Category: Horror Film

The Devils (Devil’s Advocates) by Darren Arnold review – a potted history of Russell’s controversial masterpiece

The Devils is Ken Russell’s notorious 1971 historical drama telling the extraordinary story of a case of possession in 17th century France, in the city of Loudun. I start with possession because, were this any other story, that would be the most extraordinary part. But this isn’t a film about possession; it is a film about the dangers of religion and politics colliding, and it’s message is as resonant today as it was on release (and on publication of the Aldous Huxley book, The Devils of Loudun from 1952, on which the film is partly based).

Tags Aldous Huxley, Darren Arnold, Devil's Advocates, John Whiting, Ken Russell, The Devils, The Devils of Loudun

Horror Film Horror Film Reviews

It Chapter Two review – a tonally-strange and disappointing follow-up

Post author By Caitlin Duffy
Post date 14/09/2019
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It Chapter Two is the much-anticipated sequel to Andy Muschietti’s 2017 It, following up twenty-seven years after where It left off. The child members of the Losers’ Club have grown up and grown apart. Apart from Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa), who stayed in their childhood home of Derry, Maine, all of the other Losers moved across the country and have completely forgotten about their previous battles with the homicidal supernatural entity which appears to the children as Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Bill Skarsgård). After a string of child disappearances, Mike calls the other Losers, instructing them that it’s time to make good on the promise they made twenty-seven years ago to return if Pennywise ever comes back.

Tags Andy Muschietti, It, It Chapter Two

Essays Horror Film

Ancient nightmare, modern guise: Elements of Greek mythos in A Nightmare on Elm Street

Post author By Stephan Hoda
Post date 12/09/2019
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The nightmare was real. Sitting in Ava Chitwood’s course on Greek civilization, my phone starts going off. Loudly. Dr. Chitwood was the kind of professor who inspired both fear and fascination. No doubt, those of us majoring in classics adored her but nobody, and I mean nobody, wanted to get on her bad side. I remember once advising a friend of mine, “if you’re late, just don’t go.” Truth be told, she just didn’t have time for any college-age bullshit. This was the kind of professor (icon) that would throw you out for yawning too loudly. So, you can imagine the fear, the panic, and utter desperation I felt as my phone starts ringing. There I am, tearing through my bag, praying she doesn’t kick me out, when my hand finally finds the phone. I silence it, drop it back in the bag, and pick up my pen. Dr. Chitwood is just standing there silently, eyes locked on me. “In 44 CE,” she continued, “…there was a sudden outburst of music.” She winked at me and, I swear to God, it felt like a wink from Fate, herself!

Tags A Nightmare on Elm Street, Fred Krueger

Horror Film Horror Film Reviews

Gwen review – slow, slow horror in Snowdonia

Post author By Rhys Steven Jones
Post date 27/08/2019
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William McGregor’s feature debut Gwen is not your typical horror film. In fact it’s not really a horror film. What is terrifying about this film is its grey, trudging depiction of the harsh reality of life in the Welsh countryside of Snowdonia at the turn of the nineteenth century. Eleanor Worthington-Cox plays Gwen, a teenage girl whose father is away fighting in the army, struggling alongside her severe, exhausted mother Elen (Maxine Peake) to look after her little sister and prevent their small farm from falling into the hands of the local quarry owner, Mr Wynne.

Tags Gwen, William McGregor

Books Essays Essays Fiction Horror Film

Spiders and flies – the Gothic monsters of sci-fi horror

Post author By Daniel Pietersen
Post date 11/08/2019
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“Science fiction plucks from within us our deepest fears and hopes, then shows them to us in rough disguise: the monster and the rocket” – W.H. Auden

You may believe that Alien is a science fiction film. After all it’s set in space with all the hypersleep pods and computer terminals and rumbling star-drives you might want. The story happens in some distant (but not too distant) future where humanity feels at home travelling the gulfs between stars. It is, perhaps most pressingly, called Alien.

You may believe that Alien is a science fiction film and it’s not an absurd position to hold. It’s just wrong.

