- Horror Movie - Horror Homeroom

Posted on April 3, 2021

Stephen King’s LATER: A Review

Guest Post

I started absorbing Stephen King before I was born. When she was pregnant with me, my mom distracted herself with two equally consuming tasks: stitching future-me a small quilt (despite very little knowledge or skill related to sewing) and reading the serial installments of The Green Mile, published between March and August of 1996. She spun my future with fabric squares—painstakingly arranged for comfort—and whatever textures might be taken from the echoes of chants and shaking chains on a fictional death row. Manufactured, destroyable dread was the invisible thread connecting the balloon to the toy block to the yellow background.

Now, it’s 2021 and I’m an adult who does my own grocery shopping and I see a new paperback on a display at Costco and I throw it into my cart before any food. King’s latest (aptly titled Later) is a compelling, genre-mash and in many ways, one of King’s most honest stories. Read more

Posted on March 5, 2021

Revisiting The Dead Zone

Guest Post

This piece aspires to be a dual-purpose essay on the feature film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dead Zone (1983). First, I will identify qualities that make it one of the most impactful of the King inspired movies almost 40 years after its original release. In the last several years societal events have led some to reevaluate The Dead Zone and ultimately recast it as a prescient political cautionary tale about the danger posed by aspiring demagogues. My second goal is to examine that claim’s validity more closely within the context of the film as a whole. Read more

Posted on December 23, 2020

Resurrecting Pet Sematary

Guest Post

Pet Sematary, at least at the time Stephen King wrote his 2001 introduction, was the most frightening book he’d written, according to the author. He explains that for any parent the death of a child is perhaps the most traumatic event they might ever face. The only thing worse would be if s/he came back to life, not him- or herself. Two major films were made based on this novel, one in 1989, directed by Mary Lambert and a second in 2019 by Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer. Resurrection is a frightening idea. It claws out of the ground of religion.

The entire premise of resurrection, to those in the western hemisphere, derives from Christian teaching. Among the many movie monsters, two revenants in particular—the resurrected and the zombie—inspire a special fear. Is it because religion tells us that at least the former is actually possible? Horror derives much of its energy from the fear of death, and the living dead of either stripe have religious origins and cross boundaries that are carefully guarded.

Posted on November 30, 2020

30 Years of Misery

Special Issue #2

As the only film adaptation of the Stephen King oeuvre to be anointed with Oscar gold, Rob Reiner’s Misery (1990) is quintessential psychological horror with a heaping helping of shock and awe. Fueled by a villain whose name is virtually synonymous with toxic fan culture and made memorable by one indelible sledgehammer hobbling, the film is an acknowledged classic, and yet it is not typically the first film referenced in discussions of King’s cinematic adaptations. Misery has generated memes, collectibles, and fan art that has kept it in the pop culture zeitgeist, but critical scholarship has not been quite as prolific. Our second special issue seeks to rectify that oversight.

In honor of the film’s milestone 30th anniversary, we are thrilled to present 14 original essays that explain why we are still Misery’s “number one fan.”

DOWNLOAD THE FULL ISSUE OR READ ONLINE

Posted on June 24, 2020

Misery: Call for Papers for Special Issue #2

Call for Papers

As the only film adaptation of the Stephen King oeuvre to be anointed with Oscar gold, Rob Reiner’s Misery is quintessential psychological horror with a heaping helping of shock and awe. Fueled by a villain whose name is virtually synonymous with toxic fan culture and made memorable by one indelible sledgehammer hobbling, the film is an acknowledged classic, and yet it is not typically the first film referenced in discussions of King’s cinematic adaptations. Misery has generated memes, collectibles, and fan art that has kept it in the pop culture zeitgeist but critical scholarship has not been quite as prolific. In honor of the film’s impending 30^th anniversary, our second special issue of Horror Homeroom seeks to rectify that oversight.