- Horror Movie - Horror Homeroom

Posted on December 19, 2023

The Creative Vision of Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist (2019)

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In recent years horror fans have been treated to high quality releases offering fresh takes on witches (You Won’t Be Alone), mental illness (Smile), and really sketchy basements (Barbarian). But as engaging as these films are, the most fascinating horror-related movie that I saw in 2023 is Alexandre O. Philippe’s documentary, Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist. Six days of interviews with director William Friedkin produced an entertaining deep dive into one of horror’s most revered works, The Exorcist (1973). But it goes further, becoming a meditation on the nature of creativity that is both revelatory and exhilarating.

It would have been easy for Leap of Faith to be a typical “making of” project filled with anecdotes explaining production details for some of its most famous sequences and recollections about the film’s seismic cultural impact in the 70’s. As satisfying as that may have been for many, I give Philippe a lot of credit for taking the movie into a markedly different direction, far away from spinning heads and projectile vomiting. He focuses instead on the imaginative processes and creative personality at work that ultimately resulted in the finished film. The reason we are so easily drawn into this discussion is because Leap of Faith has a super power. And its name is William Friedkin.

Posted on December 12, 2023

The Wicker Woman – A Missing Folk Horror Link

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by

Philip Jenkins

Baylor University

Folk horror is a major theme in the study of contemporary media and popular culture. Because it attracts so much attention, I am both surprised and pleased to say that I have discovered a significant reference to add to the discussion, one that I am pretty sure nobody else has spotted. It might actually be a missing link in the emergence of that whole genre. I will argue that it was a shaping influence on the 1973 production of The Wicker Man, which regularly appears in critics’ lists of the three or four greatest British films ever made.

The term folk horror dates from 1970, and it originally applied to British films that explored the idea that potent ancient forces and deep-rooted evils survive in the landscape, scarcely acknowledged by the modern world. Commonly, these dark forces are mobilized by active witches or pagan groups, deploying secret rituals dating from pre-Christian times. The plots involve innocent outsiders entrapped in these fearsome proceedings, and likely facing the prospect of a grisly sacrificial death. The genre relies on confrontations with an unsuspected ancient reality, which is inconceivably perilous. Read more

Posted on December 9, 2023

The Weird and the Quotidian: A Review of The Wolves of Eternity by Karl ove Knausgaard

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Norwegian author Karl ove Knausgaard erupted onto the international literary stage upon the release of My Struggle, a series of six autobiographical novels which chronicle the peaks and valleys of the author’s life. Fluid in form, My Struggle is a concatenation of memories, self-reflections and existential musings which drift and fade into another in free-floating fashion, yet nevertheless revolve around a pivotal moment in Knausgaard’s life: the death of his alcoholic father, his childhood and adolescence, the trials and tribulations of fatherhood, as well as, in the final volume, the release of My Struggle and the fallout resulting from its publication. What is remarkable about My Struggle, however, is Knausgaard’s unique ability to render the seemingly insignificant and quotidian details of day-to-day life utterly engaging and, in doing so, transform the intensely personal into something grandly universal. When reading the series, Knausgaard’s struggle becomes our own, and it is in his neurotic detailing of the mundane where the universal struggle (and beauty) of daily existence becomes vividly apparent. In this regard, it might seem strange that Knausgaard’s latest project turns away from autobiography and wades into the world of genre, specifically Weird Fiction.

Posted on November 9, 2023

Saw: Liberalism’s Favourite Franchise

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I recently came across a web-comic that satirised the premise of Breaking Bad. The gist of it is that Breaking Bad would never work in a country with free healthcare, since Walter White’s impetus for selling drugs is to cover the exorbitant cost of his cancer treatment.

Christopher Keelty, https://christopherkeelty.com/2013/09/breaking-bad-outside-us/

Now this is arguably an oversimplification, but it is funny nonetheless and does illustrate how neoliberalism is often a driving force behind films and series. This is especially so if the media in question is a US-based production where the liberal ideology of individual choice, meritocracy, and pulling oneself up by their bootstraps is firmly entrenched in the larger social consciousness. In the US, you are the master of your own fate, and you don’t need a handout. Now while it might not, at first glance, appear to be the case with the Saw franchise, the series has a deeply entrenched philosophy of aggressive individualism that covertly celebrates liberalism and glosses over systemic and societal factors underpinning many social ills.

Posted on October 25, 2023

Face to Face: Indigenous Experience and Zombie Cinema

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James Rose

In June 1981, Minister of Fisheries Lucien Lessard authorised more than 300 Quebec Provincial Police (QPP) to raid the Restigouche Reserve in relation to restrictions placed upon the indigenous peoples by the Department of Fisheries: the point of contention was salmon fishing rights; the Mi’kmaq claimed their right to fish salmon six nights a week while the Quebec government attempted to limit their fishing to three days a week as, according to them, their fishing practices were endangering the salmon population. A survey commissioned by the Mi’kmaq and undertaken by Dr. Alan Roy demonstrated the indigenous salmon haul did not exceed 1,200 fish a year, a smaller amount compared to the 1,800 per year that were fished by commercial organisations (Ambroziak). Despite this, the QPP raid occurred and, one of the young people involved was Mi’kmaq Jeff Barnaby: