Tag: Horror

Demi Moore Does Body Horror in The Substance

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A few years ago, for Horror Homeroom, I wrote about how writer/director Coralie Fargeat reverses the male gaze in her rape/revenge debut Revenge. In the beginning of that film, Fargeat focuses the camera’s gaze on Jen (Matilida Anna Ingrid Lutz), the mistress of the uber wealthy Richard (Kevin Janssens), who rapes Jen not long into the runtime. Initially, the camera focuses on Jen’s legs, buttocks, and breasts, as she sucks a lollipop. This switches about halfway through the film, and not only does the gaze switch, but Jen becomes the hunter, ultimately unleashing hell upon Kevin for the brutality he inflicted upon her.

Fargeat’s latest feature, the excellent The Substance, again deals with issues of gender and the male gaze but expands that to include the beauty industry and how culture generally treats aging women, specifically celebrities. To stress that point from the outset, the movie opens with a Hollywood star just constructed on Hollywood Boulevard. It belongs to Elisabeth Sparkle, played by Demi Moore. During the first few years of the star’s existence, people pose for pictures with it. Judging by their clothes, you can tell this it’s the 1980s, which was the start of Moore’s career as a Brat Pack member. As years go by, the star cracks. People walk by it. They spill stuff on it. They don’t recall who Sparkle is. Her celebrity has been reduced to a workout series, and she’s on the cusp of aging out of that, on her 50th bday.

As soon as the film’s first act, Elisabeth gets notification from a strange, anonymous company that she can take a product called “the substance” to essentially look younger again. She really, really wants this, since the powers that be booted her from her workout show, in order to find a younger, more attractive model/actress.

Unlike Revenge, The Substance is very much a body horror movie, and its practical effects are on par with the likes of The Fly, Basket Case, and other great body horror movies of the 1980s. When Elisabeth injects herself with the substance, she passes out on her bathroom floor. Her back splits open, and a younger version of herself appears named Sue (Margaret Qualley). Sue easily lands Elisabeth’s former job. Her face and body are plastered on billboards. She appears frequently in commercials and chats up late-night talk show hosts. She obtains everything Elisabeth once had.

The problem is that the more famous Sue becomes, the more Elisabeth ages. The two entities technically need each other to exist, but Sue takes and sucks more and more from Elisabeth, until she starts to look like a crone. Even prior to that, Fargeat uses lightening and make-up to make Moore look older, to make her skin look as cracked as Elisabeth’s Hollywood star.

The messages in Fargeat’s film are by no means subtle. The film serves up an all-out assault and critique on the beauty industry, the media, celebrity, and how older women are mistreated and even worse, forgotten by the culture that once loved them. Men in suits/bigwig TV execs always tell Sue and Elisabeth to smile more. The film has so many discomforting moments, reinforced by the frequent close-ups that Fargeat uses. The sound design is sometimes amped up too, especially to reinforce how loud and overbearing men in power can be.

Like Revenge, The Substance makes the male gaze obvious with frequent close-ups of Sue working out in front of the cameras, zooming in on her most intimate body parts, objectifying and sexualizing her. Yet, she also knows the power of her own body. She also craves the fame and sues her looks to obtain it.

Yet, what I found to be the most powerful moment isn’t one of the gross-out body horror sequences. Near the midway point, Elisabeth nearly goes on a date with an old classmate who still has a major crush on her and generally likes her. For nearly an hour, she stands in front of the mirror, messing with her make-up. She’s haunted by a massive billboard of Sue just outside of her swanky apartment’s window. Because she no longer feels attractive, Elisabeth never attends the date. It’s heartbreaking, and Moore is great throughout the film, but she’s especially brilliant in that particular scene.


While I don’t think The Substance will resonate with everyone, especially some of the body horror bits, Fargeat isn’t afraid to take some wild wings with her filmmaking. Moore is perfectly cast in this film about an aging celebrity deemed disposable by a celebrity culture that created her. Once again, Fargeat does a lot of interesting things with the camera and the gaze to reinforce points she wants to make about gender.

