- Horror Movie - Horror Homeroom

Posted on December 16, 2015

Eden Lake (2008): Folk Horror For A Disenchanted World

Dawn Keetley

Eden Lake, released in 2008 and directed by James Watkins, has been generally classified as “hoodie horror”—a British sub-genre that exploits middle-class fear of hoodie-wearing, underclass youth.[i] Mark Featherstone aptly describes the way in which “feral youth” become stand-ins for the “poor or underclass,” forming the central “evil other” of “hoodie horror.”[ii] While there is no doubt that Eden Lake is indeed hoodie horror, the film also borrows liberally from folk horror.[iii]

The film follows Jenny (Kelly Reilly) and Steve (Michael Fassbender) as they travel to Eden Lake, a beautiful natural space that Steve frequented as a child but which is about to be converted, as the billboard tells us, to “a secure gated community of fifty superior New England homes.” Jenny and Steve have a couple of encounters with young hooligans on bikes, who then appear almost uncannily right beside them on Eden Lake’s beach. One thing leads to another and soon Jenny and Steve, trapped in the woods, are being hunted by the increasingly menacing children.

Adam Scovell has laid out the principal elements of folk horror on his website, Celluloid Wicker Man—and Eden Lake unambiguously exemplifies three of the four characteristics he identifies. It is set in a lush natural landscape; Jenny and Steve become isolated, removed from their familiar urban environment; and they soon realize with horror that they are beset by characters whose moral beliefs are at best bewilderingly skewed, at worst entirely absent.

Posted on December 7, 2015

Piano Keys to the House: Crimson Peak, the Gothic Romance, and Feminine Power

Guest Post

On the eve of Crimson Peak’s opening day, Guillermo del Toro tweeted, “One last time before release. Crimson Peak: not a horror film. A Gothic Romance. Creepy, tense, but full of emotion…”

Before seeing this film, I had read all about its Gothic, particularly literary, influences, and most particularly the influence of Ann Radcliffe. But, when I saw the trailers, which feature the heroine, Edith, pronouncing, “Ghosts are real,” as well as images of the ghosts themselves, I had to wonder what these influences could possibly be. Radcliffe championed the concept of the explained supernatural in her late eighteenth-century Gothic novels: her ghosts are intentionally not real. What her heroines first imagine to be ghosts turn out to be wax figures or wandering romantics, or some other easily-explained phenomenon. Crimson Peak, however, engages with these literary Gothic influences in a more nuanced way. It’s not that the ghosts aren’t real, it’s that the ghosts aren’t the real threat to our heroine. The real threat is flesh and blood.

Posted on November 30, 2015

The Walking Dead: Did the Carol/Morgan Scene Go Too Far?

Elizabeth Erwin

SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUT

There is an obvious danger in trying to suss out the success or failure of a season of television that has only reached the midway point. Not only are arcs halfway developed, but things we assume to be true often turn out to be something wholly different.

When I initially sat down to write up my assessment of The Walking Dead’s sixth season thus far, I was not nearly as frustrated with the show as some critics. With three near perfect episodes opening the season and a brilliantly plotted, and even more bravely timed, peek into Morgan’s backstory, my criticisms of the show had been largely confined to pacing issues. And then the fight scene between Carol and Morgan aired.

Posted on November 28, 2015

We Need to Talk About Judith: Why Children Matter in the Zombie Apocalypse

Guest Post

SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUT

One aspect of The Walking Dead that has always bothered me, and has been commented on elsewhere [i], is the obvious stupidity of having a child within the zombie apocalypse. Season two will forever ignite me in anger because of Rick’s reaction to Lori’s wanting to end her pregnancy because she shockingly thought it might be a good idea not to pop out some more children now that they live in a zombie-infested world.

Posted on November 27, 2015

Slow Violence, Environmentalism, and The Walking Dead

Dawn Keetley

There is much to say about The Walking Dead and many people saying it, so I feel there’s room before the upcoming mid-season finale of season 6 to write about something a little bit off the beaten track.

Especially since the beginning of season 6, I’ve been thinking that among the many things the zombies of The Walking Dead connote is the slow lurch of catastrophic environmental damage.

My theory is, no doubt, in large part due to the fact that I’ve been reading Rob Nixon’s excellent 2011 book, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Nixon coins the term “slow violence” to describe long-term ecological devastation, “a violence that occurs gradually,” a “violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all.” Nixon argues that while sudden cataclysmic environmental disasters (typhoons etc.) are easy to narrativize, it’s harder to tell stories about often almost-imperceptible “slow violence.”[i] I would suggest that one place to look for such stories is the zombie narrative—because, for me at least, the term “slow violence” also inevitably conjures up zombies (the slow kind, anyway!).

Season 6 has offered the repeated shot of Daryl (Norman Reedus) on his motorcycle, cresting the hill of a rural road with a horde of walkers looming behind him, as he tries to lead them away from the community of Alexandria. This image suggests the way in which the consequences of a reckless use and misuse of our planet follows slowly but inexorably behind us.