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Posted on June 13, 2017

Award-winning Horror Shorts from the Greenfield Youth Film Festival

Guest Post

Not many events foster the creative aspirations of the teenaged filmmaker, which makes the Upper Dublin-based Greenfield Youth Film Festival stand out. On April 27, 2017, this film festival displayed and celebrated short films from all over the state of Pennsylvania. Some of the most clever (and most awarded) films were horror films. After the event, I got the chance to talk with the filmmakers awarded for their work in the horror genre at a private screening on May 7th, or through email correspondence. Below are three films that stood out in the film festival. These expert and passionate films reflect the professionalism and talent of their respective makers.

Posted on June 4, 2017

Unfriended: Unfairly Maligned

Guest Post

I have a confession. I love found footage horror and have an undying need to protect the often-maligned subgenre from criticism. I’m not trying to excuse the absolute tripe that sometimes passes for found footage horror, but hand on my heart, one example I feel that was dismissed a little too quickly and energetically by the horror community, is Unfriended (Levan Gabriadze, 2014).

In Unfriended, the internet is a place haunted by characters’ mistakes as much as the supernatural and the insidious potential of social media is at the heart of the film’s construction of fear. A large majority of critics received the film negatively on its release, suggesting that Unfriended was an example of found footage horror trying desperately to stay relevant by co-opting the aesthetics of social media into its repertoire after riding the surveillance-cam wave of Paranormal Activity for the past decade.

Posted on May 9, 2017

The Eye vs. The Eye

Guest Post

If you’re a serious film fan, you probably have a kneejerk (but totally appropriate!) negative reaction any time you hear about an American remake of a beloved movie from another country. Who among us has not been burned? Who doesn’t have that one favorite film from abroad that was eventually sullied (or even ruined) by Hollywood ignorance/excess/apathy/all of the above?

For me, it was the 2004 Thai horror movie, Shutter, which was crazy scary and climaxed with a final reveal (I won’t spoil it here) that chilled me to the bone, only to be transformed four years later into a disappointing cash grab starring Dawson Creek’s Joshua Jackson.

For others, perhaps it was the British cult classic, The Wicker Man (1973), which was recycled into the unintentionally campy Nicolas Cage movie of the same name in 2006. Or maybe it was the R-rated J-horror classic, Ju-on (2002), which became the nonsensical PG-13 Sarah Michelle Gellar vehicle, The Grudge (2004).

But believe it or not, I’m not a rabid purist. I do acknowledge that there have been solid remakes in the American canon, horror and otherwise. For example, as much as I (and the rest of the world) love the chilling Let the Right One In (2008) from Sweden, I think Let Me In (2010) is remarkably well-crafted and surprisingly moving, emotionally, in ways the Swedes never intended.

So it was with an open mind that I recently approached watching, after all these years, the 2008 American remake of The Eye (2002). I saw the Hong Kong-made original when it first came out, in a small theater that no longer exists, and it instantly became one of my favorite horror films of all time.

Posted on April 28, 2017

Trauma and Final Girls in Two New Novels

Guest Post

This is the year of final girls dissected. Final Girls by Mira Grant (pen name of Seanan McGuire) and Final Girls by Riley Sager share a name and a fascination with the trauma that shapes the figure of the final girl. The approaches taken by each novel, though, are drastically different, highlighting just how elastic the horror genre can be. Both are definitely worth reading.

Posted on April 25, 2017

Failure to Protect: Families in Shyamalan’s Split

Guest Post

What really scares me about M. Night Shyamalan’s Split (2016) is the opening: A father, his teenage daughter Claire (Haley Lu Richardson), and her two “friends” (we’ll get to this) Marcia (Jessica Sula) and Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) return to their car after his daughter’s birthday party. The girls climb into Claire’s father’s luxury car first, while he finishes putting left-overs in the trunk. The slightly wide-angle shot shifts to point-of-view.

The next scene unhurriedly reveals a stranger (James McAvoy) as he puts on a painter’s mask and, with callous efficiency, chloroforms Marcia and Claire, right before seeing Casey and subsequently rendering her unconscious as well.