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Posted on March 26, 2020

Night of the Living Dead in the Time of Confinement and the Coronavirus

Guest Post

George A. Romero’s classic zombie trilogy, Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), and Day of the Dead (1985), is the ultimate example of the zombie as a social metaphor. Countless articles have been written about each film, especially the racial undertones of the first film. In the age of the Coronavirus and confinement, Night of the Living Dead suddenly warrants a re-watch. When survivors are trapped inside a farmhouse, the social equilibrium is reset–and the film mirrors some of the worst aspects of human nature during a societal breakdown and confinement. Even the (anti)hero, Ben (Duane Jones), commits heinous acts that he most likely would not have otherwise. Yet, the film also shows a few of humanity’s bright spots.

Though shot outside of Pittsburgh, Night of the Living Dead is a film that could take place anywhere, which, again, makes it all the more relevant during this global pandemic. As of the time of writing this, COVID-19 has impacted every state and nearly every country. Cities have been hit the worst, specifically New York City, but the virus knows no boundaries and has started to spread through rural pockets of the country, more evocative of Romero’s setting. The radio and television reports that speak of the growing outbreak in the film have an eerie parallel to our current moment, as each day brings more grim news. Read more

Posted on March 22, 2020

Lady in a Cage: Early, Devastating Home Invasion Film

Dawn Keetley

Lady in a Cage (1964) is a deeply disturbing film. I was, to put it bluntly, shocked that a film this dark was made in the early 1960s. It anticipates some of the more nihilistic horror films of later decades—notably Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left (1972), Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (1997 and 2007), and Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers. Indeed, these films seem at times explicitly to reference the earlier film.

Luther Davis wrote the original screenplay for Lady in a Cage, and the film was directed by Walter Grauman. Aside from its unremitting bleakness, the film is also notable for its stars: Olivia de Havilland plays Mrs. Hilyard, the eponymous “lady in a cage,” and one of the invaders of her home, Randall Simpson O’Connell, is played by a young James Caan in his first substantial role in a feature film.

Posted on March 20, 2020

“Just Like the Movies”: The Non-Diegetic Horror of the Coronavirus Outbreak

Guest Post

In one of the most memorably sublime scenes of Danny Boyle’s zombie masterpiece, 28 Days Later (2002), a nonplussed Jim (played by a young Cillian Murphy) wanders the deserted streets of London in scavenged hospital scrubs, having just awoken from a coma. Extreme long shots of Jim on an empty Westminster Bridge, in front of the Household Cavalry Museum, walking past St. Paul’s Cathedral, and alongside the Royal Exchange reveal the sobering extent of his isolation. Like him, we are learning that life has all but stopped in one of the busiest, most populated cities in the world, and, as far as we can tell, Jim may be the only person left alive, a realization that provokes dread for whatever caused society to fall into such a desolate state.

Images from this scene are not unlike what people around the world are experiencing today as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Previously bustling sites of activity have been transformed into urban wastelands, as recent photographs have shown. In one collection posted by CNN, a Jerusalem train station sits empty, Roman ruins in Italy stand quietly in the absence of tourists, and a lone individual walks the darkened halls of a Beijing shopping mall past dozens of shuttered storefronts. Whereas in 28 Days Later this lack of human activity is the result of an apocalyptic loss of life due to the “rage” virus, the non-diegetic global stasis we are experiencing is the result of mass social distancing and quarantine efforts to halt the spread of COVID-19. Read more

Posted on March 11, 2020

The Zombies of Kingdom are Better, Faster, Stronger

Guest Post

I happened upon Kingdom during a particularly gloomy Saturday afternoon. It was in some post-lunch delirium that I picked it out from one of Netflix’s algorithm-generated line-ups, titled “Korean Thrillers”—generated entirely from my recent viewing of Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan—fully intending on drifting into my afternoon siesta during the opening credits. Little did I know that 56 fraught minutes later I’d be wide, wide awake. Kingdom demands your attention: set against the backdrop of Korea’s Joseon dynastic kingdom (for which the show is named), this show breathes fresh air into an over-saturated zombie sub-genre.

I’ll try and give as little away as I am able in this review. Fortunately, Kingdom isn’t a show that really lends itself to spoilers. The show’s full force is felt in its technical mastery of the horror genre, having perfected the fine balance between excruciatingly drawn-out anticipatory tension and the inevitable—but nevertheless effective—jump scare. Kingdom holds you in its affective clutches for 50ish minutes, 6 times in a row. At least, that’s how I watched it: all in one sitting. Much of the show’s special sauce comes from its return to folklore as the basis for the supernatural, suggesting that evil is produced through contravention of the natural order, or faith, or the sins of man. Yet Kingdom’s undead are anything but mythological: they are political, and assertively so, about which viewers are left with little doubt. Read more

Posted on March 9, 2020

The Lodge and the Cyclical Nature of Trauma

Guest Post

Severin Fiala and Veronik Franz’s The Lodge (2019) has been praised as one of the best horror films of 2020. Somehow, it still feels like it fell through the cracks.

Given the spectacular failure of The Turning (2020), it’s no surprise that a horror film featuring a woman and two children in isolation would be passed over. However, The Lodge is a gripping, slow-burn horror that pays homage to The Shining (1980), The Thing (1982), and Hereditary (2018), while also artfully creating its own space within the genre. One of the most innovative aspects of the film is its focus on the importance of understanding and respecting traumatic experiences.