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Week 14

             This week we watched the film Crimson Peak made in 2015. Personally, I am a fan of gothic style as Hanson describes it “as a style in forms of architecture, literature, film, and television” (33). It is interesting to look at this style of film versus noire films. They seem similar with the except of having either female or male protagonist. They both deal with detective/deduction plots, but noire is more of a who dunnit. While gothic is more about whether or not the female is crazy or she was on to something. It makes it seem like women need to prove that they should be believed, that they are deserving of it.

Like how we have talked about locations before, the estate becomes its own character. It is not just a family home, but a space of horror. The house feels as if it is a reflection of the twins. The house and what is happening to it is like a rash. The inner going ons between Lucille and Thomas and what they are doing is like what systematically happens inside the body.

Lucille takes on an interesting role in the film. it seems that she films different roles that women usually take in horror films. She is going back and forth in contradictory roles like sister/mother and lover. She acts as the controlling mother trying to keep ties on Thomas. Hanson talks about “the monstrous double signifying duplicity and evil nature” (34) which could reflect on both Lucille and Thomas. At face value they both seem fine, but there is a hidden evilness. It kind of plays into that vampire characteristics in horror, being visible beautiful but hidden monstrosity. Thomas plays a different role in this film compared to men in other horror films. Hanson also talks about the expression of “anxieties of shifting gender roles” (47). Thomas takes on the position of ”other” that usually is taken by women. He becomes that in between desirable factor, the damsel. Similar to Helen in Nosferatu, he must die because he is too other.

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Week 13

             This week, we watched the film Jennifer’s Body made in 2009. While as the time of its original release, it did not do well in box office. But later around the time of the #MeToo movement and the 10 year anniversary it started to pick up popularity. This film is different to other that we have watched in multiple ways. Past films have had visual grotesque or different looking monsters. Cherry talks about how “the most popular type of horror film was the vampire film” (170). I think the reason being is partly because of the visual appeal that the vampire brings. They are designed as their sexual, mysterious creatures that audiences can fawn over. Jennifer is depicted in a similar way, being seen very sexually and not visual monstrous. Personally, I don’t think it is fair to label Jennifer as the sole monster. I think she commits monstrous acts, but is not really the monster. The film also depicts Jennifer as being possessed, so the being killing men is not Jennifer, but something in her body. I think the real monsters should be the band Low Shoulder. It was their actions that lead to Jennifer being possessed and then killing people. Their ego and lack of care for others leads to a monster being created. It connects to a question that I would talk about with my friends when Captain America: The Winter Soldier came out. Who do you blame the person who made the gun, the gun, or who fired the gun. Who is really at fault, the band, Jennifer, or the thing that possessed Jennifer. Since we as viewers see what fully happens to Jennifer, there is a sense of sadness directed towards what the film what trying to make the monster. As Cherry mentions, “empathy for the monster continues into adulthood and may be one of the reasons why some types of horror film… are so popular with female viewers” (174). I think that that reason in combination of the “monster” being female as well already makes female audiences have sympathy towards Jennifer.

Something interesting about this film is its focus on taking classic slasher tropes and spinning them. In most slasher films, the girls who just had sex are targeted by the killer quickly. While Jennifer is targeted because it was believed that she was a virgin, a complete opposite of the slasher trope. Much like the film is taking this tropes and making it their own, Jennifer is spending the film reclaiming her body. The main characters, Needy and Jennifer, also go against the traditional roles. While Needy could be read as final girl/victim and Jennifer as monster, in reality there are each both of those roles. Jennifer is a final girl because she survives what Low Shoulder tried to do to her, but she then becomes the monster. Needy goes from side friend, to final girl/victim, and then to monster at the very end. It takes these normally separate roles and mushes them into two characters. Personally, I really enjoy this film and have seen it multiple times before.  

