Horror Homeroom, Author at Horror Homeroom

Posted on January 14, 2016

Silent Retreat (2016) Review

Dawn Keetley

Summary: Silent Retreat is worth watching. Great cinematography and suspenseful, well-told story, as well as its exploration of the double, elevate this film a bit above the average.

Silent Retreat is directed by Ace Jordan, written by Jordan and Heather Smith, produced by Starko Entertainment, and was released to VOD and DVD on January 12, 2016.

Shot in a beautiful location on Big Bear Lake in California, Silent Retreat follows a group of media employees who head into the woods for a weekend retreat. They soon discover that the lodge they’re staying in was, not too long ago, a psychiatric hospital. And then the retreat participants start unaccountably disappearing.

I was definitely engaged by Silent Retreat, but I have to say up front that it has some significant problems. The writing (specifically the dialogue) was not great and neither, unfortunately, was the acting, which seemed generally to be of daytime-soap-opera quality. And as much as the story itself was one of the film’s strengths, I did see the big reveal (that is, the identity of the killer) coming from at least the middle of the film.

Posted on January 11, 2016

Short Cuts: Cherry Darling in Planet Terror

Elizabeth Erwin

Note: Short Cuts is our new feature in which we consider an image in horror and examine its broader cultural implications. It is not intended to offer definitive analysis but to start a conversation about broader cultural topics related to the genre. We hope that by throwing out a few ideas related to an image that we will start a community wide discussion.

It is impossible to look at the above image and not think of Laura Mulvey’s groundbreaking theory of the male gaze. In her influential essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Mulvey posits that women are used in media for visual pleasure and that they become sexualized objects through voyeurism. Certainly, this image—of Cherry Darling in Planet Terror (2007)—contains all of the markers traditionally associated with the male gaze, from the spectacle created through clothing to the clear observational viewpoint of the camera. And yet, this reading dismisses the highly charged narrative operating beneath the surface of the image.

Posted on January 8, 2016

Dark Fantasy, Horror, and The Neverending Story

Gwen

I am going to be frank. I really wanted to write about The Neverending Story (1984). Even though it is a fantasy film, I believe it uniquely contains adult themes of horror which culminate in one of the most horrific monsters of all time…The Nothing. The next few paragraphs are a brief justification of why I feel that some fantasy overlaps with horror, followed by my take on The Neverending Story. To get straight to the point, I firmly believe that many fantasy films include an abject terror shared with the horror genre. The difference between horror and fantasy lies in the setting for these abject horrors. Furthermore, The Nothing overlaps with the formless horror seen in much of natural horror, yet it looms over the real and imagined worlds and stands for something so much more terrifying and powerful than anything in horror film.

Not everyone will agree with me, but I believe that fantasy and horror go hand in glove. I especially believe this when it comes to children’s fantasy. I have stated in previous posts that the fantasy films from my childhood in the 1980s were my gateway to horror. From Grimm’s Fairy Tales to Watership Down, fantasy has used many elements that persist in today’s gothic and horror narratives. In some circles, the term “dark fantasy” has been used interchangeably with gothic fantasy as well as supernatural horror. Many works of notable horror authors like Stephen King and Clive Barker have been categorized as dark fantasy. So closely related are the two that noted horror scholar Noel Carroll felt the need to distinguish his definition of art horror from fantasy.[i]

Posted on January 8, 2016

5 Things You Should Know About Punke’s The Revenant Before Seeing the Film

Dawn Keetley

Published in 2002, The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge was written by Michael Punke, a lawyer, western historian and, currently, U.S. ambassador to the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.

Punke was not involved in the creation of the film. In fact, as a Washington Post article reported in late December, 2015, he cannot even talk about it due to laws prohibiting federal employees from earning money on the side.[i]

I have purposefully stayed away from most news about the film, so I have no idea if I’m offering plot spoilers for the film in what follows. If I am, it’s done unknowingly. But I thought I’d offer five crucial things to know about the novel (for those who don’t have time to read it!), so you can measure what the film has done with its source material.

Posted on January 6, 2016

Horror Block Subscription Box Review

Elizabeth Erwin

Full disclosure: I have a slight addiction when it comes to collecting items related to The Walking Dead. And by slight addiction I mean entire rooms packed with merchandise, autographs, and all those bits and baubles associated with the show. So when it was announced that Horror Block was going to contain an exclusive TWD item, I knew the time was right to finally try out a subscription box service.

What You Need to Know:

The Cost: $19.99 plus shipping (Shipping is $8.75 to Canada, $9.50 to US, $12.50 Worldwide)

What’s In It: All Horror Blocks comes with a custom t-shirt (you specify the size) and 5 or so items including the latest Rue Morgue.

Ships to: US, Canada, and Worldwide!

The December 2015 Box Contents:

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the box’s merchandise as well as its packaging.