The Substance is currently in theaters. If you want to learn more about Fargeat’s work, check out this interview I conducted with her for Signal Horizon a few years ago.

Milk & Serial: A surprise DIY found footage hit

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Last year, I wrote about a short horror film called The Chair that became a viral sensation. The short, which you can watch for free on YouTube, is all kinds of creepy, blending possession with what may be a metaphor for old age/Alzheimer’s. The short was created by the folks in That’s a Bad Idea, which initially started as a sketch comedy group but now keeps making more and more horror films.

Their latest film, Milk & Serial, also directed by Curry Barker, who stars as lead character Milk, is an inventive, non-linear found footage film that was created for $800. In less than a month, it already has over half a million views on YouTube. Cooper Tomlinson stars alongside Barker as Seven, who plans a bday party for Milk. The two are pranksters, constantly filming new content to upload their channel. Except, in this case, the pranks lead to one escalating crisis after another.

If you want to read more of my thoughts, check out this piece I wrote for 1428 Elm. In it, I explain that what’s so effective about the 62-minute film is the DIY, punk rock energy it has. You can tell Tomlinson, Barker, and the rest of the small crew had a hell of a good time making this.

Yet, the film also works because of what it has to say about voyeurism and livestreaming. The non-linear narrative works at keeping viewers engaged, as one event after another is teased, often out of order, at a break-neck pace. Yet, when one prank early on causes Seven and Milk to cover up a crime, you feel like you’re a witness to it, rubbernecking, unable to look away or unsubscribe from their channel.

After a few viral hits now, shot on a shoestring budget, it wouldn’t surprise me if Barker and crew are tapped for bigger projects. Still, I hope that they continue to make films on their own terms with the sort of DIY, indie filmmaking, punk rock spirit that Milk & Serial has.

A wide-ranging interview with Full Moon Features Founder Charles Band

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I got into horror by visiting video stores with my dad. On Friday nights, we’d browse the aisles, and he’d let me rent a horror movie or two. I was always fascinated by the colorful sleeves of Full Moon Features movies like Puppet Master, Demonic Toys, and Castle Freak.

When presented with the opportunity to interview Full Mean Features founder and legendary B-movie director Charles Band for 1428 Elm, I jumped on the chance. During the wide-ranging chat, we talked about his new movie, Quadrant, Full Moon’s new production label Pulp Noir, indie filmmaking, and AI.

Especially of interest to me was Band’s comments on AI in terms of its use in filmmaking and how it can be a tool used sparingly. He also talked quite a bit about Full Moon’s new label, Pulp Noir, which will release “darker” and “edgier” films with more mature subject matter. The first to release on the label, Quadrant, follows a Jack the Ripper-obsessed serial killer who uses the quadrant technology, basically a VR headset, to transport herself to 19th Century London. The film is a stylish sci-fi flasher with some cool black and white sequences.

Band also promised a few exciting Full Moon films on the horizon that should excite fans of oh, say, the Puppet Master series. To read the full interview, check it out over at 1428 Elm.

Alien: Romulus Returns to Basics

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It’s been a while since we’ve had an Alien movie worth seeing on the big screen. Ridley Scott’s return to the franchise more than a decade ago gave us Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017). Prometheus has a lot of interesting things to say, but fans complained because it wasn’t a movie featuring Xenomorphs stalking and killing. Because of that, Covenant paid too much attention to fan gripes and in turn, gave us one of the worst films in the franchise.

Alien: Romulus, for better or worse, is a return to bloody basics. It’s even set between the first two films, widely considered the best in the series. Directed by Fede Alvarez (Don’t Breathe, Evil Dead 2013), the film follows a group of young miners desperate to get the hell off of their deary planet, which sees zero days of sunlight. The Company won’t allow them to transfer and keeps upping the number of years they have to work. Yes, The Company is still just as evil and horrible.

