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Posted on September 10, 2016

The Neighbour Isn’t What You Think It Is—It’s Much Better

Dawn Keetley

The Neighbour (2016) was one of those films that started out well and then got better. It started out appearing to be one kind of story, and then it became another—a much more human story. At every turn, writers Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton reveal that characters who appear unredeemable, the sadistic stock characters of exploitation horror, are just powerless individuals, caught in a web of hopelessness, trying to survive.

The Neighbour is Marcus Dunstan’s third film as director, following on the heels of The Collector (2009) and The Collection (2012), both also written by Dunstan and Melton. These two earlier films can’t help but shape expectations for The Neighbour, as does the trailer and all the brief synopses of the film. As the summary on IMDb tells us: “the film follows a man who discovers the dark truth about his neighbor and the secrets he may be keeping in the basement.” So you could be forgiven for thinking The Neighbour is another Collector, another entry in the by-now rather tired “torture-porn” subgenre. It isn’t. It’s much more interesting than that. Read more

Posted on September 8, 2016

Billionaire Ransom (2016): Watch it for the Scenery

Dawn Keetley

My primary motivation for watching the recently-released Billionaire Ransom (Take Down outside the US) was its filming location. I was punished, it seems, for my less-than-serious motivation in that the film’s location ended up being by far the best thing about it.

Billionaire Ransom is directed by Jim Gillespie, known for I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), and written by Alexander Ignon. It features a cast of young people (led by Jeremy Sumpter and Phoebe Tonkin), all of whom are rich and spoiled and sent to some kind of punitive boot camp for moral rehabilitation. As they are being taught the basics of survival on an isolated island, they are kidnapped by a group of criminals interested in a little wealth redistribution. The rich kids then get to practice their newly-honed survival skills with their very lives on the line. Read more

Posted on September 6, 2016

Horror Imagery & Dread in Cloverfield (2008)

Elizabeth Erwin

Within the context of traditional horror, the role of the hero/heroine is to defeat the threat the monster poses and return the narrative to normalcy. Certainly, the locus of the horror manifested in the monster is dependent upon the era in which a film is made. In the wake of 9/11, horror films underwent a metamorphosis in which the dread central to the horror film was permanently altered. In a return of horror tropes popular during the Cold War and Vietnam eras, slasher films and reflexive horror with pronounced elements of humor gave way to an apocalyptic horror now situated in realism courtesy of the nightly evening news. This move away from films such as Camp Blood (1999), Final Destination (2000) and Ginger Snaps (2000) and toward films such as Quarantine (2008), Hostel (2005), and Saw (2004) is pronounced and requires of the audience an intimate association with the terror being expressed.

Cloverfield (2008) straddles the line between horror and science fiction and creates a new breed of terror unique to post 9-11 audiences that speaks to this shift. Employing the same found footage technique seen in Ghostwatch (2002) and The Last Broadcast (1998), Cloverfield tells the story of a group of friends who attempt to survive the fallout when a monster lays waste to New York City. Although not a great film, Cloverfield is worth a watch both for its imagery as well as for its re-imagining of terror tropes.

Posted on September 5, 2016

In Defense of Lucky McKee’s The Woman

Guest Post

Like many horror films, Lucky McKee’s The Woman (2011) caused controversy from its first screening. [i] This video of the reaction of one audience member at the Sundance Film Festival says it all:

Certainly, The Woman scarred me the first time I saw it. Upon subsequent viewings, it lost none of its power, and while there are many films that present us with visions of real-life horror, McKee’s study of domestic abuse and extreme misogyny continues to haunt me five years after its initial release. Read more

Posted on September 2, 2016

Dracula: Body Horror’s Beginnings

Dawn Keetley

In her book, Horror (Routledge, 2009), Brigid Cherry defines “body horror” as “Films that explore abjection and disgust of the human body” (6). Body horror involves a graphic breaching of corporeal borders—the body splitting open, its substances bursting, oozing, out. So, because of the inherent limitations of film techniques (notably special effects) in the 1930s, as well as restrictions imposed by the Motion Picture Production Code, classic horror films are generally not considered part of the “body horror” sub-genre: bodies typically remain intact (and fully clothed). A crucial scene from Tod Browning’s Dracula, however, shows that, even in 1931, at the birth of the sound horror film, body horror was part of the fascination (of the repulsion and attraction) of the film.

The scene occurs after Dracula (Bela Lugosi) has first come to Mina (Helen Chandler) at night. She is sitting on the couch the next day and Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) is questioning her about the “little marks” that are on her neck. We do not see them, but the other characters in the film are riveted by them: Van Helsing peers for a while at her neck, loosening her scarf to do so, and the camera cuts to Mina’s fiancée, Jonathan Harker (David Manners), and her father, Dr. Seward (Herbert Bunston), both of whom are staring at her neck. Read more