“Nothing Inside”: On Pablo Larraín’s El Conde (2023)
This man who watches you returns from hell […]; he is hollow, he is full of air. Dry hands hold him upright from behind, like a house of cards being[…]
Category: Horror
African · African American · Books · Hollywood · Horror
Book Review: I Walked with a Zombie, by Clive Dawson
Clive Dawson, I Walked with a Zombie. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 2023. 120 pages. Available in hardback and e-book. * * * At a time when education and culture are increasingly[…]
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Horror · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Sexual Subversion: The Bride of Frankenstein
To celebrate Halloween, we repost your editor’s slightly revised analysis of James Whale’s immortal Bride of Frankenstein, which appeared previously on the site in 1997. * * * No institution[…]
Defending Cinematic Heresy: John Boorman’s The Exorcist II: The Heretic
Despite ritualistically crowning lists of the worst sequels ever made, in no way does The Heretic exemplify “sequelitis.” It’s neither a quick cash-in nor a rehash of the original. Its[…]
Directors · Essays · Genres · Horror
Sexual Violence and Female Experience in Roman Polanski’s Apartment Trilogy: Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, The Tenant
Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933, making him 89 years old on this day in 2023. We mark the occasion – we won’t say celebrate – by republishing Elise[…]
Horror · Mental Illness · Superheroes · Urban Conflict
Hollywood Art Flick: Joker as Social Commentary, an Origin Story
Joker is the “underman” we get when God and Superman have been killed and we still don’t know how to navigate our lives without them. He’s our secular Antichrist –[…]
Cults · Horror · Religion & Spirituality · War
Rosemary’s Baby: The World as Coven
Rosemary’s Baby has been seen as eerily prescient, predictive, but in fact it looked back; Polanski already knew evil and horror, and specifically the horror of the giant covens of[…]
Absurdism · DIY · Experimental & Underground · Horror
An Enraged Eye: Nathan Schiff’s Vermilion Eyes as Anti-Film
“I felt there was a dead end to the kind of films I was making. . . . I was losing sight of reason in favor of result and so[…]
The Demiurge in the American Eyesore: Night Tide
If Curtis Harrington had not had the ruined mall of hell unveiled to the world in 1905 as Venice of America as a setting for his occult fable, he might[…]
Body Horror · Horror · Mumblecore · Romance
Lucky McKee’s May and the Retelling of Frankenstein for the Indie Rom-Com Era
Not only does May challenge the tropes of mumblecore and indie-rom com movies, but it also retells elements of Frankenstein, offering a female protagonist who is both monster and monster-maker.[…]
Rate Your Hunch: Women and Intuition in Barbarian
Hinting at women’s complicity in a film plotted around men’s violent treatment of women is, well, ballsy. That Cregger’s script doesn’t delve into the larger cultural conditioning and structures that[…]
Wild Imagination: Forty Years of The Thing
“You just can’t beat wild imagination.” – Bob Bottin * * * It took decades for John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) to find an audience, on home video and cable.[…]
Body Horror · Horror · SF & Fantasy
“A Great Future in Plastics”: Crimes of the Future and Cronenberg’s Story of Evolution
The voice-over tells us that as a result of this neo-venereal disease, his colleague’s body is creating new organs, each one complex, perfect, unique, but without function. Each time these[…]
Family · Horror · Linguistics and Language
Ghost Story: Christian Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil/Gæsterne (2022)
What kind of guests are so pathologically accommodating that their hosts can get away with murdering them? * * * What’s in a name? On one hand, Speak No Evil[…]
Absurdism · African American · Horror · Surrealism · Westerns
What’s Behind That Curtain: The Wizard of Oz and Jordan Peele’s Nope
The theme of exploitation is evident in Nope’s multiple references to a classic film. Not Jaws, The Goonies, or Close Encounters, or any of the Western films nodded at in[…]
Franchises & Series · Horror · Men & Masculinity
Saw and the Danger of Not Talking about Masculinity
We see how Jigsaw can fail, again and again, to help anyone and still blame it on them. We see how people can live through how little his traps teach[…]
Animation · Experimental & Underground · Horror · Splatter & Gore
Splatter in (Stop) Motion: The Gory Animations of Michael Kahlert
There is no question of suspending our disbelief watching Kahlert’s films, but there does emerge a bizarre unease in the inescapable doom of his scenarios. Unburdened by the need to[…]
Directors · Gender · Hollywood · Horror · Men & Masculinity
The Jaws of War: How Quint Decodes Masculinity in the Films of Spielberg
If the sum of Spielberg’s work is about how men live in the world, Jaws is his most particular point on the subject, a film centered with almost fantastical totality[…]
Drama · Eco · Eco-horror · Horror
Don’t Go Near the Water: Revisiting Four ’70s Eco-Horror Films
I’ve detailed each film to convey the strange and strict extent to which they each cohere to one base fear: reproductive control. The only hope for human survival in Phase[…]
Experimental & Underground · Horror · New Media · Societal Trends · Theory · Thrillers & Action · TV & Streaming
A Spectre in the Participatory Panopticon: The Database Horror of Unfriended: Dark Web
The encounter between the lead characters and The Circle evokes a wider sense of anxiety regarding the extent to which we upload information about every area of our lives into[…]
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