Noël Carroll’s theory of art-horror has always seemed a particularly compelling one to me—that the genre is defined by a monster characterized by impurity, by the yoking together of contradictory categories (the living dead, for example), thus evoking fear and revulsion in the viewer.[i] His theory notoriously has difficulty, though, accounting for the very human “monsters” of some horror films.[ii] What do we make of Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) in Wes Craven’s groundbreaking 1996 film, Scream? Billy is human, isn’t he? In fact he’s the very normal boyfriend of the heroine, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), seemingly no different from any other high-school student.
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