Cailee Spaeny stars as Rain, an orphan who’s only real sense of family is an android/syntenic named Andy (David Jonsson). He’s essentially a product that The Company disposed of, before Rain’s father rescued him and reprogrammed him to look after Rain. It’s a really interesting twist on the android aspect that’s always been a part of this franchise.

Rain’s friends, also miners, hatch a plan to board a derelict space station that’s drifted into their orbit and steal the hibernation pods so they can reach a much sunnier planet and create their own lives. They refuse to labor until they die on a bleak planet, all on behalf of The Company. Yes, some of the class politics from the first two Alien movies are certainly at play here and generally handled well.

Unfortunately, however, most of the other characters are mere cannon fodder for the Xenomorphs and face huggers, which are quickly unleashed once the group’s plan goes terribly, terribly awry. There’s the ship’s pilot, Navarro (Aileen Wu), the pregnant Kay (Isabela Merced), Rain’s hunky boyfriend Tyler (Archie Renaux), and the real jerk of the lot, Bjorn (Spike Fearn). None of these actors are bad per say, but too many of them are given little to do. It’s really Spaeny and Jonsson’s performances that are the most memorable. They’re the only fully realized characters who also have quite a complex relationship. Can a machine be family? Can it even be trusted? Rain wrestles with this very question throughout the two-hour runtime.

Because of various narrative turns his character takes, Jonsson goes through quite a range of emotions that straddle hero and villain, another common trait of the franchise regarding the synthetic characters. Spaeny, meanwhile, makes a kickass final girl. No, her performance isn’t as iconic as Sigourney Weaver’s various iterations of Ripley, but that’s an unfair comparison. Spaeny handles her own well enough, and we come to care about Rain’s fate.

This is certainly the scariest Alien movie that we’ve had in some years. The Xenomorphs and face huggers, which were largely created through practical effects, are downright menacing. The ship feels confining, perilous, and suffocating, much like the first film. The sound design, especially the moments of space’s eerie silence, really enhance the suspense and that fear of the unknown.

The film’s main problem, at least throughout the first half, is that it has way, way too many nods to what Ridley Scott created in Alien and what James Cameron did with Aliens. It’s too much of a homage. The film really becomes interesting in the last act, when Alvarez manages to expand the lore and mythology in quite a creative way, while keeping on point with some of the franchise’s main themes, that being the dangers of technology, fear of the unknown, and The Company’s disregard for human life. There’s a lot going on with AI that speaks to our times, and I’ll leave it at that to avoid spoilers.

Alvarez is known for really gory scenes and sexual violence. There’s a lot of that in this film, especially in that harrowing and surprising final act. It’s at that point this truly feels like a Fede Alvraez movie and less like a tribute to the strongest two films in the franchise. He very much makes that final act his own and takes the franchise in some exciting new directions.

Alien: Romulus has plenty to enjoy, especially for long-term fans of the franchise. It operates best when it’s less a tribute to what came before and instead carves out its own path within the broader Alien universe. Alvarez crafted a horror movie through and through that’s actually scary at points. Though flawed, this is the best Alien movie we’ve had in some years.

Alien Romulus opens nationwide on Friday.

Yes, Longlegs is the creepiest movie of the year

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I’m not one to say such and such is the scariest movie of all time, or such and such rivals The Exorcist. I avoid those broad statements. That said, I will definitively declare that Longlegs is the creepiest movie I’ve seen all year, one that will stick with me for a long while, from its cold, immersive world, to Maika Monroe and Nic Cage’s performances, to the unsettling imagery that haunts nearly every frame. Writer/director Oz Perkins’ Longlegs is pure nightmare fuel.

Set in the 1990s, the film stars Monroe (It Follows) as FBI agent Lee Harker, who’s placed on a case to locate a serial killer and also solve why the patriarch within various families murders his loved ones. She works alongside Agent Carter (Blair Underwood), who has been on the case for years but has been running cold until Lee shows up. For whatever reason, Lee seems to possess some sort of psychic abilities and connection to Longlegs (Cage). The reasons why exactly become much clearer in the film’s final act, but the less audience members know going into the film, the better. Carter comes across as a hard-nosed skeptic, while Lee believes there’s something otherworldly possibly at play. It’s a solid dynamic at the center of the film.

