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Posted on February 6, 2017

Don’t Knock Twice and the New Horror of Motherhood

Dawn Keetley

Don’t Knock Twice is an interesting film that is lifted up by its exceptional performances and cinematography and by the way it taps into what I think is an intriguing new trend in horror film: the horror of motherhood.

Directed by talented Welsh filmmaker Caradog W. James (best known for the 2013 sci-fi film The Machine), Don’t Knock Twice centers on the relationship of Jess (Katee Sackhoff, of Battlestar Galactica) and the teenage daughter she abandoned nine years ago, Chloe (Lucy Boynton). The film opens with Chloe and her boyfriend Danny (Jordan Bolger) being inexplicably drawn to a house nearby where a woman named Mary Aminov used to live. Convinced that, years ago, she kidnapped and killed a boy who lived in their group home, Chloe and Danny harassed her long after the police decided they had no case. They drove her, it seems, to suicide, and now a legend has flourished that something demonic lives in her house. If you knock twice on the door, it will come to get you. Danny, of course, knocks twice. And then the demonic witch comes to get him. In terror, Chloe flees to her mother’s home—even though she had earlier brutally refused Jess’s plea that Chloe come live with her. But the witch pursues Chloe even to her mother’s house—and so Jess ends up fighting for her daughter’s life.

Posted on January 19, 2017

Josh Malerman’s Bird Box

Guest Post

Bird Box (UK: Harper Voyager/ US: Ecco Press, 2014)

When characters in horror films hear a strange noise, the first thing they do is investigate, despite the audience shouting at them to run the other way. More provoking than going to see what caused the noise, however, is not being able to do so. In Josh Malerman’s novel, Bird Box, characters and the reader must react to sounds without being able to see. And therein lies the horror.

Like Night of the Living Dead, something has happened to the world, and no one knows why. The reports come in gradually at first, then like a flood: people are turning violent and committing suicide, taking anyone close enough with them. It is eventually surmised that these tragic victims have seen “something,” to cause their actions: creatures who suddenly walk among us. No one knows who or what they are, what they look like, or what they want because anyone who sees them loses their mind and dies.

Posted on January 16, 2017

The Bye Bye Man: Ideas Are Real

Dawn Keetley

The Bye Bye Man is a decent horror film. I can’t say it’s terribly innovative but it was enjoyable enough—and interesting enough—for me to recommend it.

In some ways, The Bye Bye Man feels like something of a throwback to the 1990s and early 2000s. It evoked Candyman (1992), Final Destination (2000), and The Ring (2002)—with a nod to the more recent Slenderman mythology.

Posted on January 13, 2017

Top 10 Films About the Horrors of Caregiving

Gwen

What follows is my list of films which reveal the horrors of caregiving. The role of caretaker requires you to give something of yourself, sometimes giving more than you have to offer. This is a precarious assignment that takes a toll on the physical as well as the psychological self. One must make moral decisions and selflessly sacrifice time, patience, and dreams. Ineffective caregivers sow the seeds of lasting consequences for themselves and others. Needless to say sometimes there is a backlash for giving so much of one’s self. (For the purposes of this list, I tried to stay away from using examples of parents as “caregivers”.)

Posted on January 4, 2017

Hopes for Horror in 2017

Gwen

FILMS:

A Cure For Wellness

Due for release in February 2017, this Gore Verbinski directed psychological horror has stirred my interest. The cyclical story has me wondering what they are hiding up there in the Swiss Alps. As one man goes to retrieve the CEO of his company from a wellness spa, his own well-being is tested. Will he fall victim to what ails all those who walk through these doors, or will he escape intact? “Only if we know what ails us, can we find a cure.” If you are looking for jump scares and the such, this might not be for you as it is shaping up to be more of a slow building contemporary gothic film that taps in to your senses.