Horror understands that what is most desired is the same as what is most feared. Scholars of religion often overlook this while the makers of horror films bank on it. Consider the critically acclaimed oeuvre of Robert Eggers, both his 2015 film, The Witch, and his more recent The Lighthouse (2019). If you’ve ever been […]
On February 11, 2020, Blumhouse released a new trailer and marketing campaign for its horror / action film, The Hunt, which had been due for release in September, 2019. The film was pulled from distribution, however, after a firestorm blew up about its representations of violence (people hunting each other) in the wake of August […]
Cassiah Joski-Jethi is an award-winning female filmmaker based in the UK, and she has just directed an exciting indie horror short called Catch a Butcher कच्चा बच्चे – and I was lucky enough to be able to interview her about her new film. First, here’s the teaser trailer:
The terror of Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House (1959) resides in the struggle of its protagonist to procure and maintain a stable sense of self. Eleanor Vance’s desperation to establish a collective and an individual identity is palpable in her continual self-affirmations that she both “belongs” to the group of guests in […]
From online discussion boards to quips in the 2019 film adaptation, It Chapter Two, there’s one truism Stephen King fans and critics alike have long accepted: King can’t stick a landing. But I’ve always found the ending of his massive coming-of-age horror classic, It, fitting and, dare I say, satisfying. Trying to tease out why […]
In 2019, horror went back to school in a major way, with a couple of popularly-released films taking on the trappings of academia. Ari Aster’s atmospheric Midsommar takes us to a remote village in Sweden where the residents have sinister plans for the unwitting grad students functioning as tourists. Sophia Takal’s Black Christmas is a […]
Countless viewers this holiday season will be re-visiting Frank Capra’s classic 1946 film, It’s a Wonderful Life. I did so myself last night –and was particularly struck, this viewing, by the turn the film takes after George Bailey (James Stewart) drives to the bridge, determined to take his own life. This is, of course, where […]
The first real horror film that I saw was Sleepwalkers (1992) by Mick Garris. I was 14 when I saw that film. When I met Mick in Copenhagen two and a half decades later – he was guest of honor at the Bloody Weekend film festival in the spring of 2019 – I told him […]
Perhaps the most significant development in horror films since the year 2000 is the dramatic impact that filmmakers from outside of the US are having on the genre. Japan’s “J-Horror”, the French Extremity, and the horror-inflected fantasies of Mexico’s Guillermo del Toro all found audiences ready to try something different after the often underwhelming output […]