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Posted on June 29, 2020

Scream, Queen! Review

Around this time last year, the Met Costume Institute was displaying its exhibit on camp, sparking explainers and podcast episodes and angry rants (the last one from me) about just what camp is exactly. I thought about it some more while watching Roman Chimienti and Tyler Jensen’s Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street (2019), and here’s what I’ve got. Camp is the reclamation of something embarrassing or perceived by others as embarrassing. It is the amazing knack queer people have to transform shame into joy and survival. Scream, Queen! is the story of how Nightmare on Elm Street 2, once an embarrassment to its franchise and the career of its then-closeted gay star, Mark Patton, became beloved by fans and a launching pad for Patton’s activism.

The 1985 sequel to Wes Craven’s slasher smash hit, Nightmare on Elm Street 2 is the rare slasher film with a Final Boy. The hapless Jesse, played by Mark Patton, is not merely Freddy’s intended victim but his entry point into the real world as he strives to take over Jesse’s body. More a possession film than a typical slasher, Nightmare on Elm Street 2‘s Freddy functions as an unlikely metaphor for repressed homosexuality. Read more

Posted on June 26, 2020

Followed: A Clever Use of Found Footage and a Smart Critique of Influencer Culture

Guest Post

Ever since the massive success of 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, found footage has been a staple of the horror genre. Even George A. Romero experimented with it in one of his last (and also criminally underrated) films, Diary of the Dead (2007). Yet, now, more than 20 years after The Blair Witch Project, the subgenre has become stale. The grainy, shaky shots have become cliché. Even Blair Witch Project became such a part of the zeitgeist that it was spoofed mercilessly. At this point, for any director and screenwriter to use found footage as a technique, they better do something innovative. Cue Followed, the directorial feature debut by Antoine Le, written by Todd Klick. The film’s uniqueness lies in its method of storytelling. Followed’s narrative is told through vlogging, and by using this method, the movie updates the found footage technique to reflect and comment upon influencer culture. It’s a smart take on what has generally become an exhausted subgenre. The plot unfolds click by click, through a series of vlogs sequenced on a website.

Posted on June 24, 2020

Misery: Call for Papers for Special Issue #2

Call for Papers

As the only film adaptation of the Stephen King oeuvre to be anointed with Oscar gold, Rob Reiner’s Misery is quintessential psychological horror with a heaping helping of shock and awe. Fueled by a villain whose name is virtually synonymous with toxic fan culture and made memorable by one indelible sledgehammer hobbling, the film is an acknowledged classic, and yet it is not typically the first film referenced in discussions of King’s cinematic adaptations. Misery has generated memes, collectibles, and fan art that has kept it in the pop culture zeitgeist but critical scholarship has not been quite as prolific. In honor of the film’s impending 30^th anniversary, our second special issue of Horror Homeroom seeks to rectify that oversight.

Posted on June 23, 2020

Horror Fans, Don’t Call the Cops!

Sara McCartney

What do you think of when you think of the police? Do you think of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and many more Black people who should be alive today? Do you think of the brutal police responses that have interrupted peaceful protests around the nation?[1] Do you think of your favorite television show? Entertainment, from buddy cop movies to gritty thrillers to police procedurals to detective dramas, have shaped our perception of law enforcement, sometimes under the direction of actual precincts.[2] And if you’re following the news, the incongruency between the real-life police and their fictional equivalents is impossible to ignore.

One of the reasons I love horror is because it’s very good at not taking the status quo for granted. The best horror unmoors us from our assumptions about the world. As calls to abolish the police enter the American mainstream, it’s time for us to rethink our familiar narratives about cops, and that’s where horror comes in, because the cops you’ll find in horror movies aren’t quite what you’ll see in Law and Order.

Posted on June 20, 2020

Jaws: Novel vs. Film

Dawn Keetley/ Elizabeth Erwin

On the 45^th anniversary of the release of the film that made people afraid to go in the ocean, we consider Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) in relation to Peter Benchley’s 1974 novel. Which is better? Or, perhaps a more useful question, what do the novel and film uniquely do? Check out answers by Elizabeth Erwin and Dawn Keetley.