Horror Homeroom

Posted on October 14, 2020

Tech Horror During Covid: 8 Classic Films

Guest Post

Now more than ever, we’ve been living in a horror film, as the isolation of seven plus months of lockdown has forced us into a reality mediated almost entirely by screens. For those of us working remotely, days are spent on computers and in video meetings. We socialize through phones and laptops too: Zoom birthday parties, FaceTime calls with friends, and confessional Instagram stories. Every person I interact with is as far away or near as every other. They’re all talking heads inside the same digital squares, as known to me as actors on TV.

It’s strange to live through a time of so much illness and death when daily experience has become so nonphysical. The virus, of course, isn’t virtual at all. Unlike the supernatural transmissions in tech horror films, where a haunting is passed from one form of cursed media to another, Covid-19 spreads through bodily proximity. So, we aren’t living in a tech horror film exactly, but our dependence on digital technologies sets us up to appreciate the genre anew.

Posted on October 8, 2020

Dark Economies: Anxious Futures, Fearful Pasts – Conference CFP

Call for Papers

CFP Conference

Dark Economies: Anxious Futures, Fearful Pasts

Falmouth University, UK. 7-9 July 2021

After the success of the Folk Horror in the Twenty First Century conference hosted by Falmouth University, we are holding another related conference in 2021.

We are aiming to have a face to face conference at the beautiful Falmouth Campus in Cornwall. With sub-tropical gardens and the beach nearby, there will be a ‘Welcome to Dark Falmouth’ cemetery walk above the lovely Swanpool lake, an art exhibition, a gig and street food in place of the more usual staid conference dinner. If we’re going to beat Covid we want to do it in style!*

Posted on October 6, 2020

Deconstructive Nostalgia in Clown in a Cornfield

Guest Post

Adam Cesare’s first YA horror novel Clown in a Cornfield delivers exactly what it promises from the title. High school senior Quinn Maybrook, a city girl from Philadelphia, moves with her father to the rural town of Kettle Springs, Missouri, after a family tragedy. They’re looking to move on from this trauma, and so it’s ironic that they settle in Kettle Springs, a town rooted in the past. Quinn quickly assimilates into the surprisingly vibrant youth culture in the town, but she soon learns that not everyone is so fond of the town’s teens. The majority of the novel takes place over the course of one night, as a group of killer clowns attack Quinn and her new friends.

So, why killer clowns? As Brandon Cornett’s article on creepy clowns claims, clowns are terrifying because of their inherent unknowability. Their true emotions are hidden through the use of a painted-on facial expression that’s often overly exaggerated. Clowns fit well within the realm of the uncanny valley: they look one way, but, in the case of horror films, commit acts of violence that don’t always add up with their outward appearance – cheerful and animated. Read more

Posted on October 6, 2020

A Frendo in Need: Talking Clown in a Cornfield

Elizabeth Erwin

How much do we love Adam Cesare’s CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD (2020)? So much that we braved Zoom just to bring you this mini-episode! From its in-the-moment politics to its creative deployment of slasher tropes, Dawn and I are explaining why this novel deserves its buzz on this episode so stay tuned! SPOILERS ABOUND IN THIS EPISODE SO TAKE HEED.

Check out Hayley Dietrich’s review of Clown in a Cornfield.

As you can see, we both love Clown in a Cornfield — and you can find it on Amazon #ad:

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Posted on October 1, 2020

Best Folk Horror – Off the Beaten Track

Dawn Keetley

As folk horror has steadily become more popular over the course of the last ten years, a canon has emerged –the “must watch” folk horror films. These canonical films are all eminently worth watching—and they begin with what Adam Scovell called the “unholy trinity”: Witchfinder General (Michael Reeves, 1968), The Blood on Satan’s Claw (Piers Haggard, 1971), and The Wicker Man (Robert Hardy, 1973). (Scovell’s 2017 critical study, Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange is required reading if you’re interested in folk horror, by the way.) In the second contemporary resurgence of folk horror, there is already what seems like it might be a new US “unholy trinity.” Robert Eggers’ The Witch (2015) and Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019) are already must-see films; Midsommar, in particular, is profoundly influenced by the earlier films, especially The Wicker Man.

As fantastic as these six films are, there is so much more to folk horror. So, throughout the month of October, I’ll be posting works of folk horror—film, TV, fiction—that are off the beaten track. Some of them are hybrids, since folk horror is a capacious category and is often intertwined with other genres (science fiction and the murder mystery, for instance). Some of them are new. Some of them are lesser-known works from the 1960s and 70s. All of them are good!