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Posted on March 14, 2025

In the Twilight Zone: The After Hours in Severance

Dawn Keetley

In Severance’s latest episode, “The After Hours” (season 2, ep. 9), the show makes its most direct reference yet to another television series. Could it be more appropriate that it’s The Twilight Zone? Specifically, the thirty-fourth episode in season one, “The After Hours,” which aired on June 10, 1960. For those of us who like to look for hidden references, this one isn’t much of a challenge (“The After Hours” = “The After Hours”). The directness of the reference continues near the end of Severance’s episode when Harmony Cobel and Devon are smuggling Mark into the Damona Birthing Retreat, and Harmony seems to be giving some kind of password to the guard: “Marsha White. Ninth floor,” she says, adding “Specialty Department. I’m looking for a gold thimble.” The Twilight Zone’s “The After Hours” begins with Marsha White taking the elevator to the ninth floor – the Specialities Department – looking for a gold thimble.

Now that Severance has directly evoked The Twilight Zone’s “The After Hours,” the similarities are striking and many. The ninth floor of the department store to which Marsha White is whisked does not – as far as the “normal” world is concerned – actually exist. We see multiple shops of the elevator indicator going up only to the eighth floor and then the roof. As several characters say to a bewildered Marsha White who leaves the ninth floor and then tries to get back to it, “There is no ninth floor.”

Posted on January 18, 2025

The Art of Murder: The Continuing Influence of Fritz Lang’s M

Guest Post

William Burns

‘Thinking back to all the details is not at all unpleasant. I rather enjoy it.”—Peter Kürten quoted in Dr. Karl Berg’s The Sadist

While postmodern thinkers may scoff at “grand narratives” and “human nature,” the one topic that seems to link human beings across time and space is a fascination with crime and criminals. The real life what, how, why, and who of criminality have fed pretty much every form of human expression: myths, epic poems, folktales, ballads, songs, poetry, novels, short stories, plays, radio shows, films, TV shows, comic books, journalism. documentaries, videos, web sites, video games, podcasts, ad nauseum. Rather than as a way to facilitate communication, perhaps media was invented to highlight and share accounts of the dark side of human behavior to the thrilled fascination of its audiences whether around a fire or an iPhone. In the 21^st century, cable TV, social media, video platforms, and streaming services are overflowing with true crime movies, documentaries, podcasts, and programs based on the most heinous of offenses. Felonies such as fraud, theft, abuse, identity theft, racketeering, bank robbery, drug trafficking, conspiracy, smuggling, and sex crimes have all been fodder for our entertainment, giving us the ability to live vicariously through wicked criminals and then feel satisfied and superior when they are apprehended for their social violations.

Posted on September 7, 2024

Fate in Film: A Deterministic Approach to Cinema, by Thomas M. Puhr

Guest Post

Below are the opening pages of a fascinating 2022 book by Thomas Puhr, Fate in Film, about determinism in film–much of which is horror, including Under the Skin, Hereditary, Midsommar, Us, Gus Van Sant’s Psycho, and Michael Haneke’s American Funny Games. We highly recommend.

INTRODUCTION

“You’ve Always Been the Caretaker”

When introducing compatibilism, my undergraduate philosophy professor drew a crude maze on the blackboard with a stick figure at its entrance. She traced the figure’s possible paths with diverging sets of arrows and explained how it had, say, a choice between left or right at a given T-junction (free will), but was prohibited from continuing straight (determinism). As this simple exercise illustrates, compatibilism’s deliciously ambiguous response to whether or not we have free will can be boiled down to: “Well, sort of yes, sort of no.”

Posted on December 26, 2023

The Place Called Dagon – Herbert S. Gorman’s Folk Horror Novel

Guest Post

by

Philip Jenkins

Baylor University

The current fascination with folk horror as a genre began with British contributions in cinema and literature, and that focus is still obvious, despite all the efforts to broaden and globalize the narrative. Even today, the American part of the story is still seriously under-valued, particularly early writings that long precede the British wave of the 1960s. If I was looking for the first ever piece of writing in folk horror, I would make the case for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Young Goodman Brown” (1835), while Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (1948) is an obvious early classic. Here, I want to highlight a work that still stands among the very first full-length novels in this tradition written in any country, and one that already at its early date fulfils all the criteria for the folk horror label. This is The Place Called Dagon, by Herbert S. Gorman, published in 1927. Although it is poorly known today, it still makes for very rewarding reading.

Posted on December 9, 2022

“Bodies Bodies Bodies” pile up in a trenchant tale of affluent anxiety

Guest Post

Privileged paranoia is rarely as enjoyable as in Halina Reijn’s English language feature film debut – a sharp, sarcastic slasher stabbing away at the elite’s self-obsession and self-loathing. A devastating lack of meaning serves both as the origin and outcome of a hilarious horror that is simultaneously physical, psychological and parodistic. The Danish director’s genre gem cunningly mimics mainstream cinema’s detachment from lower-class reality by zooming in on a prototypical group of upper-class kids. Their hurricane party set in a friend’s mansion is crashed by their estranged friend Sophie (Amandla Stenberg).

The recently recovered addict brings her new girlfriend, eastern European Bee (Maria Bakalova), the only one unfamiliar with the affluent apathy of the spoiled sextette she’s to stay with. Belligerent host David (Pete Davidson), his theatrical girlfriend Emma (Chase Sui Wonders), self-righteous Jordan (Herrold), pretentious podcaster Alice (Rachel Sennott), her older Tinder date Greg (Lee Pace) and Sophie are, as Emma puts it, “rich” or “rich rich.” They scoff at Bee trying to contribute to the expenses by bringing food, spill expensive champagne, toy with antique armor and play the titular game. Read more