Horror Homeroom

Posted on June 5, 2021

Folk Horror at Home and Abroad in Ari Aster’s Midsommar

Guest Post

Upon its release, Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019) was hailed as a new Folk Horror masterpiece. Like so many other films in the genre – for instance, The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973) and the made-for-TV movie The Dark Secret of Harvest Home (Leo Penn, 1978) – Aster’s film ends in death and with the triumph of the values of a secluded community over the members of a more modern society.

Many viewers read this violent ending as cathartic. Dani (Florence Pugh) has finally shed all the people and circumstances in her life that made her miserable. Her acceptance by the Hårga and the enigmatic smile that plays on her face as she watches her boyfriend, Christian (Jack Reynor), burn to death are seen as the hallmarks of a happy ending.

Posted on May 27, 2021

The Bloodcurdling Book Club: Reading The Dollhouse Murders

Elizabeth Erwin

The Bloodcurdling Book Club is our horror books podcast where Dawn and I rant and rave over dark and disturbing popular fiction. This week’s hair raising read is 1983’s The Dollhouse Murders by Betty Ren Wright. This juvenile classic is the story of Amy, a young girl who escapes the fatigue of being her sister, Louanne’s, caregiver by fleeing to help her aunt prepare to sell her grandparents’ abandoned home. There she discovers a dollhouse that is the exact replica of the family home. But when the dolls begin to move of their own accord, Amy is thrown into a bloody mystery where some secrets are just not meant to stay in the past. An effective read that introduces the horror genre to young readers, The Dollhouse Murders remains relevant for its depictions of generational trauma and its deployment of uncanny dopplegangers.

Listen to the episode here:

Posted on May 25, 2021

The Persistence of Reproductive Futurism in A Quiet Place

Guest Post

‘If they hear you, they hunt you.’ A Quiet Place (2018) tells the story of a white American family fighting to survive in a post-apocalyptic North American landscape, where they are forced to live in silence to avoid monstrous creatures that hunt by sound and have wiped out the majority of the population. The fictional couple Evelyn and Lee Abbott (played by real-life Hollywood couple Emily Blunt and John Krasinki) are determined to find a way to protect their children (deaf daughter Regan, and sons Marcus and Beau) while desperately searching for a way to fight back.

Posted on May 14, 2021

Announcing the Bloodcurdling Book Club Podcast!

Elizabeth Erwin

Listen, we love horror films, and we especially love talking about them on our podcast Horror Homeroom Conversations. But we also love ranting and raving over dark and disturbing popular fiction! And so, the Bloodcurdling Book Club was born.

This bi-weekly (we hope) podcast deep dives into one spine-tingling read per episode and we’re thrilled to kick things off with Cameron Roubique’s masterful Kill River (2015). Billed as a slasher film in book form, the story follows four campers who stumble upon an abandoned waterpark in the middle of the woods. What follows is a heart pounding game of cat and mouse with twists we did not see coming. But did it successfully capture the shlock and gore of 80s horror, or did it get lost in the nostalgia? Dawn and I delve into how Roubique’s story interacts with slasher conventions in some surprising and effective ways in this episode.

And because every slasher deserves a sequel, we’re also dropping a second episode that looks at Kill River 2 (2017), which follows the Final Girl back into suburbia and asks some uncomfortable but essential questions about what it really means to survive a traumatic event at a young age. We’re also including below a reading primer for anyone wanting to learn more about the slasher sub-genre and its conventions. If you enjoy these episodes, please let us know by rating and reviewing!

You can buy Cameron Roubique’s Kill River here (advertisement):

Suggested Reading on the Slasher Film

Anderson, Aaron C. Rethinking the Slasher Film: Violated Bodies and Spectators in “Halloween’’, `’Friday the 13th”, and “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. University of California, San Diego, 2013.

Christensen, Kyle. “The Final Girl versus Wes Craven’s” A Nightmare on Elm Street”: Proposing a Stronger Model of Feminism in Slasher Horror Cinema.” Studies in Popular Culture 34.1 (2011): 23-47.

Clayton, Wickham, ed. Style and form in the Hollywood slasher film. Springer, 2015.

Clover, Carol J. “Her body, himself: Gender in the slasher film.” Representations 20 (1987): 187-228.

Creed, Barbara. The monstrous-feminine: Film, feminism, psychoanalysis. Psychology Press, 1993.

Keisner, Jody. “Do you want to watch? A study of the visual rhetoric of the postmodern horror film.” Women’s Studies 37.4 (2008): 411-427.

Kendrick, James. “Razors in the Dreamscape: Revisiting” A Nightmare on Elm Street” and the Slasher Film.” Film Criticism 33.3 (2009): 17-33.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema.” Visual and other pleasures. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1989. 14-26.

Nolan, Justin M., and Gery W. Ryan. “Fear and loathing at the cineplex: Gender differences in descriptions and perceptions of slasher films.” Sex Roles 42.1 (2000): 39-56.

Nowell, Richard. Blood money: A history of the first teen slasher film cycle. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010.

Petridis, Sotiris. Anatomy of the Slasher Film: A Theoretical Analysis. McFarland, 2019.

Rieser, Klaus. “Masculinity and monstrosity: Characterization and identification in the slasher film.” Men and Masculinities 3.4 (2001): 370-392.

Rockoff, Adam. Going to pieces: the rise and fall of the slasher film, 1978-1986. McFarland, 2011.

Trencansky, Sarah. “Final girls and terrible youth: Transgression in 1980s slasher horror.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 29.2 (2001): 63-73.

Wee, V. (2005). The Scream Trilogy,” Hyperpostmodernism,” and the Late-Nineties Teen Slasher Film. Journal of Film and Video, 57(3), 44-61.

Posted on May 7, 2021

In the Earth: Ben Wheatley’s New Folk Horror

Dawn Keetley

Ben Wheatley’s new film, In the Earth, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in late January 2021, is a fascinating film—especially for fans of folk horror. Wheatley is well-known to those fans, of course, for his previous work in the sub-genre: Kill List (2010), Sightseers (2012), and A Field in England (2013).

In my view, In the Earth is one of the most important folk horror films of the last decade—up there with Wheatley’s own Kill List, although the two films could not be more different.