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woman walks alone
Posted on January 2, 2022

America’s Original Sin—Top Ten Movies About the Horrors of Settler Colonialism

Guest Post

“Once upon a time, there was a girl, and the girl had a shadow.”

-Red (Lupita Nyong’o), Us (2019)

We live in a haunted house. The founding of the American nation began with a moment of sweeping amnesia about its defining structure—settler colonialism, a form of colonization that replaces the original population of the colonized territory with a new society of settlers.[1] From depopulation to the reservation system[2], the residential school system[3] to the plantation system[4], settler colonialism as an ongoing process depends upon a constant flow of physical and cultural violence. Colonization is as horrific as humanity gets—genocide, desecration, pox-blankets, rape, humiliation—and it is the way nations are born. It is an ongoing horror made invisible by its persistence. And yet since the inception of film, the horror genre has, perhaps sneakily, participated in, portrayed, and resisted settler colonialism, ensuring at the very least that it remains visible. Horror movies invite us to rethink the roles that fear, guilt, shame, and history play in the way we conceive of the United States as a nation founded through settler colonialism.[5] They unveil the American experience as based on genocide and exploitation and force us to consider horror as a genre about marginalization and erasure. The ghosts in these films are “never innocent: the unhallowed dead of the modern project drag in the pathos of their loss and the violence of the force that made them, their sheets and chains.”[6] Most importantly, they force us to see them—the shadows of our sins. Read more

Posted on September 30, 2020

October: 31 days, 31 horror movies from all over the world

Guest Post

What I like about horror is the versatility of the genre: it can be appropriated and reworked in a million different ways. Every country and every culture has unique approaches and unique stories to tell through horror, and we’re missing out if we’re not opening ourselves up to them.

But opening ourselves up means authentically to predispose ourselves to accept and appreciate foreign horror movies in their particularity. Especially when it comes to countries in what’s usually called “the Third World”–countries with radically different cultures, histories, and perceptions of what qualifies as horror. And, also, countries in which filmmakers more often than not work with limited budgets and have only recently started producing horror movies.

The last decade has helped these local industries take off: video-on-demand services have made these movies easier to access internationally, and new producers (like Netflix and Shudder) have begun investing in foreign projects. As viewers, the best we can do is watch these movies–show our support so they can keep growing and enriching the film industry, horror included.

For all these reasons, for anyone’s potential October watch-a-ton (either this year or the ones to come), I’d like to suggest a theme: horror movies from all over the world. And, if you’re interested in knowing major content warnings for these movies, you can check this Letterboxd list. Read more

Posted on April 11, 2020

Top 10 Horror Films to Watch on Easter

Gwen

My most awe inspiring encounters with nefarious rabbits include the first time I laid eyes on the massive black costume of “Bunny” while at a rave with Rabbit in the Moon and the first time that my innocent anticipating eyes consumed the film Watership Down (1978). While both of these are definitively scary (and potentially traumatizing), they do not encompass the spirit of Easter. If your family is anything like mine, nothing spells holidays like some old fashioned repression and subsequent bursts of aggression (or passive aggressiveness in our house).  For all of you who can appreciate laughing at inappropriate times and poking fun at established traditions, then this list is for you!

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Posted on February 1, 2019

Ten Women Authored Ghost Stories from the Gilded Age

Guest Post

If you’re like me, you love a good ghost story in the dead of winter. The season commands all that is spooky, desolate, and lonely. Fortunately, American literature is rife with ghostly stories written by women, the Gilded Age being an era when the genre was particularly enjoyed, highly published and serialized in magazines like Harper’s, Scribner’s, and New England Magazine. Topics range from marriage, motherhood, to unruly women, but all retain an unerring sense of the otherworldly. I highly recommend curling up with these stories on a cold winter’s night.

Below is a ranking of some of the best ghost stories of the Gilded Age (and some from just slightly after it, too). If you’re a fan of the era, you’ll recognize some of the more famous names, but there are some hidden gems, too. By no means is this list exhaustive, and I encourage you to find your own favorite stories from the era, as well! Read more

Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Posted on September 29, 2018

Top 10 Episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Guest Post

Obsessions always have a beginning.  If you rewind the clock 26 years, you would find hordes of kids crowding around the television at 9:30pm to catch Are You Afraid of the Dark? on Nickelodeon before being corralled and taken to bed.  The series became the subject of nightmares and terrors and created a new generation obsession with horror.  A combination of Tales from the Crypt and The Twilight Zone, mixed with kid-friendly subject matter, Are You Afraid of the Dark? was always destined to be a hit.  The success of the series helped green light Goosebumps and one episode even inspired M. Night Shymalan’s The Sixth Sense (1999), but unfortunately, the show now sits in relative and completely unwarranted obscurity.

Needless to say, this Canadian-American classic has a special place in my heart and, in honor of its 26th anniversary, what follows is a list of my top ten episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark?  Now, I don’t claim to be a master of 90’s television and the list is very subjective, but know that I have ordered the episodes by least-to-most frightening.  Moreover, every episode is a gem in its own way and a list of only ten episodes could never do justice to this amazing television horror.

So. Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this article, The Top Ten Episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark?

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