- Horror Movie - Horror Homeroom

Posted on November 20, 2021

Lamb: A Tender Tale of Grief, Full of Hidden Horror

Guest Post

Folklore, fable and family dynamics breed a challenging chimaera of a movie the horror of which arrives with the self-evidence of fairy tales. Such are part of the inspiration for Icelandic debut-director Valdimar Jóhannsson’s captivating cinematic condensation of mythologic motifs from his home country. Its people’s close conjunction to nature – a relation revealed by seemingly incidental scenes to be far less symbiotic than the protagonist couple on their remote, yet idyllic sheep farm might believe – drives a metaphor about grief and gifts that were never ours for the taking. This image of giving and receiving is augmented by the narrative’s starting on Christmas Night.

green image of woman dressed as a nurse looking at the camera

Posted on November 8, 2021

Never seen before now: Grave Encounters and the Allure of Paranormal TV

Guest Post

Popular ghost hunting shows come in a variety of flavors with a universal appeal to cheese and camp. There’s the wildly popular roto-rooting Ghost Hunters originally airing on Sci-Fi and the bro-fest that is Ghost Adventures usually repeating every tired episode on Discovery+’s pantheon of channels. Even Ozzy, Sharon, and Jack Osbourne have joined the pseudo-scientific quest to prove what usually happens just slightly off camera. Shows like these all follow a similar formula. They are contingent on the audience’s willingness to blend our disbelief with what is manufactured on screen. By the end of the show there is still no proof of the hereafter, of residual or intelligent hauntings, or of demons who have chosen to just loiter in abandoned buildings for kicks. Viewers return from the spectacle safe from their tentative exploration into the outer limits of their knowledge. If the ghosts are not real, then at least we know the rules of our universe still hold, right? Read more

Posted on October 26, 2021

How Scream (1996) Takes a Stab at White American Masculinity

Guest Post

Released in December 1996, Scream announced a redirection in horror filmmaking. A Hollywood staple ever since Dracula (1931) announced the stateside viability of a genre developed by German expressionists, horror had already gone through a succession of variations that nonetheless maintained an array of recognizable tropes and sub-genres. Much in the same way that Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) examined the medieval film genre, Scream introduced the concept of meta-horror to the mainstream, bolstered by director Wes Craven’s bona fides^[1] in the genre. While the film’s meta-criticism focuses on horror, a related critique intrinsically linked with the genre emerges as the film progresses: white American masculinity.

Scream was not alone in this regard. The 1980s, particularly when it came to blockbuster action films at the front of popular culture, “remasculinized” male characters as “symbolic configuration[s] of hegemonic masculinity that restabilize[d] the centrality of men’s bodies” in response to the perceived de-masculinization of the nation’s loss in Vietnam. However, by the time we reached the 1990s, those extreme examples of hegemonic masculinity, the Arnold Schwarzeneggers and Sylvester Stallones of Hollywood were reevaluated, reaching a point where they were “frequently caricatured in popular culture” (Messner, 465). While Scream sidesteps direct caricature, Kevin Williamson’s script and Craven’s direction present a dyad of white American masculinities that simultaneously assail the dangers of violent and toxic masculinity while presenting a healthier alternative, all within the framework of deconstructing horror. To demonstrate this, I will focus on two male characters from Scream: Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) and Dwight “Dewey” Riley (David Arquette). Read more

priest in a white robe on the pulpit with open arms

Posted on October 13, 2021

How Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass Criticizes Charismatic Christianity & Christian Nationalism

Guest Post

When Midnight Mass, Netflix’s latest horror hit series, took the horror fandom by storm on social media, I knew I was in for a treat. And I was not disappointed. Mike Flanagan has been producing solid horror projects ever since his powerful and eerie haunted house horror, Oculus (2013). His works tend to explore our relationship with trauma using horror narratives to elevate the affective responses. In his latest effort, Midnight Mass, Flanagan shifts his focus to religious beliefs as a means to explore trauma and violence. Many other writers have highlighted Flanagan’s nuanced criticism of “faith,” which sets the series apart from other less empathetic religious-horror fare. Like other mainstream discussions of religion in popular culture, these analyses and deep readings of the series offer all-encompassing conclusions using vague and often complex terms such as “faith,” “religion,” and “cult” without much critical unpacking. What sets Midnight Mass apart from other religious-horror films, such as The Exorcist (1973), Midsommar (2019), or Red State (2011), is its awareness of the devastating effects of neoliberal capitalist ideology on charismatic Christian movements.

Before analyzing Midnight Mass, let me clarify both aforementioned terms. Charismatic Christianity is a religious movement that emphasizes an individualist approach to Christianity. It highlights a personal relationship with Jesus, prophecy and biblical literalism, glossolalia, faith healings, and other “gifts” from the Holy Spirit. In essence, in charismatic Christianity, practices are understood to be less about the community and more about the individual. For example, in Charismatic Catholicism, a movement heavily inspired by its Protestant counterpart, the Eucharist, representing communal worship, becomes less important as more individualized forms of worships are put forth. Read more

Posted on October 11, 2021

The Son of Abraham and Cult Psychology

Guest Post

Our fascination with cults goes deep. It’s hard to watch crime shows, read thrillers, or horror without a cult or two popping up somewhere along the way. It’s become cliché, a trope, a predictable element of how we scare ourselves. We joke about tight-knit clubs, gyms, friend circles as being cultish, and we laugh. The psychology isn’t too hard to figure out: what is horror except a way to play out all the possible terrors that might occur before they actually do? It’s why we watch scary movies, why we devour true crime. In the back of our heads, there is a little voice that whispers over and over it can’t get you when you’ve seen its face.

But cults are not the exclusive territory of the disturbed and deviant. They consist of people much like any of us, people who walk every avenue of life, and consist of every possible combination of human attributes. That is where the scary lives: if a seemingly normal person can be lured into a cult, then how do I know who to trust? Read more