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Posted on March 23, 2018

Pyewacket and the Consequences of Rage

Dawn Keetley

With his second feature film, Pyewacket (2017), Adam MacDonald is showing himself to be a distinctive director and writer of horror. His films offer spare plots centered on an intense, complicated relationship—a relationship then tested and torn apart by some kind of horrific force. His films are beautifully shot and make the most of the isolation of his characters.

MacDonald’s first film, Backcountry (2014), which I review here, centers on the strained relationship of Alex (Jeff Roop) and Jenn (Missy Peregrym) as they become lost in the deep woods on a camping trip Jenn never wanted to take. An encounter with a large grizzly bear, however, puts their troubled relationship in a very different perspective.

Posted on March 17, 2018

The Strangers: Prey at Night Is a Travesty

Dawn Keetley

Johannes Roberts’ The Strangers: Prey at Night is a travesty for anyone who watched and loved the outstanding 2008 film, The Strangers, directed by Bryan Bertino. I discuss Bertino’s Strangers here. It’s a brilliant horror film in the pure, enigmatic malevolence of the “strangers,” the simplicity of the plot, and the absolute terror induced by the way the strangers emerge silently into the frame, inside the home they shouldn’t be in. Strangers: Prey at Night is the opposite of all that. Which isn’t to say that, as a film in its own right, it doesn’t have some redeeming qualities.

Posted on March 14, 2018

Horror Homeroom’s 3rd Anniversary Giveaway

Giveaway

Horror Homeroom has been going strong for three years now and, to celebrate our third anniversary and to thank everyone who’s read and interacted with us, we’re offering a free giveaway.

Posted on March 13, 2018

Mathias Clasen on Why Horror Seduces

Guest Post

Imagine you’re an alien anthropologist sent to Earth to document the behaviour of the strange bipedal mammals who inhabit the planet. You stumble into a movie theater that’s showing the latest Hollywood horror film.

Several dozen humans are gathered together in a dark, undecorated room. They’re all staring at a rectangular area on which patterns of light change rapidly.

They are clearly in a state of high arousal. Their hate rate is elevated, they occasionally glance around nervously, and they sometimes jump collectively in their seats, and emit high-pitched warning calls.

Eventually, the lights come up and the rectangular screen goes black. The humans stand up and leave the room, chatting and laughing, and showing signs of pleasure.

What on earth is going on?

Why do these humans voluntarily expose themselves to what appears to be a deeply unpleasant experience? And why do they react so strongly to those patterns of light on a screen?

Mathias Clasen from the School of Communication and Culture of Aarhus University in Denmark has asked these questions–and he answers them, and more, in his TedX talk, and in this guest post, first published on ScienceNordic.

Posted on March 11, 2018

Horror Visits Little House on the Prairie

Elizabeth Erwin

Ask anyone who grew up watching Little House on the Prairie what is the most traumatizing image they recollect from the show’s run and you’re likely to get a surprisingly wide array of answers. From Caroline almost taking a knife to her leg while in the throes of a fevered infection to Alice screaming and trying in vain to shatter glass as she and baby Adam burned in a fire, the show contains more than a few moments that call into question its cultural legacy of family friendliness. These moments aside, however, the show never delved into explicitly horror territory until its seventh season when a two-part episode entitled “Sylvia” leveraged the genre’s tropes to completely rewrite audience expectation. Read more