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Posted on December 22, 2019

Polarizing Politics: Talking Black Christmas (2019)

What happens when feminists dislike a feminist anthem horror film? We’re finding out today in our discussion on Black Christmas (2019), the latest adaptation of the 1974 slasher that has grown to be a cult favorite. Directed by Sophia Takal, whose impassioned defense of the film’s PG-13 rating on Twitter launched debate over whether a horror film needs to be rated R to be enjoyable, the film draws explicitly on the #MeToo era. But is it effective? We’re talking political horror, Joe Bob Briggs and the importance of audience spectatorship on this episode, so stay tuned!

Posted on July 5, 2018

The First Purge (2018) Review

Elizabeth Erwin

For as much as I enjoy so-called “prestige horror” such as The Invitation (2015), Get Out (2017) and Hereditary (2018), there is something to be said for the value of what I call “popcorn horror,” those movies that eschew all nuance for explicit depictions of carnage and social commentary. And if there is one horror movie this season that fits that bill it’s The First Purge (2018), the fourth film in the franchise that serves as its de facto origin story and explains how an America of the very near future turned to a yearly program of intentional lawlessness in order to combat cultural aggression. Directed by Gerard McMurray, the movie is a direct frontal attack on Trump’s America that pulls no punches in its depiction of class warfare. From pointedly associating the NRA with the villainous political party in power to a devious Spicer-like mouthpiece of the administration to a character literally being “grabbed by the pussy,” there is no question that this movie is designed to be a searing indictment of Donald Trump and those who support him.

How a viewer receives The First Purge is likely to depend upon where he/she falls on the political spectrum, and I suspect Rotten Tomatoes will be awash in both one star and five-star reviews. As a horror flick, the movie is slightly above average. Given that it is a prequel, it spends a good deal of the time situating and developing the characters—so much so that the actual Purge doesn’t begin until the movie’s midway point. One of the criticisms of the franchise has always been that the films advocate non-violence while simultaneously depicting in graphic fashion the spectacle of violence. But here, the opposite is true. While there are scenes of graphic brutality, it feels underplayed, especially in comparison to the other films. We’re also given heroes who understand that part of resisting is being prepared to fight back. Read more

Posted on June 8, 2018

Us and Them and the Rise of Political Horror

Dawn Keetley

Us and Them, a British film that saw general release in the US in March, 2018, is the feature-film directorial debut of Joe Martin, who also wrote the screenplay. It follows three working-class men, Danny (Jack Roth), Tommy (Andrew Tiernan), and Sean (Daniel Kendrick), who decide to invade the home of a wealthy family—patriarch Conrad (Tim Bentinck), wife Margaret (Carolyn Backhouse), and daughter Phillipa (Sophie Colquhoun)—for, as it turns out, very different reasons. The trio is lured into crime both by a political rage that is tied to a contemporary moment of widening class inequality and by money, a motive for crime as old as money itself.

Danny is the voice of political resentment and rage. He argues that the time has come for the working classes to take “direct political action” by targeting the top 1% who, he tells us more than once, own as much as the bottom 50% in the UK. “Things have to change,” he says, trying to urge his friends, in a long speech he gives them in the local pub, to see Conrad, a financier, as a “political target.” Danny’s plan, not exactly meticulously thought-out, is to terrorize the wealthy family, forcing Conrad to choose which of his wife or daughter will play Danny’s seemingly deadly game of roulette. His intent is to videotape the “game” and then broadcast it along with his political statement. Needless to say, things don’t go exactly as Danny intended. Neither his victims nor his partners in crime acquiesce in his agenda.

Posted on May 18, 2015

James Wan’s The Conjuring and Abortion

Dawn Keetley

One of the best of the current spate of occult films is James Wan’s The Conjuring (2013), which opened to critical acclaim and the distinction of being rated “R” simply for its terrifying sequences (on which promise, in my view, it certainly delivered).

One notable characteristic of occult horror is its seeming resistance to socio-political meanings. After all, it translates its principal conflict to the afterworld: human characters are beset by ghosts, demons and poltergeists—often forces of uncomplicated “Evil”—not by more recognizable and more complicated “evils” of this world. The “dark entity” in The Conjuring, for instance, simply wants the unoffending Perron family dead. Articulating what seems true of occult films in general, Douglas Kellner writes of Poltergeist that it “deflect[s] people’s legitimate fears onto irrational forces.”[i]