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Posted on June 29, 2015

Crocodile Horror: Black Water and Rogue

Dawn Keetley

Although Shark Week gets all the good press, this post is about shark’s horror film sibling, the equally disturbing crocodile. In fact, crocodiles may be even more disturbing than the shark: reptiles not fish, they can terrorize on land as well as sea (and river and lake!). Australia has demonstrated that it rules the domain of crocodile horror, with two exceptional films released in 2007: Black Water, directed by David Nerlich and Andrew Traucki (the latter of whom has since also directed the shark horror film, The Reef [2010]), and Rogue, directed by Greg McLean (who also directed Wolf Creek [2005]).

Posted on June 17, 2015

Review of Jurassic World: Of Dinosaurs and Monsters

Dawn Keetley

It may seem strange that I’m reviewing Jurassic World for a horror blog since none of the Jurassic Park films have ever been categorized as horror films: they are action, adventure, thriller, and science-fiction. But not horror. Why is that? Well, in large part it’s about marketing and studios striving to reach the largest possible audience; it’s about making sure the franchise is family-friendly. It’s also, though, because the films feature dinosaurs—natural creatures, not monsters. Right?

Posted on June 11, 2015

Rewatch: Environment and Race in The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms

Dawn Keetley

As part of a series of posts on the relatively neglected horror films of the 1950s, I want to begin with The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, directed by Eugène Lourié, and released in 1953 by Warner Brothers Studios. It was the first of the “monster” films that have come to define the decade—before Godzilla, before Creature from the Black Lagoon. The monster is a rhedosaurus, long buried in the ice north of the Arctic Circle and released during a routine test of an atomic bomb. It then tracks a path down to its former home, now New York City, and wreaks havoc on lower Manhattan before being taken down by a radioactive isotope shot into its neck in the midst of its rampage through Coney Island Amusement Park.

Horror films from the 1950s in general, and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms in particular, are accruing an increasing importance in the current moment because they so directly address environmental crisis. The atomic explosion that opens Beast from 20,000 Fathoms causes sheets of ice to cascade into the ocean. The shots of catastrophic glacial melting reminded me of a documentary I just watched, Chasing Ice, released in 2012 and documenting the effects of climate change on the glaciers in Greenland, Iceland, and Alaska: like Beast, the centerpiece of Chasing Ice was glacial ice sliding into the ocean.

Posted on June 9, 2015

Insidious 3 Film Review: The Demon Death Drive

Dawn Keetley

Insidious 3 is the directorial debut of the talented Leigh Whannell, the screenwriter for Saw (2004), Dead Silence (2007), Insidious (2011), and Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013). Demonstrable proof that Whannell can direct as well as write (and act), Insidious: Chapter 3 is quite different, and more disturbing, than the first two Insidious films. It’s telling that the tagline on the movie poster is “This is how you die,” because the film seems itself to be driving toward death, with little to lighten the mood. The mise-en-scène reflects the darkness of the film’s trajectory, exuding decay: while the first two films have a generally lighter, suburban mise-en-scène, the latest installment is set in an old, dark, urban apartment building, and centers on a family struggling both to make ends meet and to deal with the loss of a wife and mother. Read more

Posted on June 8, 2015

Hostel 2: Eli Roth’s Homage to Friday the 13th, Part 2

Dawn Keetley

Friday the 13^th (Sean S. Cunningham, 1980) famously culminates with the Final Girl, Alice (Adrienne King), decapitating Pamela Vorhees (Betsy Palmer). Although she survives the first round of carnage at “Camp Blood,” Alice’s luck runs out as Friday the 13^th, Part 2 (Steve Miner, 1981) begins. Still traumatized, she lives only long enough to see the worst of her nightmares realized: while making tea and feeding her cat, Alice is attacked and killed by Jason Vorhees, bent on avenging his mother.

Alice’s death is shocking for any viewer who may have expected (and hoped) she would reprise her role as plucky survivor: it approximates the devastating murder of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) halfway through Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). It’s also a narrative trick that Eli Roth adopts in Hostel: Part 2 (2007), offering more evidence of his allegiance to the slasher tradition.