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Posted on August 29, 2018

The Gifts of Deafness in Horror

Guest Post

There remains debate as to whether deafness and hearing-impairments should be classified as disabilities. Many, including those within the deaf community and their allies, affirm that deafness is a culture rather than a disability. Still, others affirm that having a hearing impairment imposes disadvantages on an individual. We can think of many ways that being deaf brings challenges in common daily life activities- the ringing of a doorbell, the answering the telephone, the knock of a door. In horror media, deafness may mean missing the screams of loved ones, or not perceiving an audible threat, until the threat is close enough to sense by other means.

Horror characters rely on specific strengths to get through the terror they are experiencing and/ or to survive. In some examples of television and film, deaf characters utilize their hearing impairments as a gift to fend off the horrors while the hearing characters around them remain vulnerable. In these instances, we see a paradigm shift from one in which deaf persons suffer incapacities to one in which their deafness relates to a tenacity in the face of terror, even as they maintain their human vulnerability.

Posted on August 15, 2018

The other secret of Marrowbone: The domestically entrapped male in horror film

Guest Post

The recent film, The Secret of Marrowbone (Sergio Sánchez, 2017) exemplifies a trope that has become an active model within the gothic and horror film since the mid twentieth century: the lone male figure enclosed within the spaces of the domestic realm, observing the women and children in his absence from afar, on the periphery of society and haunting the spaces of the family home. Hidden in attics, basements and crawlspaces, the domestically sutured male at once supports the male gaze but is at the same time disenfranchised from and on the borders of the society that supposedly promotes that same gaze. From Norman Bates’ scopophilic peephole view of Janet Leigh in Psycho (1960) to the image of Bryan Cranston observing the consequences of his self-imposed exile in Wakefield (2016), 20^th and 21^st-century film has given birth to a new societal orphan.

Posted on August 6, 2018

Mohawk and Downrange: Two Films for Our Time

Guest Post

Thus far, 2018, like its predecessor, has been a good year at the box office for horror. Small-budget films like A Quiet Place and Hereditary have been all the buzz, breaking into the mainstream. Two lesser-known recent films, Mohawk (2017) and Downrange (2017), are also deserving of attention. They recently became available on streaming services and speak to our present moment, especially in the context of immigration/the “other” and gun violence.

Directed by Ted Geoghegan and set during the War of 1812, Mohawk takes place in the American wilderness as Americans track down a British officer, Joshua Pinsmail (Eamon Farren), who befriends a tribe of Mohawk Indians and encourages them to join the British against the Americans. The Mohawks want to remain neutral but are forced to choose sides when members of the tribe are slaughtered.

Posted on August 4, 2018

Fallen Kingdom and Empathy for Dinosaurs

Guest Post

Nothing will ever be Jurassic Park. In an interview for Fallen Kingdom, executive producer Steven Spielberg recalls his experience directing the franchise-opener explaining, “the moment that brought this home for me as a filmmaker was when the T. Rex started to attack two modern Ford Explorers, and you saw the modern world and you saw the prehistoric world meeting up 65 million years later. To me, that’s when I really felt we had captured lightning in a bottle.” That sensation, what Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) evokes when she asks Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), “Do you remember the first time you saw a dinosaur…it’s like, a miracle. You read about them in books. You see the bones in museums. But you don’t really believe it,” cannot be replicated.

Fortunately, that is not what Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) is attempting to do. Rather, the film evokes the memory of those emotions, via visual callbacks and recurring characters, both human and non, to drive J. A. Bayona’s purpose—empathy. The director insists, “It’s not about people rescuing people anymore; it’s about people rescuing dinosaurs. The whole movie’s about empathy. An empathy toward the dinosaurs.” This objective is simple, and Fallen Kingdom excels at simplicity—in jump scares, with Blue, demonstrating the dangers of commodifying life. However, the questions the film raises are inherently complex, and, though fun, Fallen Kingdom sometimes finds itself lost in its own complexity.

Posted on August 1, 2018

Scared Sacred – Exclusive New Poster Art

books

Scared Sacred: Idolatry, Religion and Worship in the Horror Film is due for release early in 2019 from House of Leaves Publishing and is edited by Rebecca Booth (author of the forthcoming The Devil Rides Out [Devil’s Advocates]), Erin Thompson (owner and editor of The Backseat Driver Reviews), and RF Todd (Managing Director of House of Leaves).

Exploring the complex relationship between religious and supernatural themes within horror cinema, particularly in response to a mainstream reclaiming of these subjects in recent years, the book collects writings from academics, critics, and historians. Each chapter is a theological thread that touches on a range of subjects, from atheism to martyrdom to zoolatry. Limited editions of the book will be available for pre-order via a crowdfunding campaign commencing in September 2018.