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Posted on November 10, 2018

Laughing at Rape: Reconsidering Young Frankenstein

In the annals of horror comedy, Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein occupies a unique space for both its plot-driven narrative and its subtle inclusivity. Combining satire, parody and slapstick, the film is effective primarily due to its reinterpretation of genre tropes and its commitment to illustrating how inequitable cultural systems are predicated upon illogical thinking so absurd as to be laughable. And, on the whole, it is a largely effective undertaking. Whether it is Igor’s machinations which work to dismantle ideas about the limitations of disability or Inspector Kemp’s ineptitude which calls into question our blind trust in systems of justice, there is a laudable amount of political subtext permeating the film which is why the rape scene that occurs a mere nine minutes before its conclusion is especially jarring. It would be easier if Young Frankenstein was a film that hates women but it’s not. Instead, the rape scene serves as a spectacular example of the failure of allyship. Read more

Posted on October 21, 2018

A Rage-Filled Halloween for Our Time

Dawn Keetley

From what I’d read before going in to David Gordon Green’s Halloween (2018), I was expecting a portrait of the deep and lasting effects of grief and trauma. The film chooses to ignore all the sequels to John Carpenter’s 1978 original and picks up the story of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) many years later, after two failed marriages, a daughter (now estranged), and a granddaughter. Instead of a complex study in the lingering after-effects of trauma, however, Green’s Halloween gives us simple, unalloyed rage. A fitting Halloween, perhaps, for our own anger-filled post-Trump moment.

Posted on October 15, 2018

Channel Zero: Dream Door is Dramatic, Silly, and Scary

Guest Post

The first three seasons of Syfy’s Channel Zero found clever ways to combine fears that veered closer to traditional horror film iconography with those based in the existential and emotional. Indeed, the show’s ability to do just that is certainly a part of why it is arguably the best horror show currently on television. While Channel Zero has cycled through evil puppets, monsters made of teeth, memory clones, cannibals, psychotic dwarves, and meat-men, it has also explored horror present in the everyday: the guilt of losing a loved one, fear of your own mind turning against you, the pain of lingering memories, etc. The emotional depths that Channel Zero so frequently explores are a huge part of what makes the more visceral horror elements work, investing us not only in characters’ safety but often their emotional well-being and ability to live a happy life.

And thus we open the Dream Door, the title of Channel Zero’s fourth season, directed this time by indie horror director EL Katz (Cheap Thrills, Small Crimes). While season one started with a nightmare sequence, and seasons two and three with more traditionally visceral horror sequences, this new season begins with a sex scene. And yet, the sequence feels uneasy: Katz starts with a shot of a conspicuously absent home, slowly and ominously zooming into nothing in particular. Additionally, the first sounds we hear are moans, but without seeing the individuals moaning, it’s tough to tell whether they’re sounds of pleasure or screams of pain. While the opening of Channel Zero: Dream Door departs from more traditional horror, it’s still clear that something is off here, and, to Katz’s credit, this mood never lets up; in fact, it snowballs into even greater tension as we are introduced to our cast of characters.

Posted on October 6, 2018

Hereditary as Folk Horror

Guest Post

In a recent post on Ari Aster’s debut film Hereditary (2018), Brian Fanelli contends that “grief, mental illness, and the challenges of motherhood are the subconscious fears that erupt after the family suffers one loss after another.” Fanelli thus summarizes the traits passed down through the generations in the film; he also implicitly reads the text as an addition to a canon that follows what Dawn Keetley has identified as “an intriguing new trend in horror film: the horror of motherhood” and, on a larger scale, to what genre critics such as Tony Williams and Kimberly Jackson call “the family horror film.” I argue that a conjoined reading of these ideas in the context of the movie’s central horror plot—possession by a mythological demon as a result of ritualistic ceremonies—situates Hereditary within yet another new (or rather, revived) field in horror studies: folk horror.

Posted on September 19, 2018

Interview with Grimmfest Senior Programmer

Dawn Keetley

Grimmfest is Manchester’s premium international festival of genre film, including (of course) horror, and it will be enjoying its 10^th anniversary when it opens on October 4-7, 2018. The final line-up is now out, and it includes some fantastic films.

This year, Grimmfest has partnered with House of Leaves Publishing in the promotion of their forthcoming book, Scared Sacred: Idolatry, Religion and Worship in the Horror Film, to offer day passes to the 2018 festival. For more information, please visit Scared Sacred‘s crowdfunding page.

Ahead of Grimmfest’s opening, I interviewed Senior Programmer Steve Balshaw about Grimmfest—and about the broader shape of horror today.

What do you think is distinctive about Grimmfest?

First and foremost, the range and selection of films. We are interested in exploring the darker side of cinema, in all its various forms. Obviously, our focus has always been on horror, and to a lesser extent science fiction, but we have also found space over the years for Southern Gothic, Crime and Film Noir, black comedy, Fantasy and even Sword and Sorcery, as well as cinema that it simply weird, wired and utterly uncategorisable. Genre cinema has always been pretty broadly defined anyway, and we will screen everything from grindhouse to arthouse. Over the years, we have developed an international reputation for pushing at the boundaries of genre, and focusing on more left-field and independent material, rather than more mainstream horror and sci-fi films. We like to stretch and redefine the parameters, and hopefully we will continue to do that. If we like a film, and think our audience will like it, or simply that they need to see it, we will try to find a slot for it.