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Posted on March 11, 2018

Horror Visits Little House on the Prairie

Ask anyone who grew up watching Little House on the Prairie what is the most traumatizing image they recollect from the show’s run and you’re likely to get a surprisingly wide array of answers. From Caroline almost taking a knife to her leg while in the throes of a fevered infection to Alice screaming and trying in vain to shatter glass as she and baby Adam burned in a fire, the show contains more than a few moments that call into question its cultural legacy of family friendliness. These moments aside, however, the show never delved into explicitly horror territory until its seventh season when a two-part episode entitled “Sylvia” leveraged the genre’s tropes to completely rewrite audience expectation. Read more

Posted on March 7, 2018

The Most Terrifying Story I’ve Ever Read: The Little Stranger

Guest Post

Novelist Alma Katsu is known for injecting horror and the supernatural into historical fiction (“makes the supernatural seem possible,” says Publishers Weekly). Her new book, The Hunger, a reimagining of the story of the Donner Party, has just been published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

I’ve always loved ghost stories, probably because I grew up in a run-down old Victorian that we were sure was haunted. Writing a ghost story, however, is another matter. I think they’re hard to pull off successfully. Even if they manage to produce a ghost, it’s often done so unimaginatively that you wish the author hadn’t bothered.

You certainly can’t say this about The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. Although shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2009, it has not been universally loved, particularly by the fans of Waters’ earlier work. However, I’m in the camp that believes when it comes to art, a little controversy is a good thing. It’s a sign of Waters’ genius that she was able to build ambiguity in her novel without the whole thing falling apart. And in the end, she created a very different kind of ghost story. I wouldn’t say the book is terrifying, but it is terrifyingly well done, and I’ve come back to reread and study her artistry time and time again.

Posted on March 4, 2018

Midnighters, the Cost of the American Dream, and A Simple Plan

Dawn Keetley

Midnighters premiered in June 2017 at the Los Angeles Film Festival and saw its theatrical release in the US on March 2, 2018. It’s the feature-film directorial debut for Julius Ramsay, who has directed two episodes of AMC’s The Walking Dead—two very good ones, I might add: “Still” (s. 4, ep. 12 [2014]) and “Them” (s. 5, ep. 10 [2015])—as well as an episode of Scream: The TV Series (2015) and of Outcast (2016). The screenplay was written by his brother, Alston Ramsay, and the film’s four main leads are well cast: Alex Essoe from 2014’s Starry Eyes as Lindsey, Dylan McTee as her husband Jeff, Perla Haney-Jardine as Lindsey’s wayward sister, Hannah, and Ward Horton as alleged FBI agent Smith. While the plot is a little predictable (I definitely saw the final reveal coming and wondered why none of the characters seemed to), it is acted and directed extremely well. The pacing is perfect with each escalation of the tension happening at just the right time. You should watch this.

Posted on February 24, 2018

What do Bruckner’s The Ritual and Kusama’s The Invitation Have in Common?

Dawn Keetley

David Bruckner’s The Ritual is a wonderful film, which I review here, and which combines rich allusions to other horror films while also doing something quite distinctive. In my review, I mention some of the more obvious references of the film, but here’s a less obvious one: Karyn Kusama’s 2015 film, The Invitation.

Posted on February 19, 2018

Podcasts as Horror Storytelling

Elizabeth Erwin

You can’t expose yourself to grisly images and concepts on the daily and not have a strong stomach. And so it was with more than a little surprise that I found myself having to repeatedly take a break from episode 10 of the fantastic Charles Manson’s Hollywood podcast, which recounts in grisly detail the murders that took place at Sharon Tate’s home in 1969.

Now none of these details were new to me. In fact, I’d go so far as to say there may have been elements left out in the telling. But the very intimate nature of listening to the description of events instead of reading it or watching it impacted me in a way for which I was wholly unprepared. And so it got me thinking about the ways in which podcasts are revolutionizing the horror experience for fans. Read more