NelRae Toler, Dr Catherine Pugh, Jeff Ambrose

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Reviews

Brooklyn Horror Film Festival: Ryan Glover’s Split Rock

I watched Split Rock as part of the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, where it had its North American premiere on October 21, 2026. Written and directed by Ryan Glover, Split Rock is his second feature after The Strings, which was released in 2020 (and is available on Shudder). Split Rock is about a group of geologists […]

Brooklyn Horror Film Festival – Culture Shock: Black Horror Shorts

Culture Shock: Black Horror Shorts was a program of excellent horror shorts by Black filmmakers that screened on October 20, 2026, at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival. It was followed by a fabulous Q&A with creatives involved in all but one of the six films. Here are some highlights! Grampa (2026) The six films were […]

Brooklyn Horror Film Festival: Alison-Eve Hammersley’s Erie

I watched Erie as part of the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, where it had its East Coast premiere on October 20, 2026. Directed by Alison-Eve Hammersley and co-written by Hammersley and J. Batzli, Erie is a found-footage horror film that does something new with a genre that’s been going strong for over twenty-five years. We’re reminded […]

Brooklyn Horror Film Festival Review: Russell Goldman’s Sender

I watched Sender as part of the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, where it had its New York City premiere on October 19, 2026. Director Russell Goldman was present for a Q&A after the film. Sender is a film that’s all about the actors, although that doesn’t seem entirely fair to all those who worked on the […]

Brooklyn Horror Film Festival Review: Jordan Downey’s The Cycle

I watched The Cycle as part of the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, where it had its east coast premiere on October 16, 2026. Directed by Jordan Downey, and written by Downey and Kevin Stewart, The Cycle (2026) is a distinctive blend of forensic crime / police procedural and supernatural horror. (The Autopsy of Jane Doe, […]

Chronovisor (2026): On the Affects of Academic Anxiety and Techno-Animism

Jered Mabaquiao Anyone who has been swept away in a current of intellectual pursuit can identify with Chronovisor’s appeal. At least for me, I intimately recognize the kind of frightening intellectual work and mindful interiority that Jack Auen and Kevin Walker’s Chronovisor illustrates. Chronovisor begins with the professional, and oftentimes rare, virtue of attention—with the […]

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Podcasts

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Top Ten

Dawn Keetley

10 Best Agatha Christie Stories for Horror Fans

Agatha Christie was famously a founding member of The Detection Club, a group of mystery writers formed in 1930. They crafted ten commandments about writing detective fiction, composed by member Ronald Knox, of which the second very clearly stated: “All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.” Sometimes, though, Christie […]

Guest post ·

Chlorinated Slaughter: Predation and Power in Ten Horror Movie Swimming Pools

Cullen Wade             “Swimming isn’t a sport. Swimming is a way to keep from drowning.” —George Carlin, Playin’ with Your Head Springboard If, as it’s speculated, our prehistoric ancestors learned swimming to escape predators1, I doubt many of the millions of Americans who use swimming pools every year are consciously practicing how to avoid being […]

Guest post ·

Tarot in Horror: 9 Films You Should Watch

With this month’s release of Tarot (Spenser Cohen & Anna Halberg), a horror-comedy supernatural slasher inspired by 2000s mid-budget American horror, I decided to count down nine other instances of tarot readings in horror, thriller and supernatural film.

Guest post ·

The Top 10 Horror Moments in the Batman Cinematic Universe

While director Matt Reeves may have described the most recent Batman movie, The Batman (2022), as “almost a horror film,” horror as an aesthetic mood or idiom pervades representations of the character and his world across cinematic history. The stylistically and tonally diverse cinematic projects of Tim Burton, Joel Schumacher, and Christopher Nolan and now, […]

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