Longlegs has earned some comparisons to Silence of Lambs, and they’re somewhat warranted. Monroe’s character, like Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling, largely operates in an all-male world. This is the 90s, after all. More than one agent doubts Lee’s ability to handle such a grisly case. She has to prove herself, and prove herself she eventually does, to the point she becomes absolutely obsessed with the case. She stays up all night, trying to decipher Longlegs’ bizarre letters, which seem like they’re written in code. At one point, she tells her mom over the phone that the work she’s doing is important. She understands if she solves the case, she’ll save other families. There’s also the fact that Lee hails from a tiny unnamed town and grew up sheltered, living only with her religious mom, played by Alicia Witt. The scenes between those two are oddly unnerving as well. Something simply seems strange and uncanny about their relationship.

If I had one critique of Perkins’ other films, it’s that they too often elevated style over story and narrative. Longlegs finally feels like he got both just right- style and substance. This film is incredibly bleak aesthetically, from the snowy settings of small-town America to the dim libraries where Lee often works late into the night. Yet, Perkins creates quite a world here, with a dense narrative and several layers that eventually peel away the longer the runtime progresses. By the last act, it all gels. I also can’t understate just how hellish the imagery is, from nuns with shotguns, to maggot-covered corpses, to snakes that hiss and fill the frame. There are moments that feel like they’re statured in pure evil, meant to torment the viewer’s mind well after the credits roll.

For as stylish the film looks and for as detailed the narrative is, this film works so well because of Monroe and Cage’s performances. In short, this is the most disturbing role I’ve ever seen Cage in. He’s barely recognizable when you do see him. Every moment he’s on screen is hair-raising. Monroe, meanwhile, plays a pensive, yet determined FBI agent, and one specific scene in which she confronts Longlegs drips with edge-of-your-seat suspense. It’s no wonder that the distributor, Neon, made a whole promo about Monroe’s heartbeat the first time she saw Cage in the Longlegs makeup. You feel it in that particular scene they have together.

Longlegs is a film that warrants rewatches, if audience members can handle the devilish imagery. It’s one of those films where you’ll want to reexamine nearly every frame to see what you might have missed during the first or second viewing. This is, by far, Perkins’ strongest film to date, and it’s Cage’s most unnerving performance. Meanwhile, Monroe has starred in two of the best horror films of the last decade- It Follows and Longlegs.

The film opens nationwide on Friday.

Interview: Tiger Stripes Director Amanda Nell Eu on Body Horror, Censorship, and Influences

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Now that the year is at its halfway point, I’m already pondering what some of my favorite films of 2024 are, and yes, I know there’s still plenty of films yet to be released. Still, there are a few movies that I’m sure will top my year-end list. One of those films is Tiger Stripes, by Amanda Nell Eu. The Malaysian feature debut combines several genres, including body horror, coming-of-age drama, and even possession, with a dash of Mean Girls influence on the side.

I first screened and reviewed the film at the Jim Thorpe Independent Film Festival back in April. While I probably screened 50 films at the JTIFF this year, Tiger Stripes is one that stood out for the way it used body horror to address marginalization, puberty, and especially gender. It also has one heck of a performance by Zafreen Zairizal, who stars as Zaffan. She’s shunned by society, including her home and school and finds refuge in the jungle.

I had the pleasure of recently interviewing director Amanda Nell Eu for 1428 Elm. We discussed the movie’s influences, censorship it faced in her home country of Malaysia, and some of those very tough bullying scenes. It was a delight chatting with her and getting more insight into this unique film. You can read the interview by clicking here.

Tiger Stripes is now available globally on VOD, and I highly recommend it.

