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Posted on February 6, 2022

The Villa and the Vortex: Supernatural Stories by Elinor Mordaunt

Guest Post

The Villa and the Vortex: Supernatural Stories (1916-1924), Elinor Mordaunt, edited by Melissa Edmundson (Handheld Press, 2021).

Melissa Edmundson’s Women’s Weird anthologies were, for me, an invaluable window into the work of a number of long-neglected women writers and a trove of weird, unsettling short fiction of astonishing breadth. Stories like the cosmic horror of Francis Stevens’ ‘Unseen – Unfeared’, or the deeply oneiric tragedy of ‘The House’ by Katherine Mansfield, demonstrated that women writers are not just the equal of their male counterparts but, often, far exceed them. We should be thankful, then, that Edmundson has continued her partnership with Handheld Press to begin a series of single-author collections, starting with The Villa and the Vortex, a retrospective of Elinor Mordaunt’s strange, melancholy tales. Read more

Posted on January 17, 2022

Scream – Another Great Installment in the Franchise

Guest Post

This is a spoiler-free review. A spoiler-filled one will come later on when Scream is accessible to people who may prefer not to venture into a movie theater quite yet.

There are no bad Scream (1996) sequels. After Wes Craven took us to Woodsboro for the first time in 1996, he returned to Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and that dreaded Ghostface mask three more times, and while none of the subsequent films reached the heights of the first, they each more than justified their inclusion in the franchise. Scream 2 (1997) positively vibrates with the joy Craven and company take in skewering sequels while nonetheless navigating powerful arcs for Sidney, Gale (Courteney Cox), and Dewey (David Arquette). Plus, Sidney’s play rehearsal remains one of the single most fascinating set pieces in any of the films. Scream 3 (2000) is a bit schlocky, yes, but injecting more camp into the franchise while moving the needle on industry satire is delicious. Scream 4 (2011) goes back to Woodsboro with flair and the best script since the original. That is, until Scream (2022) came along to crash the party.

Posted on January 17, 2022

Folk Horror – Special Issue of Horror Studies, CFP

Call for Papers

Horror Studies – Proposed special issue on Folk Horror

Guest editors, Dr. Dawn Keetley, Professor of English and Film, Lehigh University, dek7@lehigh.edu, and Dr. Jeffrey A. Tolbert, Assistant Professor of American Studies and Folklore, Pennsylvania State University – Harrisburg, jat639@psu.edu

This special issue attempts to systematize and formalize the study of folk horror, a subgenre whose meteoric rise (or return?) to popularity in the past ten years or so raises critical questions relating to rurality, “traditional” cultures, nationalism, and place, among others. Folk horror posits a folk as the source of horror, and a body of related folklore as constituting a simultaneously picturesque and horrifying aesthetic/symbolic backdrop to its portrayals of atavistic danger and pre- or anti-modern “heathenism.” Sharing with the increasingly broad cross-media genre of the gothic an obsession with landscape, folk horror tends to abandon dark corridors and windswept mountain fastnesses in favor of agrarian and/or pastoral settings (though even this distinction is often elided in practice, with the genres often becoming entangled). In the end, though, one distinguishing trait is that the peasant folk of the countryside, imagined as preserving earlier ways of life, become the source of fear—or at least provide the context for its encroachment into otherwise “normal” modern life.

Posted on January 10, 2022

The Great and Terrible Day of the Lord

Guest Post

The Great and Terrible Day of the Lord (2021), written by Jared Jay Mason and directed by Mason and Clark Runciman, is a film that raises more questions than it answers. An independent movie distributed by Random Media, it features two actors, Jordan Ashley Grier (Gabby) and Swayde McCoy (Michael). It received seven award nominations. This review will contain spoilers, so be warned.

About the spoilers: there’s no way to review this film without them.

The Great and Terrible Day of the Lord takes place over a weekend—intended to be romantic—with Michael and Gabby. They aren’t engaged, but in love. They drive to a remote cabin (and this isn’t going where you probably think it is) owned by his family. Arriving before dark on Friday we quickly learn that Michael is intense, loving, and sensitive. Gabby’s holding back a little because she’s not ready to trust him with her secrets. They have a drink and smoke some pot to unwind. As they’re dancing through the stylish cabin, Michael suddenly reveals to Gabby that he’s God. More than that, he’s come to her without Michael’s knowledge to tell her she’ll die before the weekend’s over. And she’s going to Hell.

Posted on January 5, 2022

Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror is a Must-see for Horror Fans

Guest Post

Comprehensive documentaries are a tricky business. Condensing the overview of a chosen topic into cinematic form without the resulting piece folding into the realm of glorified lecture is far from guaranteed. No filmmaker wants their work to land with all the glory of an out-of-print history textbook that smells of glue and decades of after-school snack smudges. Through a combination of experimental animations, well-chosen clips, and a steady string of engaging talking heads, Kier-La Janisse’s new documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021) avoids the major pitfalls that often doom similar projects. Consequently, Janisse orchestrates an informative and bewitching adventure that takes viewers through the roots, developments, and current iterations of folk horror the world over.