Horror Homeroom

Posted on July 8, 2020

The Beach House: Contemporary Climate Crisis Horror

For all that any movie even vaguely about contagion and isolation will have special resonance in the Coronavirus era, I’ll spare you the topical commentary on The Beach House. This isn’t a new entry to the canon of outbreak horror. What The Beach House aims for instead is to be a Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968) for the climate crisis, as four unsuspecting vacationers face an extinction event, complete with an homage of radio updates. Director Jeffrey A. Brown serves up a beautiful apocalypse, but a tonally and structurally imbalanced story.

Posted on July 7, 2020

Parasite as Horror Film

Guest Post

Class conflicts are a recurring theme in Bong Joon-ho’s films, which deftly traverse multiple genres to portray insights about economic disparities. One could describe Okja as a science fiction action drama and Snowpiercer as a post-apocalyptic dystopian action film. Likewise, in Parasite (2019), a comedic first half gives way to a dark thriller action film. It also strategically uses several elements of horror to transform its plot.

The film follows the story of the cash-strapped Kims, a family of four who work for the affluent Park family. The latter are unaware they have employed individuals from the same family for different roles in the house. The first half of the film depicts how the Kims successfully secure their positions through an elaborate plan. Ki-woo, the son, is the first to be employed as a tutor for the Park family’s daughter through a friend’s recommendation. Ki-woo identifies the need for an art tutor for the younger son in the Park family and recommends his sister, Ki-jung. Ki-woo and Ki-jung then hatch plans to get both the driver and Moon-gwang, the housekeeper fired so that their parents Ki-taek and Chung-sook can be hired.

Posted on July 2, 2020

In Search of Darkness: A Nostalgic Celebration of 80s Horror Cinema

Guest Post

Coinciding with the current renaissance of American horror cinema, we’ve seen more interest in horror documentaries. Within the last two years alone, Eli Roth’s History of Horror (2018) and Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (2019; see the Horror Homeroom review here) both released to critical acclaim, and now we have the collector’s documentary In Search of Darkness: A Journey into Iconic ‘80s Horror (2019), written and directed by David A. Weiner, to add to the mix.

Posted on June 29, 2020

Scream, Queen! Review

Sara McCartney

Around this time last year, the Met Costume Institute was displaying its exhibit on camp, sparking explainers and podcast episodes and angry rants (the last one from me) about just what camp is exactly. I thought about it some more while watching Roman Chimienti and Tyler Jensen’s Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street (2019), and here’s what I’ve got. Camp is the reclamation of something embarrassing or perceived by others as embarrassing. It is the amazing knack queer people have to transform shame into joy and survival. Scream, Queen! is the story of how Nightmare on Elm Street 2, once an embarrassment to its franchise and the career of its then-closeted gay star, Mark Patton, became beloved by fans and a launching pad for Patton’s activism.

The 1985 sequel to Wes Craven’s slasher smash hit, Nightmare on Elm Street 2 is the rare slasher film with a Final Boy. The hapless Jesse, played by Mark Patton, is not merely Freddy’s intended victim but his entry point into the real world as he strives to take over Jesse’s body. More a possession film than a typical slasher, Nightmare on Elm Street 2‘s Freddy functions as an unlikely metaphor for repressed homosexuality. Read more

Posted on June 26, 2020

Followed: A Clever Use of Found Footage and a Smart Critique of Influencer Culture

Guest Post

Ever since the massive success of 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, found footage has been a staple of the horror genre. Even George A. Romero experimented with it in one of his last (and also criminally underrated) films, Diary of the Dead (2007). Yet, now, more than 20 years after The Blair Witch Project, the subgenre has become stale. The grainy, shaky shots have become cliché. Even Blair Witch Project became such a part of the zeitgeist that it was spoofed mercilessly. At this point, for any director and screenwriter to use found footage as a technique, they better do something innovative. Cue Followed, the directorial feature debut by Antoine Le, written by Todd Klick. The film’s uniqueness lies in its method of storytelling. Followed’s narrative is told through vlogging, and by using this method, the movie updates the found footage technique to reflect and comment upon influencer culture. It’s a smart take on what has generally become an exhausted subgenre. The plot unfolds click by click, through a series of vlogs sequenced on a website.