Tags Alien, Dracula, Mario Bava, Planet Of The Vampires

Essays Horror Film Horror Film Reviews

Midsommar: the dangers of isolation and the beauty of rebirth

Post author By Tiarnan Hatchell
Post date 23/07/2019
1 Comment on Midsommar: the dangers of isolation and the beauty of rebirth

Editor’s note: as this is an analysis of the film Midsommar, there be spoilers ahead.

Midsommar is Ari Aster’s latest horror offering following 2018’s Hereditary, and sees a group of friends who travel to Sweden for a festival that only occurs every 90 years, only to find themselves amongst a pagan cult.

Tags Ari Aster, Midsommar

Books Essays Essays Fiction Horror Film

The universe is a haunted house – the Gothic roots of science fiction

Post author By Daniel Pietersen
Post date 27/05/2019
No Comments on The universe is a haunted house – the Gothic roots of science fiction

“There could be an opening of a mental space for novelists to explore this future, not in terms of travelling at 10 times the speed of light in anti-gravity boots, but in actually looking at the human dilemmas of being close up to something that you know to be artificial but which thinks like you. If a machine seems like a human or you can’t tell the difference, then you’d jolly well better start thinking about whether it has responsibilities and rights and all the rest.” – “Ian McEwan: ‘Who’s going to write the algorithm for the little white lie?’”

With this dismissive opinion of science fiction – writing that’s full of fun and gadgets, perhaps, but ultimately vapid and ignorant of more important concerns – Ian McEwan not only set the genre internet alight but also added himself to a list of hoary old authors and critics who’ve blithely dismissed genre fiction as little more than children playing with toys while the adults look on indulgently.

Tags Frankenstein, Ian McEwan, Mary Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Books Horror Film Interviews Interviews Non-fiction Podcast

Podcast episode #4, Jessica Gildersleeve on Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now

Post author By Peter Meinertzhagen
Post date 26/05/2019
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Peter speaks to professor Jessica Gildersleeve about Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 classic horror film Don’t Look Now.

Tags Devil's Advocates, Don't Look Now, Jessica Gildersleeve, Podcast

Horror Film Horror Film Reviews

Us review – ‘maybe the evil is us’

Post author By Rhys Steven Jones
Post date 03/04/2019
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“When I decided to write this movie I was stricken by the fact that we’re in a time where we fear The Other – whether it’s the mysterious invader we think is going to come and kill us or take our jobs, or the faction we don’t live near that voted a different way than us. We’re all about pointing the finger. I wanted to suggest maybe the monster we really need to look at has our face. Maybe the evil is us.” – Jordan Peele

Jordan Peele’s new horror film Us, the eagerly awaited follow-up to his Oscar-winning horror debut Get Out (2017), documents the terror of a terrified mother, Adelaide (played by Lupita Nyong’o), as she fights to protect her family from an uncanny band of doppelgänger home invaders. The film opens with a series of haunting quotes, one of which claims that the whole of North America is infested with a network of subterranean tunnels, directly mirroring the above-ground world. From the outset, then, Peele makes it clear that the domestic horror promised in the trailers for Us will give way to something much more expansive, a nation-wide catastrophe. Nevertheless, the cinematic gaze focuses almost explicitly on the Wilson family, for reasons that become clear in a final twist in the closing minutes of the film.

Tags Jordan Peele, Us

Essays Horror Film

Domestic horror in Lee Cronin’s The Hole in the Ground

Post author By Rhys Steven Jones
Post date 19/03/2019
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Lee Cronin’s feature debut The Hole in the Ground, which premiered at Sundance Festival in 2019, marks a recent resurgence in Irish folk-horror set in remote parts of the countryside (The Lodgers, Beyond the Woods). Despite its wider setting of an ominous and dark forest, home to an ever-shifting sinkhole which pays homage to the off-the-beaten-track caverns of The Descent (2005) and the claustrophobic woodlands of The Blair Witch Project (1999), the film’s most horrifying and violent moments are intensely domestic.

Tags Lee Cronin, The Hole in the Ground