Cassiah Joski-Jethi is an award-winning female filmmaker based in the UK, and she has just directed an exciting indie horror short called Catch a Butcher कच्चा बच्चे – and I was lucky enough to be able to interview her about her new film.
First, here’s the teaser trailer: Read more
The terror of Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House (1959) resides in the struggle of its protagonist to procure and maintain a stable sense of self. Eleanor Vance’s desperation to establish a collective and an individual identity is palpable in her continual self-affirmations that she both “belongs” to the group of guests in Hill House and exists as a separate entity. Identifying herself in relation to Theodora, the house’s other female inhabitant, is particularly crucial, given Eleanor’s history of dysfunctional relationships with other women. In Robert Wise’s 1963 film adaptation, The Haunting, Eleanor’s identity crisis is brilliantly conveyed through the use of mirrors in the cinematography and mise-en-scène. Throughout the film, mirrors function to trace Eleanor’s attempts and eventual failure to establish an identity in relation to Theodora.
From her arrival at Hill House, Eleanor is painfully aware of her “self,” or, rather, lack thereof. Bending down to pick up her suitcase, Eleanor notices her reflection in the freshly waxed floors (19:30) and is prompted to quickly catch up with the house’s caretaker, commenting, “I gather I’m the first one here, Mrs. Dudley” (19:40). On the way up the stairs, she is startled less by the ominous-looking gargoyles decorating the stairwell than she is by her reflection in a wall mirror (19:50). This is just the first of the excessive number of mirrors she will encounter in the house. Read more
From online discussion boards to quips in the 2019 film adaptation, It Chapter Two, there’s one truism Stephen King fans and critics alike have long accepted: King can’t stick a landing. But I’ve always found the ending of his massive coming-of-age horror classic, It, fitting and, dare I say, satisfying. Trying to tease out why the ending works for me—why I believe it rings true with the rest of the novel and is not simply the tacked-on excuse of a writer out of ideas—became a minor obsession that finally culminated in this essay.
The ending is as follows: In 1950’s America, seven children defeat It, the primordial shapeshifter that most often appears in the guise of Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Grown up, the protagonists realize that It survived, forcing them to face off against the monster once more. After an apocalyptic struggle, they finally destroy It through the power of their friendship. Fairly standard, but the reviews and articles claiming that the ending is pat, predictable, and void of complexity beg to differ. The headline of a review in Vulture more or less sums up these feelings with the claim that “A Sentimental It Chapter Two Needed More Pennywise.”[i] Read more
In 2019, horror went back to school in a major way, with a couple of popularly-released films taking on the trappings of academia. Ari Aster’s atmospheric Midsommar takes us to a remote village in Sweden where the residents have sinister plans for the unwitting grad students functioning as tourists. Sophia Takal’s Black Christmas is a remake of the 1974 proto-slasher of the same name about murders in a sorority house, but acts as more of a spiritual successor than faithful adaption.
While these films take dramatically different approaches to horror and the delivery of feelings of unease, they share a certain thematic sensibility. Namely, both movies deal with themes of cults and cult-like behavior, and in doing so draw an interesting comparison between the occult behavior of the villains of the stories and the trappings of higher education itself. In short, the cults in the film hold up a mirror to the conceit of academia in both productions and ask hard questions about the behavior of the characters involved. Read more
One of the standout horror films of 2019, Ready or Not was an unexpected hit with both fans and critics. Directed by the duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, this foray into generational lore and unrestrained privilege offers up an intriguing blend of campy gore and pointed black humor that feels particularly relevant in Trump’s America. We’re talking satire, devil iconography and the importance of a killer costume in this episode, so stay tuned!
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