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Posted on March 28, 2016

The Birds and Night of the Living Dead

Dawn Keetley

Alfred Hitchcock’s masterful film, The Birds, was released on March 28, 1963—fifty-three years ago today.

Among the many ways in which The Birds broke new ground, helping to shape the modern horror film, is in its profound influence on George A. Romero’s inaugural zombie film, Night of the Living Dead (1968).

Numerous critics have pointed out the similarities of the two films, and the ways in which The Birds created the narrative formula that would be emulated by so many zombie films. [i] The birds, like zombies, are dangerous en masse, as they flock and herd—and birds and zombies are also largely silent. Both The Birds and Night of the Living Dead, moreover, involve humans trying to board themselves up in structures that inevitably prove vulnerable: grasping dead hands and beaks always manage to penetrate their walls.

Both films also left in obscurity the origins of the mysterious attacks by the birds and the returned dead, each of which represented a grotesque overturning of natural law. As The Birds’ ornithologist, Mrs. Bundy (Ethel Griffies) proclaims, birds are “peaceful” and different species of birds would “never” flock together. Her definitive pronouncements (like those that insist the dead are dead) prove, of course, spectacularly wrong.

Posted on March 27, 2016

Easter in the Land of The Walking Dead

Dawn Keetley

Season 5, episode 3, “Four Walls and a Roof”

The above screenshot is taken from a scene in Father Gabriel’s church in the season 5 episode, “Four Walls and a Roof.” Rick and his group have laid a trap for Gareth and the other cannibals, who have just ambushed Bob and eaten his leg. Two of the Cannibals stand on either side of the door, where they think the survivors are hiding, and they’re about to break in and kill them. Rick has other plans, though. He, Abraham, Sasha, and Michonne will soon slaughter the Cannibals in what a horrified Gabriel calls “the Lord’s House.”

A list of Bible verses hangs conspicuously on the wall, and is featured in countless shots during the course of this episode. The Bible verses are below (at the end of this post)—and, as you’ll see, they all feature the dead who do not stay dead—the resurrected dead.

Posted on March 16, 2016

“Raised up from the Dead”*: The Walking Dead and Religion

Dawn Keetley

There is much to say about the role of religion in AMC’s The Walking Dead, but here I want to focus on the three crucial church scenes that have punctuated the series so far.

1. In season two, episode one, “What Lies Beneath,” the group is searching for Carol’s (Melissa McBride) lost daughter. They hear church bells and are drawn to the Southern Baptist Church, where, after killing the three walkers sitting in its pews, Carol and Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and even Daryl (Norman Reedus) ask God to help them.

Season 2, “What Lies Beneath”

2. In a much different scene in the season five episode, “Four Walls and a Roof,” the group lures those remaining survivors from Terminus who had captured Bob (Lawrence Gilliard, Jr.) and eaten his leg into Father Gabriel’s (Seth Gilliam) church and brutally slaughters them.

3. And finally, in the season six episode, “Not Tomorrow Yet,” Rick stands at the front of Alexandria’s church and exhorts the survivors that their very lives depend on a preemptive attack on Negan’s Saviors—that they must find them and kill them.

The most obvious point to make about the trajectory of these scenes is the dramatic increase in brutality on the part of Rick and his group, which goes hand-in-hand with Rick’s movement from supplicating Christ to taking his place.

Posted on March 11, 2016

Commune: Join Us!

Dawn Keetley

Summary: Commune works as a short film because it is both complete in itself and exceptionally evocative. The richness of the film—all the things that lurk beyond the boundaries of the literal story—offer, I think, incredible potential for a feature-length follow-up.

The short horror film, Commune, is the brain-child of Thomas Perrett, who conceived the idea for the film, wrote the script, and directed.

Perrett studied Television and Video Production at Bournemouth University and, since graduating in 2001, has been working as a freelance TV and film editor in London. Commune represents the promise he made to himself to get back into filmmaking, and he was clearly inspired as much by place as by anything else—although he does credit some of his favorite childhood horror films, Poltergeist, Evil Dead, and The Shining, as influencing his vision.

Commune really began, though, when Perrett was invited to a Halloween party at a derelict Jewish commune in North London, a house built on Lordship Park in the 1930s. Decaying and abandoned, the house seemed the perfect location for a film—and Perrett had incentive to work fast since the property was slated for redevelopment.

Posted on March 4, 2016

Must-Watch Movie: Honeymoon (2014)

Dawn Keetley

There seems to be an emergent mini sub-genre of films about couples who head into the woods for some quality time—about to get married or just married—and then very bad things happen. I’m thinking in particular of Eden Lake (2008), Willow Creek (2013), and Backcountry (2014)—all great films, and two of which I’ve written about here. I just discovered another addition to the canon, Leigh Janiak’s Honeymoon (2014), that’s streaming on Netflix and I definitely recommend you watch it. It’s worth pointing out (since women directors of horror are still relatively rare) that Janiak is a woman. She also wrote the screenplay, along with Phil Graziadei.

The recently and (for now) happily-married couple of Honeymoon, Bea (Rose Leslie) and Paul (Harry Treadaway), are heading on a delayed honeymoon to a cottage in the woods where Bea grew up. Things go swimmingly until Paul wakes up one night to find that Bea is gone. He eventually finds her (in a highly creepy moment) standing in the woods, in a state of dazed virtual unconsciousness (think Micah and Katie in Paranormal Activity, although worse since Bea and Paul are deep in the woods, not on a suburban patio). The couple writes the strange event off to sleepwalking—albeit with a hefty dose of anxious self-deception, since Bea has never walked in her sleep before.