Heredity or A Dog’s Life

The fate of animals in any horror movies is a prickly subject. What does it mean for animals to die in horror movies? Most of the time the audience knows that the furry bell weathers are often the first to go. Films like Halloween or the Friday the 13th franchise occasionally play with the audiences...

All in the Family

Possession movies are sleight of hand. While questions of good versus evil, the devil versus god, seem to be what their narratives are about, what they really posit are the things that imperil a society. For William Friedkin's The Exorcist, what’s at stake is the body of a rich white girl, a representation of purity...

A Woman Under the Influence

Possession movies are always predicated on bad influence. Often these influences come from an outside malicious force, one that wants to cause death and pain to an innocent person. A good example of this is William Friedkin’s The Exorcist where a little girl is possessed for no other reason than to create doubt and terror....

Fathers and Daughters

Fear is an open-ended question, and perhaps one of the essential fears of childhood is parental abandonment. Oz Perkins’s film The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015) describes both a spiritual and emotional type of abandonment. The movie begins at a girl’s Catholic school during holiday break. The atmosphere of the school is desolate, the snow of upstate...