- Horror Movie - Horror Homeroom

Posted on July 8, 2020

The Beach House: Contemporary Climate Crisis Horror

For all that any movie even vaguely about contagion and isolation will have special resonance in the Coronavirus era, I’ll spare you the topical commentary on The Beach House. This isn’t a new entry to the canon of outbreak horror. What The Beach House aims for instead is to be a Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968) for the climate crisis, as four unsuspecting vacationers face an extinction event, complete with an homage of radio updates. Director Jeffrey A. Brown serves up a beautiful apocalypse, but a tonally and structurally imbalanced story.

Posted on June 29, 2020

Scream, Queen! Review

Sara McCartney

Around this time last year, the Met Costume Institute was displaying its exhibit on camp, sparking explainers and podcast episodes and angry rants (the last one from me) about just what camp is exactly. I thought about it some more while watching Roman Chimienti and Tyler Jensen’s Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street (2019), and here’s what I’ve got. Camp is the reclamation of something embarrassing or perceived by others as embarrassing. It is the amazing knack queer people have to transform shame into joy and survival. Scream, Queen! is the story of how Nightmare on Elm Street 2, once an embarrassment to its franchise and the career of its then-closeted gay star, Mark Patton, became beloved by fans and a launching pad for Patton’s activism.

The 1985 sequel to Wes Craven’s slasher smash hit, Nightmare on Elm Street 2 is the rare slasher film with a Final Boy. The hapless Jesse, played by Mark Patton, is not merely Freddy’s intended victim but his entry point into the real world as he strives to take over Jesse’s body. More a possession film than a typical slasher, Nightmare on Elm Street 2‘s Freddy functions as an unlikely metaphor for repressed homosexuality. Read more

Posted on June 23, 2020

Horror Fans, Don’t Call the Cops!

Sara McCartney

What do you think of when you think of the police? Do you think of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and many more Black people who should be alive today? Do you think of the brutal police responses that have interrupted peaceful protests around the nation?[1] Do you think of your favorite television show? Entertainment, from buddy cop movies to gritty thrillers to police procedurals to detective dramas, have shaped our perception of law enforcement, sometimes under the direction of actual precincts.[2] And if you’re following the news, the incongruency between the real-life police and their fictional equivalents is impossible to ignore.

One of the reasons I love horror is because it’s very good at not taking the status quo for granted. The best horror unmoors us from our assumptions about the world. As calls to abolish the police enter the American mainstream, it’s time for us to rethink our familiar narratives about cops, and that’s where horror comes in, because the cops you’ll find in horror movies aren’t quite what you’ll see in Law and Order.

Posted on June 12, 2020

The Constructed Masculinity of Evil Dead’s Ash

Sara McCartney

Even the squarest heterosexual knows about drag queens by now. They may even know how theorists like Judith Butler have used drag queens to talk about the constructedness and performativity of gender. Though drag kings receive less attention, their satiric power is even more pointed. As theorist Jack Halberstam argues, “kinging reads dominant male masculinity and explodes its effects through exaggeration, parody, and earnest mimicry.”[1] Drag kings use their craft and a healthy dose of humor to critique mainstream masculinity. Just as drag queens’ camp can be found outside of drag, so too do the motifs of drag king comedy show up in the mainstream. Halberstam points to the Austin Powers movies. In horror, where the usual performances of male heroism are futile at best, the male heroes who do appear come with a healthy dose of tongue-in-cheek humor. There’s no better example than Ash Williams from the Evil Dead franchise, with his boomstick, his chainsaw, and his groovy swagger.