The Black Rose in the Garden: A Second Look at The Babadook
Amelia has cultivated a fearful respect of Mr. Babadook. She is in control of him and feeds him worms from her garden. Instead of trying to exorcise the demon, she[…]
Category: Horror
Dreams and the Human Material in Night of the Living Dead
Dawn brings the forces of reason and order (ironic, in that the posse clearing away the few remaining dead are little more than trigger-happy, thrill-seeking rednecks, not the wise and[…]
Experimental & Underground · Horror · Memoir
Strangest Damn Things: Eraserhead in My Head
Our Eraserhead screening was naïve and unexpected and for me had lasting impact, because when art enters our heads uninvited, leaves traces after it’s flashed through our consciousness, jars the[…]
Born on a Meat Hook: On André Øvredal’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)
“We grow up, but do we ever forget how afraid of ourselves we are?” * * * The books parents protest about are the best at converting children into bookworms.[…]
Drama · Horror · Women in Film
The Birds Is Us: Where Did We Come From?
The movie is, literally, a projection of our mental landscape. We passively sit back (like Jeffries in Rear Window) and the world appears as we live and make it. We[…]
African American · Horror · Race
Color-Blind in Black and White: How Suture Wants Us to Ignore Race
As it stands, Suture’s bold attempt at cultural effacement never drives home any type of allegory, just as Clay is only a passenger in a narrative with barely any causal[…]
Absurdism · Comedy · Drama · Eastern European · Horror
The Cremator (1969): In Love with Death
The Cremator, only Juraj Herz’s second film, was adapted from a novel by Ladislav Fuks. It was well received, won a few awards, and was promptly banned for two decades[…]
Horror · Mystery · SF & Fantasy · Westerns
The Self as Other: Unknown Identities in John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) and Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight (2015)
The Thing and The Hateful Eight’s analogous narratives speak to broader philosophical notions of selfhood and knowledge of others. Their thematic undercurrents explore the forever-complicated terrain of what it means[…]
Activist & Political · Disease and Epidemics · Economy · Horror · Pandemic
“Don’t Let It Touch You”: Watching It Follows in the Age of Coronavirus
What the decade’s scariest film can tell us about pandemics, poverty, and the web of financial risk that ensnares us all * * * It comes for you when you’re[…]
Horror · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy
The Thing about The Thing and Some Other Things
It’s your thing, do what you wanna do, I can’t tell you who to sock it to. – Isley Brothers What in the thing is thingly? What is the thing[…]
To the Lighthouse: Cinematic Lighthouses in Shutter Island, Annihilation, and The Lighthouse
Through their own fragmentary narratives, which resemble Poe’s stream-of-consciousness diary, Shutter Island, Annihilation, and The Lighthouse mount challenges to our own perceptual abilities as viewers. They locate us in the[…]
The Architecture of Horror: Space, Light, and Atmosphere in Ari Aster’s Hereditary and Midsommar
We encounter filmic atmosphere vaguely, imperceptibly, but emotively and reflexively; a movie is a mood. Hereditary and Midsommar creep into our consciousness through subtle shifts in light, sound, and camerawork.[…]
Horror · Interviews · Movies · SF & Fantasy
Metallica’s Kirk Hammett on Introducing Kids to Scary Movies, Why He Likes Lords of Chaos, and the Deal with Women and Horror
* * * It’s The Day of the Triffids’ fault: when he was a wee lad stuck at home in front of the television with a sprained arm (fault: sister,[…]
Drama · Horror · SF & Fantasy
Facing “Ultraviolence”: Blindness as Insight in Bird Box
Given the fact that sex and violence are alleged to be as normalized in our culture as wind blowing through the trees, in Bird Box, Malorie’s shock even appears prudish[…]
Designers · Horror · Interviews
In the Mütterhaus: A Conversation with Suspiria’s Production Designer, Inbal Weinberg
“We need guilt, Doctor. And shame.” * * * Luca Guadagnino follows up 2016’s A Bigger Splash and 2017’s Call Me by Your Name with 2018’s Suspiria, a remake of[…]
Horror · Women in Film · Writers & Critics
Ardel Wray: Val Lewton’s Forgotten Screenwriter
Despite the fact that Wray had no previous screen credits, Lewton hired her to rework the story of I Walked with a Zombie with only two months to go before[…]
Post-Horror Kinships: From Goodnight Mommy to Get Out
“The aesthetic features of post-horror replicate the mixture of shame, confusion, shock, and anxiety about the future experienced by liberal Americans in the midst of the Tea Party and Trump’s[…]
Galactic Angst: Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy Swallows the Cosmos
The demon-summoning, LED laser-lens flares, medieval weaponry-fetishizing, churning synth and axe rhythms, and the overall simmer of curdling darkness are collective flickers of a recurrent, suffocatingly inescapable nightmare, one fueled[…]
“Family Swallows Everything”: Artificiality and Determinism in Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018)
Something hereditary is passed down to posterity, all without their foreknowledge or approval; an unborn child has no say in what color eyes it will have, what its allergies may[…]
Design for Killing: Function Follows Form into the Megalomania of Giallo
Filmmakers like Argento have no interest in sex per se. Suffering seems inessential, but terror and death are key, photographed with the same clinical absorption and aesthetic gloss as giallo-maestros[…]
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