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Posted on June 1, 2015

Horror Rewatch: Paranormal Activity 2 & Disembodied Horror

Released in 2010, Paranormal Activity 2 provides a prologue of sorts to the horror that was portrayed in the first film. I chose the second installment of this franchise to rewatch because it best lays out the mythology of the film as well as providing far more character development that what we saw in the original film. In a nutshell, the film follows a family that is being haunted by a demonic spirit. When the lead female character becomes possessed, the family takes drastic measures to save her and the baby whose very existence inspired the return of the spirit.

One thing I’ve been struggling with is the monster as a disembodied force in the Paranormal Activity franchise. Read more

Posted on May 20, 2015

The Unique Monstrosity of Jigsaw

Elizabeth Erwin

Lauded as a significant entry in the catalog of torture porn, Saw became one of the highest grossing horror films in recent memory. The 2004 film opens with two characters chained in a dilapidated bathroom. Instructions detailing how to escape are left by an unknown assailant but there is a catch. One of the characters must kill the other if he wants to live. What follows is a game of cat and mouse in which our ringleader, named Jigsaw, uses physical and psychological horrors to test the will of his “players.”
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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]

Posted on May 6, 2015

The Generational Horror of Scream

Elizabeth Erwin

While the films within the franchise have been hit or miss, there is no denying that the original Scream film injected the horror genre with a much needed shot of self-awareness. From Drew Barrymore unexpectedly getting killed within the film’s opening moments to the script’s self-referential humor, Scream is the film that used the conventions of the slasher horror film against itself to create a new breed of terror.

Like most slasher films, the premise is simple. Sydney Prescott, a girl who is still reeling from her mother’s death one year prior, is being stalked by the same unknown killer who claimed the life of her mother. What follows is a fascinating blend of meta horror in which classic slasher tropes are openly mocked even as they are deployed successfully[i]
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Posted on May 4, 2015

Violence and The Purge Franchise

Dawn Keetley

As someone who writes about horror, I was interested in the eruption of The Purge into the news this week after Freddie Gray died in police custody. As a story on CNN.com put it: “In a sobering example of life imitating art, the chaos sweeping the streets of Baltimore may have been partly inspired by a series of action-horror movies.” Some high-school kids apparently circulated plans about a “purge” on social media on Monday afternoon (April 27). ‘Baltimore going purge,” read one tweet.[i] And the riots themselves, later that night, were compared to The Purge: “The purge is happening in Baltimore,” tweeted at least one observer.[ii]