Browsing Category

Featured

Posted on January 4, 2017

Hopes for Horror in 2017

Gwen

FILMS:

A Cure For Wellness

Due for release in February 2017, this Gore Verbinski directed psychological horror has stirred my interest.  The cyclical story has me wondering what they are hiding up there in the Swiss Alps. As one man goes to retrieve the CEO of his company from a wellness spa, his own well-being is tested. Will he fall victim to what ails all those who walk through these doors, or will he escape intact?  “Only if we know what ails us, can we find a cure.” If you are looking for jump scares and the such, this might not be for you as it is shaping up to be more of a slow building contemporary gothic film that taps in to your senses.

Read more

Posted on December 30, 2016

THE TOP 10 HORROR FILMS OF 2016

Dawn Keetley

2016 has been a bad year in so many ways (there’s even been a horror movie made about it!) but there were some fantastic horror films released this year—and here’s our top ten. These are all terrifying films, but thought provoking at the same time. So I don’t get repetitious, let me say from the beginning that all ten of these films are superbly acted and directed. And if there’s one of them you haven’t seen yet, make it a new year’s resolution!

Read more

Posted on December 27, 2016

Boyism: The Horror of Delayed Manhood in William Brent Bell’s The Boy (2016)

Guest Post

William Brent Bell’s 2016 The Boy plays a neat trick on us. The film poses as one genre of horror and then reveals itself to be another. It begins with Greta (Lauren Cohan), an American who, after escaping an abusive relationship that resulted in a miscarriage, travels to Britain to work as a live-in nanny for Brahms, the son of an old English couple, the Heelshires, who live in a mansion in the middle of nowhere. When Greta arrives, she discovers something strange about Brahms: he is a doll, the spitting image of the real Brahms, the Heelshires’ dead son, who died in a housefire years back but is “still with us,” the father explains.

Read more

Posted on December 20, 2016

Reconsidering Disaster Films as Horror

Elizabeth Erwin

Sharing a similar aesthetic, the line between horror films and disaster films has always been hard to pinpoint. From creepy sound effects to graphic violence to a cultivated atmosphere of menace, the characteristics of horror films and disaster films overlap in a very organic way. I’ve been interested in thinking about whether these two genres are distinctly different, or if it benefits us to think of them as similar.

I’m often surprised at how overlooked these movies are by horror film buffs. But with Hollywood attempting to resurrect the genre (World War Z, Olympus Has Fallen), I think it’s worth a look at whether some of the films that created the blueprint for the modern disaster film are also intimately connected to the horror genre. And while disaster films, much like horror, are designed to reflect the times in which they are made, the elements employed by both are startlingly similar.

Read more

Back to top