Horror Homeroom

Posted on February 15, 2017

If Looks Could Kill: Beauty and Obsession in Black Swan and The Neon Demon

Guest Post

The tortured artist, in which an artist or performer seems willing to sacrifice almost anything to achieve perfection, is a common trope in film. Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky, and The Neon Demon, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, are two films of the past decade that capture the horrors of attempting to achieve perfection in a culture obsessed with beauty.

Check out the trailer for The Neon Demon.

The Neon Demon (2016) brings the viewer into the modeling world of LA through our fish-out-of-water character, Jesse, played by Elle Fanning. She harnesses true, natural beauty and allure—the “it factor”—which could rocket her to modelling stardom. Upon her arrival in this new world, Jesse is confronted by three women who embody different types of beauty: Ruby, a make-up artist who bestows beauty; Gigi, the manufactured beauty who flaunts her plastic surgeries as accomplishments; and Sarah, the aging beauty who recognizes her time in the spotlight will soon end. Almost inevitably, Jesse falls down the rabbit hole of modeling and becomes the titular neon demon, the self-obsessed model: she embraces her own allure in a striking scene that echoes Narcissus falling in love with his own reflection.

Posted on February 10, 2017

Death on the Roads: Defining The Highway Horror Film

Guest Post

The Interstate Highways Act of 1956 may not automatically sound like the most fascinating topic in the world, but the unprecedented act of road building that followed its passage actually had a much bigger impact upon the American horror film than one might think. What I’ve called the “Highway Horror” tradition encompasses a range of films that critique the ostensibly positive benefits of the culture of mass automobility that the Interstate Highway System helped inaugurate. In the Highway Horror film, journeys made via the highway inevitably lead to uncanny, murderous, and horribly transformative experiences. The American landscape, though supposedly “tamed” by the highway, is by dint of its very accessibility, rendered hostile, and encounters with other travellers (and with individuals whose roadside businesses depend upon highway traffic) almost always have sinister outcomes.

Posted on February 6, 2017

Don’t Knock Twice and the New Horror of Motherhood

Dawn Keetley

Don’t Knock Twice is an interesting film that is lifted up by its exceptional performances and cinematography and by the way it taps into what I think is an intriguing new trend in horror film: the horror of motherhood.

Directed by talented Welsh filmmaker Caradog W. James (best known for the 2013 sci-fi film The Machine), Don’t Knock Twice centers on the relationship of Jess (Katee Sackhoff, of Battlestar Galactica) and the teenage daughter she abandoned nine years ago, Chloe (Lucy Boynton). The film opens with Chloe and her boyfriend Danny (Jordan Bolger) being inexplicably drawn to a house nearby where a woman named Mary Aminov used to live. Convinced that, years ago, she kidnapped and killed a boy who lived in their group home, Chloe and Danny harassed her long after the police decided they had no case. They drove her, it seems, to suicide, and now a legend has flourished that something demonic lives in her house. If you knock twice on the door, it will come to get you. Danny, of course, knocks twice. And then the demonic witch comes to get him. In terror, Chloe flees to her mother’s home—even though she had earlier brutally refused Jess’s plea that Chloe come live with her. But the witch pursues Chloe even to her mother’s house—and so Jess ends up fighting for her daughter’s life.

Posted on February 1, 2017

The Loved Ones: Torture Prom

Guest Post

In a world of jump-scaring sequels the discerning horror fan has long since embraced intense foreign imports. European, Japanese, and Korean films have all hit the mainstream while Australia remains overlooked. The Loved Ones (2009), directed by Sean Byrne, has had little recognition outside its country of origin. But we should pay attention to it. Byrne’s feature-length debut challenges the way we look at the whole ‘Torture Porn’ sub-genre.

In the post-Scream horror movie landscape, so many films are mired in references. The Loved Ones is no different. Set on prom night, the film has inevitably been compared to Carrie, but spoiled psychopath Lola bears no resemblance to the timid telekinetic. More accurate is a likening to Kathy Bates in Misery. There are some directorial homages too, choices of shots and cuts that could be taken straight from a Tarantino flick. Outside the hall of mirrors which is film history, Sean Byrne has stated he drew upon the real-life Jeffrey Dahmer murders when writing and directing. Unless you’re already ghoulishly familiar with the crimes you probably won’t spot this inspiration. This source material does bring a mundane explanation to one of the film’s few tired elements, however, making it fresh and frightening. This is not the first time the actions of an infamous serial killer have been exploited by horror films. Ed Gein infamously provided inspiration for horror greats including Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, and Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The last of these is coincidently the biggest cinematic reference in the Loved Ones.

Posted on January 27, 2017

Josh Malerman’s A House at the Bottom of a Lake

Guest Post

Newly published through This Is Horror, A House at the Bottom of a Lake by Josh Malerman is both incredibly simple and complex at the same time: its basic premise is exactly what the title says. On their first date, seventeen-year-old Amelia and James go canoeing on James’s uncle’s lake, which is connected to another lake… which is connected to a third lake, hidden away and difficult to access. James thinks that this secret lake will impress Amelia, but what impresses her even more is the two-story, fully-furnished house they find at the bottom of it: there are dishes on the table, there are books on the shelves, and there are stairs to a basement. Nothing is floating, and nothing is water-damaged. The novella follows James and Amelia’s gleeful exploration of the house over the course of the summer. They take diving classes together and construct a raft with provisions and a mattress tied to its chimney so they rarely have to leave. The house at the bottom of the lake becomes their home. As their attachment to the house grows, so does their attachment to each other, love for each other becoming indistinguishable from love for the house. What they don’t know is that someone—or something—already lives there. And, when they find they’re too afraid of the house to stay, they find they’re also too addicted to it to leave.