Horror Homeroom

Posted on July 20, 2026

Obsession and the Patriarchy

Guest Post

James Staynings

When my partner joked on our car ride home from the cinema about how Curry Barker’s Obsession (2026) is a metaphor for the patriarchy, the statement became a… fascination.

We stumbled and analysed our way through the woods on a Bear hunt. We read, listened and discussed others’ observations. I noticed something in much of the discussion around the ironically named protagonist who evokes the 2024 TikTok Phenomenon. Being so focused on the bear, what about the man-made willow forest that’s made the predator deadly?

There’s plenty of valid discussion of Obsession as a new entry in the category of “incel horror.” There are valid points of comparison with Bear and the insecure male protagonists of films like Passengers, Ex Machina, Don’t Worry, Darling and Bugonia. A lonely, flawed, insecure male protagonist takes a female character/s autonomy.

Posted on July 13, 2026

Backrooms, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Dinner Scenes, and Discarded Workers

Dawn Keetley

The new power duo of Gen Z directors, Curry Barker and Kane Parsons, both seem to be influenced by an iconic horror film: Tobe Hooper’s 1974 Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Director of the record-shattering Obsession (2026), Barker is directing a reboot of the film for A24, which he plans to make “grounded, brutal, raw.” Kane Parsons, director of the similarly record-shattering Backrooms (2026), does not appear to name Texas Chain Saw Massacre as an influence (see this article in GQ for the list of the influences he’s claimed), yet he incorporated an extended homage to Hooper’s film into his own, in one of the most interesting scenes of the film.

Posted on July 11, 2026

Widow’s Bay and the Cassandra Problem in Horror

Guest Post

Valentina Ciarrocca

Gifted by Apollo and cursed when she refused him, to never be believed, Cassandra spent the fall of Troy delivering true warnings to people who looked at her the way Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) looks at Wyck Crawford (Stephen Root) in Apple TV’s Widow’s Bay (Katie Dippold, 2026): as a lunatic. The town crank is horror’s Cassandra by another name—the grizzled fisherman or grumpy elder who warns everyone that something evil is coming and people are going to die. This archetype is usually there to be ignored, to be proven right too late, and to die mid-sentence, delivering the exposition that could have saved everyone. We already know this, and after many cliché films, the horror genre has trained us to expect it. Widow’s Bay lets you settle into that expectation, and then does something the genre seldom does. It believes him.

Posted on July 4, 2026

The Horrors of Wellness Culture in Ling Ling Huang’s Natural Beauty

Guest Post

Henriikka Koivisto

Ling Ling Huang’s satirical horror novel Natural Beauty (2023) tells the story of a young, unnamed narrator who gives up a promising career as a classical pianist after her parents are injured in a car accident. One day, an extraordinarily beautiful woman shows up at the restaurant where the narrator works and offers her a job at a high-end wellness and beauty company called Holistik. What at first seems like a dream job for many young women—with better pay, an endless supply of free skincare products and treatments, and a boost of social status—soon turns dangerous. Huang leads her readers into the deeply disturbing world of invasive and risky beauty procedures, unapologetic cultural appropriation, abuses of power culminating in sexual violence, all behind a façade of wellness and self-care.

Posted on June 28, 2026

“Trust His Instincts”: Disease & Death in Good Boy (2025)

Guest Post

Grace Fuller

Good Boy, directed by Ben Leonberg in 2025, initially appears to be a supernatural horror film from a dog’s perspective. However, upon closer examination, it reveals a deeper, unsettling meaning. Not only does it function as a haunted-house narrative, but it also serves as a metaphor for how dogs perceive human illness, both physical and mental. Dogs have an innate ability to sense changes in their owners’ physical and behavioural states before fully understanding them. They remain loyal even in the face of fear as they witness their beloved owners’ decline.

Good Boy is an independent horror film directed by Ben Leonberg and co-written by Alex Cannon. The film stars a dog named Indy and his owner, Todd, played by Shane Jensen. Todd moves into a rural family house that is supposedly cursed. This is the same house where his grandfather and his faithful dog, Bandit, both lived and died. While they are there, Indy begins to sense a supernatural presence in the house, as does Todd, who is battling a chronic lung disease.