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Week 12

             This week, we watched the film The Babadook from 2014. This film kind of brings up the question of since it was by a female does that inherently make it feminist. I think the film could be read both ways. One way is that it was trying to be a feminist film, but fails because it does not kill/get rid of the Babadook, which represents the absence of the father. It could also be read as being feminist because it shows a female main character having to live with grief and makes the female character a three dimensional person. I think overall, it had feminist ideas, like showing womanhood and the absence of the father, but was not super concerned with it. The film also brings up this common idea of having the woman (mother) take the blame for the child’s behavior and the perception of the mother. One theme that I saw with this film was the perception of the outside on the mother. Not about how the mother views herself.

             This film also brings up the question of what was monster. It seems that it was written to be the mother’s grief and not being able to let it go in a healthy way. It also touches on the idea of motherhood being suffocating and consuming. As Dempsey mentions, “the real monster in the film is not Kent’s antipodean bogeyman, the Babadook, but rather the repressed grief of the main characters that is embodied by the figure” (1). This film deals with the ideas of grief, trauma and survivors guilt. It also brings up the something that Carol Clover talked about which is the “terrible place”. This is another instant where the location where the horrors are happening are not in a foreign place, but in a location that would usually be safe. The house is both the safe space and the terrible place.

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Week 11

             This week, we watched the film Get Out by Jordan Peele. I really liked this film, even though I got spoiled on the twist ending before I watched it. I think Peele does a really great job in adding this subtle hints in the movie making it even more impactful. Especially the scene with Rose and the Froot Loops. She has her past “conquest” posted behind her like she is a proud hunter. She also has a cup of milk and a bowl of Froot Loops beside her. This can be ready as a further view of her hyper realized white supremacy, she kept the colored cereal separate from the white milk. Peele does something different when portray8ing Rose as the villain. Which I fully believes her to be, I don’t think she is a victim in any way. In past films, like At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul where the female villain was portrayed as a witch. Depicting a gross, hideous character that wears their monstrosity. Rose, however, is depicted similar to later versions of vampires. She is visually beautiful with a hidden evilness. It further what we have talks about before in class, that is becomes harder to see who the monster is because it is no longer just a physical difference seen.

             Something that Robin Coleman mentions is how “Blacks were pressed to enter into support relationships with Whites” (151). That idea can kind of be seen in Get Out. Rose’ family has that idea that they can take Black bodies to further their life. Thinking that there were only there to help support the White family. It also comes to point the theme of white ownership of Black bodies. Think links back to slavery and how Black bodies were treated as actionable goods. Coleman also talks about “the Other as a scapegoat” (167). I think that can be seen in just how Rose’s family acts. They have been able to get away with kidnapping this people and having no repercussions. Even when Chris is strangling Rose at the end, it seems like she feels that Chris will get the blame, which he does in the original ending. That idea of the Other being a scapegoat is kind of a real life thing. People who are not white often get the blame pushed on them. Like currently China shouldering the blame for COVID and people thinking its okay to call it offensive names like “China Virus” and “Kung Flu”.

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Week 10

For this week, we watched the film Candyman by Bernard Rose. Once again, this film has the main female character named Helen. This name probably comes from Helen of Troy, the woman who caused the Trojan war. She is this well known female who men desired and also caused their downfalls. However, Helen of Troy was Greek, not this common version that we see in horror films. Helen now is this white female. As Briefel and Ngai mention, “the scene thus appropriately closes with Helen reading the words, ‘IT WAS ALWAYS YOU HELEN’” (86) seems a bit meta, in how there are so many female characters in horror named that. In Candyman, Helen’s witness can be read as purity and hammers in her disconnect from the Black community. Something that I found interesting in the film was when Helen took over the legend. It seems like her didn’t deserve it in a weird way. For Candyman, he unjustly suffered at the hands of white males and then became the legend. Kind of going back to that idea of the final girl, needing to suffer through pain to achieve something. While Helen did not unjustly suffer, she called upon Candyman. It’s weird that she is now seen as the hero with the moniker of the legend. It demonizes the Black man and idolized the white female. This film is a great example for Robin Wood’s term “terrible house”. Wood states, “The borderline between home and slaughterhouse had disappeared – the slaughterhouse has invade the home” (212). We see Candyman come through a mirror in the bathroom, directly invading one’s little bubble.

