Horror Homeroom

Posted on July 24, 2017

The Disappointments Room Does Horror (Badly) by the Numbers

Dawn Keetley

The Disappointments Room has all the ingredients of a good horror film, which is perhaps part of the problem. The film seems content to fill in the colors of lines that have already been well drawn. It has no imagination, adds nothing new, and simply plods through the motions.

Married couple Dana (Kate Beckinsale) and David (Mel Raido), along with their young son Lucas (Duncan Joiner), move to an isolated old house in the country. Not surprisingly, we soon discover two things: 1. Dana and David have recently experienced a traumatic event, and Dana is not dealing with it very well; 2. The house they are moving to has its own traumatic past, one that soon makes its uncanny appearance to the more vulnerable Dana. She starts seeing things and soon the line between hallucination (or supernatural occurrence) and reality starts wavering.

Posted on July 15, 2017

Politics and American Horror Story: Roanoke

Guest Post

November 9, 2016. Hillary Clinton concedes the presidential election to a “pussy-grabber” who spent his campaign sending tweets like, “If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?” Addressing “all the little girls watching,” Clinton implores, “never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.”[i] The penultimate episode of American Horror Story: Roanoke premieres less than twelve hours later. “Chapter 9” opens with a trio of college-age bloggers looking for the house where My Roanoke Nightmare (the show-within-a-show constituting the first five episodes of AHS ‘s sixth season) was filmed. Sophie (Taissa Farmiga) wonders aloud, “How many likes do you think we’ll get on Instagram when we post footage of the house at the peak of the blood moon? We are gonna blow up the Internet, right?” The exchange that follows is eerily prescient:

Posted on July 11, 2017

Man Vs.: Horror, Philosophy, Nature

Dawn Keetley

Horror films are important not least because they so often dramatize fundamental philosophical questions. I just watched an extremely interesting (and definitely underrated) horror film, Adam Massey’s Man Vs. (2015). I did so at the same time that I was reading an essay by Canadian philosopher Karen Houle about the importance of the language we use when talking about the natural world.[i] At one point in her essay, Houle quotes from Martin Heidegger, a quote that struck me as providing a great lens through which to watch Man Vs.

Posted on July 7, 2017

5 Perspectives on It Comes at Night

Guest Post

I’ve had lots of conversations with people about Trey Edward Shults’ recent film It Comes at Night (2017)—about what it means, how to interpret the ending, and what “It” is. This post is most definitely for those of you who have seen the film and who want to think more about it (so–spoiler alert). Here are five different opinions on what happens and what “It” might be.

Posted on July 5, 2017

Don’t Hang Up: Teens and Social Media

Gwen

2016 | R | 83 min | Directors: Damien Macé & Alexis Wajsbrot | Writer: Joe Johnson | UK

Grade: A-

Don’t Hang Up scares some sense into social media obsessed teens.

Synopsis: A few millennial pranksters take crank calls to the next level while trying to achieve internet stardom. They soon find out the hard way that there are very real life repercussions for their actions.

Don’t Hang Up is a really good film. I was super excited to see a horror film that is rated “R” as that in itself has become as likely as finding a unicorn. This film evokes many of the better elements of Wes Craven’s Scream (1996) as well as I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) combining pranks, poor choices, and a few selfish kids. Remember the opening scene in Scream when Casey Becker gets a prank phone call? Well, imagine that on crack and you have Don’t Hang Up.

Most thrilling about this film is the commentary on social media use. Don’t Hang Up tells a tale of a handful of teenage boys who video themselves making pretty vicious prank phone calls for the purpose of getting “likes” online. When bad things happen, we could superficially assume that their horror-trope indiscretion was exploiting others for personal gain. However, this film is actually much more complex than that. Social media and technology greatly enhance the cat-and-mouse component within this film.