Horror Homeroom

Posted on December 20, 2016

Reconsidering Disaster Films as Horror

Sharing a similar aesthetic, the line between horror films and disaster films has always been hard to pinpoint. From creepy sound effects to graphic violence to a cultivated atmosphere of menace, the characteristics of horror films and disaster films overlap in a very organic way. I’ve been interested in thinking about whether these two genres are distinctly different, or if it benefits us to think of them as similar.

I’m often surprised at how overlooked these movies are by horror film buffs. But with Hollywood attempting to resurrect the genre (World War Z, Olympus Has Fallen), I think it’s worth a look at whether some of the films that created the blueprint for the modern disaster film are also intimately connected to the horror genre. And while disaster films, much like horror, are designed to reflect the times in which they are made, the elements employed by both are startlingly similar.

Posted on December 17, 2016

Train to Busan: Zombies and Crises of Conscience on a Train

Dawn Keetley

Train to Busan marks the live-action debut of animator Yeon Sang-ho—and it is a stunning debut. It tells the story of a workaholic fund manager, Seok Woo (Gong Yoo) whose marriage appears to have been a casualty both of his ambition and of what his daughter, Su-an (Kim Su-an), describes as his ingrained propensity to think only of himself. When the film opens, Su-an is staying with her father in Seoul, but she demands he take her back to her mother in Busan—which sets off the eponymous high-speed train ride. As father and daughter board the train, evidence of strange, violent behavior manifests on the edges of the frame, not quite in vision—but soon it’s clear that something is infecting the passengers on the train. What follows is a terrifying film about the struggle of the dwindling uninfected against the increasing hordes of infected. The film is also about so much more than that—it’s about what humans are capable of becoming, both good and bad.
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Posted on December 13, 2016

“He’s inside me, and he wants to take me again!” Homosexuality and Gay Fandom in A Nightmare On Elm Street: Freddy’s Revenge

Guest Post

During my Masters’ degree, I decided to explore the nascent field of “queer horror.” This phrase may sound familiar, or it might sound entirely alien. Queer horror is the intersection between queerness – that is, non-heterosexual, non-normativity – and the horror genre. In 1997, a film scholar named Harry M. Benshoff wrote the seminal Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film. Benshoff explores the rich and deep-seated connections between homosexuality and horror, dating back to the earliest days of celluloid recording. One of the leading German Expressionists filmmakers, F. W. Murnau, was a homosexual male. He made film versions of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, and what is now considered an influential masterpiece of cinematic Expressionism, Nosferatu (1922). Yes, perhaps the most iconic image in all cinematic history was created by a gay person. I often get asked, “What is it about horror that’s queer?” I often respond, “What isn’t queer about horror?”

One of the most infamous queer horror films ever made is A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985), the first sequel to Wes Craven’s horror masterpiece A Nightmare On Elm Street from the previous year. Made during the height of the AIDS crisis, Freddy’s Revenge has been subject to rigorous analysis in relation to its homoerotic subtext. The film tells the story of Jesse, a sexually confused boy dealing with Freddy Krueger, a deformed monster who uses Jesse’s pubescent body as a vehicle for his killing. There are many great lines throughout the film, but its most quotable must be the unforgettable: “Something is trying to get inside my body!” Jesse has been identified as horror cinema’s first male “scream queen” (a prototypical role usually reserved for females), which goes hand in hand with the film’s homoerotic charge. There’s also the homoerotic relationship between Jesse and his handsome jock frenemy Grady, as well as Jesse’s gay gym teacher who has a penchant for young boys and BDSM. The latter of which leads to a scene in the film I still cannot believe made its way into a mainstream horror film in the 1980s, in which Jesse goes to a leather bar and sees his teacher kink-slapped to death in the boys’ showers. This actually happened. In 1985. Just let that soak in. Read more

Posted on December 10, 2016

The Monster: Of Mothers and Monsters

Dawn Keetley

The Monster is written and directed by the extremely talented Bryan Bertino, who also directed and wrote the 2008 home invasion film, The Strangers—a film that would certainly make my list of the best films of the 2000s. The Monster shares some of the things that make The Strangers a great film: its plot is spare, focused (without distraction) on the palpable threat to its isolated protagonists; it succeeds in very large part because of the undeniable strength of its actors: Zoe Kazan and Ella Ballentine are just as brilliant in The Monster as Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman were in The Strangers. And, in both films, Bertino expertly weaves in a larger frame of meaning—religion and the presence of evil in The Strangers (as I wrote about elsewhere) and the complicated love (and hate) of mother-daughter relationships in The Monster. Read more

Posted on December 5, 2016

House (1986) and House II (1987) Offer Insight into the Performance of Masculinity

Gwen

I initially delved into these movies with the aim of revisiting some great horror comedy. What I unearthed instead was an instruction manual for becoming a man in the 1980’s. These texts are just as rich with gender ideals as uncovering a 1950s Ladies Home Journal. Within both films I noticed a not so subtle description of what passes for appropriate masculinity. The narratives are different but the trajectory of the leading man is the same. In House, Roger Cobb (William Katt) has to overcome his failures in Vietnam to become man enough to have his family back. Similarly in House II Jesse (Arye Gross) isn’t even worthy enough to have a family until he butches up. Cue up your Betamax and your VHS as we are going to revisit the 1980s version of how to become a man.