In Honor of John Carpenter’s Hollywood Star

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Recently, for 1428 Elm, I made a list of my favorite John Carpenter films in honor of his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, coming next year. This got me thinking a lot about Carpenter, who has pretty much stopped directing (I don’t really count that Suburban Screams episode last fall as a proper return) to record music and still score some films. He also plays a lot of video games now, apparently. Still, I’d be hard-pressed to think of a director who has had more impact on the horror genre than Carpenter, other than maybe James Whale, Wes Craven, and Hitchcock.

If you asked me, I couldn’t tell you which Carpenter film I saw first. Was it Halloween? Was it The Thing? Was it The Fog? Most likely, I first viewed his work with my dad, who made a habit of renting horror movies with me when I was a kid, and I’m fairly certain that’s when I first encountered the maestro’s work, likely when I was 10, 11, or 12. Years later, in college, my friends and I had horror movie marathons at least once a month. Carpenter’s work factored heavily into our screenings, and it’s then I encountered some of his lesser-known work, like Princess of Darkness and Assault on Precinct 13.

The older I get, the more I’m drawn to some of these less-revered films, especially the later parts of what Carpenter described as his “apocalypse” trilogy. This trilogy began with The Thing in 1982, but I find myself rewatching Prince of Darkness (1987) and In the Mouth of Madness (1994) more. Because I’ve taught Halloween so many times in my horror film/literature class and because The Thing is so revered, and rightfully so, I’ve taken a pause from those classics in part because they feel so inescapable.

Prince of Darkness caught my attention in the last year or two because that film, while incredibly eerie, also has such a profound sense of dread to it. In short, there’s nothing optimistic about Prince of Darkness. It’s incredibly freakin’ bleak. Even though Childs or MacReady may be infected at the end of The Thing, the last shot shows them sitting around a fire, trading a bottle of whiskey back and forth. You hold out hope one of them will survive the night. There’s no chance for that at the conclusion of Prince of Darkness and you start to think that yes, the world may end, after graduate students and scientist unleash a strange goop from an ancient canister that ushers in Satan. Hey, I didn’t say the plot was perfect. Oh, and did I mention that Donald Pleasance plays a priest, and there’s a cameo by Alice Cooper?!

In the Mouth of Madness is Carpenter’s last truly big film, and he really went crazy with it. The film stars Sam Neill, who plays an insurance investigator sent to solve the mystery of Sutter Cane’s disappearance. Cane is a horror novelist whose work is similar to Lovecraft and whose pages start to become real. This film is all out bonkers, and it’s so much fun to see Neill return to the horror genre after the massive success of Jurassic Park. For me, this one has plenty of rewatch value because of Neill’s performance and for what it has to say about mass marketing, consumption, and even the publishing industry itself. It’s also a fitting conclusion to the apocalypse trilogy. It’s also a thrill ride to see a Lovecraftian Carpenter film.

It’s unclear if Carpenter will ever direct a full-length feature again. He’s stated in the past he wants to, but regardless, his legacy is secured. Halloween and The Thing especially are essentially inescapable classics at this point, referenced in countless other films. Yet, for as much as I love those two works, I find myself returning to Carpenter’s mid-career films much more, appreciating them years later.

Maxxxine: A Fitting Finale to Ti West’s X Trilogy

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If anyone says that mainstream horror movies are all remakes, requels, prequels, and reboots, then please point them in the direction of Ti West’s X trilogy, which began with 2022’s X, followed by the prequel Pearl, and now the finale, Maxxxine, all starring Mia Goth in one banger of a performance after another. West manages to stick the landing and conclude the trilogy well, all while steeping the final entry in 1980s Hollywood, complete with cocaine and neon colors.

Comparing the trilogy’s entries really isn’t fair because each and every one stands on its own, and each is stylistically different. X is a bloody romp and tribute to 1970s grindhouse, while also serving as a commentary on voyeurism and audience. Pearl is a tragic character study and technicolor nightmare that has plenty of nods to the Wizard of Oz. Maxxxine, meanwhile, is a nod to the 1980s, video rental stores, and slashers, specifically Giallos.

