- Horror Movie - Horror Homeroom

Posted on April 28, 2025

Black Joy, White Interruptions: Sinners and the Afrofuturism of Black Horror

Guest Post

Nicole Huff

The newest addition to our current Black Horror Renaissance comes from none other than Ryan Coogler in his vampire horror debut Sinners. As a Black person from the South, I was in awe of how Coogler portrays the Jim Crow South as still full of Black hope and joy despite its cotton-field-filled backdrops. And, as an Afrofuturist, it was these themes of liberation and unmitigated joy that drew me in.

Already I’ve seen commentary on Sinners negating its status as a horror movie. Even Spike Lee has stated that this is a “new genre” rather than a horror film. But I want to reiterate that this, amidst all its historical exploration of the Black South, is a horror film. In fact, it’s a particular horror film— a vampire film! The tendency to label this film anything other than horror I believe stems from a long history of Black art and literature needing to legitimize itself and prove itself worthy thus rejecting genres and mediums that have been effectively ghettoized. Why would we associate ourselves with a ghettoized genre like horror? Well, that’s exactly what Coogler, and many other Black artists, have done as there is a potential within horror and especially in Black Horror and that potential lies in the hopefulness embedded in the genre.

Posted on April 24, 2025

Aislinn Clarke Talks about Fréwaka, Her New Irish Folk Horror Film

Guest Post

Johanna Isaacson

In March 2025 Aislinn Clarke visited my alma mater, University of California, Santa Cruz as part of a symposium exploring creative and critical intersections in the work of UCSC and Queens University Belfast faculty. I was fortunate to attend a screening of Aislinn’s amazing new folk horror film, Fréwaka, and to have the opportunity, along with Literature professor Renée Fox, to interview the writer/director in front of a live audience.

Fréwaka is an atmospheric, brilliantly-acted, Irish language film in which Shoo (Clare Monnelly), a young woman grieving her recently deceased mother, is sent to a rural town to care for Peig (Bríd Ní Neachtain), a disabled older woman whose home is either haunted by fearful memories or demonic fairies. The women seem to be opposites and antagonists, but, like the thorny roots which give their name to the film, their struggles and lives are complexly tangled.

Aislinn is very busy screening Fréwaka at festivals around the world, where it has been received with great enthusiasm in anticipation of its release on Shudder this week (Friday April 25, 2025). However, she still generously agreed to an interview between California and Ireland via Zoom.

Posted on April 15, 2025

Freddy on the Grassy Knoll – A Nightmare on Elm Street and the JFK Assassination

Guest Post

Adam Pasen

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: something horrific happens in the 1960s on a street called Elm. The murderer is subsequently killed in an act of vigilante justice, but that isn’t the end of it. In a series of bizarre “coincidences,” those involved start to die… gruesomely. Despite the mounting evidence that some sinister force is at play, any challenges to the official narrative are silenced. Those who investigate too deeply and try to warn others are labeled crazy or “conspiracy theorists.” And the deaths continue.

Yes, this is the plot of A Nightmare on Elm Street… the story of homicidal maniac Freddy Krueger who murders twenty kids in the 60s and is killed by a vengeful mob before returning in dreams to continue wreaking havoc. However, it is also an exact description of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, who was shot while driving down Elm Street in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Although the Warren Commission concluded there was no conspiracy, independent researchers continue to fight the alleged cover-up to bring the truth to light (cough cough… Nancy Thompson).

Posted on April 10, 2025

The Alt-Right at the End of the World: Knock at the Cabin’s Affirmative Apocalypse

Guest Post

Abby Trainor

Paul G. Tremblay’s The Cabin at the End of the World (2018) and its film adaptation Knock at the Cabin (2023) present a “uniquely twenty-first century” (Tremblay 157) type of horror: how physical violence can spawn from a digital/cyber space. Both novel and film feature a queer married couple and their daughter being held hostage by doomsdayers who genuinely believe that the world will end unless someone from the family kills another. Unlike Cabin at the End of the World’s ambiguity about whether the apocalypse will actually occur, the adaptation guts the original critique of religious dogma, misinformation spread by for-profit media, and how the two have combined to create the perfect conditions to foster a rising cult of people willing to resort to vigilante violence. The film’s positioning of the four invaders as heralds of the truth may seem minor, but it shifts the meaning from a critique to a narrative embrace of hate-filled ideologies.

Posted on April 3, 2025

A Haunting in Alola – Ghost Narratives in the Pokémon Franchise

Guest Post

Reece Goodall

The Pokémon franchise is full of ghosts and spirits even outside of their Ghost-type Pokémon, and the appearance of such paranormal activity dates back to the first title. In Red/Blue, a young girl NPC in Lavender Town asks the player about an unseen white hand on their shoulder after inquiring whether they believe in ghosts (Figure 1). In the battle with the Ghost-type specialist Phoebe in Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire (2014), a ghost girl appears behind her in a chair – the camera then tracks towards the player character as if sharing the ghost’s point of view. In one of the franchise’s most famous and unexplained mysteries, in X/Y, a ghost appears behind the player in a lift in Lumiose City, freezing the game to state ‘no, you’re not the one’ before floating away.