Horror Homeroom

Posted on September 20, 2016

Disability in Don’t Breathe: Victim, Villain, Blind Man

Guest Post

The opening lines of the 2016 box-office hit, Don’t Breathe, directed by Fede Alvarez, summarize the plot:

“Wait, is he blind?”

“That’s kind of fucked up to rob a blind guy, isn’t it?”

“Just ‘cause he’s blind don’t mean he’s a saint, bro.”

The scene in which these lines are said appears in every trailer for the film. It demonstrates a sadly common reaction and attitude towards those with visual impairments, and other disabilities: a double-take, discomfort, pity, and disengagement (or, worse, repulsion and recoil). Blindness is almost a deal-breaker for the speakers, thieves planning their next mark, and it is ironically the most ruthless of the three who exposes their assumptions with the third line.

In Don’t Breathe, three thieves (Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette, and Daniel Zovatto) break into the house of a man (Stephen Lang) who has received a large settlement after his daughter is killed and has hidden the cash in his dilapidated house in a deserted Detroit neighborhood. They target him for all of these reasons. The fact that he’s also a blind war vet becomes an added bonus: easy prey, if pathetic. They presume he will be an easy mark that will bring their careers as thieves to a fruitful end. However, “The Blind Man” (that’s the only name he gets) is not only capable of defending himself, but of hunting them down one by one. In the depths of his house, they discover that he’s hiding more than money. Critics are saying this twist sets Don’t Breathe apart, but I have no interest in discussing it here. Any other spoilers throughout this post involve the details of the film-long chase, which I don’t feel would detract from a first viewing. Don’t Breathe is an experience. Read more

Posted on September 13, 2016

Nicholas McCarthy’s Easter: A Modern Fairy Tale

Guest Post

Easter is a short film in the Holidays horror anthology, released in 2016. Written and directed by Nicholas McCarthy, it tells the tale of a young girl (played by Ava Acres), who is conflicted about the Easter holiday; having just learned of Jesus’s death and resurrection at church, she has a hard time reconciling the story with her mom’s tales of the Easter Bunny, whom no child has actually seen. What follows is one of the most disturbing yet surreal scenes out of recent horror: as the girl traverses the dark hallway of her home to get a glass of water, she encounters the Easter Bunny. But as is to be expected of a horror story, this Bunny is a horrifying, blasphemous combination of the cute holiday mascot and Christ— the raw, flayed, crown of thorns, pierced side, and stigmata-riddled Christ of the Crucifixion story. He is the girl’s confusion made real. Cowering in fear of this monstrosity, the girl is told that she must now “take [his] place.” When the girl questions whether she will see her mother again, the creature replies— with seemingly sadistic glee— that she never will. The short then ends with the girl transforming into a new Easter Bunny. Read more

Posted on September 10, 2016

The Neighbour Isn’t What You Think It Is—It’s Much Better

Dawn Keetley

The Neighbour (2016) was one of those films that started out well and then got better. It started out appearing to be one kind of story, and then it became another—a much more human story. At every turn, writers Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton reveal that characters who appear unredeemable, the sadistic stock characters of exploitation horror, are just powerless individuals, caught in a web of hopelessness, trying to survive.

The Neighbour is Marcus Dunstan’s third film as director, following on the heels of The Collector (2009) and The Collection (2012), both also written by Dunstan and Melton. These two earlier films can’t help but shape expectations for The Neighbour, as does the trailer and all the brief synopses of the film. As the summary on IMDb tells us: “the film follows a man who discovers the dark truth about his neighbor and the secrets he may be keeping in the basement.” So you could be forgiven for thinking The Neighbour is another Collector, another entry in the by-now rather tired “torture-porn” subgenre. It isn’t. It’s much more interesting than that. Read more

Posted on September 8, 2016

Billionaire Ransom (2016): Watch it for the Scenery

Dawn Keetley

My primary motivation for watching the recently-released Billionaire Ransom (Take Down outside the US) was its filming location. I was punished, it seems, for my less-than-serious motivation in that the film’s location ended up being by far the best thing about it.

Billionaire Ransom is directed by Jim Gillespie, known for I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), and written by Alexander Ignon. It features a cast of young people (led by Jeremy Sumpter and Phoebe Tonkin), all of whom are rich and spoiled and sent to some kind of punitive boot camp for moral rehabilitation. As they are being taught the basics of survival on an isolated island, they are kidnapped by a group of criminals interested in a little wealth redistribution. The rich kids then get to practice their newly-honed survival skills with their very lives on the line. Read more

Posted on September 6, 2016

Horror Imagery & Dread in Cloverfield (2008)

Elizabeth Erwin

Within the context of traditional horror, the role of the hero/heroine is to defeat the threat the monster poses and return the narrative to normalcy. Certainly, the locus of the horror manifested in the monster is dependent upon the era in which a film is made. In the wake of 9/11, horror films underwent a metamorphosis in which the dread central to the horror film was permanently altered. In a return of horror tropes popular during the Cold War and Vietnam eras, slasher films and reflexive horror with pronounced elements of humor gave way to an apocalyptic horror now situated in realism courtesy of the nightly evening news. This move away from films such as Camp Blood (1999), Final Destination (2000) and Ginger Snaps (2000) and toward films such as Quarantine (2008), Hostel (2005), and Saw (2004) is pronounced and requires of the audience an intimate association with the terror being expressed.

Cloverfield (2008) straddles the line between horror and science fiction and creates a new breed of terror unique to post 9-11 audiences that speaks to this shift. Employing the same found footage technique seen in Ghostwatch (2002) and The Last Broadcast (1998), Cloverfield tells the story of a group of friends who attempt to survive the fallout when a monster lays waste to New York City. Although not a great film, Cloverfield is worth a watch both for its imagery as well as for its re-imagining of terror tropes.