Browsing Tag

Gerald’s Game

Posted on August 22, 2021

Unraveling The Green Ribbon In Horror Stories and Movies

Guest Post

Marriage and relationships have always been a major theme in horror. How much can you ever REALLY know about the person you share your life with. How long can you last until a person’s true self is revealed. Yes, marriage is a murky mess. Oftentimes there is a simple yet impactful folktale that gets to the heart of a theme like this. One such story, one that has quite the history in itself, is a tale often known as The Green Ribbon.

I made a documentary about the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books, and so I’ve heard many people talk about the numerous folktales and urban legends in them. So many had a profound impact for children growing up, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s. The Green Ribbon is one that isn’t technically in those books (though featured in the same author’s easy reader) but it was one that came up again and again as a story that resonated with many people as a truly scary story that one ought to read in the dark. Over time I found that The Green Ribbon has some unique themes that closely relate to other modern tales in books and film. Read more

Posted on April 18, 2019

8 Vacation Home Horrors: Summertime Madness

Guest Post

Jordan Peele’s recent film Us (2019) cashes in on what horror does best: it takes a comfortable setting and makes it very, very uncomfortable. In Peele’s movie, that setting is a Santa Cruz-area summer home owned by the Wilson family. What begins as a relaxing getaway ends in a bloody showdown between the Wilsons and a murderous foursome that looks creepily similar to them. Like these doppelgangers, the physical spaces of vacation—the house, the nearby lake, the beach boardwalk—become, over the course of the film, decidedly uncanny.[i] The lush verdure of the house’s front yard becomes a menacing jungle in which the intruders easily conceal themselves; the once-placid lake becomes a watery grave; instead of a cozy glow, the den’s fireplace casts a hellish backlight behind the grinning doubles. Read more

Posted on November 6, 2017

Behind the Eclipse: Complicating Sexual Assault in Gerald’s Game

Guest Post

Mike Flanagan’s Gerald’s Game (2017) is, shot for shot, one of the most loyal Stephen King adaptations to hit the screen. The premise of the film and the novel (1992) is, for Stephen King, very simple. Jessie (Carla Gugino) and Gerald Burlingame (Bruce Greenwood) travel to their secluded lake house in an attempt to save their failing marriage. Gerald’s solution to their sexual stagnation is a pair of handcuffs. Jessie plays along with his game, witnesses her husband’s fatal heart attack, and finds herself alone.  The terror of the story, like its protagonist, is confined. The book and the film are compelling, however, because the terror is not in the house or the ravenous dog feasting on Gerald’s decaying body. For Jessie, the fear is spawned by being bound and alone, with only the repressed terror of her past.

In Gerald’s Game, Stephen King crafts one of his most feminist novels. His original intention was to pair the story with Dolores Claiborne (1992) as they both take place at (the fictional) Dark Score Lake during a full solar eclipse. Unfortunately, the pairing never happened, but we did end up with two separate books that work well in establishing a purely feminine viewpoint within the Stephen King universe. In Gerald’s Game, Jessie Burlingame becomes our window into a world that has been darkened by broken trust and a darkened sun.

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