Horror Homeroom

A woman stands outside of a door pausing before entering a room. Inside, a man is sitting on a bed and he is smiling.

Posted on April 6, 2023

A Return to Nihilism: Talking Smile (2022)

Podcast

In today’s episode, we’re diving into Smile (2022), a film that has almost single-handedly reinvigorated debate over the importance of trigger warnings. Written and directed by Parker Finns, the film follows Rose (Sosie Bacon), a doctor who cares for patients at a psychiatric facility while navigating her own mental health journey. Following the death by suicide of a patient in her care, Rose begins to suspect that she is the new target of a demonic entity who won’t be happy until she’s dead. With its nod to the uncanny and gruesome death scenes, Smile is a horror movie explicitly about trauma but is it also about something more? We’re breaking it all down today, so stay tuned.

Please be aware that this episode contains spoilers and references to suicide.

Posted on April 1, 2023

“Talk About Ni’Jah, Get Stung”: Unpacking Swarm, a Sweet Take on Slashers

Guest Post

The horror genre is currently experiencing an interesting slasher renaissance. Our favorite masked killers such as Leatherface, Ghostface, and Michael Myers have all seen reboots, sequels, and even requels in the last few years. However, not all slasher fans have been satisfied with these remakes and have been itching for a new take on the slasher that isn’t just a gorier remake of the original. Janine Nabers and Donald Glover’s new series Swarm is a fresh take on the classic subgenre that gives us all of the gore without the killer hiding behind a mask. Rather, our slasher is a Black person who kills whenever they must to protect their goddess, pop star Ni’Jah.

Played by Dominique Fishback, Andrea Green, “Dre,” is a part of a larger group of Ni’Jah fans called the swarm. If this group sounds familiar, you’re not mistaken as this group is meant to represent the Beyonce stans’ BeyHive. What Naber and Glover seem to be homing in on is the toxic nature of fandom, exploring how far a fan will go to meet their favorite artist. However, what I find most salient in this series is the subversion of the slasher subgenre and the exploration of what happens to a Black Queer child who is left unprotected by their community. Dre’s character tells us that when everyone and everything casts you out of society, the only place left to run to is a Ni’Jah concert. Read more

a black and white photo of a woman looking scared.

Posted on March 22, 2023

Before Norman Bates: Talking the Spiral Staircase (1946)

Podcast

In today’s episode, it is early horror with an unexpected feminist twist in 1946’s The Spiral Staircase, directed by Robert Siodmak. Set in 1906, the film follows Helen (Dorothy McGuire), a woman with traumatic mutism, who cares for Mrs. Warren (Ethel Barrymore), the difficult and bedridden lady of the manor. When a serial killer begins killing off women with so-called afflictions, Helen is warned that she may be next. Adapted from Ethel Lina White’s novel Some Must Watch (1933), the film takes up themes such as disability and masculinity while simultaneously challenging the notion that the modern slasher film began with Hitchcock’s Psycho(1960). We’re breaking it all down today with spoilers, so stay tuned.

Essential reading:

Anne Golden, “Robert Siodmak’s The Spiral Staircase: Horror Genre Hybridity, Vertical Alterity, and the Avant-Garde,” Recovering 1940s Horror Cinema: Traces of a Lost Decade, edited by Mario Degiglio-Bellemare, Charlie Ellbé, and Kristopher Woofter (Lexington Books, 2014), chapter 5.

Posted on March 21, 2023

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey – The Representational Dangers of “Fun” Horror

Guest Post

Horror films provide paradoxical feelings of fear and fun, offering ways of navigating societal darkness while simultaneously giving us humorous delight. In the case of, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (Rhys Frake-Waterfield, 2023), it punches up toward Disney IP and punches down on marginalized audiences. However, the film ultimately spends far more time doing the latter, with its violence and aggression squarely trained on women. Any attempt to speak back to larger forms of power—like Disney’s draconian use and expansion of intellectual property law to protect its economic interests to the detriment of creativity and play—ultimately becomes a fig leaf for what this film really wants to do: dehumanize, sexualize, and punish women.

a golden yellow hill sits in the distance

Posted on March 14, 2023

Algernon Blackwood, The Unknown: Weird Writings, 1900-1937

Guest Post

Even though Algernon Blackwood’s ‘The Willows’ is one of my favourite weird tales, possibly even my most favourite, I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve read little of his less-known work and hardly any of his non-fiction writings. This is doubly shameful as not only is there a huge amount of work beyond stories like ‘The Willows’ and ‘The Wendigo’ but also much of it is concerned with a love which I share with the writer: a deep love not only of enjoying nature (or Nature, as editor Henry Bartholomew reminds us of Blackwood’s love of capitalisation) but of becoming lost within it. I’ve never been to the Canada that Blackwood described as ‘the nearest approach to a dream come true I had yet known’, but I have explored the jungles of Borneo, trekked across Andean passes and skirted Himalayan foothills. As Blackwood would’ve known, these are all places where reality itself seems to become thin and one’s soul expands outwards to fill the void left behind. They are, in short, weird places.