Sidney Prescott’s entry onto the Stab 3 soundstage begins with a deceptive, everyday errand: finding a hairbrush dropped by an actress and stepping into the production space to return it. What begins as a mundane act immediately collapses into spatial and emotional disorientation as she crosses the threshold onto the set. She is instantly overwhelmed […]
In 2017, renowned Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro released The Shape of Water, asking his audience to find comfort in his sympathetic monsters and further question the slippery boundary that separates the natural from the unnatural. Arguably, Del Toro’s filmography has been largely defined by his fascination with mythological and fantastical creatures including everything from […]
Jeff Ambrose A 2023 Pew Research Center survey of nearly 6,000 American workers found that only “half of U.S. workers say they are extremely or very satisfied with their job overall” (Horowitz and Parker). Often, people turn to forms of entertainment to find stress relief and escape the boredom, stress, or frustration of their occupation. […]
Catherine Pugh In the television series Dollhouse (2009–10), young people known as ‘Actives’ or ‘Dolls’ are subjected to mind-altering technology, wiping away their original identities to be replaced with new ‘imprints’ and hired by wealthy clients. Amoral programmer, Topher Brink (Fran Kranz), is able to create any imprint desired, from mother to lover, thief to […]
Emily Naser-Hall We exist encased in screens within screens, at least in the twisted mind of Osgood Perkins. The 2024 film Longlegs opens with a red block embedded within a black screen, the red configured to fit the now outdated 4:3 aspect ratio that more appropriately befit the 8mm camera and which renders the lines […]
Alice Sage It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen. They cannot ‘do’; they can only have things done to them. Tottie: The Story of a Dolls’ House (dir. Oliver Postgate) The 1984 children’s television series Tottie is infamous among British nostalgists for […]
Gabrielle Sinclair Compton Discussions of dollhouses in horror and cultural theory return to questions of power, control, and scale. The dollhouse operates as a structure of miniature domination – and creepiness inheres in this imbalance of scale and agency, where the miniature world serves as a site of surveillance, containment, or control. The fourth season […]
Paul A J Lewis Rooms filled with mannequins; characters who are living people one minute and dolls the next; a mechanical music box that features six figurines rotating around one another in a never-ending cycle; a Gothic drama in which characters are destined to replay the past; a young woman lost in an eerie, dreamlike […]
Rebecca Booth In Resident Evil Village (2021), the eighth installment in the longstanding Resident Evil (RE) video game series, the (unnamed but Romanian-coded) titular mountain village is ruled by matriarch Mother Miranda and her subordinates, a council of House Lords from four noble families. In her quest to find a compatible vessel to house the […]