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Posted on June 28, 2026

“Trust His Instincts”: Disease & Death in Good Boy (2025)

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Grace Fuller

Good Boy, directed by Ben Leonberg in 2025, initially appears to be a supernatural horror film from a dog’s perspective. However, upon closer examination, it reveals a deeper, unsettling meaning. Not only does it function as a haunted-house narrative, but it also serves as a metaphor for how dogs perceive human illness, both physical and mental. Dogs have an innate ability to sense changes in their owners’ physical and behavioural states before fully understanding them. They remain loyal even in the face of fear as they witness their beloved owners’ decline.

Good Boy is an independent horror film directed by Ben Leonberg and co-written by Alex Cannon. The film stars a dog named Indy and his owner, Todd, played by Shane Jensen. Todd moves into a rural family house that is supposedly cursed. This is the same house where his grandfather and his faithful dog, Bandit, both lived and died. While they are there, Indy begins to sense a supernatural presence in the house, as does Todd, who is battling a chronic lung disease.

Posted on June 12, 2026

AI horror in The Backrooms

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Ian Haig

Kane Parsons’ The Backrooms emerged on the internet. The creepy pasta backstory of the film is well known: like a piece of haunted media within the network, it began as a mysterious still image posted on 4chan, and later a short film on YouTube with over 60 million views, and now a Hollywood movie. What’s striking about the recent film, The Backrooms, is the way viral marketing has spread across the internet, the algorithm suggesting more and yet more stories, interviews with cast and characters and various analyses of the film, amplifying the idea of the film being a product born out of the internet and the algorithmic culture of social media from where it originally emerged.

Posted on June 7, 2026

Terrible in Their Beauty: Artistic Echoes of George ‘AE’ Russell in A Dark Song

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Kevin Cooney

Guiding the audience through a claustrophobic psychological and physical labyrinth in the pursuit of divine revenge, director Liam Gavin’s A Dark Song (2016) presents an overwhelmingly majestic yet equally terrifying vision of an angelic presence that defies rational explanation. The film’s climax, I contend, through elements of terror, beauty, and dread contingent on ecstatic religious experiences, startlingly echoes mystic, poet, and artist George ‘AE’ Russell’s expressions of lost gods and guardians of ancient Eire.

Posted on June 2, 2026

Open Cracks in Horror Narratives: Philip Fracassi, Behold the Void

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Tomáš Erhart

“There is, in every event, whether lived or told, always a hole or a gap, often more than one. If we allow ourselves to get caught in it, we find it opening onto a void that, once we have slipped into it, we can never escape.” (Abbott, 2016: 13)

This is originally a quote from Brian Evenson, which was used by another writer of contemporary horror, Philip Fracassi, as the motto for the introduction to his collection of short stories – Behold the Void. Stories in it recount seemingly ordinary events, such as a grandmother’s funeral or a visit to a swimming pool, but then a rift opens (once even literally), filling the text with something dark and frightening. With a slightly looser interpretation, where we understand the crack as a gap in the narrative, Evenson’s words may describe one thing typical of horror narratives. Many horror stories do not explain the origin or nature of supernatural events that take place in them, leaving a gap leaking darkness.

Posted on May 7, 2026

Reproductive Rights in Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s Swallow

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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.