Horror Homeroom

Posted on May 13, 2017

Top 13 Horrible Parents of Horror

Gwen

Stranger Danger is a total crock. We all know that we are statistically more likely to be maimed or murdered by someone we know (and love). In honor of the looming Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, these films offer depictions of terrible parents who help us appreciate the moms and dads in our own lives. Some of the most memorable performances in horror come from ghastly guardians who remind us that being a parent ain’t that easy. What follows is a chronological list of horror films whose parents make us think twice about “Home Sweet Home.” Thanks mom and dad for everything! (Especially, for not being skin-suit wearing psychopaths….or at least for hiding that side of things from us.)

Posted on May 9, 2017

The Eye vs. The Eye

Guest Post

If you’re a serious film fan, you probably have a kneejerk (but totally appropriate!) negative reaction any time you hear about an American remake of a beloved movie from another country. Who among us has not been burned? Who doesn’t have that one favorite film from abroad that was eventually sullied (or even ruined) by Hollywood ignorance/excess/apathy/all of the above?

For me, it was the 2004 Thai horror movie, Shutter, which was crazy scary and climaxed with a final reveal (I won’t spoil it here) that chilled me to the bone, only to be transformed four years later into a disappointing cash grab starring Dawson Creek’s Joshua Jackson.

For others, perhaps it was the British cult classic, The Wicker Man (1973), which was recycled into the unintentionally campy Nicolas Cage movie of the same name in 2006. Or maybe it was the R-rated J-horror classic, Ju-on (2002), which became the nonsensical PG-13 Sarah Michelle Gellar vehicle, The Grudge (2004).

But believe it or not, I’m not a rabid purist. I do acknowledge that there have been solid remakes in the American canon, horror and otherwise. For example, as much as I (and the rest of the world) love the chilling Let the Right One In (2008) from Sweden, I think Let Me In (2010) is remarkably well-crafted and surprisingly moving, emotionally, in ways the Swedes never intended.

So it was with an open mind that I recently approached watching, after all these years, the 2008 American remake of The Eye (2002). I saw the Hong Kong-made original when it first came out, in a small theater that no longer exists, and it instantly became one of my favorite horror films of all time.

Posted on May 5, 2017

Roadkill: Art or Exploitation?

Dawn Keetley

Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) famously opens (after the credit sequence) with what has to be one of the most famous shots of roadkill in horror—a dead armadillo on a hot Texas highway. The shot is an establishing shot, but it also predicts something of what is to come. The young and attractive main characters, speeding past the charnel houses of a forgotten part of Texas, will soon find other kinds of “animals” who have been left behind by civilization, abandoned by the side of the road of progress. And then they themselves will also become a kind of roadkill.

Posted on May 4, 2017

Loot Crate: Women in Horror Dream Crate

Elizabeth Erwin

It’s no secret to anyone who has ever entered my office that I am a hardcore collector of all things Final Girl related. So when Loot Crate reached out to us to create our own “Dream Crate” on a theme of our choosing, we may have broken the speed of sound in accepting the challenge. As the collector of the group, I was given the enviable task of assembling a crate of goodies that would represent Loot Crate’s commitment to providing fans with fun, unique and geeky gifts while highlighting a theme near and dear to Horror Homeroom’s heart.

The decision to select ‘Women in Horror’ as our theme was an easy one. Recent statistics indicate that more women are buying movie tickets for horror films than are men. There has also been a noticeable uptick in the number of female led horror films entering production. Yet, check out the merchandise marketed to fans and it becomes glaringly obvious that the presumption most horror fans are adolescent teen boys still reigns supreme. Our Dream Crate takes that assumption and smashes it! Read more

Posted on April 28, 2017

Trauma and Final Girls in Two New Novels

Guest Post

This is the year of final girls dissected. Final Girls by Mira Grant (pen name of Seanan McGuire) and Final Girls by Riley Sager share a name and a fascination with the trauma that shapes the figure of the final girl. The approaches taken by each novel, though, are drastically different, highlighting just how elastic the horror genre can be. Both are definitely worth reading.