What Helen does reminds me of what we talked about with The Mummy and King Kong. These privileged white people go poking and prodding at something they don’t really know. Helen went and called upon Candyman, she opened the door for him. Helen also takes on my roles during the film. She is an academic that starts pulling at this Candyman thread. But she is also the love object for both Candyman and Trevor, the betrayed wife, and later becomes the monster. When she becomes the monster, it is her taking over about black role and taking away that agency from Candyman. When Helen takes on the legend, for me, it makes her less likeable. Like she allowed all those innocent people get killed to just end up taking on that role that cause so much distress. I think the film was trying to imply that she would be better, but killing Trevor kind of just reset it. When Tony is Candyman he creates “the Monster’s being sympathetic” (Wood, 205). The audience learns about his backstory and that allows people to kind of feel for him.

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Week 8

This week we watched the films Halloween and Sleepaway Camp and read Carol Clover’s Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film. Clover talks about how horror is seen as a kind of low genre, but within that slasher films are at the bottom. Like the bottom of the bottom genre. I think that at the time she wrote this, slasher films did not get the credit they deserved, they are a lot more complex than what people gave them credit for. Clover credits Hitchcock’s Psycho with being an ancestor to slasher films. With Psycho being such a highly appreciated film, it only makes sense that films from that one should be looked at the same way.

Halloween is one of the most know slasher films, Michael being one of horror’s most popular killers. This has somewhat to do with Carpenter and what he brought to the film. he brought this high end quality to Halloween and used the eye camera. While this is not the first time being use, he is noted most with it because how he chose to use it. Halloween’s use of the eye camera put the audience into the monster’s place. They are forced into the monster and are not longer the third party. As Clover mentions, “cinema, it is claimed, owes its particular success in the sensations genre… to its unprecedented ability to manipulate point of view” (71). Halloween really created the archetype for what Clover coins as the “final girl” in horror films. She describes the final girl as not weaponizing their sexuality, usually being a virgin. They are usually the good girl, innocent, to themselves, and a bit androgenous. “Just as the killer is not full masculine, she is not fully feminine” (88). The final girl is blurring these gender lines and making it “ok” for the female to be the protagonist. Laurie become powerful because she uses a phallic object to fight back, the knife. This is understood to mean that power comes from masculinity.  She is only able to survive because she suffers pain and trauma, that’s how she gains her agency. She is still female, so her “penetrations” towards Michael don’t really work, but she lives through the movie. the furthers the connection of sex and death in horror. That idea of “I hate you, but I want to be inside of you” and a weird intimacy in both wanting to sexual be with someone and wanting to kill them.

Personally, I really enjoy Sleepaway Camp, even with its complicated ending. I think this film really mixes up what Clover talks about with the monster and final girl. Throughout the film, it is setting up Angela being the final girl. She is adverse to sexual behaviors, quiet, and innocent. She presents as a helpless female character. At the end of the film it is revealed that Angela is actually Peter and is the one who has been killing everyone. Knowing this and looking back at Angela, hints of her being the killer can become clear. Clover says, “the killer is the psychotic product of a sick family but still recognizably human” (74). Through flash backs the audience sees that Angela went through a lost of trauma. From seeing her father in a weirdly primal sexual act to having the family die to then being forced to act as a gender that they might not have wanted. This shows that horror is about trauma, it is a cinema of anxieties. While the scene where Angela is kind of fixated on Judy could be read as queer, it could also be read as normal male hormones showing up. I think that this film complicated the killer and victim narrative. Angela is a victim herself, but she is the one killing everyone. But her killing could also be read as somewhat heroic, she is killing people who took advantage of helpless people and saving future victims. Where Michael is just kind of killing randomly. One thought that I had in the film is how we are shown the kills. We mainly saw the hands of the killer, being a bit more masculine. This could have been a red herring to make it seem like Ricky was the killer. I also read it as a weird way the director was trying to explain Angela. It could have just appeared more masculine so the audience could read the kills as being done by Peter, like more him who Angela was before was coming out. Maybe that Peter and Angela are two different personalities due to the aunt forcing that narrative onto Peter. Similar to how in Seed of Chucky, the character of Glen/Glenda. They is never really a clear explanation about Peter /Angela, who the person is now and the sequel doesn’t really clear any of it up.

