Horror Homeroom

Posted on December 12, 2023

The Wicker Woman – A Missing Folk Horror Link

Guest Post

by

Philip Jenkins

Baylor University

Folk horror is a major theme in the study of contemporary media and popular culture. Because it attracts so much attention, I am both surprised and pleased to say that I have discovered a significant reference to add to the discussion, one that I am pretty sure nobody else has spotted. It might actually be a missing link in the emergence of that whole genre. I will argue that it was a shaping influence on the 1973 production of The Wicker Man, which regularly appears in critics’ lists of the three or four greatest British films ever made.

The term folk horror dates from 1970, and it originally applied to British films that explored the idea that potent ancient forces and deep-rooted evils survive in the landscape, scarcely acknowledged by the modern world. Commonly, these dark forces are mobilized by active witches or pagan groups, deploying secret rituals dating from pre-Christian times. The plots involve innocent outsiders entrapped in these fearsome proceedings, and likely facing the prospect of a grisly sacrificial death. The genre relies on confrontations with an unsuspected ancient reality, which is inconceivably perilous. Read more

Posted on December 9, 2023

The Weird and the Quotidian: A Review of The Wolves of Eternity by Karl ove Knausgaard

Guest Post

Norwegian author Karl ove Knausgaard erupted onto the international literary stage upon the release of My Struggle, a series of six autobiographical novels which chronicle the peaks and valleys of the author’s life. Fluid in form, My Struggle is a concatenation of memories, self-reflections and existential musings which drift and fade into another in free-floating fashion, yet nevertheless revolve around a pivotal moment in Knausgaard’s life: the death of his alcoholic father, his childhood and adolescence, the trials and tribulations of fatherhood, as well as, in the final volume, the release of My Struggle and the fallout resulting from its publication. What is remarkable about My Struggle, however, is Knausgaard’s unique ability to render the seemingly insignificant and quotidian details of day-to-day life utterly engaging and, in doing so, transform the intensely personal into something grandly universal. When reading the series, Knausgaard’s struggle becomes our own, and it is in his neurotic detailing of the mundane where the universal struggle (and beauty) of daily existence becomes vividly apparent. In this regard, it might seem strange that Knausgaard’s latest project turns away from autobiography and wades into the world of genre, specifically Weird Fiction.

Posted on December 4, 2023

The Lord of Misrule – Paint-by-Numbers Folk Horror

Dawn Keetley

The Lord of Misrule is the latest horror film from William Brent Bell, who has previously directed 2016’s The Boy and Orphan: First Kill (2022), among others. The Lord of Misrule is firmly in the folk horror tradition and, as a huge folk horror fan, I had been excitedly anticipating its release. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. That isn’t to say there aren’t things to like, but while it delivers on pretty much every folk horror convention, it adds little; it plays out a rote folk horror narrative across its admittedly beautiful surface, but it’s flat, lifeless, bereft of underlying meaning. It doesn’t add anything new, as the best recent folk horror films – Kill List (Ben Wheatley, 2011), Without Name (Lorcan Finnegan, 2016), Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019), In the Earth (Ben Wheatley, 2021), The Feast (Lee Haven Jones, 2021), Enys Men (Mark Jenkins, 2022), and Men (Alex Garland, 2022) – have done.

a sloth holds up a camera to take a selfie with a girl in a hospital bed in a breathing mask.

Posted on December 1, 2023

Sloths Gone Wild: Talking Slotherhouse (2023)

Elizabeth Erwin/ Podcast

In today’s episode, it’s an old school horror-comedy romp with Matthew Goodhue’s Slotherhouse (2023). The plot revolves around Alpha, a homicidal three-toed sloth who is abducted from her home in the Panamanian jungle by poachers. Upon killing Oliver, one of the poachers, she is taken in by Emily who believes Alpha just might be her ticket to the sorority house presidency. But when Alpha discovers Emily looking chummy with Oliver in an Instagram post, she unleashes her fury on the unsuspecting sorority house. With some fans and critics lambasting the film as the dumbest story ever committed to film and others declaring it the best horror film of the year, Slotherhouse is, to put it mildly, divisive. We’re breaking it all down with spoilers, so stay tuned.

Posted on November 23, 2023

Why You Should Watch The City of the Dead (and its Striking Resemblance to Psycho)

Dawn Keetley

It’s a moment of uncanny serendipity in horror film history.

The City of the Dead (re-named Horror Hotel in the US) – the first directorial project of Argentinian-born British director, John Llewellyn Moxey – was released in the UK in September 1960. Produced by Americans Milton Subotsky and Max J. Rosenberg, the film is generally considered to be the unofficial first of their Amicus Productions (a British company they would officially found shortly after the release of City of the Dead, and which had an impact on the horror genre in the 1960s that was second perhaps only to Hammer Studios)[i]. Filming commenced “at Shepperton Studios [in Surrey, England] in the Summer of 1959,” [ii] running at least through October.

The vastly more famous Psycho, produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, made at Universal Studios in the US and distributed by Paramount Pictures, was released in New York City in June 1960 and saw general distribution, like City of the Dead, in September 1960. Also like City of the Dead, filming began on Psycho in the later half of 1959 (running, specifically, between November 1959 and February 1960).

In other words, there’s virtually no way that either City of the Dead or Psycho could have influenced the other. And yet, they share some striking similarities. They are also, I should add, profoundly different in their approach to horror. Both these similarities and this difference are worth exploring.