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Posted on April 7, 2021

HUSH-A Film Poe Would Have Loved

Dawn Keetley

Synopsis: Centered on a woman who lives alone in the woods and is inexplicably terrorized, Hush distills everything to a single effect—terror.

Released on April 8, 2016, Hush is directed by Mike Flanagan and written by Flanagan and Kate Siegel. Siegel also stars in the film, playing the heroine, Maddie, alongside villain John Gallagher, Jr. (from 10 Cloverfield Lane), identified in the credits only as “The Man.”

I went into this film with virtually no expectations, watching it on the day it landed on Netflix. I was transfixed. It was terrifying from beginning to end, and the performances by Siegel and Gallagher were inspired.

The film’s plot is very simple—and that, I think, is its primary strength (and where Poe comes in, but more on that later).

Maddie (Siegel) lives alone in an isolated house in the woods. An illness at age thirteen left her deaf and mute, isolating her in a still more profound way. As she says via Facetime to her sister, who’s worried about her being alone: “Isolation happened to me. I didn’t pick it.” After a brief visit from her neighbor, Sarah (Samantha Sloyan), the film focuses almost exclusively on “The Man’s” terrorizing of Maddie. He does so, at first, from outside the house, telling her he will only come in after she’s reached the point that she wishes she were dead. The film tracks their extended battle—as he seeks to victimize Maddie and she fights back. Read more

Posted on December 13, 2020

Adam Egypt Mortimer’s ARCHENEMY: Power, Addiction, and Tragedy

Guest Post

Adam Egypt Mortimer’s Archenemy (2020) is the minding-bending, genre-breaking superhero film we need right now.

That is to say, it’s not much of superhero film at all.

There are no monsters to fight, no true villains. It’s not even clear if there is a heroic protagonist. Instead, Mortimer uses his gritty story to talk about the tragic fallout that inevitably follows addiction and the pursuit of endless power.

Archenemy is about disgraced superhero, Max Fist (Joe Manganiello). Fist is a homeless man living on the streets and bartering his grandiose tales of interdimensional heroics for free whiskey. His depression and self-destruction are stalled when a young, aspiring journalist named Hamster (Skylan Brooks) begins following him and documenting his stories and exploits. Their burgeoning relationship becomes a bloody tale of survival when a crime boss targets Hamster and his sister, Indigo (Zoelee Griggs). Read more

Posted on October 6, 2020

Deconstructive Nostalgia in Clown in a Cornfield

Guest Post

Adam Cesare’s first YA horror novel Clown in a Cornfield delivers exactly what it promises from the title. High school senior Quinn Maybrook, a city girl from Philadelphia, moves with her father to the rural town of Kettle Springs, Missouri, after a family tragedy. They’re looking to move on from this trauma, and so it’s ironic that they settle in Kettle Springs, a town rooted in the past. Quinn quickly assimilates into the surprisingly vibrant youth culture in the town, but she soon learns that not everyone is so fond of the town’s teens. The majority of the novel takes place over the course of one night, as a group of killer clowns attack Quinn and her new friends.

So, why killer clowns? As Brandon Cornett’s article on creepy clowns claims, clowns are terrifying because of their inherent unknowability. Their true emotions are hidden through the use of a painted-on facial expression that’s often overly exaggerated. Clowns fit well within the realm of the uncanny valley: they look one way, but, in the case of horror films, commit acts of violence that don’t always add up with their outward appearance – cheerful and animated. Read more

Posted on August 16, 2020

The Only Good Indians: The Bloody Marrow of Tradition

Guest Post

The Only Good Indians (2020), Stephen Graham Jones’s latest novel, often feels weighed down by a distant, but strong, tradition. For horror fans, there is a lot to like in its pages: haunted houses, breaching of cultural taboos, spectacular but rarely overdone gore, hybrid monsters, and an ever-present deniability of the supernatural. Many reviewers celebrate Jones’ style, citing his creation of likeable and realistically flawed characters as the novel’s main strength, with its horror coming in a close second. While these elements are certainly strong in The Only Good Indians, I found that the change in the novel’s structure after the first section to be the real strength of the novel. Presenting readers with a horror novel turned into hopeful allegory, Jones creates characters that battle with or ignore their indigenous traditions and identities only to have them caught, destroyed, and changed by those same traditions. By its conclusion, The Only Good Indians becomes less a tale of horror, grief, and trauma, and more one focused on acceptance and reconciliation of one’s sense of identity.

Posted on July 27, 2020

Mexican Gothic: Pulpy Anti-Colonial Critique

Sara McCartney

From the title on, Mexican Gothic, the latest from Mexican Canadian novelist Silvia Moreno-Garcia, leaves no doubt about its genre or its self-awareness. Fans of the Gothic will find all its greatest hits lined up and ready for savoring – the crumbling house, the family with a secret, fraught sexual dynamics, ghosts of a restless past. Moreno-Garcia delivers it all with gusto. But more than mere homage, the novel’s pulpy plot invites a closer read to its treatment of race, colonialism, patriarchy – and some very scary ecology.

Moreno-Garcia locates her Gothic in 1950s Mexico; her heroine is Noemí Taboada, a high society beauty sent to check in on her beloved cousin, Catalina. Recently married to English expat Virgil Doyle, proud owner of a defunct silver mine, Catalina’s rambling letters home have aroused her family’s concern. No swooning damsel, Noemí is vibrant, cunning, and sharp-tongued. She’ll needs all that and more to escape the machinations of the Doyle family, who decide to make the most of Noemí’s intrusion.