- Horror Movie - Horror Homeroom

Posted on July 22, 2021

What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been: Wrong Turn (2021)

Guest Post

Wrong Turn (2021) isn’t misleading in its approach to genre filmmaking, to be certain. The brochure lets moviegoers know full well that they’ve traveled bloody byways like these before, that they’ve been terrorized by homicidal hillbillies like these before. But the destination of Wrong Turn (2021) is altogether unique in relation to what’s come before it, and it seems to suggest that the oft-reviled horror movie rehash may soon be replaced with slasher films audacious enough to have something more to say.

A ‘Wrong Turn’ remake? Wrong again!

In the film, six young adults venture into the Appalachian mountains for a weekend of hiking & adventure, only to find themselves the targets of an entire society of mountainside locals who have retreated into the wilderness where they’ve survived for over a century in an effort to divorce themselves from the cancerous history and bleak future of society. Read more

Posted on July 16, 2021

Jigsaw Pedagogy: The Teaching Strategies of the Saw Franchise

Guest Post

As self-aware franchises such as Scream have shown us, horror films often espouse conservative moral values, and adhering to or flouting these values are often the difference between life and death for the characters on screen. There’s even a trope for the virginal young maiden who lives to the end of the film based on her purity: the Final Girl. But what happens when a horror film doesn’t just showcase these values implicitly through the gory deaths of fornicators and hedonists, but has the villain explicitly target people to teach them these lessons?

The answer to this question is the premise of the Saw franchise, now in its ninth entry with the spinoff Spiral. Across the films, various villains place their victims in gruesome traps, for the purpose of teaching them lessons about their behavior. The victims are given a choice that typically goes as follows: voluntarily self-mutilate in order to get out of the trap and survive, or remain passive and die terribly. Read more

Posted on July 8, 2021

Xenophobia is America’s Deadly Specter in Image Comics’ ‘Infidel’

Guest Post

It remains one of the hardest things to accept today, knowing that we can’t avoid the latest report on hate-based violence, whether rooted in politics, race, opinions, or faith. At least for now, the 21st century is a time for hatred.

People are blinded by it, struggle to actively resist it, even cling to it like a religion, like a belief system to which they are somehow twistedly entitled.

And others cower in the presence of it, incapable of affecting it, helpless to escape its influence.

Yet Image Comics’ ‘Infidel,’ a five-issue miniseries collected in trade paperback written by Pornsak Pichetshote and illustrated by Aaron Campbell, seeks to exploit hatred in order to demonstrate through recognizable tropes of the horror genre that bigotry is a monster as capable of haunting humanity as any silver screen spirit or unstoppable slasher. Read more

Posted on June 26, 2021

Memories Worth Keeping: Adaptational Changes in IT: Chapter 2

Guest Post

Stephen King’s IT – and, later, the Andy Muschietti adaptations – have been vital to my journey as a horror fan and an aspiring fantasy/horror writer, and as an important way to think about change. I read IT during the summer of 2018, after moving from the home I had lived in for 12 years. While I approached the novel thinking I had hit the jackpot of horror, I found myself more moved by the strong bond that the Losers’ Club formed as adolescents, which made the disintegration of these friendships in adulthood all the more tragic. In many ways, IT shares more DNA with Stand By Me (a non-horror adaptation, based on King’s short story “The Body”) than some of his other horror novels. Both works are coming-of-age stories that see seemingly unshakeable friendships tested by fears and anxieties – some are explicitly horror-related, such as Pennywise, but others are more existential: how long will we remain friends? Adulthood, in these stories, seems to be more of a source of horror – or, at least, anxiety – than any monster or bully, and yet when it comes, it happens gradually. Adulthood’s arrival is not heralded by ominous music or a jumpscare, it just… happens, and childhood friendships that seemed strong don’t always last. Read more

Posted on June 22, 2021

A Chilling Summer Treat: Image Comics’ Ice Cream Man serves up horror outside the Season of the Witch

Guest Post

Summertime is the time for water games in the backyard, day-long visits to the amusement park, and chilly rocket pops from your neighborhood ice cream man. But summertime is also the time to ready oneself for the chilling spooky season that is just around the corner, and one of Image Comics’ horror series — Ice Cream Man, written by W. Maxwell Prince & illustrated by Martin Morazzo — is ready to serve up any deadly delicacy — & more! — that you can imagine.

Simply know that the just desserts come with a price. Read more