- Horror Movie - Horror Homeroom

Posted on October 25, 2023

Face to Face: Indigenous Experience and Zombie Cinema

Guest Post

James Rose

In June 1981, Minister of Fisheries Lucien Lessard authorised more than 300 Quebec Provincial Police (QPP) to raid the Restigouche Reserve in relation to restrictions placed upon the indigenous peoples by the Department of Fisheries: the point of contention was salmon fishing rights; the Mi’kmaq claimed their right to fish salmon six nights a week while the Quebec government attempted to limit their fishing to three days a week as, according to them, their fishing practices were endangering the salmon population. A survey commissioned by the Mi’kmaq and undertaken by Dr. Alan Roy demonstrated the indigenous salmon haul did not exceed 1,200 fish a year, a smaller amount compared to the 1,800 per year that were fished by commercial organisations (Ambroziak). Despite this, the QPP raid occurred and, one of the young people involved was Mi’kmaq Jeff Barnaby:

Posted on October 4, 2023

Feminine or Feminist? Abortion, Motherhood, and the Traditional Final Girl

Guest Post

It is generally accepted that the final girl in late-twentieth-century slashers evidences a “moral integrity mark[ing] [her] as special” (Gill 19). Less discussed, however, has been the final girl as a mother figure who, in contrast with her peers, shows traditional maternal values (Christensen 40). These maternal qualities include “female self-sacrifice and motherly love” (Nickerson 14). Traditionalists often emphasized motherhood as the most fulfilling outlet for women’s special qualities as “life-bearers” (Jepson 340). The final girl in slasher horror films exhibits many of the traditional womanly qualities of caretaker and comforter.

Posted on September 28, 2023

“There Are Better Ways to Die”: Final Girls and Ecohorror

Guest Post

Named for their natural settings, The Handmaid’s Tale season four finale, “The Wilderness” (2021) and Land (2021) are both, importantly, women-directed stories that expand ecohorror elements and the feminist horror genre, flipping the Final Girl horror trope. Protagonists June (Elisabeth Moss) and Edee (Robin Wright) are not simply the stereotypical Final Girls walking out of the woods after violence – a too-common horror trope in which girls and women are victims of violence, at the hands of men, in natural spaces where only men “survive.” June and Edee’s stories start after their traumas – horror already experienced – as they walk into the woods for their own types of healing and then walk out as complicated protagonists rather than flat female-victims-as-porn.

Carol Clover (2015) writes that while the Final Girl is a survivor, her role is mostly based in being demeaned and abused, a ‘“victim-hero,” with an emphasis on “victim”’ (p. x). And that victimhood has historically been rape/ trauma porn made for a certain type of male viewer (there are too many examples to list here). But June and Edee’s survival and renewal, rather than trauma, is the focus in these texts as they find redemption in the classic horror natural spaces for a very different audience. In a reversal of typical Final Girl horror tropes, ‘The Wilderness’ and Land empower women in natural spaces rather than using such spaces as instruments of trauma. These texts utilize ecohorror elements but showcase such natural spaces as redemptive for women, extending the Final Girl horror trope past the immediate violence and past its emphasis on women as victims.

Posted on August 25, 2023

Exorcising The Pope’s Exorcist

Guest Post

The Pope’s Exorcist (Julius Avery, 2023) was released in April to much fanfare and has just recently landed on Netflix. While it performed well enough at the box office, it failed to wow the critics. It certainly didn’t rise to the level of The Exorcist (1973). In fact, the many possession/exorcism movies that have appeared since William Friedkin’s masterpiece have generally fallen short. One of the reasons seems to be the failure to really understand the religion portrayed. Let’s use The Pope’s Exorcist as a test case.

Posted on May 29, 2023

Knock at the Cabin’s Embracing of Fanatical Homophobia

Guest Post

“Make the choice” demands the advertising tag line for M. Night Shyamalan’s theocratic thriller, Knock at the Cabin (2023), which comes with a tagline as heavy with political implications as its peremptory plot. The latter’s orthodox overtones, a curious mix of cultish Christianity, archaic aggression and sectarian spectacle, retrospectively seem the plausible progression for a director whose films are littered with conspiracy theories, quasi-Christian lore, and a constant emphasis on patriarchal family values. The cornerstones of religion and reactionism are accompanied by a pattern of often intertwined key motives neatly fitting into a set of larger concepts: being chosen or singled out to play a specific role, a divine plan or predetermined fate, and an existential truth which protagonists either can’t see or refuse to believe.

Shyamalan’s forcefully forward allegories, which transmit these ideas along with an unwavering approval of the gospel, make for a curious series of faith based movies. Signs has a father regain his faith while discovering that crop circles are indeed caused by aliens. The Sixth Sense already spells out in its title the faith which the central story of purgatory is rooted. The Village pairs an exaltation of “blind faith” with surveillance schemes. The Unbreakable series mixes political paranoia with modernized myths of angels and demons. Old embraces traditional family values and the idea of big pharma plotting. Even the Edgar Allan Poe inspired low budget thriller The Visit evolves around deadly deception, validated suspicion, and the importance of biological family bonds. Read more