Maxxxine opens years after the conclusion of X, and though you really don’t need to see the other films to make sense of the final entry, it’s beneficial to give X another watch because so much of the film calls back to that first entry. Set in 1985, the third entry finds Maxine Minx (Goth) in Hollywood. After carving out a very successful career for herself as a porn star, she wants to make the shift to more mainstream movies. It turns out that she lands a starring role in a horror movie that’s a sequel to a B movie called The Puritan, helmed by the very serious and demanding director Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki). The filmmaker demands that Maxine get her head in the game and be willing to give her all for the film. Alongside the bloodshed, Bender wants to send a powerful message into the world, using the horror genre to do so. Some of the interactions between Maxine and the director are some of my favorite moments in the film, commentaries about art and the horror genre generally, as well as the difficulty of working with the mainstream studios, which too often stifle truly creative voices that go against the status quo.

The film set is besieged by Satanic Panic protestors who believe that everything from heavy metal to genre movies are the work of the devil. Meanwhile, there’s a killer on the loose called the Night Stalker who torments Maxine for what transpired in X, and he continually picks off young women who worked with the wannabe starlet in the porn industry. In fact, the black-gloved killer hires a private investigator, played by Kevin Bacon, to track Maxine down. Much of the film plays out like a murder mystery, though there are some gnarly and bloody kills that should satisfy horror hounds, though this film doesn’t have the grindhouse elements of X. It’s much tamer by comparison and more of a drama, too.

Yes, this film deals with Hollywood and Maxine’s aspirations as an actress, and like the other entries, it’s very much a love letter to filmmaking in general. It’s also about the weight of a character’s actions. As Bacon’s character warns Maxine, the past is about to catch up with her. She’s haunted by it, and she can’t outrun it. She has to learn to confront it. If she doesn’t do that, then her career and friends will suffer. This is a much more vulnerable Maxine compared to the first entry, again showing Goth’s versality as an actress. She’s rattled by the murders and notes and video tapes the killer leaves for her.

All of Ti West’s films are stylish, and Maxxxine is no different. This film is drenched in pastel and neon colors. The characters, including Maxine, have big hair and 80s outfits. This is a film, like the others, that really should be seen on a big screen, especially for some of the set designs, costumes, and Hollywood studio lots. There’s even a nod to the Bates Motel, again another reference to the fact the past always catches up with the present. It’s inescabale.

While I’m hesitant to say that Maxxxine is as good as Pearl or X, it’s a fitting conclusion to West’s trilogy. Goth’s character comes full circle and I can’t see any other way that this could have ended. Overall, West has made an outstanding horror trilogy that’s also very much his love letter to the process of filmmaking itself and different eras of Holllywood.

Maxxxine opens in theaters on Friday, July 5.

Thoughts on the Nosferatu trailer (and why I’m excited)

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Let me preface this post by stating if you want a more detailed analysis of the Nosferatu trailer from me, then read the piece I wrote a few days ago over at 1428 Elm. I did a pretty comprehensive breakdown of the trailer, including the characters, the comparisons to Bram Stoker’s text, and comparisons to the original film. I’m using this post to talk about why I have a lot of faith in Robert Eggers’ take on Nosferatu and why he may be the only contemporary genre director who can handle the monumental task of remaking this film, like Werner Herzog did in 1979.

I’ll also state that I have a deep love of F.W. Murnau’s original 1922 film, and I’ve written about it and presented on it more than a few times. In fact, every fall, when I teach my Horror Literature and Film class, the very first film we watch is Nosferatu, as an introduction to German Expressionism and the foundations of the genre. It’s a heck of a lot of fun discussing that movie with the class. Many students, even the horror hounds, haven’t seen it before, at least not in full.

