Foundations of Fear - The World of Horror Filmmaking



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'Possession' - Film Analysis

  Possession: noun -  1) the state of having, owning, or controlling something.                                       2) the state of being controlled by a demon or spirit.      There are few things within the human experience as potentially painful, traumatic, or devastating as divorce. The severing of a union made in happier times, no matter how mutually beneficial, is an affair that leaves its mark upon both partners. Tempers flare and accusations fly  as resentment and suspicion reign supreme. It is perhaps then no mistake that one of horror’s most overlooked films, the psychological /supernatural thriller Possession (1981) , deals almost exclusively with this theme. While other horror films such as Night of the Living Dead or The Purge may speak to allegories of political and societal dysfunction, Possession ’s boundaries lay firmly with...
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Dracula: From Sexual Predator to Romantic Hero

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               As the sun sinks beneath the horizon and night descends upon the world, humanity huddles around the collective light to fend off the threats within the darkness. In ancient times, this was often equated with the fear of predators, red in tooth and claw, but as humans abandoned their caves and huts for more cosmopolitan climes, the dangers began to take on a more familiar appearance. Senseless crimes such as murder would often be attributed to strange, supernatural beings -- after all, in the eyes of early man, no human could possibly do something so heinous to their kin. As such, tales of blood-sucking demons such as the draugr of Scandinavia , vrykolakas of Greece, and vetālas of India began to rise in prominence all over the world. Though the word “vampire” would not be coined for many centuries, all of these legends speak to a baser human fear of those who would prey upon their own kind. In the 19th Century, the Vampire sudd...
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Death in the Countryside: The British Pastoral Horrors of The Wicker Man and Witchfinder General

  There is a heavy fog upon the moor as the sun rises -- in the distance, the dark and ominous treeline of the forest looms menacingly, much like a boundary between two worlds: the known and the unknown. Ancient hamlets serve as islands in the vast ocean of agrarian emptiness. And though these communes may serve as bastions of civilization in an otherwise desolate countryside, the insular ways of the townsfolk and the derision with which they leer at outsiders inform us that though these villagers may be Englishmen, there is something, all together, wicked about them.  The “pastoral horror film,” perhaps, bears fewer traits, in common with films such as Psycho (1960) or Halloween (1978) than they do with the picturesque American Westerns of John Ford. “Landscape is absolutely crucial to American genres like the western and the road movie, and even informs fantastical styles such as science-fiction and horror...[b]ut English landscape is too often taken for granted...concerne...
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