- Horror Movie - Horror Homeroom

Posted on April 27, 2015

Trapped In a Mall: Consumerism & Religion in The Dawn Of The Dead (2004)

With the hiatus of The Walking Dead, I’ve been missing my daily zombie fix and so I wanted to do a rewatch of The Dawn of the Dead (2004), a surprisingly satisfying remake of the 1978 original. While the two films share zombies, that’s about the only point of comparison. Unlike its predecessors, this film features zombies of a more threatening variety and is meant to critique American consumerism. In the wake of a zombie outbreak, a group of people take refuge in a mall where they attempt to salvage a little of their humanity.

Posted on April 23, 2015

Top 10 Made for TV Movies- Horror Edition

Elizabeth Erwin

When I was eight years old, my mother made the very unfortunate decision to let me watch Fatal Vision (1984), a made for television movie recounting the suspected murder of a pregnant woman and her two children by her Green Beret husband. To call the experience traumatic would be a vast understatement. Not only did I hide all the kitchen knives much to my grandmother’s chagrin, but I also made it a point to sleep under a wall of stuffed animals thinking that they’d provide the necessary protection should a family member decide to gut me in the middle of the night. My lingering psychosis aside, there is something about watching on the small screen a classically constructed horror film with clearly defined television tropes that makes the horror feel more intimate. Here is my list of the top 10 scariest, most tingle inducing made for television movies ever to air on American broadcast television.

Posted on April 19, 2015

Unfriended (2015) Film Review: Elizabeth’s Take

Elizabeth Erwin

Unfriended (2015)

R | 83min | 2015 | USA | Levan Gabriadze

Synopsis: On the one-year anniversary of the death of a fellow classmate, six friends are forced to remain online and answer to her spirit.

Review: Horror fans will find better acting and more thrills in an episode of ABC’s Pretty Little Liars.

Posted on March 23, 2015

Empowerment of the Traditional in John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978)

Elizabeth Erwin

Released in 1978, John Carpenter’s Halloween not only gave Jamie Lee Curtis her definitive Scream Queen role but it also gave audiences one of the best known horror film villains of all time in Michael Meyers. On its face, the story is a simple one. On Halloween night, six-year-old Michael murders his sister and is placed in a psychiatric hospital. On the fifteenth anniversary of his incarceration, he breaks out intent on exacting revenge.

One of the reasons I keep coming back to this film is because of how effectively it uses cultural norms to elevate the horror.

Posted on March 11, 2015

Elizabeth’s Top 10 Horror Films

Elizabeth Erwin

To be fair, any list of my very favorite horror films would be significantly longer than ten titles. But these are the ones that I find myself returning to time and again. These are also the films I would shove into the hands of those who just don’t “get” horror. Atmospheric and memorable, this collection of titles demonstrates that what is deemed horrific is often dependent upon the time in which the film was made.