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Week 7

This week, we watched the 1971 movie, Daughters of Darkness. I think that this has been one of my favorite films that we have watched. This films really shows the duality that runs through horror films. Vampires are also connected to that duality of looking human, normal and having a hidden monstrosity. They look innocent, but are not, they look young, but are not. Another duality that can be seen in this film is of horror and porn. As Williams says, “Pornography and horror films are two such systems of excess. Pornography is the lowest in cultural esteem, gross-out horror is next to the lowest” (3). In many circles, horror and porn are looked at as being lower version of art. This films takes those and is able to shoot it in a way to make a beautiful film. that marriage of horror and porn can be watered down to a connection of violence of the body and desire of the body, sex and violence, death and lust. “a subtle ‘juxtaposition of erotic and macabre imagery,’ sex and violence, not only in a heterosexual context but a lesbian one as well” (Zimmerman, 431). This films is trying to show horror as a higher genre, while battling with the restrictions caused by horror being seen as a lower genre.

This film is very obviously coded queer, with the vampire, Countess Bathory, being lesbian. Vampires can be seen as being used to counter act the “gay agenda”. Vampires are usually used to threaten male security and their masculinity. They comes that fear of contamination, that was often connected with queer people, especially in relation to the AIDS epidemic. In the past, queerness was thought of similarly to a disease, something able to be passed. Vampires can be seen as a metaphor to passing venereal diseases because of the connection to blood and other bodily fluids.

I think that this films shows both Bathory and Stefan can be read as monsters, in different ways. As Zimmerman mentions, “man and female vampire battling for possession of a woman” (435). Stefan and Countess are both using Valerie, Stefan as a vessel for his power and a heteronormative cover, while the countess uses her as a vessel for herself. While in the traditional horror lens, Bathory is the monster because she is a vampire, Stefan is the more realistic monster.  He is an abusive, lying, cheater who holds the characteristics that could actually be seen in real life. The film pulls the narrative to make it seem that the vampire is more complicated when it comes to being a monster. We don’t see Bathory perpetuate any violence, there is not direct connection between her and the murders. While we actively see Stefan kill Ilona and abuse Valerie. This acts to humanize the vampire and make it hard to tell who truly in the monster.

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Week 6

This week in class, we watched the films Suspiria and Black Sunday. Both of these films end up having quite a cult following. I would say that these films were made with that purpose. Not to make a giant amount of money, but to express the director’s creativity and curiosities. These are the first two films that have placed women as the protagonist. Suspiria culminates that idea of the giallo genre, which is Italian horror. Giallo is cinema of influence, not international cinema. It takes inspiration from international cinema, but not in the same way the At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul is about Brazilian culture. Giallo is more about taking horror, which is usually looked at as being lesser, and elevating it with the use of inspiration from high art. Most giallo films do not focus on the oppressed, but on aristocracy. Creed mentions, “the ultimate in abjection is the corpse” (40). Most horror films are based around wrongness of the body or pollution of the natural human body. Most common horror monsters can be read as “wrong bodies” or bodies that be been tampered with.

Suspiria shares similarities to other films that we have watched. As stated, giallo takes on influences of other films. You can see aspects of Hitchcock in the film with the use of color. Aspects from King Kong can also bee seen in this film, where the only person to survive is the American. Also that idea of discovery and going to a different place, one seen as lesser than, and messing around/poking about. Susie also gets victimized, but she involved herself into the issue. Like in King Kong, the New Yorkers are seen as the victims after they went and took Kong from his home.

