Horror Homeroom

Posted on April 22, 2018

Ecohorror: The Nature of Horror

Dawn Keetley

A repeated visual motif in some recent horror films (actually ecohorror films) is the landscape that engulfs characters. These moments typically involve extreme long shots in which the characters are swallowed by their surroundings. They highlight, most obviously, the insignificance of humans in the face of an overwhelming nature. But they also represent, more ominously, how nature seems to be actively encroaching on the characters, actively threatening them. What happens in these moments is, I think, a distinct variant of ecohorror.

Posted on April 20, 2018

Ghost Stories: Best Horror Film of 2018

Dawn Keetley

Ghost Stories, distributed by IFC Midnight, is directed and written by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman and adapted from their stage play which opened in Liverpool in 2010. The play was notable for its warning that no one under 15 should attend and also for its asking the audience to keep its “secrets.” Like the play, the film definitely deserves to have its secrets kept, and this review is without spoilers. I do know, though, that I’ll undoubtedly write about Ghost Stories in the future because it’s a film with an ending that needs to be talked about. And it’s brilliant. It’s the best horror film I’ve watched in 2018. (While Ghost Stories premiered at the London Film Festival in late 2017, so technically it’s a 2017 film, it didn’t arrive in the US until 2018.)

Ghost Stories centers on Professor Phillip Goodman (Andy Nyman), a profound skeptic who devotes his life to debunking what he sees as the superstitious and destructive delusions of believers. A short home video that plays near the opening of the film explains Goodman’s zeal. As he says, “My father’s religious beliefs destroyed our family.” To Goodman, religious faith, or any faith in the supernatural, is a product of humans’ having to confront mortality and death; it’s a way of dealing with “existential terror.” And he believes it’s a self-deceptive way of dealing with that terror. Goodman lives his life believing one must confront the terror of existence and death, not evade it through lies. His entire life is built on the bedrock of “material evidence” –of apprehending the reality in front of your eyes. The film, not surprisingly, challenges that view.

Posted on April 14, 2018

Watership Down & Eden Lake

Dawn Keetley

Martin Rosen’s famous 1978 adaptation of Richard Adams’ 1972 Watership Down turns 40 this year, and no doubt there will be numerous tributes to the brilliant film that traumatized a generation of children. Indeed, there is a conference planned in November 2018 at the University of Warwick, The Legacy of Watership Down, organized by Dr. Catherine Lester (@CineFeline; @watershipdown40).

I’m very interested, specifically, in Watership Down’s legacy within the horror tradition, and this post just points out one small connection between Rosen’s film and a later important British horror film, Eden Lake (James Watkins, 2008).

Posted on April 13, 2018

Disability in A Quiet Place: Hearing Not Required

Guest Post

Horror films include a diverse range of communication methods: anything from writing in blood, ghostly TV static, speaking in tongues, intense stares into the soul, opening puzzle boxes, reading from cursed books, dreaming, saying a name five times in a mirror, channeling spirits from beyond, passing around video tapes. The list could go on. There are also more typical methods, of course: screaming, crying, cackling. Among this list of strange and unusual ways to communicate, however, is a noticeable absence. A Quiet Place, directed by John Krasinski, may be the only horror film I’ve seen that so prominently features American Sign Language.

To encourage you to go see this movie, I’ve tried to avoid spoilers, though I do make vague mention of the end. The film starts mid-action, in the near future, the world already unrecognizable. Any remaining humans in this world cower in fear of violent and indestructible (gorgeously-designed) creatures, who appear to have already killed much of the population. The creatures are attracted to sound, which appears to cause them pain. In fact, their heads are comprised of teeth and an oversized, armor-encased ear. Whatever makes a sound is instantly destroyed. The tagline for the film is “silence is survival.”

Posted on April 11, 2018

Viewer Participation and Decision Making in Would You Rather (2012)

Gwen

The premise of Would You Rather is simple; eight guests meet at the home of Mr. Lambrick in hopes of becoming the next recipient of the Lambrick Foundation’s philanthropy. They meet under the guise of a dinner party, but what they don’t know is that there are no free handouts from this Foundation.

Would You Rather is broken down into two particularly interesting parts. Essentially these two parts consist of Iris’ (Brittany Snow) life outside of the game and her life inside the game. Outside of the game Iris is a young woman who moves home to care for her brother after her parents pass. Iris’ brother has leukemia and is in need of a costly bone marrow transplant. Prior to the game we see that Iris makes the conscious choice to become a caretaker by putting her life on hold to assist her brother. This same brother regularly makes comments about Iris’ sacrifice, “You can’t always be the hero, sometimes you gotta let go…Aren’t you sick of this, don’t you want a life?” Because of her inability to let go, Iris seeks out the money from Lambrick Foundation thus landing herself in the horrible game of would you rather.