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Posted on July 17, 2020

“Don’t be scared”: Change, Evolution, and The Beach House as Ecohorror

Guest Post

Jeffrey A. Brown’s The Beach House has been getting a lot of attention, largely positive, since its recent release on Shudder. As others have noted, Liana Liberato’s performance as Emily is excellent, and the film features an effectively creepy atmosphere, wonderful cinematography of the ocean (both from the beach and underwater), and one truly disturbing moment of body horror. (This is also a movie worth watching without knowing much about what you’re getting into, so please note that this is a spoiler-heavy discussion rather than a straightforward review).

Despite its tranquil-seeming title, The Beach House is fundamentally a movie about change and how we respond to it. The story begins with a young college-aged couple, Emily (Liana Liberato) and Randall (Noah Le Gros), taking a weekend trip to Randall’s dad’s beach house. They are at a transition point in their relationship and trying to reconnect (one key tension is between his dropping out of college to avoid the typical life of job, marriage, kids, and her plan to finish her degree in organic chemistry and go to grad school for astrobiology). Soon after arriving, they discover that another couple – Jane (Maryann Nagel) and Mitch (Jake Weber), friends of Randall’s dad – are already at the beach house. This couple is also at a transition point, making one last trip to the beach as Jane battles a serious illness and appears to be dying.

Posted on July 14, 2020

From Poltergeist to Pennywise: Why Creepy Clowns Scare Us

Guest Post

In 1982, my family piled into our Ford station wagon and headed for the local theater to see Poltergeist. I was ten at the time, the youngest of four children. Ten is an age where you begin to fear things on a deeper, more cerebral level. But the movie was rated PG, so we went with it.

Today, this movie would easily warrant the stronger PG-13 rating. But there was no PG-13 in 1982. It was either G, PG or R. So the Motion Picture Association went for the middle ground. Bear this in mind, as we revisit the movie through the eyes of a ten-year-old.

Posted on July 7, 2020

Parasite as Horror Film

Guest Post

Class conflicts are a recurring theme in Bong Joon-ho’s films, which deftly traverse multiple genres to portray insights about economic disparities. One could describe Okja as a science fiction action drama and Snowpiercer as a post-apocalyptic dystopian action film. Likewise, in Parasite (2019), a comedic first half gives way to a dark thriller action film. It also strategically uses several elements of horror to transform its plot.

The film follows the story of the cash-strapped Kims, a family of four who work for the affluent Park family. The latter are unaware they have employed individuals from the same family for different roles in the house. The first half of the film depicts how the Kims successfully secure their positions through an elaborate plan. Ki-woo, the son, is the first to be employed as a tutor for the Park family’s daughter through a friend’s recommendation. Ki-woo identifies the need for an art tutor for the younger son in the Park family and recommends his sister, Ki-jung. Ki-woo and Ki-jung then hatch plans to get both the driver and Moon-gwang, the housekeeper fired so that their parents Ki-taek and Chung-sook can be hired.

Posted on July 2, 2020

In Search of Darkness: A Nostalgic Celebration of 80s Horror Cinema

Guest Post

Coinciding with the current renaissance of American horror cinema, we’ve seen more interest in horror documentaries. Within the last two years alone, Eli Roth’s History of Horror (2018) and Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (2019; see the Horror Homeroom review here) both released to critical acclaim, and now we have the collector’s documentary In Search of Darkness: A Journey into Iconic ‘80s Horror (2019), written and directed by David A. Weiner, to add to the mix.

Posted on June 26, 2020

Followed: A Clever Use of Found Footage and a Smart Critique of Influencer Culture

Guest Post

Ever since the massive success of 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, found footage has been a staple of the horror genre. Even George A. Romero experimented with it in one of his last (and also criminally underrated) films, Diary of the Dead (2007). Yet, now, more than 20 years after The Blair Witch Project, the subgenre has become stale. The grainy, shaky shots have become cliché. Even Blair Witch Project became such a part of the zeitgeist that it was spoofed mercilessly. At this point, for any director and screenwriter to use found footage as a technique, they better do something innovative. Cue Followed, the directorial feature debut by Antoine Le, written by Todd Klick. The film’s uniqueness lies in its method of storytelling. Followed’s narrative is told through vlogging, and by using this method, the movie updates the found footage technique to reflect and comment upon influencer culture. It’s a smart take on what has generally become an exhausted subgenre. The plot unfolds click by click, through a series of vlogs sequenced on a website.