The Other Folk, Horror Media Dissections

Animated Horror, Dreamscape Horror, Identity Horror, Metahorror, Psychological Horror

Perfect Blue likes to jar audiences out of escapism and suspension of disbelief as a way to get us to think critically about the film as a film—as a story, a fantasy, a constructed narrative. When you engage with the film in this way, assuming the film itself knows it’s a film, the nature of the story changes. It becomes clear that the film’s “reality” has been invaded by a surreality brought on by fan obsession with the fantasy of a J-pop idol. That fantasy comes to literal life in the film, as a metaphor for the real-life dangers of immersion, suspended disbelief, and escapism in the arts.

Jul 20

Jul 20 Cartoon Bunnies & The Incomprehensible Power of Humanity

Animated Horror

Richard Adams Watership Down and its 1978 animated adaptation carries an environmental message of letting nature run its course that can feel quaint in a world of ongoing and drastic human-caused climate change. But its humans, especially in the book, are incomprehensible, godlike creatures bringing death, destruction, and madness to the creatures they touch. In that context, the quaint message becomes heartbreakingly nostalgic for a time when stepping away from nature and letting it run its course might have been possible.

May 23

May 23 Robots Make the Worst Ethics Teachers

The 2019 Netflix film I Am Mother received a lot of attention at the time of its release for being an expertly crafted film with a small, but very talented cast, and spot on special effects. Sprinkled through the positive reviews, though, are claims that it’s an anti-abortion screed (or an “artful” take on “pro-life themes,” depending on the critic writing about it). We explain why it’s definitely not anti-abortion, as well as what it’s actually about: robots being bad at ethics.

Apr 29

Apr 29 The End of Sex, Death, & Humanity

Animated Horror, Science Fiction Horror, Philosophical Horror, Identity Horror

Ghost in the Shell tells the story of humanity's crossing the event horizon that draws us into a spiral toward meaninglessness and slow oblivion as we approach the technological singularity.

Mar 9

Mar 9 The Ticking of Clocks

Animated Horror

All three shorts in this bizarre collection develop shared and interrelated themes that, taken together, tell a narrative of environmental horror brought on by modern human greed, materialism, and self-delusion about the doom we’ve created.

Dec 8

Dec 8 The Devils & the Offensive Truth

Dreamscape Horror, Satanic Panic

Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971) has been called the most controversial film in Hollywood history. Not just controversial for its time, Russell’s masterpiece remains shocking to this day in its depictions of cruelty, orgiastic sexuality, the evils of the 17th-century Catholic Church, and blasphemous imagery.

The film tells an old historical truth about political martyrs … and gets censored for it.

Nov 14

Nov 14 Family Values in Ready or Not

Metahorror, Satanic Panic

The ham-fistedness of Ready or Not fits the carefully-crafted and well-paced balance of quippy, campy, self-aware pulp horror/comedy. The film doesn’t waste a single moment of screen time and pays close attention to the arcs of its three main characters through the deconstruction of Grace's wedding dress as she finds herself hunted in The Most Dangerous Game: Satanic Mansion Edition.

Oct 6

Oct 6 Satanic Capitalists in Rosemary's Baby

Satanic Panic,

Rosemary’s Baby and the films that have followed it draw clear lines between Satanic cults and capitalism. They tell stories about the evils that unchecked, late-stage capitalism incentivizes: selfishness, greed, ruthlessness, and the sacrifice of others for status, wealth, power, and privilege.

Sep 5

Sep 5 Moral Panic, Fundamentalism, & We Summon the Darkness

Satanic Panic

There’s a rich film tradition drawing on and indulging humanity’s long and ongoing history of Satanic panics. In We Summon the Darkness (2019), though, the Satanists we need to watch out for are a congregation of Christians following a televangelist who fancies himself “the wrath of God.” That man, Pastor John Henry Butler is, in our reading of the film, the physical embodiment of Satan on Earth. The fallen Lucifer, warped by pride and a lust for power.

