- Horror Movie - Horror Homeroom

Posted on January 7, 2019

Another Problem with Bird Box: Dying While Black in Horror Film

Guest Post

Shortly after watching Bird Box (Susanne Bier, 2018) one of my homies angrily texted me: “Why did Tom (Trevante Rhodes) have to die? And why did Malorie (Sandra Bullock) get to live?” While I knew exactly why he was so mad, I didn’t share his sense of surprise. Early on, after recognizing that the film alternated between the apocalyptic past and the post-apocalyptic present, and that Malorie was all alone with those children on that raft, my first thought was, “How many characters in this story will need to die to earn this white woman the empathy she should already have?”

This might seem like a cynical or reductive question from an admittedly jaded, black horror fan, but the implicit demand for Malorie’s salvation calls it forth. As I watched Bird Box with my family and they began to speculate about which of the characters might live, particularly the black ones, I felt sad already knowing that no one else in Malorie’s group (save the kids) would get out alive: I knew that making Malorie into someone capable of empathy was a call for blood.

Posted on January 6, 2019

Channeling the Dark Muse: An Interview with Eric Morago, Editor of Dark Ink

Guest Post

While poetry and the horror genre may seem like opposites, they do share some similarities, namely their use of image and metaphor to address deeper issues. Dark Ink: A Poetry Anthology Inspired by Horror contains a wide range of poetic responses to horror. There are haikus about Poltergeist, multiple responses to the Frankenstein story, elegies to Godzilla and Kong, and meditations on horror’s ability to confront deeper issues, such as mental illness, fear of the Other, and feminism. Eric Morago is the editor-in-chief of the anthology, which features 66 poets total, and publisher/editor of Moon Tide Press, located in California.

Posted on November 17, 2018

What’s the Real Horror in It Follows?

Guest Post

At the start of David Robert Mitchell’s 2014 film It Follows, protagonist Jay (Maika Monroe) has sex with a young man who calls himself Hugh (Jake Weary). He then chloroforms her, ties her to a wheelchair, and explains that a creature—referred to as “It”—is going to follow her until she has sex with someone else. The day after Jay’s assault, she stands in front of the bathroom mirror, looking down into her underwear, presumably examining whether “Hugh” left any noticeable physical changes. In a larger, symbolic sense, she is reflecting on her identity—asking herself whether her sexual encounter transformed her in some way. Jay is startled out of her reflection when a ball hits the window. Though Jay does not see him, the ball was thrown by a neighbor boy who is crouching out of sight to peek at the half-naked Jay. This screenshot encapsulates It Follows‘ running motifs of sexual surveillance and the transition from childhood to adulthood. By combining Jay’s internal contemplation and external objectification, It Follows demonstrates how entering adulthood entails submitting one’s body to both self-reflection and public consumption.

Posted on November 10, 2018

Laughing at Rape: Reconsidering Young Frankenstein

Elizabeth Erwin

In the annals of horror comedy, Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein occupies a unique space for both its plot-driven narrative and its subtle inclusivity. Combining satire, parody and slapstick, the film is effective primarily due to its reinterpretation of genre tropes and its commitment to illustrating how inequitable cultural systems are predicated upon illogical thinking so absurd as to be laughable. And, on the whole, it is a largely effective undertaking. Whether it is Igor’s machinations which work to dismantle ideas about the limitations of disability or Inspector Kemp’s ineptitude which calls into question our blind trust in systems of justice, there is a laudable amount of political subtext permeating the film which is why the rape scene that occurs a mere nine minutes before its conclusion is especially jarring. It would be easier if Young Frankenstein was a film that hates women but it’s not. Instead, the rape scene serves as a spectacular example of the failure of allyship. Read more

Posted on October 21, 2018

A Rage-Filled Halloween for Our Time

Dawn Keetley

From what I’d read before going in to David Gordon Green’s Halloween (2018), I was expecting a portrait of the deep and lasting effects of grief and trauma. The film chooses to ignore all the sequels to John Carpenter’s 1978 original and picks up the story of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) many years later, after two failed marriages, a daughter (now estranged), and a granddaughter. Instead of a complex study in the lingering after-effects of trauma, however, Green’s Halloween gives us simple, unalloyed rage. A fitting Halloween, perhaps, for our own anger-filled post-Trump moment.