- Horror Movie - Horror Homeroom

Posted on March 5, 2021

Revisiting The Dead Zone

Guest Post

This piece aspires to be a dual-purpose essay on the feature film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dead Zone (1983). First, I will identify qualities that make it one of the most impactful of the King inspired movies almost 40 years after its original release. In the last several years societal events have led some to reevaluate The Dead Zone and ultimately recast it as a prescient political cautionary tale about the danger posed by aspiring demagogues. My second goal is to examine that claim’s validity more closely within the context of the film as a whole. Read more

Posted on February 18, 2021

Saint Maud: Who Cares for the Carers?

Guest Post

“I have so much respect for anyone in the medical profession, like, any area. I really think it’s the most important thing you can do with your life. Almost.” –Maud

Saint Maud is only partially about religion. It’s also about the horrors of isolation, end of life care, and mental illness. During this crucial moment when we’re lauding our healthcare workers as heroes, it’s also about the trauma of caretaking work and the easy neglect of those who do it. Read more

Posted on February 10, 2021

Is the Golem the Perfect Jewish Monster?

Guest Post

Judaism is not unrepresented in horror, but it has to be handled with sensitivity since anti-Semitism is a far too real horror of its own. The stark fact of the Holocaust adds considerably to this caution. Sometimes the Holocaust has been referenced in horror film, as in The Possession (Ole Bornedal, 2012), but then it’s often shown obliquely and with respect. Religion plays a regular role in horror, and frequently that religion—especially in American films—is some form of Christianity. When a monster based on Judaism appears it’s well worth watching.
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Posted on January 20, 2021

On the psychology of self-directed fear at the movies; or, Can you fear your own fear?

Guest Post

I’ve read a good number of horror novels, mostly modern classics like Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining, The Exorcist, and The Haunting of Hill House. They are all frightening works of fiction, but I haven’t lost much sleep over them. It’s different with horror films. They really freak me out. But I like much of what they have to offer, so I’ll come up with any number of excuses to get my wife to watch them with me. That way I won’t have to stick it out alone.

At least I’m not alone in feeling like this. Most people find horror films more frightening than horror literature. This is presumably because horror films can audiovisually represent cues to danger, such as needly fangs, rotting flesh, and loud noises—and humans have evolved to be sensitive to such cues (Clasen, 2017). By contrast, horror literature has to rely on the reader’s readiness and ability to picture the monster and imagine what it sounds like. To be sure, some readers’ imaginations are plenty scary, but even the words of a great horror novel don’t literally seem to be jumping out at you, whereas the cinematic horror monster often does. For this reason, I don’t know of anyone who can imagine themselves into a startle. (Of course, the reader’s imagination might potentiate a startle, making you jump at shadows, but that’s different.) Read more

Posted on January 13, 2021

Uncanny Reflections: How Past Terrors Haunt Modern New Horror Cinema

Guest Post

Part One

Nosferatu reaching out his heart-stopping hand via Robert Eggers’ upcoming remake of the silent classic to grip the hearts of a new generation is not the only shadow of the past arising during the current renaissance of sophisticated scares. Movies like Ari Aster’s Hereditary and Midsommar, Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Us, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit, Karyn Kusama’s The Invitation, Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria or The Lodge by Austrian directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala testify to a macabre recurrence of morbid motifs from early European speculative films. Some referential contemporaries evoke distinct characters like Jennifer Kent’s pathologic parenting parable The Babadook did with its titular villain: Dr. Caligari’s top-hatted, cloaked silhouette overstepping from sharp-shadowed expressionist storybook-setting into a reality which might be lunatic delusion. Some reassemble structural, visual and narrative tropes like Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night with its black-and-white landscape of urban despair, preyed upon by vampiric and human bloodsuckers.

Vampyr (1932)

Some recreate a specific scenery and mood like Trey Edward Shults’ gloomy tale of moral breakdown in a setting of bottled-up paranoia, pain and pestilence, It Comes At Night. Or they establish similar settings where the occult, egregious parades in broad daylight like Midsommar’s world of unflinching brightness is reminiscent of the hazy sunshine in Vampyr. Others dive into the stylistic peculiarities, sinister themes and sardonic mannerisms of their predecessors, like The Lighthouse. A preliminary paradigm of retrospective attributes, Robert Eggers’ sailor’s yarn about doubles, drink and damnation marks the ever increasing immediacy of this trend. Said revival of a specific mode is not driven by fashionable revisionism or arbitrary nostalgia but outside historic forces – much like the classic canon that modern horror cinema innovators draw from. For their semblance and the feelings they triggered those classic films may be labeled uncanny. This denotation also addresses their origin in the artistic traditions of Dark Romanticism, a style period which anticipated defining tropes of uncanny cinema. Dark Romanticism’s obscure, often sexually charged imagery, exalted scenery and metaphysical subjects directly inspired groundbreaking early European filmmakers. To understand their work’s influence on the present requires a closer look at its spooky sources. Read more