Black Sunday clearly has the monster coded as feminine, she is no longer just an object of desire. But she still has a sort of eroticism to her, using her sexuality to her use. This connects to the Mummy and the reincarnation of a female. Showing a duality of evil in women. Like the older version is more evil because she holds knowledge that goes beyond their lifespan. In this film, we start to see that blend of monstrous femininity and beauty. The monstrosity is hidden behind a beautiful outside.

As horror stories with women monsters grows, the underlying idea of patriarchal values stays. Women’s world is often seen as self-destructive and chaotic, it “needs” a man’s mediating nature to help calm the situation. This is where that fear of witches and witch covens grow. Witches are often used to show female otherness. “The witch (one of whose many crimes was that she used corpses for her rites of magic)” (41). This is flat out seen in Suspiria. Markos is taunting Susie with a reincarnated version of Sarah’s body. Another note that I made was that monstrous characters often need to use a female’s body in some way. Nosferatu wanted Helen’s body, Kong lusted after another, and Asa is literally after a female body.

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Week 5

This week we watched the film At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul by Jose Mojica Marins. The film starts off with direct narration and then breaks with a warning from a witch. The way that this played out made it feel a bit like a amusement park ride announcement. This film is a bit different format that other films that we have watched. Jancovich states, “there is no simple, single ‘collective belief’ as to what constitutes the horror genre, even among self-identified fans of the genre” (25). Horror is that genre that everyone can have a bit of a different idea of. As opposed to one like comedy, even if you don’t find it funny you can tell that it was meant to be. But comparing a couple horror films, they can all be vastly different. Like looking at Event Horizon, that is more sci-fi, to Nightmare on Elm Street that is a more classic horror film. Marins wanted to use this film as a tool of critic. Horror for a long time, even still to this day, is seen as a throw away category that is not taken seriously.

One thing that can be noticed with this film is the quality compared to other films released at this time. During the time of this film being made, Brazil was considered a third world country, populated by people of color. It seemed that Brazil was almost looked at like how Skull Island was seen. Marin made this film kind of like an amateur film, using friends and family to fill the background. With it not being backed by a big studio, that meant that Marins did not have to follow any Hollywood agenda. Marins wanted Brazil to break away from what Brazil and film “should look like”. He wanted it to embrace their heritage, talk about the shortcomings, their religion/superstitions, political unrest, and struggles. That is why Ze is from Brazil, has no supernatural aspects, and was terrorizing his peers, he wanted to make a Brazilian boogeyman. There is a connect to the Brazilian experience and the dictatorship that they faced. The idea that killing the many helps profit the few. That is what Ze is doing in the film, he kills whoever gets in his way while he is trying to create new life that is like him. What Marins creates with Zee can be seen as horror based on the definition by Fear magazine. Horror is “anything that evokes unease” (27), which seems like it is too broad of a definition.

There is a duality in Zee as a character that is often found in horror. Horror films as often based on contradictions being made, in this film it is Ze’s feeling of superiority and internal hate. Ze has this feeling of being above everyone else, but by doing that he alienates himself that eventually leads to his downfall. I think that feeling of superiority can be based on his internalized hate. He might hate himself because he recognizes his difference/otherness, but also uses that differentness to feel above everyone else. Ze is the monster of the film, but he is also a victim himself. It is that cycle of someone traumatize traumatizing other people and then those newly traumatized people bring an end to the first traumatized person.

This film can also be seen as a bit of a reverse of Nosferatu. There are these hints of Ze having vampire characteristics, like saying the funeral made him hungry or that blood is the reason to exist or his aversion to religion. He is also that mix of humanistic and monstrous qualities. While Ze and Nosferatu both could pass as human, but kind of off. Both end up being killed by the female in the film. while Nosferatu was the undead killed by the living girl and Ze was the living male killed by the undead girl. Something connected to this is that the demise of the males are usually because the women turns the gaze onto them and happens either after the female’s death or on death’s door steps.