I’m hard-pressed to think of a director better suited to remake this classic than Eggers. His entire body of work has been period pieces, starting with The Witch, then The Lighthouse, and lastly, The Northman. He likes period pieces, and it’s clear from the trailer he’s sticking with the Victorian era for this remake. Not only that, but he’s clearly influenced by German Expressionism. This is most evident in The Lighthouse, a film set in 1905 and shot in black and white, very much reliant on light and shadow and strange camera angles, like Murnau’s work. Nosferatu has been Eggers’ dream project for years, and if you watch The Lighthouse specifically and even The Witch, to a lesser extent, it’s clear why.

The trailer, even if it’s about 90 seconds long, makes clear that Eggers is sticking to the general story of Stoker’s text and Murnau’s very loose adaptation of it. As I wrote in my piece for 1428 Elm, the trailer does a good job establishing the main characters, including Count Orlok’s prey. This includes Nicholas Hoult as Thomas Hutter, Lily-Rose Deep as Ellen Hutter, Thomas’ wife who comes under Orlok’s attacks, and Emma Corrin as Anna Harding, likely Ellen’s best friend who stands in for the Lucy character in Stoker’s book. Willem Dafoe stars as the Van Helsing-type character.

There also a refrain that’s repeated, and it’s simple, but effective. “He is coming.” The trailer barely shows Bill Skarsgård in the make-up, but it does present Orlok as an apocalyptic threat to the New World, who will not only attack Thomas, Ellen, and Emma, but also unleash plague, famine, and death. We see the rats. We see the coffins carried through the streets of (London maybe? It’s hard to tell). He is coming indeed, and I have faith Eggers is going to make this Gothic film frightening, especially when you consider he told Empire magazine, “It’s a horror movie. It’s a Gothic horror movie. And I do think that there hasn’t been an old-school Gothic movie that’s actually scary in a while. And I think that the majority of audiences will find this one to be the case.”

Eggers’ movie, like the other Nosferatu films, appears to make the vampire predatory and scary again. It also aligns Orlok with predatory animals again, including the wolf. I’m all for it! There’s no director I can think of who better understands the source material or who’s been influenced by German Expressionism more than Eggers. The trailer is extremely promising, and I can’t wait for the film’s release on Christmas day. Until then, check out the original if you haven’t watched it yet. It’s public domain and free to stream online.

Celebrating Queer Horror During Pride

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Horror has a long, rich history of celebrating queerness. This dates back to its 19th Century foundation in Gothic literature, specifically the famous story of the friendship among Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron, all sexually fluid writers whose work, especially Mary Shelley’s, explores themes of Otherness. Meanwhile, her hubs, Percy, was an anarchist who advocated for the rights of the marginalized. Queerness extends to other Gothic writers, including Oscar Wilde, author of the Portrait of Dorian Gray. Wilde is an important figure because he was put on trial in the late 19th Century for “gross indecency,” after the details of his homosexual affair with a British aristocrat became public. Needless to say, this profoundly negatively impacted the writer’s career, but he was unashamed of who he was and his sexuality.

Queerness extends to horror’s earliest film adaptations, too, including Nosferatu by gay director F.W. Murnau, and some of the most famed early Universal movies, specifically those by openly gay director James Whale, including Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Old Dark House, and most notably, Bride of Frankenstein, a campy feature that includes many theater actors who worked with Whale.

While horror does have some problematic depictions of the LGBTQ community, such as Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, and the “bury your gays” trope that became all too prevalent in slashers of the 1980s, the genre has become more and more inclusive, with recent examples being Freaky, Attachment, Let the Right One In, Spiral, Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, and the haunting and mesmerizing I Saw the TV Glow, by non-binary director Jane Schoenbrun. These are just a few examples in an ever-growing canon.

Horror has and always will have a relationship to Otherness and by an extension queerness. In celebration of Pride Month and my love of horror, I wanted to share two lists I composed for 1428 Elm. The first is a list of classic queer horror movies, and the second is a list of more contemporary queer horror films.

Enjoy, and Happy Pride!