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Posted on October 4, 2023

Feminine or Feminist? Abortion, Motherhood, and the Traditional Final Girl

Guest Post

It is generally accepted that the final girl in late-twentieth-century slashers evidences a “moral integrity mark[ing] [her] as special” (Gill 19). Less discussed, however, has been the final girl as a mother figure who, in contrast with her peers, shows traditional maternal values (Christensen 40). These maternal qualities include “female self-sacrifice and motherly love” (Nickerson 14). Traditionalists often emphasized motherhood as the most fulfilling outlet for women’s special qualities as “life-bearers” (Jepson 340). The final girl in slasher horror films exhibits many of the traditional womanly qualities of caretaker and comforter.

Posted on September 28, 2023

“There Are Better Ways to Die”: Final Girls and Ecohorror

Guest Post

Named for their natural settings, The Handmaid’s Tale season four finale, “The Wilderness” (2021) and Land (2021) are both, importantly, women-directed stories that expand ecohorror elements and the feminist horror genre, flipping the Final Girl horror trope. Protagonists June (Elisabeth Moss) and Edee (Robin Wright) are not simply the stereotypical Final Girls walking out of the woods after violence – a too-common horror trope in which girls and women are victims of violence, at the hands of men, in natural spaces where only men “survive.” June and Edee’s stories start after their traumas – horror already experienced – as they walk into the woods for their own types of healing and then walk out as complicated protagonists rather than flat female-victims-as-porn.

Carol Clover (2015) writes that while the Final Girl is a survivor, her role is mostly based in being demeaned and abused, a ‘“victim-hero,” with an emphasis on “victim”’ (p. x). And that victimhood has historically been rape/ trauma porn made for a certain type of male viewer (there are too many examples to list here). But June and Edee’s survival and renewal, rather than trauma, is the focus in these texts as they find redemption in the classic horror natural spaces for a very different audience. In a reversal of typical Final Girl horror tropes, ‘The Wilderness’ and Land empower women in natural spaces rather than using such spaces as instruments of trauma. These texts utilize ecohorror elements but showcase such natural spaces as redemptive for women, extending the Final Girl horror trope past the immediate violence and past its emphasis on women as victims.

A group of kids dressed in Halloween costumes talk to a girl dressed as a witch who is standing on her porch and is surrounded by many lit pumpkins.

Posted on September 22, 2023

Always Check Your Candy: Talking Trick ‘r Treat

Elizabeth Erwin/ Podcast

In today’s episode, we’re kicking off the spooky season with Michael Dougherty’s Trick ‘r Treat (2007). Told in an anthology format with non-linear storytelling, the film is a virtual shoutout to Halloween lore making it a cult classic among horror fans. But does it deserve its reputation? We’re breaking it all down today with spoilers so stay tuned!

Mentioned in this episode:

Keetley, Dawn. “Trick or Treating in Halloween Movies.” Horror Homeroom, 7 October 2016.

McIntosh, Matthew A. “Samhain: The Celtic Inspiration for Modern Halloween.” Brewminate: A Bold Blend of News and Ideas, 30 October 2020.

Vorel, Jim. “In Praise of Trick ‘r Treat, the Ultimate ‘Halloween Night’ Movie,” Paste, 29 October 2017.

Posted on September 15, 2023

Agatha Christie’s Incursion into Folk Horror in Hallowe’en Party (1969)

Dawn Keetley

Initial reviews suggest that Kenneth Branagh’s new Hercule Poirot adaptation, A Haunting in Venice (2023), has little in common with the Agatha Christie novel on which it is supposedly based. While Hallowe’en Party (1969) is set in a small English village, A Haunting in Venice is set in, well, Venice. The latter apparently centers a séance, completely absent from Christie’s novel. There’s an opera singer with a dead daughter – also not in the novel. Indeed, one wonders why this film is being marketed as an adaptation at all.

Perhaps the only thing the novel and film appear to have in common is that both represent an unusual crossing of horror conventions into Hercule Poirot’s world of clues and ratiocination – into the neat and orderly world of detection. That said, the particular horror conventions that infuse novel and film seem quite different. While A Haunting in Venice seems shrouded in the supernatural – harking back to perhaps the best-known of supernatural horror films set in Venice, Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973), Christie’s Hallowe’en Party manifests the influence of folk horror.

a trapped group of five people look out of a door fearfully.

Posted on September 8, 2023

Flesh and Blood: Talking Deep Blue Sea (1999)

Elizabeth Erwin/ Podcast

In today’s episode, it’s part two of our deep dive into shark horror with Renny Harlin’s Deep Blue Sea (1999). Blending science fiction with horror, the film follows a crew of researchers as they try to replicate in sharks the brain cells of people with Alzheimer’s Disease. Predictably, the experiment does not end well. Known for its divisive heroine, campy reinterpretation of animal attack tropes, and some truly epic CGI sharks, Deep Blue Sea is the rare shark horror film that resists demonizing the sharks. But is that a good thing? We’re breaking it all down today with spoilers, so stay tuned!

Mentioned in this episode: