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Posted on May 29, 2016

The Other Side of the Door (2016) and Wake Wood (2009): Folk Horror and Grief

Dawn Keetley

DEFYING DEATH IN THE HORROR FILM: Since at least Pet Sematary (1989), we’ve known it’s not a good idea to try to bring loved ones back from the dead. Indeed, this theme goes back still further. What was Frankenstein (1931), in the end, if not a warning about what happens when you raise the dead? But if horror is at bottom about the inevitability of death, it’s also about our efforts to defy that inevitability—efforts that are at the same time heroic and dangerously hubristic. Both The Other Side of the Door and Wake Wood demonstrate this in terrifying fashion.

The release last week of The Other Side of the Door (2016), directed by Johannes Roberts, written by Roberts and Ernest Riera, and starring Sarah Wayne Callies (The Walking Dead, Colony) and Jeremy Sista (Six Feet Under, The Returned), is a dramatic manifestation of the fact that we’ll never get over (or around) the implacability of death.

Indeed, we can see the persistence of the human desire to overcome death in the fact that The Other Side of the Door is strikingly similar to another relatively recent Irish folk horror film—Wake Wood (2009), which was directed by Arthur Keating and stars Aidan Gillen (Game of Thrones), Eva Birthistle (The Children), and Timothy Spall (Harry Potter, Mr. Turner). Both films are worth watching, both in and of themselves and also because of what their similarities say about an enduring theme of horror. Read more

Posted on May 1, 2016

Monstrosity, Creation, and Feminism in Penny Dreadful

Guest Post

Guest Author: Cayla McNally

Both seasons of Penny Dreadful have similar themes: guilt, repression, creation, monstrosity, and the confluence of the sacred and the profane. A huge part of the thematic narrative is duality, a secret self that is harbored away, repressed. As monstrosity is repressed, as the secret self is repressed, the power the characters have over themselves weakens. Ethan represses his lupine nature, which causes him to erupt violently when he does transform. Vanessa represses her natural sexuality, which then leaves her vulnerable to possession. Victor represses Lily’s history, which helps her realize she is immortal.

Monstrosity exists in all of the characters, in two different categories:

-Dorian, Lily, John/Caliban, and Ethan are monstrous in a supernatural way. Control and consent become overarching themes as well, existing at the crossroad of creation and monstrosity. The creatures who see themselves as monsters (Ethan, John/Caliban, Lily) had no control in their creation; rather, they can only control what they choose to do with their monstrosity. Read more

Posted on April 28, 2016

Everything You Need to Know about Penny Dreadful Before Sunday

Guest Post

Guest Author: Cayla McNally

Popular Gothic TV show Penny Dreadful is making its return to Showtime this weekend, and I am beyond excited! Named after a popular form of 19^th century pulp novel, the show is a twisted tale of the dark and supernatural goings-on in Victorian London. The first two seasons have been a beautiful and harrowing ride, and I am curious to see where show creator John Logan will take it next. It can be hard to remember everything that happened in the eighteen episodes of this complex and detailed show, so below you will find season recaps to bring us up to speed for season three. Caution, spoilers abound.

Season 1

Season one begins with, of course, a grisly murder of a woman and her young child, plucked out of their home in the dead of night. The killer remains mysterious and on the loose, though many fear that Jack the Ripper has returned. Meanwhile, Vanessa Ives (Eva Green) approaches American sharpshooter Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett); she offers to pay Ethan handsomely for his skills on some “night work.” Intrigued, Ethan agrees to join Vanessa and Sir Malcolm Murray (Timothy Dalton), and promptly follows them- unawares- into a vampire den. It is revealed that Sir Malcolm’s daughter- and Vanessa’s best friend- Mina (Olivia Llewellyn) was captured by one of the creatures. They are attacked, and manage to kill one of the nest’s main vampires; they take the body to Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway), who discovers that there are glyphs written under the creature’s skin. Egyptologist Ferdinand Lyle (Simon Russel Beale) later discerns that the glyphs are from the Egyptian Book of the Dead and foretell the end of the world. He also believes that the vampires are using Mina as bait, and really want Vanessa. Read more

Posted on April 22, 2016

Day of the Animals (1977): EcoHorror for Earth Day

Dawn Keetley

Day of the Animals (William Girdler, 1977) is a bad (dare I say, so bad it’s good) disaster / revenge-of-nature ecohorror film that screams seventies. Its plot is simple: a group of assorted characters, who shouldn’t be hiking in the best of circumstances, head up into the mountains just as animals start massing and trying to kill all humans—a phenomenon apparently caused by the thinning ozone layer.

There’s bad acting and plot holes as big as those in the ozone layer (not least, after a violent confrontation, one group chooses to continue up the mountain, yet is thereafter shown trekking down, while the other group, which chose to go down the mountain, is subsequently shown hiking up). There’s utterly horrible dialogue and baffling character development—and more than a few offensive comments thrown at the one Native American character. (I won’t even go into how the women are portrayed!)

The incomparable Leslie Nielsen (yes, one reason to see the film) plays a character who starts out as a straightforward obnoxious advertising executive, yet before long he mutates into a bare-chested survivalist, screaming into the rain, declaring allegiance to “Melville’s God,” shoving a mother and her child violently onto the ground, trying to rape a young woman (after telling her, “You belong to me. I own you”), stabbing a man through the abdomen with a walking stick, and then grappling (willingly) with a very large grizzly bear. The only possible excuse for this startling series of events might be that he is the lone person affected by the depleted-ozone-layer-induced madness that otherwise affects only nonhuman animals. You have to make that leap yourself, though, because the film doesn’t. Read more

Posted on April 18, 2016

Patriarchy and Monstrosity in 10 Cloverfield Lane

Guest Post

Guest Author: Cayla McNally

When I saw 10 Cloverfield Lane (Dan Trachtenberg, 2016) I was stunned, to say the least. Having seen Cloverfield in all its shaky-cam glory in 2008, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this iteration, and I certainly didn’t expect the film to be as feminist as it is.

It tells the story of Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who jilts her fiancé, gets into a car accident, and wakes up chained to a wall. She is being held there by Howard (John Goodman) who claims to have brought her to his underground bunker in order to save her life. He also claims that a large-scale attack occurred shortly after her accident, thus making leaving the bunker impossible. His story is corroborated by Emmett (John Gallagher, Jr.), who helped build the bunker and witnessed the attack. However, Michelle is rightfully skeptical, and as the narrative unwinds, the truth proves to be more sinister than originally imagined.

At its heart, 10 Cloverfield Lane is ultimately a story of private and public disaster, of oppression on a micro and macro level, and of the banality of monstrosity. Patriarchy, the practice of disenfranchising and infantilizing women, often with the goal of silencing and protecting them, is – without revealing everything- the true monster of the film. Read more