Horror Homeroom

Posted on June 9, 2015

Insidious 3 Film Review: The Demon Death Drive

Dawn Keetley

Insidious 3 is the directorial debut of the talented Leigh Whannell, the screenwriter for Saw (2004), Dead Silence (2007), Insidious (2011), and Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013). Demonstrable proof that Whannell can direct as well as write (and act), Insidious: Chapter 3 is quite different, and more disturbing, than the first two Insidious films. It’s telling that the tagline on the movie poster is “This is how you die,” because the film seems itself to be driving toward death, with little to lighten the mood. The mise-en-scène reflects the darkness of the film’s trajectory, exuding decay: while the first two films have a generally lighter, suburban mise-en-scène, the latest installment is set in an old, dark, urban apartment building, and centers on a family struggling both to make ends meet and to deal with the loss of a wife and mother. Read more

Posted on June 9, 2015

Insidious 3 Film Review: Darkness, Depression & Disease

Gwen

Review: Insidious 3 sheds light on darkness, depression, and disease.

Synopsis: A prequel to the series, this installment provides insight into Elise Rainier and the use of her abilities to help others. She teaches the audience about her talent and about The Further. When you call upon one person they all hear you…and when you go into the darkness, things come back with you.

Like the recent film, Unfriended, Insidious 3 places suicide as a main actor in the film.[i] In Unfriended the actions of others lead to the darkness that befell Laura Barnes which later justified the haunting of her assailants. However, Insidious 3 delves deeper into the psyche by exposing the levels of despair like Dante’s nine circles of hell. Insidious 3 illuminates depression, despair and despondency, and then sprinkles it with the uniquely horrific experience of losing a life to suicide or through disease. Both of these are often inexplicable ends which leave the living with unanswered questions that might push them to stick their head down the rabbit hole of depression. Each of the characters is touched by tragedy, sickness, and suicide. How they cope with such tragedy determines if they become a victim of the darkness.

Posted on June 8, 2015

Hostel 2: Eli Roth’s Homage to Friday the 13th, Part 2

Dawn Keetley

Friday the 13^th (Sean S. Cunningham, 1980) famously culminates with the Final Girl, Alice (Adrienne King), decapitating Pamela Vorhees (Betsy Palmer). Although she survives the first round of carnage at “Camp Blood,” Alice’s luck runs out as Friday the 13^th, Part 2 (Steve Miner, 1981) begins. Still traumatized, she lives only long enough to see the worst of her nightmares realized: while making tea and feeding her cat, Alice is attacked and killed by Jason Vorhees, bent on avenging his mother.

Alice’s death is shocking for any viewer who may have expected (and hoped) she would reprise her role as plucky survivor: it approximates the devastating murder of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) halfway through Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). It’s also a narrative trick that Eli Roth adopts in Hostel: Part 2 (2007), offering more evidence of his allegiance to the slasher tradition.

Posted on June 5, 2015

NBC’s Hannibal Review: Visual Horror at its Finest

Elizabeth Erwin

Season 3, Episode 1

Episode Title: “Antipasto”

Prior to this season of Hannibal, creator Bryan Fuller promised that the first few episodes would serve as mini films designed to reset the series. Last night’s foray into Hannibal (Mads Mikkelson) and Bedelia’s (Gillian Anderson) life on the run in Europe certainly fit the bill as we spent the entire hour with the two and heard not a peep from anyone remotely affiliated with the FBI. The decision to hone in on the couple and their complicated relationship helped to solidify the evolving nature of these two characters while also suggesting that the coming season will upend our expectations as to where the true horror of the series resides. With its hallucegenic quality and its languid plotting, “Antipasto” is easily one of the show’s finest hours.

Posted on June 3, 2015

The Return of the Woolly Mammoth: Fortitude and The Thaw

Dawn Keetley

Horror has always been interwoven with science—ever since Professor Van Helsing in Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931) asserted (about vampirism) that the “superstition of yesterday can become the scientific reality of today.” So it’s no surprise that the recent spate of woolly mammoth carcasses, emerging from thawing permafrost mostly in Siberia, should coincide with the appearance of the woolly mammoth in horror film and TV—specifically (to date) The Thaw (Mark A. Lewis, 2009) and the TV series Fortitude (2015), produced by Sky Atlantic and broadcast in the US on Pivot January to April, 2015.