Horror Homeroom

Posted on August 18, 2018

Down a Dark Hall: Female Gothic and ‘The End of Men’

Dawn Keetley

Down a Dark Hall is directed by Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Cortés who directed the critically-acclaimed Buried (2010). The screenplay is written by Michael Goldbach and Chris Sparling and based on the 1974 novel by the young adult author Lois Duncan (who also wrote, among others, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Killing Mr. Griffin).

In a plot reminiscent of The Craft (1996) or American Horror Story’s third season, “Coven” (2013-14), Down a Dark Hall centers on five girls with troubled pasts who arrive at Blackwood Boarding School, sent their by their parents as a kind of last resort. They are the only five students in a vast isolated mansion presided over by the mysterious Madame Duret (Uma Thurman), who soon makes it clear that the girls have special abilities that she intends to foster. And, indeed, the girls soon display talents they didn’t know they had. Protagonist Kit (AnnaSophia Robb) blossoms into a master piano player; Ashley (Taylor Russell) starts writing brilliant poetry; Sierra (Rosie Day) paints captivating landscapes; and Izzy (Isabelle Fuhrman) transforms into a math genius. Their new abilities come with a price, however, as the girls get sicker and strange figures start haunting the long dark halls of Blackwood.

Posted on August 15, 2018

The other secret of Marrowbone: The domestically entrapped male in horror film

Guest Post

The recent film, The Secret of Marrowbone (Sergio Sánchez, 2017) exemplifies a trope that has become an active model within the gothic and horror film since the mid twentieth century: the lone male figure enclosed within the spaces of the domestic realm, observing the women and children in his absence from afar, on the periphery of society and haunting the spaces of the family home. Hidden in attics, basements and crawlspaces, the domestically sutured male at once supports the male gaze but is at the same time disenfranchised from and on the borders of the society that supposedly promotes that same gaze. From Norman Bates’ scopophilic peephole view of Janet Leigh in Psycho (1960) to the image of Bryan Cranston observing the consequences of his self-imposed exile in Wakefield (2016), 20^th and 21^st-century film has given birth to a new societal orphan.

Posted on August 11, 2018

Providence: The Shadow over Lovecraft

Guest Post

How two theatre makers brought the worlds of HP Lovecraft to life in their play Providence: The Shadow over Lovecraft, now playing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe until August 25, 2018.

“You know…” Dominic Allen looks up from his phone at me and narrows his eyes, “You kind of look like him.”

We’re sitting in the outdoor bar of one of the larger venues during last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It’s August in Scotland and the weather is doing its best to imitate a warm sunny day. We’re discussing the works and mythos of one of our favourite horror authors but it wasn’t until this moment that we sought to learn a bit about his actual life by reading up about him on Wikipedia. I gingerly take the phone from his hands and stare at a thin face, not unattractive but with a rather large forehead, he’s dressed smartly in a suit and tie and I can’t help but find some resemblance between our large, somewhat intense, eyes.

“His chin is bigger than mine.” I say as I hand the phone back.

“Yeah but you’re both tall, blonde… I’m just saying.” Dominic, my friend of over 10 years, is getting that creative glint in his eye that occurs when he’s about to suggest something huge:

“We should make a show.”

A chance to work with one of the most talented and hilarious people I know, playing the man who practically INVENTED the modern horror genre… How could I say no?

Posted on August 6, 2018

Mohawk and Downrange: Two Films for Our Time

Guest Post

Thus far, 2018, like its predecessor, has been a good year at the box office for horror. Small-budget films like A Quiet Place and Hereditary have been all the buzz, breaking into the mainstream. Two lesser-known recent films, Mohawk (2017) and Downrange (2017), are also deserving of attention. They recently became available on streaming services and speak to our present moment, especially in the context of immigration/the “other” and gun violence.

Directed by Ted Geoghegan and set during the War of 1812, Mohawk takes place in the American wilderness as Americans track down a British officer, Joshua Pinsmail (Eamon Farren), who befriends a tribe of Mohawk Indians and encourages them to join the British against the Americans. The Mohawks want to remain neutral but are forced to choose sides when members of the tribe are slaughtered.

Posted on August 4, 2018

Fallen Kingdom and Empathy for Dinosaurs

Guest Post

Nothing will ever be Jurassic Park. In an interview for Fallen Kingdom, executive producer Steven Spielberg recalls his experience directing the franchise-opener explaining, “the moment that brought this home for me as a filmmaker was when the T. Rex started to attack two modern Ford Explorers, and you saw the modern world and you saw the prehistoric world meeting up 65 million years later. To me, that’s when I really felt we had captured lightning in a bottle.” That sensation, what Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) evokes when she asks Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), “Do you remember the first time you saw a dinosaur…it’s like, a miracle. You read about them in books. You see the bones in museums. But you don’t really believe it,” cannot be replicated.

Fortunately, that is not what Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) is attempting to do. Rather, the film evokes the memory of those emotions, via visual callbacks and recurring characters, both human and non, to drive J. A. Bayona’s purpose—empathy. The director insists, “It’s not about people rescuing people anymore; it’s about people rescuing dinosaurs. The whole movie’s about empathy. An empathy toward the dinosaurs.” This objective is simple, and Fallen Kingdom excels at simplicity—in jump scares, with Blue, demonstrating the dangers of commodifying life. However, the questions the film raises are inherently complex, and, though fun, Fallen Kingdom sometimes finds itself lost in its own complexity.