She barely recognized him.‘Hey you,’ he said.His white skin touched her couch. He smiled, the same smile she had seen a thousand times before in class from her cordial professor. His clothes lay arranged in a bundle next to him, neatly folded. The wool sweater, the jacket, the corduroy pants, belt on top, leather boots… Read More Tick Tock, a short horror story
Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) follows protagonists like a relay race. We start with Marion, until the iconic shower scene. We take over with Arbogast, until the stairs-shot-from-above scene. We continue with Lila and Sam, until the basement (reveal) scene. And then something strange happens. We find ourselves with a psychiatrist who explains it all to us,… Read More Why Psycho’s psychiatrist scene is more important than you think
Swallow, written and directed by Carlo Mirabella-Davis, is a beautifully stylized movie, about Hunter, a young, rich, beautiful married woman whose life looks Instagram perfect. On the outside. It is also a movie that brought me very close to understanding the attraction to want to ingest uneatable objects. Cold, smooth objects. And sharp, dangerous objects.… Read More Swallow (2019), horror and the bathroom scene
Joker in Joker dances frequently, at work and at home, but two dance scenes are key. The first one is the bathroom scene, right after Joker kills for the first time, having been taunted too much for too long. Initially this scene was not written as a dance scene. The dancing was improvised by Joaquin… Read More Joker (2019), Two Dance Scenes Compared
Sartre describes in his oeuvre emotional responses that could easily be recognized as horrific reactions, the emotions the horror genre wants to evoke. Our sudden irrational fear of an unexpected face against the window (in Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions), Roquentin’s nauseating experience when the entire world seems to collapse from its determined… Read More Sartre about Horror, human existence symbolized or an escape?
Noel Carroll has defined the horror genre, a genre where our normal categories of the world are transgressed. According to him most of the genre entails stories – movies and books – but other art forms can be part of horror as well. Paintings, sculptures, dance. A monstrous painting or sculpture can be enough to… Read More Horror in Modern Dance, Cathedral (2019) and The Missing Door (2013)
Both Jordan Peele’s films start where we feel safest: with our loved ones. Get Out is about a couple visiting her parents (meeting the scary in-laws), and Us is about a family on holiday (where they meet themselves as doppelgängers). Both films can also be compared in the way Peele portrays physical movement and its… Read More Get Out (2017) and Us (2019), running scenes compared
Before I’ll talk about The House that Jack Built I want to share two anecdotes. The first about a viewing of Good Manners. This film was promoted as a social critique, a story about a mother’s love, a touch of musical and maybe, just maybe also horror but! but! not to worry, a super sweet… Read More The House that Jack Built (2018), about meta meta horror
Last year a new translation of James Baldwin came out in the Netherlands. There was a disagreement between the translator and the publisher. The publisher wanted to use the now politically most correct words black and white in the translation, even though those were not the words James Baldwin used. The translator argued those words… Read More This Magnificent Cake! / Ce Magnifique Gâteau! (2018), or Can you Portray Colonialism in Surreal Fabric?
Rahi Anil Barve’s Tumbbad is one beautiful movie; the natural lighting and the wide vista’s (even the closed spaces seem endless) are stunning. The story is about greed and the heritage hidden in your blood. In an Indian setting, which – seeing this for the first time – I really enjoyed. Tumbbad is set over… Read More Tumbbad (2018) and a Discussion about Defining Horror
