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Posted on July 17, 2020

“Don’t be scared”: Change, Evolution, and The Beach House as Ecohorror

Guest Post

Jeffrey A. Brown’s The Beach House has been getting a lot of attention, largely positive, since its recent release on Shudder. As others have noted, Liana Liberato’s performance as Emily is excellent, and the film features an effectively creepy atmosphere, wonderful cinematography of the ocean (both from the beach and underwater), and one truly disturbing moment of body horror. (This is also a movie worth watching without knowing much about what you’re getting into, so please note that this is a spoiler-heavy discussion rather than a straightforward review).

Despite its tranquil-seeming title, The Beach House is fundamentally a movie about change and how we respond to it. The story begins with a young college-aged couple, Emily (Liana Liberato) and Randall (Noah Le Gros), taking a weekend trip to Randall’s dad’s beach house. They are at a transition point in their relationship and trying to reconnect (one key tension is between his dropping out of college to avoid the typical life of job, marriage, kids, and her plan to finish her degree in organic chemistry and go to grad school for astrobiology). Soon after arriving, they discover that another couple – Jane (Maryann Nagel) and Mitch (Jake Weber), friends of Randall’s dad – are already at the beach house. This couple is also at a transition point, making one last trip to the beach as Jane battles a serious illness and appears to be dying.

Posted on July 14, 2020

From Poltergeist to Pennywise: Why Creepy Clowns Scare Us

Guest Post

In 1982, my family piled into our Ford station wagon and headed for the local theater to see Poltergeist. I was ten at the time, the youngest of four children. Ten is an age where you begin to fear things on a deeper, more cerebral level. But the movie was rated PG, so we went with it.

Today, this movie would easily warrant the stronger PG-13 rating. But there was no PG-13 in 1982. It was either G, PG or R. So the Motion Picture Association went for the middle ground. Bear this in mind, as we revisit the movie through the eyes of a ten-year-old.

Posted on July 7, 2020

Parasite as Horror Film

Guest Post

Class conflicts are a recurring theme in Bong Joon-ho’s films, which deftly traverse multiple genres to portray insights about economic disparities. One could describe Okja as a science fiction action drama and Snowpiercer as a post-apocalyptic dystopian action film. Likewise, in Parasite (2019), a comedic first half gives way to a dark thriller action film. It also strategically uses several elements of horror to transform its plot.

The film follows the story of the cash-strapped Kims, a family of four who work for the affluent Park family. The latter are unaware they have employed individuals from the same family for different roles in the house. The first half of the film depicts how the Kims successfully secure their positions through an elaborate plan. Ki-woo, the son, is the first to be employed as a tutor for the Park family’s daughter through a friend’s recommendation. Ki-woo identifies the need for an art tutor for the younger son in the Park family and recommends his sister, Ki-jung. Ki-woo and Ki-jung then hatch plans to get both the driver and Moon-gwang, the housekeeper fired so that their parents Ki-taek and Chung-sook can be hired.

Posted on June 24, 2020

Misery: Call for Papers for Special Issue #2

Call for Papers

As the only film adaptation of the Stephen King oeuvre to be anointed with Oscar gold, Rob Reiner’s Misery is quintessential psychological horror with a heaping helping of shock and awe. Fueled by a villain whose name is virtually synonymous with toxic fan culture and made memorable by one indelible sledgehammer hobbling, the film is an acknowledged classic, and yet it is not typically the first film referenced in discussions of King’s cinematic adaptations. Misery has generated memes, collectibles, and fan art that has kept it in the pop culture zeitgeist but critical scholarship has not been quite as prolific. In honor of the film’s impending 30^th anniversary, our second special issue of Horror Homeroom seeks to rectify that oversight.

Posted on June 23, 2020

Horror Fans, Don’t Call the Cops!

Sara McCartney

What do you think of when you think of the police? Do you think of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and many more Black people who should be alive today? Do you think of the brutal police responses that have interrupted peaceful protests around the nation?[1] Do you think of your favorite television show? Entertainment, from buddy cop movies to gritty thrillers to police procedurals to detective dramas, have shaped our perception of law enforcement, sometimes under the direction of actual precincts.[2] And if you’re following the news, the incongruency between the real-life police and their fictional equivalents is impossible to ignore.

One of the reasons I love horror is because it’s very good at not taking the status quo for granted. The best horror unmoors us from our assumptions about the world. As calls to abolish the police enter the American mainstream, it’s time for us to rethink our familiar narratives about cops, and that’s where horror comes in, because the cops you’ll find in horror movies aren’t quite what you’ll see in Law and Order.