- Horror Movie - Horror Homeroom

Posted on March 27, 2021

Nightmares with the Bible: The Good Book and Cinematic Demons (Book Review)

Guest Post

Nightmares with the Bible: The Good Book and Cinematic Demons

Author: Steve A. Wiggins

Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2021

Popular culture continues to provide evidence of its fascination with the demonic and possession. Perhaps the best illustration of this is the number of horror films that have been produced over the years on the topic. Given the influence of Christianity as the dominant religion in American culture, and the centrality of the Bible within that tradition, it might be assumed that as the Bible informs cinema’s demons that this influence is straightforward, simple, and one-way: from the text to the screen. But this is not the case. The reality is far more complex, multifaceted, and synergistic.

Steve Wiggins explores and unpacks this topic in his new volume, Nightmares with the Bible: The Good Book and Cinematic Demons. As with his previous volume on religion and horror, Holy Horror: The Bible and Fear in Movies, Wiggins brings together his academic background in biblical studies, along with a fan’s and scholar’s interest in horror. The result is an informative exploration of both the Bible and the demonic in horror that has as much appeal for those involved in either area of research specialization, and even more so for those who appreciate when these areas overlap. Read more

Posted on March 25, 2021

Cosmic Slop: Before Peele Remade The Twilight Zone

Guest Post

With the rise of Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone (2019-20) and Misha Green’s Lovecraft Country (2020), we are hopefully entering a golden age of Black horror TV, following decades in which the genre was marked by a lack of diversity. An exception appeared in 1994, however, in the three-part HBO horror/sci fi anthology, Cosmic Slop.

While Cosmic Slop was a unique example of a Black horror anthology made for TV in the nineties, it was not an isolated work of the genre. As Robin R. Means Coleman outlines, the nineties did give rise to numerous, albeit underfunded, Black horror films. Means Coleman makes the distinction between the labels “Blacks in horror” and “Black horror,” with the former indicating films about Black people but often lacking knowledge or political acuity and the latter comprising films created by Black people and that draw knowledgeably on “Black folklore, histories, and culture” while speaking to Black anxieties, aesthetics and viewpoints. Read more

Posted on March 19, 2021

Host and Found Footage in the Age of COVID-19: Horrific Hyperreality

Guest Post

Everything happens over Zoom, now. Even séances. Host (2020), directed by independent British filmmaker Rob Savage, follows a group of friends who make the ill-informed decision to conduct a séance over Zoom. The group is whittled down, one by one, as they confront a supernatural entity they conjure through the internet. Host reveals the Zoom room as a haunted space, one that requires constant negotiation with (un)reality and disruptions in spatiality. While filmmakers around the world have been working with found footage for decades, the social upheaval of COVID-19 created a unique opportunity for horror to address our complicated relationship with technology during this period of forced isolation, collective grief, and desperate uncertainty. Read more

Posted on March 12, 2021

Eight Medical Horror Films (and Two Shorts) to Watch in Quarantine

Guest Post

It sure is a strange time to watch medical horror. The tensions underlying much of the horror genre are especially palpable when engaging with the creepy hospitals, contagion anxieties, and frightful institutions that are the trademarks of this medically-oriented subgenre. Is horror harmless fun, important cultural work, ghoulish grave-dancing, or all of the above? What is the point – and the ethical ramifications – of engaging with imagined versions of the calamities we are actually experiencing? As a partial answer, I offer these eight medical horror films (and two shorts!), which explore the many terrors, anxieties, and hopes that we associate with medicine. Read more

Posted on March 9, 2021

Beavers Bite Back: Rape-Revenge, “Good for Her,” and Freaky’s Final Girl

Guest Post

Freaky (2020), directed by Christopher Landon, is a slasher movie with a body-swap twist: a teenage girl, Millie (Kathryn Newton), and a serial killer, the Blissfield Butcher (Vince Vaughn) – through the dubious magic of an ancient Aztec curse – switch bodies and must deal with the unintended consequences. But the movie’s title is more than a nod to Freaky Friday; it’s also an indication of the way it mixes up – or gets freaky with – its genre classification.

Freaky establishes its slasher credentials early on, directly referencing earlier slashers like Halloween (1978) and Scream (1996) during its opening sequence of murders, and it’s obviously familiar with body-swap conventions as well (the cursed Aztec object, for instance). As a body-swap slasher, an unusual combination, some of its elements may not fit comfortably. Dawn Keetley writes, for instance, that “it felt pretty off-putting to be asked to identify with the Butcher’s body rather than Millie’s. One of my persistent pleasures in the slasher film is precisely in the Final Girl’s body. In this film, I’m asked to transfer that identification to Vince Vaughn.” The body-swap element might, then, undermine some of the effects of the slasher. And Freaky is certainly much bloodier than a typical body-swap movie, although it does retain the genre’s emphasis on gaining new perspective and understanding of others. Read more