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Posted on April 30, 2018

Insidious The Last Key: The Demon of Abuse

Dawn Keetley

Insidious: The Last Key, directed by Adam Robitel and written by Leigh Whannell, is an iconic horror film of the #MeToo moment. While the film certainly has some failings as a horror film: it’s not terribly scary and the pacing seems a little uneven, it is eminently worth watching for two reasons: its centering of the story of Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye), whose compelling character is developed for the first time in the franchise; and its explicit rendering of men’s (sexual) abuse of women as what is truly monstrous. The Last Key puts women and women’s experience of abuse front and center, and all credit to Adam Robitel for making another horror film that features a complex older woman and that uses genre film to explore real horrors: he is the director who gave us the brilliant The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014) starring the wonderful Jill Larson as a woman struggling with both Alzheimer’s and the supernatural.

Posted on April 26, 2018

10×10 and the Trend of Women Kept Captive

Dawn Keetley

10×10 is the first feature-length film for director Suzi Ewing. Noel Clarke wrote the screenplay and it stars Kelly Reilly (Eden Lake, Britannia) and Luke Evans (mostly recently in TNT’s The Alienist). The film’s plot is simple: Lewis (Evans) stalks Cathy (Reilly), abducts her, and locks her in sound-proofed (10×10) room in his home. At first, all he asks his captive is what her name is, but as she tries to escape, he gets more violent. As 10×10 unfolds, the viewer’s assumptions about what’s going on take some dramatic turns—and one of the most effective things about this film is precisely the way it plays with viewers’ expectations.

These captured-women narratives are undoubtedly saying something about men’s anxiety in an era of diminishing power—and of the rising power of women. The 2010s kicked off with Hanna Rosin’s major article in the The Atlantic: “The End of Men,” with her book of the same title following on its heels. On the other hand, as important as that general anxiety is, the films are all saying something different in their particular kinds of captivity, the different dynamics they imagine between captor and captive. 10×10 is no exception.

Posted on April 13, 2018

Disability in A Quiet Place: Hearing Not Required

Guest Post

Horror films include a diverse range of communication methods: anything from writing in blood, ghostly TV static, speaking in tongues, intense stares into the soul, opening puzzle boxes, reading from cursed books, dreaming, saying a name five times in a mirror, channeling spirits from beyond, passing around video tapes. The list could go on. There are also more typical methods, of course: screaming, crying, cackling. Among this list of strange and unusual ways to communicate, however, is a noticeable absence. A Quiet Place, directed by John Krasinski, may be the only horror film I’ve seen that so prominently features American Sign Language.

To encourage you to go see this movie, I’ve tried to avoid spoilers, though I do make vague mention of the end. The film starts mid-action, in the near future, the world already unrecognizable. Any remaining humans in this world cower in fear of violent and indestructible (gorgeously-designed) creatures, who appear to have already killed much of the population. The creatures are attracted to sound, which appears to cause them pain. In fact, their heads are comprised of teeth and an oversized, armor-encased ear. Whatever makes a sound is instantly destroyed. The tagline for the film is “silence is survival.”

Posted on April 11, 2018

Viewer Participation and Decision Making in Would You Rather (2012)

Gwen

The premise of Would You Rather is simple; eight guests meet at the home of Mr. Lambrick in hopes of becoming the next recipient of the Lambrick Foundation’s philanthropy. They meet under the guise of a dinner party, but what they don’t know is that there are no free handouts from this Foundation.

Would You Rather is broken down into two particularly interesting parts. Essentially these two parts consist of Iris’ (Brittany Snow) life outside of the game and her life inside the game. Outside of the game Iris is a young woman who moves home to care for her brother after her parents pass. Iris’ brother has leukemia and is in need of a costly bone marrow transplant. Prior to the game we see that Iris makes the conscious choice to become a caretaker by putting her life on hold to assist her brother. This same brother regularly makes comments about Iris’ sacrifice, “You can’t always be the hero, sometimes you gotta let go…Aren’t you sick of this, don’t you want a life?” Because of her inability to let go, Iris seeks out the money from Lambrick Foundation thus landing herself in the horrible game of would you rather.

Posted on March 30, 2018

Annihilation, Cellular Degeneration, and the Horror of an Indifferent Universe

Guest Post

When your directorial debut is something as beautiful, trippy, seductive, and amazing as Ex Machina (2014), you have big shoes to fill. Alex Garland has surpassed every expectation with Annihilation (2018). In a world of renewed interest in science fiction and horror (see Mute, The Ritual, Bladerunner 2049, Valerian, etc.) there are a lot of flops (see Mute). Thankfully, Annihilation is one of the most visually stunning and amazingly-realized science fiction/horror films to hit the screen to date. As a director, Garland seems to enjoy twisting our understanding of reality. Annihilation does not disappoint. The film thrives on terrifying questions regarding the importance of humanity in an uncaring universe.

The story of Annihilation seems simple. Something falls from the sky and crashes into a lighthouse in an undisclosed location. After it crash lands, this object begins to spread outwards creating a visual wall, named the “Shimmer.” Lena (Natalie Portman), Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), Radek (Tessa Thompson), Thorenson (Gina Rodriguez), and Sheppard (Tuva Novotny) are sent into the Shimmer to investigate the cause of the supernatural event and find information that could end its spread outward.