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Posted on May 22, 2018

Revenge and the Power of the Gaze

Guest Post

In the era of the Women’s March and the #MeToo Movement, Revenge (2017), directed and written by Coralie Fargeat, is a must-see, a film critical of the male gaze, hyper-masculinity, and rape culture. It reverses the gaze and empowers its female protagonist, Jen (Matilida Anna Ingrid Lutz), who seeks retaliation against her rapist and his wealthy enablers.

The plot of the film is rather simple. Jen is the mistress of 1 percenter Richard (Kevin Janssens), who takes her to an isolated location via helicopter. He invites his rich buddies along, Dimitri (Guillaume Bouchède) and Stan (Vincent Colombe). Stan rapes Jen when Richard is not around, assuming that she wanted it because she danced with him once.

Posted on May 17, 2018

Tucker and Dale vs Evil: Smart Horror to Rewatch This Summer

Guest Post

Tucker and Dale vs Evil is a perfect summer horror film. Horror movies set during summertime immerse audiences in physical activities—swimming, hiking, vacationing, camping—ideal plot devices for dropping heroes in the fight of their lives. Which is perhaps why, for many of us at least, Jaws (1975) keeps us out of the water, and Friday the Thirteenth (1980) compels many camp counselors to rethink their summer vacations.

But maybe more terrifying, though, are the types of rustic antagonists that audiences encounter in scary movies about rural America. Their summer getaways, although beautiful, offer up some nasty locals. Think Leatherface swinging his chainsaw, the banjo-playing rapists of Deliverance (1972), or the motel owners in Motel Hell (1980) who turn their guests into world-famous sausages, and we can begin to understand why city slickers prefer sweltering urban summers to provincial dangers.

Posted on May 10, 2018

Top 10 Horror Protagonists Deadlier Than the Big Bad

Guest Post

The horror movie Final Girl (or Boy) is the character you’re rooting for! They’ve suffered brutal losses, witnessing their friends and loved ones succumb to whatever deadly consequence The Big Bad has in store for them. But what if the ones we’re supposed to be rooting for are just as capable of joining in the killing sprees if it means survival for them?

Well, here’s a list of the Top 10 Horror Protagonists (be warned, spoilers!) that you’d want to be near when something goes bump in the night!

Posted on April 30, 2018

Insidious The Last Key: The Demon of Abuse

Dawn Keetley

Insidious: The Last Key, directed by Adam Robitel and written by Leigh Whannell, is an iconic horror film of the #MeToo moment. While the film certainly has some failings as a horror film: it’s not terribly scary and the pacing seems a little uneven, it is eminently worth watching for two reasons: its centering of the story of Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye), whose compelling character is developed for the first time in the franchise; and its explicit rendering of men’s (sexual) abuse of women as what is truly monstrous. The Last Key puts women and women’s experience of abuse front and center, and all credit to Adam Robitel for making another horror film that features a complex older woman and that uses genre film to explore real horrors: he is the director who gave us the brilliant The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014) starring the wonderful Jill Larson as a woman struggling with both Alzheimer’s and the supernatural.

Posted on April 22, 2018

Ecohorror: The Nature of Horror

Dawn Keetley

A repeated visual motif in some recent horror films (actually ecohorror films) is the landscape that engulfs characters. These moments typically involve extreme long shots in which the characters are swallowed by their surroundings. They highlight, most obviously, the insignificance of humans in the face of an overwhelming nature. But they also represent, more ominously, how nature seems to be actively encroaching on the characters, actively threatening them. What happens in these moments is, I think, a distinct variant of ecohorror.