Aug 9

Aug 9 The Cured & Its Place in the Zombie Media Universe

Zombies

While not a sequel or adaptation, The Cured expands on the themes of the Living Dead franchise. It does this by drawing from the fast zombie tropes established in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later and by returning to the source material behind the source material. The Cured goes beyond Night of the Living Dead (1968) and looks to the novel that inspired it: Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend (1954).

Jul 18

Jul 18 That Is Not a Zombie

Zombies

Zombies are an undead funhouse mirror, a decrepit parody of humanity meant to reflect our worst traits back at us. Part of that critique means that real, living, breathing humans, should always be more dangerous than stupid, slow-moving zombies. Today, Meg unpacks and celebrates the Romero zombie for all its given us. She also has fun hating on Zack Snyder’s fast zombies.

Jul 11

Jul 11 In Defense of Barbra: Night of the Living Dead

Zombies

The character of Barbra in 1968’s Night of the Living Dead has been mostly viewed as a useless waste of screentime, thankfully revised into a final girl action hero in the 1990 remake. We’re here to argue, as much as we love action hero Barbara (with the extra “a”), original Barbra’s reputation is undeserved. She’s a realistic character type who should have more of a place in horror and who, when present, deserves to live every once in a damn while.

Jun 30

Jun 30 Demon & a History of Denial

, Folk Horror

The film takes place over the wedding and reception of a Polish woman and a British-born Polish man. Before the wedding, Piotr discovers a skeleton buried in the yard behind their new home, the old house Żaneta inherited from her grandfather. Demon is about a terrible truth that these wedding guests and many Poles want to forget, one that persists in the bones under the very soil of Poland itself.

Jun 22

Jun 22 Grotesque Comedy, Part 2: Get Out of Stepford

Metahorror,

While not technically an adaptation or a remake, Get Out re-envisions The Stepford Wives--both the 1972 novel and the 1975 film--in what you could call a remake in spirit. (Oh, and it rightly ignores the 2004 atrocity.)

Forbes’ film and Levin’s novel dealt with feminist themes of gender power dynamics, ownership of female bodies, and the objectification of women. Get Out builds on how those issues intersect with racial power dynamics, ownership of Black bodies, and racist ideas of Black people as animals.

But Peele’s up to more than just swapping Women’s Liberation for Black Emancipation. He gives us a more hopeful film, lighter and funnier than The Stepford Wives, but at the same time heavier and more horrifying.

Jun 13

Jun 13 Grotesque Comedy, Part 1: The Stepford Wives

Ira Levin’s novel, The Stepford Wives, adapted to film in 1975 and again in 2004, marries comedy with the grotesque. That satire gives the book and its underlying feminism their power. The films miss this point in opposite ways. The ‘75 version downplays the humor, ignoring the absurdity of the novel’s premise, and the ‘04 version plays everything for laughs, seeming to mock the novel’s feminism.

Jun 9

Jun 9 Keeping Up With the Parasites

Tim Barzditis

Parasite climaxes in tragic chaos because of the systems that dehumanize and punish lower class families, while actively preventing them from advancing toward social ideals of “success.” Beneath the satirical madness of Bong’s film lies the tragic truth: the hard lines of class are nearly impossible to transcend, and attempting to cross them might leave you worse off.

May 30

May 30 Henry Spencer's Nightmare of Fatherhood in Eraserhead

Eric Botts, Meg Sipos, & Tim Barzditis

Dreamscape Horror

Everything in Eraserhead folds back on the protagonist, Henry Spencer. Every disturbing image, grating sound, jarring scene change, and bizarre dialogue tells us what’s happening in the film and what’s happening in his head, a terrible, body-horror inflected vision of paternal postpartum depression.

May 23

May 23 Pan's Labyrinth: The Trials of Ofelia

Dreamscape Horror, Folk Horror

Guillermo del Toro’s fantasy horror classic, Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), is a coming-of-age story about Ofelia, a girl living in the fascist Spanish regime of Francisco Franco as an imperiled pregnancy brings about her mother’s death. In the end, Ofelia grows--she transcends these horrors--not by giving up childish fantasies, as she’s told to do, but by learning from them to hold to her convictions, keep her own counsel, and make moral choices, even when it means sacrificing herself.

May 18

May 18 Paperhouse: A Child’s Indelible Nightmare