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Week 4

This week, we watched the film The Mummy from 1932 and read the article “Can the Subaltern Speak?” by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. There is a lot of similarities that can be seen between Nosferatu, King Kong, and The Mummy. Nosferatu and The Mummy both have a woman ready to sacrifice themselves to get rid of the monster. Each film has the monster lusting after the main female character in some way whether it is reciprocated or not. In each film, the monster is code as being very masculine, having towering bodies, and a relationship to the woman as being an object to desire after. This also plays into the relationship of the woman and monster, that mix of feeling disgusted by them but also somehow attracted to them and having pity for them. All these films also share in that commonality of coding the monsters as non-white. Nosferatu as Jewish, King Kong as black, and Imhoptep as Egyptian.

The Mummy still plays on that idea of the woman being the desired. Spivak mentions that “desire and its object are a unity” (273). Helen and the desire for her are connected. Without an object, there is no desire, but there can be a subject without any desire after it. This connects to Mulvey’s idea of the gaze. It seems that it was trying to use Helen as a plot object to push narrative and that is it. All of her “usefulness” comes from how attractive she is. It seems that The Mummy kept connecting femininity to evil. By doing this, it takes her own agency away. We have seen this in the other films that we have watched. The women don’t really get to put themselves first. Having no agency keeps the women silent. Helen tries to put herself first in this film, but Frank, the “white hero” does not seem to care for her consent. This plays into three big parts of horror films, accountability, entitlement, and consent. It seems that accountability and entitlement are coded as being more masculine while consent is more feminine. This also connects to something mentions in Event Horizon, scientific exploration. It put it in other words, scientific exploration is about going somewhere, messing with stuff, and finding thing out. The “going there” part comes from entitlement thinking that you have the right to mess around there. And the “finding out” is the accountability because know you have to deal with what was dug up, good or bad.

Helen kind of because of different version on the monster, but with less/no agency. She still needed to be saved by someone in the end. But she was the one to defeat the monster by embracing that part of her that was that “monstrous” quality. The Mummy also reflects that idea of trying to bury something and it never stays hidden. Similar to Event Horizon and how their sins don’t stay in the past.

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Week 3

For this week, we watched the 1933 version of King Kong and read “King Kong and the Monster in Ethnographic Cinema” by Fatimah Tobing Rony. There are a lot of parallels that can be seen between Nosferatu and King Kong. This might just be that around that time, most horror films followed the same core base. In Nosferatu and King Kong, it is a woman that inevitably defeats the “monster”. Nina leads to Nosferatu dying and Ann is the “beauty that kills the beast”. In both films, Nosferatu and Kong can be seen as more a victim than villain. In a way, they are both just trying to do what they need to survive. In Kong’s case, he might not really know what he is doing is wrong. If he is just acting on animalistic instincts, then he cannot understand fully what his actions means. He found something, Ann, that he likes and wants to have her. In King Kong, it is the humans that are putting themselves in danger and then blaming Kong. They came to his island and started messing around and then got made act the island and Kong for that happening. They are not taking any  accountability, which is something that plays a big role in horror films. The characters don’t fully take accountability for what they have done and it usually leads to confrontation with he big bad.

As Rony says, “King Kong is not only a film about a monster –the film itself is a monster, a hybrid of the scientific expedition and fantasy genres” (160). This kind of connects to some racial issues that the film faced. King Kong is very clearly a stereotype of black people, specifically black men. One of the big connects is that Kong was from a different place that white Americans went to and chained him up and took him to America to be looked at. This is very obviously about slavery and America’s role in it. Because of this real life “inspiration” it makes this film a bit of scientific expedition. There is something really about it and that belief that the story did not exist or matter before a white man came to tell it. It also fits into the fantasy genre since Kong himself is something so unrealistic.

Horror, so often is just a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast story. It changes it up sometimes by making the “beast” a more hidden otherness or by making beauty and beast similar in their otherness and now they have some type of connection.

