Horror Homeroom, Author at Horror Homeroom

Posted on October 11, 2021

The Son of Abraham and Cult Psychology

Guest Post

Our fascination with cults goes deep. It’s hard to watch crime shows, read thrillers, or horror without a cult or two popping up somewhere along the way. It’s become cliché, a trope, a predictable element of how we scare ourselves. We joke about tight-knit clubs, gyms, friend circles as being cultish, and we laugh. The psychology isn’t too hard to figure out: what is horror except a way to play out all the possible terrors that might occur before they actually do? It’s why we watch scary movies, why we devour true crime. In the back of our heads, there is a little voice that whispers over and over it can’t get you when you’ve seen its face.

But cults are not the exclusive territory of the disturbed and deviant. They consist of people much like any of us, people who walk every avenue of life, and consist of every possible combination of human attributes. That is where the scary lives: if a seemingly normal person can be lured into a cult, then how do I know who to trust? Read more

black and white line drawing of a faceless priest

Posted on October 4, 2021

Midnight Mass Takes us to the Church of Dread

Guest Post

I have done my best to write a spoiler-free piece about Midnight Mass. Light spoilers are unavoidable, but I promise I have preserved the most major of twists and turns.

Horror centered on faith and religion has percolated through the genre since its earliest days, stories sprouting from the festering fears of demons, witches, and the Devil in all his incarnations. It is a sub-genre rife for use, and one that gashes nerves, especially for the more devout audience members. I would not consider myself a religious person, but I grew up hearing about my father’s time in a Catholic seminary, a path he opted out of just before the priesthood. I like to joke that I ended up with all the guilt and none of the fun stuff like faith. As I discovered my love of horror, we talked about The Exorcist, a movie he deemed the most terrifying thing he had ever seen because of its Catholic roots. When I finally watched the film it was unsettling, although not as disturbing to me as it was to him. What did stick with me was Father Karras’s grappling with life, death, and trauma. I invoke that film, and that character because Mike Flanagan’s new limited series Midnight Mass is about as Catholic as horror can come, and through his writing and directing, Flanagan filters the hopes of horrors of humanity through the faith and traumas of Crockett Island’s small and isolated community. Read more

book cover superimposed over image of woods

Posted on September 10, 2021

The Bloodcurdling Book Club: The Woods are Always Watching

Elizabeth Erwin

This week’s hair raising read is 2021’s THE WOODS ARE ALWAYS WATCHING by Stephanie Perkins. The novel’s setup is deceptively simple. College bound best friends Josie and Neena embark on a last hurrah camping trip only to find themselves terrorized by two killers. But while this IS a story of survival, it is also a poignant look at the emotional complexities of friendship and what it means to fight for others just as hard as you fight for yourself. On this podcast, we talk blood, guts, and spoilers so listener discretion is advised.

And if you’re interested in exploring the woods as a setting of horror further, check out the recommended resources below!

Recommended Reading: Read more

darkened image where a man is faintly made out

Posted on September 8, 2021

Mike Flanagan’s Devotion to Negative Space

Guest Post

Mike Flanagan has developed into a writer-director at the forefront of contemporary horror, both in television and film. His work displays a horror auteurism that sets him apart from his contemporaries, with one particular stylistic marker rising above: Flanagan’s devotion to negative space. Negative space is everything around the main subject in an image. Positive space accounts for the subject of the image, that which we are drawn to focus on. Flanagan’s process suggests a careful deployment of negative space to build tension towards a terrifying payoff. Through an examination of two scenes from Flanagan’s oeuvre, one from the limited series The Haunting of Hill House (2018) and the other from the film Doctor Sleep (2019), I intend to lay out how Flanagan’s use of negative space defines his approach to filming horror.

back view of a man who looks in the distance while a wolf howls

Posted on August 29, 2021

Surviving Winter and Nature in The Long Dark

Guest Post

In the dead heat of August, I often find myself longing for the depths of winter. With the tail-end of summer upon us, I’ve been satisfying that longing by playing Hinterland Studio’s The Long Dark, a video game set in a seemingly endless Canadian winter on an abandoned island where you are forced to fend for yourself. Perhaps survival isn’t your idea of escapism, but The Long Dark offers something much more unnerving than an idyllic tromp through the snowy woods. Specifically, The Long Dark’s horror as a survival game rests on the premise of ecophobia, the ever-present threat of nature, the very real limits of the human body, and the intrusions of the past. The Long Dark reveals that survival is a constant confrontation with the mundane horror of homeostasis.

The Long Dark is by no means a new game—it was released in 2014 as a sandbox-type survival game, and it is the survival mode that this piece will focus on. Later, Hinterland added a story mode, and by then it had gained a loyal following of fans. Survival mode has varying degrees of difficulty: Pilgrim, Voyageur, Interloper, and Stalker. While Pilgrim is fun for new players who want a more atmospheric experience, Voyageur is a good mix of animal-threat and atmosphere that will frequently push your character to its limits. Read more