A disheveled man wearing pajamas looks concerned
Posted on May 17, 2023

Beau Is Afraid, Mother Is Guilty: Ari Aster’s Maternal-Horror Nightmare

Guest Post

Beau Is Afraid seems like something other than a horror movie. It’s nightmare-ish at times but simultaneously absurd and rarely (if ever) scary. It includes some bodily destruction or exaggeration, but these moments are brief or bizarrely humorous rather than straightforwardly horrific. And the movie is mostly described by critics as black comedy or bleak humor, surrealist or absurdist – not as horror.

Its plot doesn’t sound much like a horror movie, either. Beau (Joaquin Phoenix), who has some serious issues with anxiety, is going to visit his mother, but a series of bizarre difficulties prevents him from doing so. As he tries to get home, he discovers that she has died, and then he is hit by a car before he can act on that information. This is merely the opening of the movie, after which he is taken in by (held captive by) a creepily friendly family, adventures through the forest and meets a theater troupe of orphans, and eventually makes it home, where there are still more twists and turns. This sounds weird, but not horrific.

This is a horror movie, though. Read more

Godzilla movie monster looks ready to strike a city
Posted on May 12, 2023

A Disaster of a Movie: Talking Godzilla (1998)

Podcast

On today’s episode, we’re diving into the magnificent world of creature features with 1998’s Godzilla. Directed by Roland Emmerich, the film takes the famous monster’s story and puts a decidedly American spin on it to questionable results. We’re talking about historical revisionism and what makes a really bad horror film in today’s episode so stay tuned!

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Posted on May 8, 2023

Queers to the Front: On Creating Queer Horror Communities, a Conversation with Dani Bethea, Kay Lynch, and Andrea Subissati

Guest Post

Within the pop cultural imagination horror is often positioned as a low-brow, counter-cultural genre that screams in the face of bourgeois tastes. Yet even though the genre may define itself against mainstream or normative aesthetics, its typical fan communities nevertheless replicate the very restrictive structures the genre espouses to critique. Seemingly dominated by cis- heteronormative, white men who consider themselves gatekeepers of generic knowledge, fan communities – at least on the surface – carve out little space to actually challenge normative social values, including those that organize acceptable expressions of gender and sexuality.

Of course, the risk of normalizing this characterization of horror fandoms in the public sphere is that it erases all others who may participate and indeed help to build these communities. Additionally, the assumed alignment between horror and a very privileged fan community creates conditions whereby more marginalized participants feel the need to justify their engagement. Queer or trans fans who take pleasure in remediating horror characters or media may be confronted with backlash from others who are outwardly hostile toward their interpretations and their need to ‘politicize’ horror via their identities (see Vena and Burgess, 2022). As a result, queer and trans fans are left to defend not only their engagements with horror but their very existence in fandoms and society at large.

Although some may consider the above description to be a generalization, it is arguably the perception of who is involved in horror fan communities that is important rather than the anthropological descriptions of actual fan identities. The damage is already done if queer or trans fans perceive horror communities to be hostile and invalidating. This was my own perception of physical and online fan spaces as a trans-queer graduate student completing his doctoral work on the genre, and it gravely prohibited me from reaching out to others to share my insights and research. However, this attitude began to change when I encountered the homegrown Canadian magazine, Rue Morgue and their allied Faculty of Horror Podcast, both of which blend generic criticism with political commentary. Read more

A woman looks deeply concerned
Posted on April 21, 2023

Where are all the bodies?: Talking Barbarian (2022)

Podcast

In today’s episode, we’re diving into Zach Cregger’s Barbarian (2022). Told in a three act structure, Barbarian vacillates between realism and absurdism in what is arguably one of the most unique horror films to drop in recent years. Following three characters and their relationship to a house located in the Detroit neighborhood of Brightmoor, the film plays with genre hybridity while also offering a powerful indictment of the power of cultural norms to mask what lurks beneath the surface. We’re breaking it all down today with spoilers so stay tuned!

 

A woman stands outside of a door pausing before entering a room. Inside, a man is sitting on a bed and he is smiling.
Posted on April 6, 2023

A Return to Nihilism: Talking Smile (2022)

Podcast

In today’s episode, we’re diving into Smile (2022), a film that has almost single-handedly reinvigorated debate over the importance of trigger warnings.  Written and directed by Parker Finns, the film follows Rose (Sosie Bacon), a doctor who cares for patients at a psychiatric facility while navigating her own mental health journey. Following the death by suicide of a patient in her care, Rose begins to suspect that she is the new target of a demonic entity who won’t be happy until she’s dead. With its nod to the uncanny and gruesome death scenes, Smile is a horror movie explicitly about trauma but is it also about something more? We’re breaking it all down today, so stay tuned. 

Please be aware that this episode contains spoilers and references to suicide.

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