Film is a medium for conveying a director’s message. In the last five years, Jordan Peele has directed three horror films – Get Out (2017), Us (2019), and Nope (2022) – that are each infused with a message (indeed, many messages). Get Out was a commentary on casual racism in the contemporary US; the film […]
Johanna Isaacson There are few sights so satisfying in horror film as the truly evil young. In a culture that revolves around the sacrosanct child, now even going so far as to prioritize not-yet-children’s lives over that of their vessel/mothers, it is cathartic to see horror films and TV series acknowledging that children are not […]
In Poltergeist (1982), director Tobe Hooper and writer Steven Spielberg created a haunted house that ditched cobwebs in favor of wall-to-wall carpeting, central air conditioning, and a family television set turned scrying mirror. A panoply of characters fill Poltergeist, but no one outshines spirit guide Tangina Barrons. Actor Zelda Rubinstein’s magnetism poured from her 4’3″ frame, […]
Erin Harrington The Swedish silent film Häxan (1922), “The Witch,” is a remarkable account of witchcraft that offers an early intervention into how we conceptualize the effects of the interplay between truth and fantasy in horror. Danish director Benjamin Christensen’s film is a hallucinogenic documentary-narrative hybrid, presented in seven chapters, which expanded the scope and […]
Margaret J. Yankovich This article is dedicated to my brother, Johnny, who always finds me the best Illustrated Classics horror novels. The first horror novel I ever truly loved was Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus (1818). At twelve years old, I was as avid a film fanatic as I was a reader, and […]
Katherine Cottle The last few years have not been kind to the movie theater industry. The crushing competition of streaming services, rising ticket and refreshment costs, and the plethora of available home theater options had already caused a major decline in viewership, even before the pandemic hit (Barnes). The fear of contagious transmission of COVID-19 […]
Aíne Norris Ninety years ago, Freaks (1932) puzzled audiences with a message that asked viewers to reconsider the sideshow and the performers therein. Freaks asked audiences to consider the humanity of sideshow performers in a way that the shows traditionally removed, questioned, or distorted for profit. Based on reception, audiences in 1932 were not ready […]
Joseph Chang In 1951, when Bela Lugosi reprised his iconic role on stage as Count Dracula, which had frightened worldwide audiences just two decades earlier, he was sadly met with giggles from theater-goers everywhere the play toured. To the then-aging Lugosi’s disappointment, the audience was more amused than afraid (Gatiss 54:38-56:35). It was the atomic […]
Josh Grant-Young 1761 – London. A woman is dragged into the infamous Bedlam asylum, a dark and dreary place where the (purportedly) insane of London are committed. Her madness, confirmed by a court prior to her being committed, is but a pretense to silence her forever. Within the cramped space of the asylum, where many […]