- Horror Movie - Horror Homeroom

Posted on July 6, 2015

Shark Horror, Part 1: Naturalistic Horror

Dawn Keetley

Shark Week in July seems to have become a staple of our seasonal calendar, so now’s a good time to think about sharks in horror film. I’d like to propose two broad categories of shark horror. One falls under the rubric of what critic Michael Fuchs has aptly called “naturalistic horror,”[i] which puts us firmly in the terrain of the shark, in a world relatively indifferent to humans (except as food), in which the good guys don’t necessarily come out on top (or even alive), and death is random. (Check back later this week for the second kind!)

Posted on July 5, 2015

Top Ten Reasons Why Sharks Make the Perfect Movie Monster

Gwen

Since this week marks Discovery Channel’s 27^th annual celebration of Shark Week, I thought it was a great time to discuss why sharks probably make some of the best movie monsters.

10. Sharks barely need sleep. Even Freddy Krueger needs more rest than these guys. It was once thought that sharks had to constantly move in order to keep the water flowing over their gills. In fact, they tend to have active and restful periods and some species such as the nurse shark have spiracles which help move the water over the gills during restful periods.

Posted on July 5, 2015

Jaws, The Slasher, and the Encounter at the Heart of Horror

Dawn Keetley

Directed by Steven Spielberg, Jaws was released on June 20, 1975, and the story of its immense critical and popular success doesn’t need to be rehearsed here. Suffice it to say that not since Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho had a film so terrified audiences.

On every count, Jaws is a masterpiece. This summer marks its 40^th anniversary—and it’s still as powerful as it was in 1975. Not least, for much of the film only minimally visible and identified by the unforgettably ominous theme music composed by John Williams, the shark itself is still utterly chilling. And the acting is brilliant—notably Roy Scheider as Chief Martin Brody, Richard Dreyfuss as oceanographer Matt Hopper, and the truly incomparable Robert Shaw as Quint. Read more

Posted on July 5, 2015

Why Jaws Remains at the Top of the Horror Game

Gwen

Today is a symbiotic day for me to write this piece. I spent the day traveling to Virginia and, as I drove further and further south, I had flashbacks to scenes from Wrong Turn (2003) and Jeepers Creepers (2001). At one point I was certain that I drove past the exact point where Darry (Justin Long) climbed down that creepy pipe in the monster’s yard and I was momentarily convinced there were bodies down there. Unlike those in every horror film made, I was smart enough not to go back and investigate. That being said, I pondered something that I heard in a the documentary Why Horror (2014) where someone makes this beautifully obvious yet understated point that horror is really the only genre that leaves a lasting emotional imprint on a person. It becomes a reference point for so many things in our lives. Its images are the darkness beyond the trees, the monster beneath the bed, and the reason we know to never say “I’ll be right back.” Every time I drive south, I immediately picture these scenes from wrong turns down dusty roads. And every time anyone, I mean anyone, goes in the water they certainly conjure up images of…Jaws (1975).

Posted on July 1, 2015

MTV’s Scream Review: Pilot

Elizabeth Erwin

When news broke that MTV was going to try its hand at episodic horror and that they had selected the Scream franchise as its model, many were wondering how the slasher elements would transfer to the small screen. Unlike other horror genres that seem an ideal fit for serialized and anthology television, slasher films often use a very specific pacing structure that can be hard to mimic beyond 90 minutes.

As a fan of the franchise, I was dismayed to learn that part of the deal to have Scream come to the small screen was an agreement that effectively took the prospect of a Scream 5 theatrical release off the table. Was the decision a sound one? Based upon the pilot, the jury is still out. If the 1996 Scream film was a self-referential slasher dripping with a 90s sensibility, MTV’s revamped version is a generic mishmash of slasher tropes with a decidedly 2015 flair. The end result is an uneven pilot that dangles enough questions of interest to merit tuning in for episode two.