darkened image where a man is faintly made out
Posted on September 8, 2021

Mike Flanagan’s Devotion to Negative Space

Guest Post

Mike Flanagan has developed into a writer-director at the forefront of contemporary horror, both in television and film. His work displays a horror auteurism that sets him apart from his contemporaries, with one particular stylistic marker rising above: Flanagan’s devotion to negative space. Negative space is everything around the main subject in an image. Positive space accounts for the subject of the image, that which we are drawn to focus on. Flanagan’s process suggests a careful deployment of negative space to build tension towards a terrifying payoff. Through an examination of two scenes from Flanagan’s oeuvre, one from the limited series The Haunting of Hill House (2018) and the other from the film Doctor Sleep (2019), I intend to lay out how Flanagan’s use of negative space defines his approach to filming horror.

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back view of a man who looks in the distance while a wolf howls
Posted on August 29, 2021

Surviving Winter and Nature in The Long Dark

Guest Post

In the dead heat of August, I often find myself longing for the depths of winter. With the tail-end of summer upon us, I’ve been satisfying that longing by playing Hinterland Studio’s The Long Dark, a video game set in a seemingly endless Canadian winter on an abandoned island where you are forced to fend for yourself. Perhaps survival isn’t your idea of escapism, but The Long Dark offers something much more unnerving than an idyllic tromp through the snowy woods. Specifically, The Long Dark’s horror as a survival game rests on the premise of ecophobia, the ever-present threat of nature, the very real limits of the human body, and the intrusions of the past. The Long Dark reveals that survival is a constant confrontation with the mundane horror of homeostasis.

The Long Dark is by no means a new game—it was released in 2014 as a sandbox-type survival game, and it is the survival mode that this piece will focus on. Later, Hinterland added a story mode, and by then it had gained a loyal following of fans. Survival mode has varying degrees of difficulty: Pilgrim, Voyageur, Interloper, and Stalker. While Pilgrim is fun for new players who want a more atmospheric experience, Voyageur is a good mix of animal-threat and atmosphere that will frequently push your character to its limits. Read more

Family Tree comic book cover with face and flower
Posted on August 25, 2021

Image Comics’ ‘Family Tree’ remains firmly rooted in eco & body horror

Guest Post

The medium of comic books has always had an interest in highlighting fundamentally human relationships against a remarkable backdrop of spandex, super strength, and sinister villains. And over time, characters like Peter Parker, Clark Kent, and the very mortal cast of ‘The Walking Dead’ have served as the comic book conduits to define, explore, and challenge readers’ understanding of people and their relationships.

But some creators are uprooting the subject so completely by planting within their narratives stylistic and genre-defying tropes of horror, and the results can be astoundingly brutal to the senses. One of Image Comics’ latest ongoing series ‘Family Tree’ — collected in a volume of the first four issues, entitled, “Sapling,” perfectly weds elements of body and ecological horror to explore the terror faced by a family challenged by an unexplainable apocalyptic scenario of life and death. Read more

Posted on August 22, 2021

Unraveling The Green Ribbon In Horror Stories and Movies

Guest Post

Marriage and relationships have always been a major theme in horror. How much can you ever REALLY know about the person you share your life with. How long can you last until a person’s true self is revealed. Yes, marriage is a murky mess. Oftentimes there is a simple yet impactful folktale that gets to the heart of a theme like this. One such story, one that has quite the history in itself, is a tale often known as The Green Ribbon.

I made a documentary about the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books, and so I’ve heard many people talk about the numerous folktales and urban legends in them. So many had a profound impact for children growing up, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s. The Green Ribbon is one that isn’t technically in those books (though featured in the same author’s easy reader) but it was one that came up again and again as a story that resonated with many people as a truly scary story that one ought to read in the dark. Over time I found that The Green Ribbon has some unique themes that closely relate to other modern tales in books and film. Read more

Posted on August 19, 2021

CFP – Reel Demonology: Ed and Lorraine Warren and The Conjuring Universe

Call for Papers

Currently consisting of seven (eight if one counts The Curse of La Llorona) interconnected films with additional entries in the pipeline, The Conjuring universe (2013-present) serves as one of the touchstone horror franchises of the modern era. Despite rising to industry prominence as one of the most profitable horror franchises of all time and one of the few properties to effectively execute a shared universe story world, The Conjuring universe has only been the subject of a few studies where it is often assessed alongside analogous, but thematically different, films such as Paranormal Activity (2009) and Insidious (2011). To fill this gap, the proposed collection will offer the first in-depth academic analysis of The Conjuring universe, its constituent films, and its mythology.

Suggested topics for this proposed collection include but are not restricted to:

  • The Conjuring universe’s use of religious iconography
  • Analyses of themes that cut across films in The Conjuring universe
  • Close analyses of individual texts (e.g., The Nun, Annabelle: Creation) in The Conjuring universe
  • Assessment of the real-life cases informing The Conjuring universe, including Ed and Lorraine Warren
  • Analyses of ‘sub-franchises’ (e.g., The Conjuring and Annabelle) in The Conjuring universe

Please send by (December 1) a 200–400 word abstract and a 50–100 word academic biography: Todd Platts (toddkplatts@gmail.com).

Preference will be given to proposals received by December 1, 2021. All notifications of acceptance will be emailed no later than December 31, 2021. If an abstract is accepted, essays can be expected to be between 6,000 and 7,500 words in length (including references).

Further inquiries should be sent to Todd Platts (toddkplatts@gmail.com).

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