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Posted on March 4, 2019

The Hole in the Ground: the Strangeness of What We Think We Know

Dawn Keetley

Written and directed by Lee Cronin (along with co-writer Stephen Shields), Irish horror film, The Hole in the Ground is a wonderful slow-burn film that relies on the formidable talents of its lead actors—Seána Kerslake as Sarah O’Neill and James Quinn Markey as her son Chris—as well as the beauty of the enveloping landscape. Cinematographer Tom Comerford and director Cronin make the most of their locations in Kildare and Wicklow, Ireland—and the forest, surrounding the hole at the center of the narrative—is itself as good as a character. The Hole in the Ground is an incredible entry in what seems to be a veritable renaissance in Irish horror.

The story follows Sarah as she moves with her son far from the city to begin a new life—away from the boy’s father who, as Chris put it, made her sad. (We learn very little else about Sarah’s relationship with Chris’s father, other than a large cut she has on her forehead.) One night, Chris disappears, appearing mysteriously back in the house after Sarah has searched everywhere for him. After his return, Chris seems different, alien. Sarah goes from uncertainty to certainty—finally becoming convinced that he’s an imposter. “He’s not my son,” she repeats. The film keeps us in some doubt, for a while, about whether Sarah is just imagining her son’s strangeness; she’s prescribed pills, and both her taking and then not taking them are suggestively linked to what might be her delusions. It’s also possible that Chris only seems like an imposter to her because her feelings toward him have changed: tellingly, things go wrong after Chris gets angry at Sarah for taking him away from his father.

Posted on February 8, 2019

Horror Noire Reviewed – and 6 Essential Black Horror Films

Dawn Keetley

Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (2019) traces nothing short of a revolution. It begins with The Birth of a Nation (1915), which perfectly illustrates one of commentator Tananarive Due’s main points, “Black history is black horror.” It ends with the blowing open of restrictions on when and how African Americans become part of the horror tradition. From the most despicable of stereotypes in 1915, we’ve arrived at a moment when African American creators and actors can finally tell the horror stories they’ve long wanted to tell. This film—and where it ends—is thoroughly inspiring.

Directed by Xavier Burgin, Horror Noire is written and produced by Ashlee Blackwell, who runs the website, Graveyard Shift Sisters, and Danielle Burrows. It’s based on Robin R. Means Coleman’s 2011 book, Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present (Routledge)—and Professor Means Coleman is one of the three principal commentators who tell the story of African American horror. The other two commentators are Ashlee Blackwell herself and Tananarive Due, writer of horror and speculative fiction.

Posted on February 6, 2019

Calibre – New Folk Horror?

Dawn Keetley

Calibre is a brilliant Scottish thriller released in 2018 and directed and written by Matt Palmer, who has previously made two short horror films, The Gas Man (2014) and Island (2007). The film features two late-twenty-something men, Vaughn (Jack Lowden) and Marcus (Martin McCann) who head from Edinburgh up into the Highlands to hunt, an activity Vaughn is less than enthusiastic about. They arrive at the Highland village of Culcarran (filmed on location in Leadhills and Beatock in South Lanarkshire) and head straight out for a raucous night at the local pub, replete with enticing local girls. Vaughn, who has a pregnant fiancée, resists temptation and only talks with Iona (Kate Bracken), but Marcus does rather more with the clearly dangerous Kara (Kitty Lovett). Despite hangovers, both men head off the next morning to hunt deer, as planned, but they’re involved in a terrible accident and almost immediately lose control of the spiraling, out-of-control consequences.

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.