Watch It Again! King Kong (Merian C. Cooper, 1933)
With Kong: Skull Island making waves at the box office right now, perhaps it’s time to reintroduce ourselves to the first and, M. C. Myers argues (and we agree), best of the[…]
Category: Horror
Activist & Political · Books · Horror
Book Review: Films of the New French Extremity: Visceral Horror and National Identity
By the mid-2000s, following social unrest and political upheaval in France, and culminating with the emergence of the “torture-porn” horror subgenre in the United States with titles such as Saw[…]
Essays · Horror · Religion & Spirituality
You Say You Want a Revolution? Regan’s Head and The Exorcist
If the evil spirit is “seen,” that is, reflected . . . he is overcome. – Marie-Louise von Franz Unmask Satan, and you vanquish him. – St. Augustine * *[…]
Experimenting with the Horrific: A Reappraisal and Retrospective of the Films of Tobe Hooper
Hooper’s interest in horror articulates itself primarily in formal invention: how can the frame be used to incapacitate viewer expectations? * * * Tobe Hooper’s most recent feature film, Djinn[…]
Don’t Breathe, Just Keep on Surviving
What I have identified is a recurrent depiction of American citizens committing acts of extreme violence against one another, almost always in service of financial interest. * * * Watched[…]
The Horror of a Nation’s Despair: Rob Zombie’s 31 (2016)
Much like the serial-killer-themed amusement park ride in House of 1000 Corpses, 31 is a fast and hyper-sensory excursion into a nation’s sickest and bleakest fixations. * * * Rob[…]
M. Night Shyamalan’s Terror Trilogy: Signs (2002), The Village (2004), and The Happening (2008)
Shyamalan’s three films portray an imbalanced and endangered world; they engage to varying degrees with the imagery and anxiety surrounding terrorist attacks in the wake of September 11, 2001, while[…]
Originality Is Overrated: Ghostbusters (1984) and Its Remake (2016)
The new Ghostbusters seems quite pleased with itself, but it leaves the overwhelming impression that nobody involved really believed in it. Despite the original film’s numerous flaws and Bill Murray’s[…]
Old Anxieties, New Bodies: Demystifying Masculinity in Brad Anderson’s The Machinist (2004)
It is this very concept of challenging traditional models and exposing not viscera but inconsistencies within societal constructs that makes The Machinist arguably one of the most horrifying films ever[…]
Directors · Essays · Genres · Horror
Sexual Violence and Female Experience in Roman Polanski’s Apartment Trilogy: Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, The Tenant
In the first two films of the Apartment Trilogy, gender, subjectivity, and horror are intertwined: being embodied and socially constructed as a woman is the horror, and the audience is[…]
Designers · Historical & Epic · Horror
Dressing The Witch: An Interview with Costume Designer Linda Muir
The Witch thrives on its damning details. It seems authentically claustrophobic and austere. Threats to faith take their toll. The untouched surroundings and natural lighting allow each period detail revelrous[…]
The Last Man on Earth: Drama of a Lifeless Ordinary
“… the living being is only a species of the dead.” – Nietzsche * * * Dead Man. Dead Man’s Curve. Dead Man on Campus. Dead Man Walking (1988). Dead[…]
Sh! The Horror! 13 Suggestions for an Uncommon Halloween Viewing Experience
Editor’s note: We’re posting Erich “Mr. Acidemic” Kuersten’s viewing guide a couple of days before Halloween to give our readers a chance to locate these “cool and strange” suggestions spanning cinema’s[…]
Ti West Is Pregnant (On the Low-Budget Auteur of The Roost, The Innkeepers, and House of the Devil)
A reluctant genre force who admits his pictures start out as regular films but turn into horror movies much the same way he describes the process of filmmaking itself as[…]
Spider Eats Butterfly: Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961)
The film makes a far more subtle statement about childhood’s inevitable, metaphorical death: All innocent children must eventually grow into corrupted adults, and adults will only suffer for trying to[…]
The End of History in Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive
Adam, a vampire and underground rock musician, sneaks down the quiet corridors of a Detroit hospital, dressed in a physician’s scrubs with his face concealed by a surgical mask and[…]
The Return of Repression: How Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook Undoes Itself
The Babadook presents a normative vision of what it believes is a stable, happy existence, one in which if our emotions are difficult to bear, we simply lock them in[…]
What It Says About The New Republic If They Don’t Understand Horror Films
The continuing attention being showered on Jennifer Kent’s 2014 The Babadook from horror luminaries such as Stephen King and William Friedkin has prompted some impressive critical writing, while simultaneously anchoring[…]
Activist & Political · Essays · Horror · Reviews · SF & Fantasy
We Are Not Who We Are: Human Sacrifice, Philosophical Horror, and (Maybe) the End of the World
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part,[…]
The Graveyard of Your Fucking Species: Wolfen: The End of the World by Wolves
“The most powerful aspect of Wolfen is not, then, its status as an exemplary and indeed essential period piece, but its unusual situation of contemporary New York City within the[…]
