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Posted on August 5, 2016

Dinosaurs and the Horror Film, Part 2: Carnosaur

Dawn Keetley

Dinosaur movies are typically categorized as horror films, but not all of them are—and so I thought I’d use two intriguing-in-their-own-right dinosaur films as part of my ongoing exploration of what makes a horror film. In [part 1 of this discussion], I argued that Disney / Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur (2015) is not only not horror but represents an explicitly anti-horror project. Carnosaur, on the other hand, a low-budget Roger Corman production, is unequivocally a horror film. Carnosaur was released on May 21, 1993, just four weeks before Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park—and it bears some resemblance to its big-budget competitor. While not as good a film as Jurassic Park, Carnosaur is vastly more interesting, especially for horror fans.

Carnosaur is a crazy film—and while it’s currently not easy to find, it’s worth the effort to try to get your hands on it. Diane Ladd plays Dr. Jane Tiptree, a woman whom one male character calls “the fairy godmother of military biotech.” Tiptree has been sequestered away, working to create a hybrid race of dinosaurs to whose eggs women give birth right before they die. Tiptree’s plan, it turns out, is to wipe out the human race for their sins, creating a new and more worthy species (genetically-modified dinosaurs) to continue life on earth. You might be forgiven for thinking that some of the finer points of Tiptree’s scheme are a little illogical—and my advice would be, well, to enjoy and not overthink it! Read more

Posted on July 27, 2016

Dinosaurs and the Horror Film, Part 1: The Good Dinosaur

Dawn Keetley

Sometimes you watch a film that helps clarify what a horror film is by not being a horror film. Disney / Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur (2015) is that film—and it set me thinking about the contested place of dinosaurs in the horror genre. Films with rampaging dinosaurs are often categorized as horror films. But should they be?

This will be the first of two posts that explore what makes a horror film by looking at two films about dinosaurs, identifying what is explicitly not horror (The Good Dinosaur) and what unequivocally is horror (Carnosaur, 1993).

To start with what is not horror: Disney / Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur. While it is not a horror film, The Good Dinosaur, like many Disney films, contains horror, the appearance and containment of which seems necessary to the film’s construction as something other than a horror film. Read more

Posted on July 22, 2016

Barbra’s Monstrous Metamorphosis in Night of the Living Dead (1990)

Elizabeth Erwin

His name virtually synonymous with the cinematic zombie, George A. Romero’s Dead series rewrote the rules of the undead monster. In the original Night of the Living Dead (1968), Romero’s core group of survivors battle each other as well as the zombies in a film which very much reflects the time in which it was made. As one of the group fighting for survival, Barbra is the epitome of the defenseless female. She spends the majority of the film either panicking to the detriment of those around her or catatonic. Her death, via consumption by her zombified brother, is almost a welcome reprieve from her complete ineffectualness.

Posted on June 21, 2016

The Terror of Motherhood in The Ones Below

Guest Post

David Farr’s The Ones Below (2015) has much in common with recent parent-horror treasures like The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014) and Goodnight Mommy (Severin Fiala and Veronica Franz, 2014). While viewing each one, I spent much of my time thinking: “This film is doing a great job making parenting look like a terrifying nightmare.” The Ones Below is a film about the myriad of horrors facing modern mothers. With understated intensity, Farr documents the struggles of new parenting, and the potentially horrifying consequences of the persistent scrutiny that mothers endure.

The Ones Below follows a woman named Kate (Clémence Poésy) and her husband, Justin (Stephen Campbell Moore), in the last months of her first pregnancy and first months of motherhood. “The Ones Below” are their new downstairs neighbors, Jon (David Morrissey) and Theresa (Laura Birn). Like Kate, Theresa is in the second trimester of pregnancy. In spite of that shared experience, these women could not be more different. Costuming and makeup choices highlight the contrast. Theresa’s appearance is always pristine. Her outfits are bright and coordinated, often complementing her husband’s, and her makeup is always immaculate. She looks more like a model in an ad for maternity clothing than an average pregnant woman. While Kate is certainly beautiful, she seems downright frumpy by comparison. She wears oversized clothes, her hair is usually pulled back in a low bun, and her makeup is minimal. Kate’s experience of pregnancy is uncomfortable, exhausting, and sometimes not very flattering. Theresa is what popular media would have us believe pregnancy is: a beautiful woman joyfully enjoying her pregnancy, glowing at all times. Read more

Posted on June 16, 2016

Shock and Awe in The Walking Dead: Why AMC is Right to Shut Down Spoiler Sites

Elizabeth Erwin

Given the volatile outcry that accompanied the cliffhanger ending of The Walking Dead’s season six finale, it’s safe to say that the feelings of a sizable percentage of the show’s online fan base about AMC and the show’s top creators have been lukewarm at best. So it came as no surprise that when AMC decided to issue a cease and desist letter to The Spoiling Dead Fans, the show’s largest online spoiler site, rage almost instantaneously erupted. Fan outcry that AMC would want to shut down a site that has consistently and accurately spoiled key narrative developments is significant in what it suggests about fandom, ownership, and the way middle America consumes horror.

Before we discuss any of those things, though, let me be crystal clear. While I believe that AMC was within its rights to issue the cease and desist, I in no way excuse or support the harassment detailed by The Spoiling Dead Fans. If the abuse detailed in their post on that matter, which you should read here, is factually accurate, and I have no reason to believe that it is not, then AMC’s actions are a clear abuse of power and should be dealt with accordingly.

It’s also important that we define what actually constitutes a spoiler. A spoiler is not the same thing as conjecture. There is absolutely nothing stopping people from debating who is at the wrong end of Negan’s bat. Rather, the issue at hand, and the reason for AMC’s lawsuit, concerns confirmed intel that is derived either from copyright protected materials such as scripts or from revelations by people who have signed non-disclosure agreements. Given that The Spoiling Dead Fans has provided detailed episode synopses prior to episodes airing, it is more than likely that they have access to materials and/or credible accounts and that the knowledge they are sharing is no longer conjecture because it has been confirmed by a source.

Glenn’s fate was confirmed via spoiler sites well in advance of when the episode aired.

With those caveats in mind, I think it is worthwhile to consider more broadly how spoilers ruin the horror experience. The Walking Dead is a curious pop culture juggernaut in that its pedigree is unabashedly horror while many of its viewers are not fans of the genre. And it may be this disconnect that is fueling a great deal of the Internet rage being hurled at AMC for deigning to protect its investment.