Browsing Tag

abortion

Posted on May 7, 2026

Reproductive Rights in Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s Swallow

Guest Post

Brandon West

Reproductive rights are human rights, says Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s 2019 thriller film Swallow. This easily-overlooked English language film uses body horror to explore the myriad fetters with which modern American society aims to constrain the female body. The film follows a young woman, protagonist Hunter (Haley Bennett), who finds herself encircled on all sides. Since Hunter is the product of rape, her “right-wing, religious right” mother views her as a burden. Meanwhile, her wealthy husband views her as a baby incubator, a means to carry on his family name. Thus isolated, Hunter seeks bodily autonomy in one of the few avenues open to her: consumption. And so, she develops an acute case of pica, consuming such materials as a marble, a thumb tack, and a battery. Yet, even in this arena, Hunter’s control proves inadequate, subject to male supervision. When Hunter’s pica causes complications with her pregnancy, her husband scolds her and hires another man to supervise her at home.

Read more

Posted on October 4, 2023

Feminine or Feminist? Abortion, Motherhood, and the Traditional Final Girl

Guest Post

It is generally accepted that the final girl in late-twentieth-century slashers evidences a “moral integrity mark[ing] [her] as special” (Gill 19). Less discussed, however, has been the final girl as a mother figure who, in contrast with her peers, shows traditional maternal values (Christensen 40). These maternal qualities include “female self-sacrifice and motherly love” (Nickerson 14). Traditionalists often emphasized motherhood as the most fulfilling outlet for women’s special qualities as “life-bearers” (Jepson 340). The final girl in slasher horror films exhibits many of the traditional womanly qualities of caretaker and comforter.

Read more

Posted on May 18, 2015

James Wan’s The Conjuring and Abortion

Dawn Keetley

One of the best of the current spate of occult films is James Wan’s The Conjuring (2013), which opened to critical acclaim and the distinction of being rated “R” simply for its terrifying sequences (on which promise, in my view, it certainly delivered).

One notable characteristic of occult horror is its seeming resistance to socio-political meanings. After all, it translates its principal conflict to the afterworld: human characters are beset by ghosts, demons and poltergeists—often forces of uncomplicated “Evil”—not by more recognizable and more complicated “evils” of this world. The “dark entity” in The Conjuring, for instance, simply wants the unoffending Perron family dead. Articulating what seems true of occult films in general, Douglas Kellner writes of Poltergeist that it “deflect[s] people’s legitimate fears onto irrational forces.”[i]

Read more

Back to top