- Horror Movie - Horror Homeroom

Posted on June 2, 2026

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

Guest Post

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

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.

Posted on March 24, 2026

Cultivate your own garden: Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice

Dawn Keetley

In Candide, ou l’Optimisme (1759), Voltaire concluded with one of the most important ideas in modern philosophy: “Il faut cultiver notre Jardin”: We must cultivate our garden. No Other Choice, the 2025 darkly comedic film co-written, produced, and directed by Park Chan-wook takes this adage quite literally, as protagonist Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) attempts to ‘cultivate’ his ‘garden’ after being let go from his managerial job at a paper company. Thirteen months later, Man-su is still without a position and is confronted with rapidly diminishing funds along with the prospective loss of his gorgeous house, embedded in lush countryside. So, he sets out on a campaign to win a position at a successful paper company, Moon Paper, by killing its current manager and two other likely contenders for the job.

Posted on February 23, 2026

Death and “A Livin’ Man”: Ambrose Bierce, The Twilight Zone, and Jazz Icon Kenny Clarke

Guest Post

Linda Ganus

A little over 60 years ago, an episode produced for the legendary science fiction TV show, The Twilight Zone, aired on February 28, 1964. It’s surprisingly apt that this anniversary falls during Black History Month; here’s why.

The episode, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, was a short French film adaption (La rivière du hibou) of Ambrose Bierce’s widely anthologized short story of the same name about a Confederate soldier facing death during the Civil War. The director, Robert Enrico, while faithfully hewing to the text of the original story published in the San Francisco Examiner in 1890, boldly added filmic elements that gave the naturalist narrative a modern 20^th-century perspective. The film eventually won awards at the Cannes Film Festival and was one of the first television episodes to win an Oscar for Best Short Subject in 1964. An uncredited performance on the film by African-American musician and jazz master, Kenny Clarke, fiercely transformed the meaning of the story by immersing the viewer in an auditory sound world imagined from enslaved Black Americans’ viewpoints. Clarke amplified their voices, left unheard in Bierce’s original.

Posted on February 5, 2026

On Transformation and Addiction in My Novel-in-Progress, Chicana Werewolf

Guest Post

Daniel A. Olivas

I was no older than five or six when my parents first allowed me to watch the 1941 classic Universal Pictures horror movie, The Wolf Man, starring Lon Chaney Jr., as the titular shapeshifting monster as designed by makeup artist Jack Pierce of Frankenstein fame. This was a different time—the mid-1960s—before Blockbuster Video, cable television, and streaming. So for families that lived on a tight budget, Los Angeles’s local television stations offered unending reruns of old movies from horror to noir, science fiction to westerns, and comedies to musicals. Horror, not surprisingly, sat the top of my favorites.

Unlike Universal’s Frankenstein of ten years earlier, The Wolf Man (1941)—directed by George Waggner—was not inspired by a literary classic but sprung from the creative mind of science fiction writer, Curt Siodmak, who decided to leave Germany for England in 1933 after hearing an anti-Semitic tirade by Joseph Goebbels. He established himself as a screenwriter in his adopted country and eventually made his way to the United States in 1937. Siodmak’s big break in Hollywood came in the form of his screenplay for the 1940 Universal’s film, Invisible Man Returns. His horror chops thus established, Universal tapped him to pen The Wolf Man.