King Kong was able to get away with a lot in its film since it was released before the Hays code hit its peak. With the Hays code, the film would been hit with interracial relationships, bestiality, nudity/sex, “white slavery” and even “gruesome” violence. These are all aspects that were censored in movies by the Hays code.

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Week 2

During this week, we read Laura Mulvey and Linda Williams. Both of who are very essential when I comes to cinema and gaze. Mulvey brings up that “…cinema offers a number of possible pleasures” (835). She means that cinema offers audiences the pleasure that comes from looking. One of the main things that Laura Mulvey talks about is the idea of the active male and passive female. This means that the male character is always pushing the narrative forwards, he is taking an active role in the story.  For female’s role is to be looked at by the male characters and by the audiences. Women are used as a sexual object to be looked at. Linda Williams takes a deeper look into what Mulvey was talking about. When it comes to the active/dominant male, it leaves little to know room for the woman’s own pleasure. Williams even uses the film Nosferatu as an example. She talks about the “relationship” between Nina and Orlok. “The desiring look of the male-voyeur-subject and the woman’s look of horror typified by Nina’s trancelike fascination” (20). While I think that this type of relationship is seen often in horror films, I think there is something more going on in Nosferatu.

The film Nosferatu takes the characters and gives them a variance from the typically character types. While Orlok is the antagonist, he is not just simply the monster, he is acting with these animalistic instincts. In horror films, when something is described as animalistic it is meant to show the difference from human. But being animalistic is still something that we can recognize, it is not completely human but something we can identify. Nina, while at face value is the just victim/damsel in distress, becomes something a bit more complicated. She is the one that ends up saving the town by sacrificing herself. It seems that she is taking an active role, but she still has no agency. There is a martyr quality to her that seems in place because she shares a kind of bond with Orlok that would not let her live. Orlok and Nina share these otherness, that they understand each other and have his hidden connection. Because Nina has this otherness, she cannot live. This shows how often love and death can overlap.

Something else I noticed in the film is the hidden queerness of Nosferatu. In the beginning of the film, all of Nosferatu’s victims have been male. There is also some weirdly sexual backgrounds with Nosferatu “penetrating” his victims with his fangs. He is this coded gay character that all of a sudden could be helped or “saved” by the innocent, sweet female. This seems like a cover of the gay conversion therapies and beliefs that queer people can or need to be “fixed”.

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Week 1

For the first week of class, we read “The Philosophy of Horror” by Noel Carroll and watched the film Event Horizon. Horror can be describe in many ways and it becomes a bit tricky when trying to hammer down what makes a film a horror film. I think a simple definition of horror would be a strong/intense feeling of shock, fear, and/or disgust.  When it comes to films, I think horror films come with the intent to induce those feelings of horror and terror to the audience using various ways. Horror films usually have a monster or antagonistic being that is causing these feelings of fear to the characters as well as the audience.

Carroll describes these films’ horrific monsters as threatening. Further describing that the monsters must be dangerous, whether it is a physically dangerous aspect or a more mental aspect. Carroll also mentioned how the monsters have to be impure in a way. They should be a failed version of humanity in a way or a failed version of masculinity/femininity.

Horror films often uses the sense of accountability as a tool. It is used to show that your bad actions cannot stay buried forever. There is also a sense of wanting to shed light on the injustice that occurred, but vengeance can corrupt you as well. Trauma tends to play a big part in horror films too. Trauma creates fractures in life and the way of thinking. Horror puts pressure on those cracks allowing more trauma and more mess to spill out.

Event Horizon meets that mix of being a horror film and also being a sci-fi film. It seems that Event Horizon is about reconstructing the moral order, especially in the Christian sense. That other side could easily be read as Hell. The ship is also in the shape of a cross. Event Horizon could also be seen as The Shining in space, playing up that psychological horror. Playing more into the religious look of the film, the people who did could be considered damned to hell. Each character that ended up dying, with the exception of the man who was left on the ship, had visions of a person they let down and hurt. The three characters who survived did not have these visions, therefore they were not guilt/damned and they were saved.