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Posted on June 23, 2018

Decapitation in Upgrade, First Reformed & Hereditary

Guest Post

Three movies that happen to be playing in multiplexes this week have a surprising connection. Upgrade (Leigh Whannell, 2018) is a sci-fi action film, First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2017) is a spiritual drama with a dark comedic streak, and Hereditary (Ari Aster, 2018) is a horror film with plenty of family drama for seasoning. When I saw all three in the same weekend I thought I was programming a few days of very different movies, and they are that indeed. But they all feature a particular variety of body horror that brings them into conversation with each other. Not only does the same gruesome thing happen to a character in each film, but it also happens at roughly the same time in each film. If you’re looking to avoid spoilers on these movies, I would skip the section about the ones you have not yet seen, although I won’t be discussing the endings. Instead, I’ll examine how this form of body horror emphasizes the film’s themes and ideas.

Posted on June 21, 2018

Veronica: Possession or Psychosis?

Guest Post

The 2017 Spanish horror film, Veronica, directed by Paco Plaza and now available on Netflix, has been described as one of the scariest horror movies accessible on the streaming platform. Based on a true story, the movie follows a fifteen-year-old school girl who is supposedly possessed by a demon. It should be noted that the movie is very loosely based on real-life events. This article only looks at the narrative of the movie itself, and it questions whether Veronica is actually possessed . . . or whether something else is going on.

Posted on June 15, 2018

5 Terrifying Documentaries and the Rise of Real Life Horror

Guest Post

A horror film has certain safety measures. You can turn it off, change the channel, or cover your eyes. In any movie, you have the ability to just stop watching. After all, none of it is real. But what happens when the horrific events on the screen can’t be turned off or changed? What happens when a film is frightening because it is real, because its horror is the kind that exists beyond the confines of the movie screen? This is the kind of horror that horror documentaries deliver.

The horror genre is enjoying a boom right now. There’s no denying it. But the recent surge of horrific content is not limited to the fictional. Documentary filmmakers are cashing in on their viewers’ attraction to the macabre. Any good documentary seeks to expose a new truth, understanding, or perspective. This work of uncovering becomes terrifying when we realize that what’s been documented is the inescapable horrors of reality, the things we can’t un-see, and the moments we can’t avoid. What follows are five horror documentaries that feel like fictional horror films. Their discoveries leave you wondering what’s worse, fact or fiction?

Posted on June 11, 2018

Hereditary: Grief and Motherhood

Guest Post

In Danse Macabre (1981), Stephen King’s nonfiction book about the horror genre, he says that if a horror movie is going to work and be memorable, there has to be something beyond spatter, a story that functions on a symbolic level to help us understand our deepest fears. In Hereditary (2018), written and directed by Ari Aster, grief, mental illness, and the challenges of motherhood are the subconscious fears that erupt after the family suffers one loss after another.

The plot and strained family dynamics of Hereditary unfold after the death of the Graham family’s matriarch. The film opens with the obituary of the 78-year old grandmother, who is described by her daughter, Annie (Toni Collette), during the funeral as having been a “very secretive” and “very private woman.” The first 30 minutes of the film focus on how the rest of the family deals with her death. The father, Steve (Gabriel Byrne), initially tries to comfort his wife and family, while the son, Peter (Alex Wolff), spends much of his time getting stoned and going to parties. The daughter, Charlie (Milly Shapiro), who had the closest relationship with the grandmother, asks her mother, “Who’s going to take care of me?” Annie deals with her mother’s death by throwing herself into her work, creating miniature houses for a scheduled art show opening. As the film progresses, the miniatures mirror the events of the film, and the deadline to finish the work only creates added pressure on an already stressed mother.

Posted on June 8, 2018

Us and Them and the Rise of Political Horror

Dawn Keetley

Us and Them, a British film that saw general release in the US in March, 2018, is the feature-film directorial debut of Joe Martin, who also wrote the screenplay. It follows three working-class men, Danny (Jack Roth), Tommy (Andrew Tiernan), and Sean (Daniel Kendrick), who decide to invade the home of a wealthy family—patriarch Conrad (Tim Bentinck), wife Margaret (Carolyn Backhouse), and daughter Phillipa (Sophie Colquhoun)—for, as it turns out, very different reasons. The trio is lured into crime both by a political rage that is tied to a contemporary moment of widening class inequality and by money, a motive for crime as old as money itself.

Danny is the voice of political resentment and rage. He argues that the time has come for the working classes to take “direct political action” by targeting the top 1% who, he tells us more than once, own as much as the bottom 50% in the UK. “Things have to change,” he says, trying to urge his friends, in a long speech he gives them in the local pub, to see Conrad, a financier, as a “political target.” Danny’s plan, not exactly meticulously thought-out, is to terrorize the wealthy family, forcing Conrad to choose which of his wife or daughter will play Danny’s seemingly deadly game of roulette. His intent is to videotape the “game” and then broadcast it along with his political statement. Needless to say, things don’t go exactly as Danny intended. Neither his victims nor his partners in crime acquiesce in his agenda.