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Posted on December 23, 2015

12 Days of Christmas Horror

Gwen

It’s no secret that Horror and Christmas go together like hatchets and heads. Holidays evoke the best and the worst in us by tapping into our good will toward man at the same time as they burden us with shopping, family meal planning, and the repetitive cadence of grandma getting run over by a reindeer. I continuously expose my bias, but if there is one decade that best marries horror with holidays it is the 1980s. Please join me in celebrating the Horror Homeroom holiday season by indulging in our version of the Twelve Days of Christmas (80s style)!

Posted on November 23, 2015

Horror Rewatch: Tales From the Darkside the Movie (1990)

Gwen

Revisiting this film is a lot like going to a high school reunion. There are a lot of mixed feelings, but in the end you get to see forgotten faces and have some good old fashioned fun. The first thing that caught my attention was how I had completely erased the number of huge stars in this movie. Instantly I was taken back in time when I saw such staples of the time period as Debbie Harry, William Hickey, and Christian Slater. In hindsight, though, the stories within the film are like the lunch tables at school, they don’t quite mix well with one another. Each is to be appreciated for what it is, but there is a general lack of cohesion. Nonetheless, this film maintains the necessary creep factor, good story telling, and was well worth the revisit if simply for the feelings you get opening a time capsule.

Posted on November 16, 2015

American Horror Story: Hotel and the Dual Self

Gwen

Only a few episodes into the fifth season of American Horror Story, the concept of the dual self has emerged time and again. This is not revolutionary as historically, society loves a great binary.[i] Consider Freud’s concepts of Eros and Thanatos, or on a more basic level think about Donald Duck in Donald’s Better Self (1938) where he battles between his inner angel and devil. This notion that we have dual drives or dual selves seems ingrained. Theoretically, it is humans’ ability for a higher level of thought that distinguishes us as a species, but it is exactly this penchant for thought that also drives us mad. It is telling that Hotel uses the peephole as a symbol, since the peephole can be seen as a portal to the other side of the door. It reveals the outside of your inside, only visible through one side, posing a distorted view through the other. There is no clear reality through the peephole.

In American Horror Story: Hotel the characters straddle several dichotomous worlds. Like a sadistic see-saw, each person tries to navigate life/death, visible/invisible, light/dark, control/unregulated, and reality/mind until they discover who they really are. Supporting this binary world is the language of the hotel’s inhabitants: within the first five episodes several characters, including Iris (Kathy Bates), Sally (Sarah Paulson), Detective Lowe (Wes Bentley), Liz Taylor (Denis O’Hare), and the Countess (Lady Gaga), articulate the fractured self: “We have two selves and there are some places inside that have sat too cold and dark for too long.” “Control is an illusion, and I gave into the illusion.” “Feeling invisible? You see everything and the world doesn’t see you.” “We have two selves; one the world needs us to be, compliant, and the Shadow. Ignore it and life is forever suffering.”

Posted on October 30, 2015

10 Horror Legends We Miss

Gwen

As the harvest season ends and winter looms ever near, the Celts believed that this transition between seasons opened a bridge between the living and the dead. It is thought that the winter cold and higher death rates contributed to this blurring of life and death. The Celtic festival Samhain moved people to wear costumes to ward off ghosts that roamed the earth, brought trouble, and even served as harbingers of death.

As Romans later conquered much of the Celtic land, their festival (Feralia) which commemorated the dead, came to blend with the Celtic Samhain. Much later, with the spread of Catholicism, the Church drafted their own day of remembrance to honor martyrs, saints, and the dead on All Souls Day, All Saints Day, and All Hallows Eve.

Despite the watered down, consumer version in America today, Halloween is still fundamentally about blurred boundaries and remembering the dead. No matter how you celebrate—whether you dress up to ward off ghosts or partake in a vegetarian feast by the light of a bonfire—we should honor the origins of our favorite horror holiday.

Join me in commemorating Halloween in true horror film fashion by remembering some of our dearly departed.

Posted on October 28, 2015

A Good Marriage (2014) Film Review

Gwen

You know that moment when you realize that your relationship isn’t what it used to be. The moment when you think, where did we go wrong? For Darcy Anderson (Joan Allen) it was the moment that she found a dead girl’s driver’s license hidden in a secret panel behind her husband’s work bench.

From the outside looking in, the Andersons had a good marriage. They had a successful business, successful children, and they celebrated their 25^th wedding anniversary amongst a slew of adoring friends. Even Darcy thought she had a good marriage, despite the nagging notes all around the house and the misogynistic comments by her husband. Notice the title is “good” not great. Early in the film, Darcy responds to all Bob’s notes, saying “He goes but he never really leaves.” We soon come to find out their relationship isn’t all that it appears to be.