Carrie Syme “Just because people eat the burger doesn’t mean they wanna meet the cow.” The Island (2005) Fans who cut their horror teeth around the turn of the millennium often share a very specific understanding of “body horror.” In some of the most infamous films of that era, from Audition (1999) to Hostel (2005) […]
Harry Gay Thermal imaging and infrared technology have been around since 1929, but have seen increased usage in the last 50 years as commercial and industrial applications have expanded. Used largely in the fields of security and medicine, thermographic cameras have been teasing their use in the cinematographers toolbox in the last decade, with filmmakers […]
Ellen Boyd “If cultures are defined by what they eat,” posits Maggie Kilgour, “they are also stereotyped by how they speak” (8). This confluence of food and language—and how they play into defining people—is taken up by Agustina Bazterrica in her 2017 novel Tender is the Flesh. The novel takes place an unspecified time after […]
Madeleine Frost Starvation is said to lead people to extreme measures; when deprived of nutrition and sustenance, one’s mind does not function to its fullest capacity, which often leads them to make choices they would not normally make—like cannibalization. Horror frequently uses cannibalism to portray a physiological starvation, but, recently, has portrayed cannibalism as a […]
Stacey Anh Baran LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL: so reads the title of a 1977 poetry collection by Charles Bukowski. In it, the introverted writer reflects on bedroom encounters, the inscrutability of women, and the incalculable science of love and lust. Although born in Germany, Bukowski left with family at the age of two […]
Aylin Pekanık Defined as “the hold exerted over a human being by external forces or entities more powerful than she” (Boddy 407), spiritual possession is an existential horror that annihilates one’s bodily autonomy and free will, brings the moral integrity and humanity of the possessed into question, and reduces them to a “grotesque and blasphemous” […]
Darren Gray Kevin Smith’s Tusk (2014), is, like the human-walrus hybrid at the film’s centre, a strange beast, and a bizarre entry in the body horror genre. The film’s juxtaposition of horror and comedy destabilises both genres and disorients the viewer. Tusk’s generic instability, absurd concept and abrupt tonal shifts may explain the film’s critical […]
Sandra Mills Cinema, particularly in those narratives written for children, regularly portrays childhood toys as supportive confidantes or treasured reminders of a character’s youth. Yet there is something about these inanimate figures that is inherently unsettling with their blank expressions and frozen limbs that eerily mimic the living. While the fantasy of a treasured toy […]
Paul A J Lewis and Peter True “You’re not having a moment, are you?” Dr Feinstone’s (Corbin Bernsen) wife Brooke (Linda Hoffman) asks her husband over the telephone after, in the grip of a psychotic episode, he has pierced a young boy’s gum during a routine dental examination. Filmed in gruesome extreme closeup, this is […]