- Horror Movie - Horror Homeroom

Posted on July 2, 2020

In Search of Darkness: A Nostalgic Celebration of 80s Horror Cinema

Guest Post

Coinciding with the current renaissance of American horror cinema, we’ve seen more interest in horror documentaries. Within the last two years alone, Eli Roth’s History of Horror (2018) and Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (2019; see the Horror Homeroom review here) both released to critical acclaim, and now we have the collector’s documentary In Search of Darkness: A Journey into Iconic ‘80s Horror (2019), written and directed by David A. Weiner, to add to the mix.

Posted on June 29, 2020

Scream, Queen! Review

Sara McCartney

Around this time last year, the Met Costume Institute was displaying its exhibit on camp, sparking explainers and podcast episodes and angry rants (the last one from me) about just what camp is exactly. I thought about it some more while watching Roman Chimienti and Tyler Jensen’s Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street (2019), and here’s what I’ve got. Camp is the reclamation of something embarrassing or perceived by others as embarrassing. It is the amazing knack queer people have to transform shame into joy and survival. Scream, Queen! is the story of how Nightmare on Elm Street 2, once an embarrassment to its franchise and the career of its then-closeted gay star, Mark Patton, became beloved by fans and a launching pad for Patton’s activism.

The 1985 sequel to Wes Craven’s slasher smash hit, Nightmare on Elm Street 2 is the rare slasher film with a Final Boy. The hapless Jesse, played by Mark Patton, is not merely Freddy’s intended victim but his entry point into the real world as he strives to take over Jesse’s body. More a possession film than a typical slasher, Nightmare on Elm Street 2‘s Freddy functions as an unlikely metaphor for repressed homosexuality. Read more

Posted on June 26, 2020

Followed: A Clever Use of Found Footage and a Smart Critique of Influencer Culture

Guest Post

Ever since the massive success of 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, found footage has been a staple of the horror genre. Even George A. Romero experimented with it in one of his last (and also criminally underrated) films, Diary of the Dead (2007). Yet, now, more than 20 years after The Blair Witch Project, the subgenre has become stale. The grainy, shaky shots have become cliché. Even Blair Witch Project became such a part of the zeitgeist that it was spoofed mercilessly. At this point, for any director and screenwriter to use found footage as a technique, they better do something innovative. Cue Followed, the directorial feature debut by Antoine Le, written by Todd Klick. The film’s uniqueness lies in its method of storytelling. Followed’s narrative is told through vlogging, and by using this method, the movie updates the found footage technique to reflect and comment upon influencer culture. It’s a smart take on what has generally become an exhausted subgenre. The plot unfolds click by click, through a series of vlogs sequenced on a website.

Posted on May 6, 2020

Night of the Living Dead ™ – Remix (Review)

Guest Post

Premiering in early 2020, with a successful UK tour cut short by theatre closures in the wake of COVID-19, Night of the Living Dead™ – Remix is the latest production by imitating the dog. As a performance collective, imitating the dog are known for their breadth – from stagings of comic serials to musical theatre, and from adaptions of classical novels, including Heart of Darkness (2018), to Cold War spy dramas. Now, turning to a darker Americana aesthetic, their new ‘remix’ of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) is a striking new entry to the imitating the dog catalogue.

Photography Credit: Ed Waring

The original Night of the Living Dead was a ground-breaking take on a horror icon which dates back to Golden Age Hollywood cinema. Beginning with Victor Halperin’s voodoo-themed The White Zombie (1932), the zombie evolved through war-time 1940s films, including the Nazi-themed King of the Zombies (Jean Yarbrough, 1941), and through 1950s imaginings of speculative nuclear wars, including Creature With the Atom Brain (Edward L. Cahn, 1955). Romero’s landmark film shook off the zombie’s supernatural origins and transformed it into a living and visceral threat which turned the spotlight onto profound injustices at the heart of US society. Read more

Posted on March 9, 2020

The Lodge and the Cyclical Nature of Trauma

Guest Post

Severin Fiala and Veronik Franz’s The Lodge (2019) has been praised as one of the best horror films of 2020. Somehow, it still feels like it fell through the cracks.

Given the spectacular failure of The Turning (2020), it’s no surprise that a horror film featuring a woman and two children in isolation would be passed over. However, The Lodge is a gripping, slow-burn horror that pays homage to The Shining (1980), The Thing (1982), and Hereditary (2018), while also artfully creating its own space within the genre. One of the most innovative aspects of the film is its focus on the importance of understanding and respecting traumatic experiences.