Oz Perkins’ 2024 film, Longlegs, is at first glance a serial killer film, with references abounding to Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs (1991) and, to a lesser extent, David Fincher’s Seven (1995). Perkins has been quite explicit in interviews, however, that he lures viewers in with this promise and then gives them something else. […]
Kevin Cooney Godzilla Minus One (2023) altered many fans’ perceptions of the eponymous kaiju. Gone was the childhood joy of watching a man in a rubber suit wreak havoc on meticulous scale models, now overshadowed by a new sense of awe and dread. No longer was the irradiated monster humanity’s savior. Instead, Godzilla emerged anew […]
Canadian filmmaker Chris Nash’s 2024 In a Violent Nature is an effective, pared-down slasher. It is also a commentary – and at times a rather brilliant one – on the slasher. The killer’s perspective . . . Ever since Vera Dika’s and Carol Clover’s work in the 1980s and early 1990s, it has been commonplace […]
By JDC Burnhil What qualifies a protagonist as a protagonist? The answer may vary depending upon whom we ask, and for what purpose. At one extreme, we find a very simple set of criteria, offered for functional purposes by author Robin D. Laws: “Any figure who the viewer wants to see succeed, both because they […]
Alan Garner’s writing is famously bound to the land. One of his best-known novels, Red Shift (1973) is set in Cheshire, Garner’s native county in north west England. Indeed, the novel features specific places and events in Cheshire: Mow Cop Castle, a folly built in 1754 in the village of Mow Cop, split between the […]
Gavin F. Hurley I was a teenager when I first watched The Exorcist. It terrified me. Later, in my twenties, I read Blatty’s novel. It still terrified me. But its complexity began to seep in. While the story was entertaining and the style was easy to read, the novel was also intellectual and spiritually engaging. […]
Johanna Isaacson I first watched The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) decades ago, with too-high, too-pure expectations. As a devout horror fan and a dedicated feminist, I freaked when I learned Rita Mae Brown wrote the script. On top of that, the film was the first slasher to be directed by a woman, Amy Holden Jones. […]
Cody Parish WARNING: This essay contains plot spoilers! The killer’s point-of-view (POV) shot is arguably the most recognizable convention of the slasher film.1 Made famous in the opening sequence of John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), the killer’s lurking POV shot has been reproduced in countless subsequent slasher franchises as a means to build suspense. It is […]
JDC Burnhil “Eventually the secret of Those, etc., is revealed. … It’s a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It Was All a Dream. It’s so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don’t know the secret anymore.” […]