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Posted on August 18, 2018

Down a Dark Hall: Female Gothic and ‘The End of Men’

Dawn Keetley

Down a Dark Hall is directed by Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Cortés who directed the critically-acclaimed Buried (2010). The screenplay is written by Michael Goldbach and Chris Sparling and based on the 1974 novel by the young adult author Lois Duncan (who also wrote, among others, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Killing Mr. Griffin).

In a plot reminiscent of The Craft (1996) or American Horror Story’s third season, “Coven” (2013-14), Down a Dark Hall centers on five girls with troubled pasts who arrive at Blackwood Boarding School, sent their by their parents as a kind of last resort. They are the only five students in a vast isolated mansion presided over by the mysterious Madame Duret (Uma Thurman), who soon makes it clear that the girls have special abilities that she intends to foster. And, indeed, the girls soon display talents they didn’t know they had. Protagonist Kit (AnnaSophia Robb) blossoms into a master piano player; Ashley (Taylor Russell) starts writing brilliant poetry; Sierra (Rosie Day) paints captivating landscapes; and Izzy (Isabelle Fuhrman) transforms into a math genius. Their new abilities come with a price, however, as the girls get sicker and strange figures start haunting the long dark halls of Blackwood.

Posted on December 2, 2017

I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives, Dies, and Haunts in the House

Guest Post

I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House begins with the anticipation of certain death.

I have heard myself say that a house with a death in it can never again be bought or sold by the living. It can only be borrowed from the ghosts who have stayed behind.

In this 2016 Netflix original, directed by Osgood Perkins, Lily Saylor (Ruth Wilson) enters the house of the dying author, Iris Blum (Paula Prentiss), to serve as her live-in nurse. Lily spends solitary months caring for Ms. Blum, and the film follows her at a sometimes excruciating pace. Ms. Blum refuses to call her anything but Polly, whom Lily learns is the lead character in one of Blum’s books: a character who suffered a horrible murder but whose ending was never fully told. The ghost of this character (Lucy Boynton) begins following Lily about the house, unbeknownst to her. The death that the house has been waiting for becomes three as Polly’s end is briefly shown, Lily never reaches her 29^th year (as she predicts in the first few minutes of the film), and Ms. Blum dies without her caregiver. The film slowly unravels the theme of three different relationships in regards to these deaths: 1) that of the dying and a caregiver, 2) that of an artist with her work, and 3) that of the living with the dead. Ultimately, these relationships grow so neatly and subtly tangled that they become inseparable

Posted on September 17, 2017

Aronofsky’s mother! Unabashed Misogyny

Dawn Keetley

This post contains spoilers; I thought about it long and hard but was unable to write about mother! without discussing the ending.

Darren Aronofsky’s most recent film was preceded by a suitably vague trailer that quite effectively, as it turned out, disguises what his film is actually about.

And much of the film, like the trailer, is intriguing because it doesn’t give away what’s going on, what kind of film mother! is. It trades in many horror film conventions, raising all kinds of expectations: there’s a couple isolated in a house, each with a mysterious past; there’s a house that seems itself to be sentient, alive; there are uninvited guests who quickly turn hostile (is this a home invasion film?); and there’s an uncanny pregnancy (Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby is one of the principal cinematic touchstones of Mother!). Jennifer Lawrence does a great job of playing the standard “haunted house” protagonist, especially after she becomes pregnant, a woman who may or may not be seeing what’s actually there, may or may not be experiencing hallucinations. Indeed, for much of its run-time, mother! seems like a gothic horror film, a subgenre that is notable for featuring strong women and feminist themes.