Horror is for Grrrls

Just pretend it's still May. What's time, anyway? Do you really know what day it is?              One week in my American horror film class, we watched two groundbreaking movies from the ‘90s, Silence of the Lambs and Candyman . Released within a year of each other, neither are my favorite but they’re both undoubtedly influential. Silence of the Lambs cleaned up at the Oscars, while attracting justifiable criticism in its stereotypical and grotesque depiction of a trans serial killer. Candyman , based on a short story by Hellraiser auteur Clive Barker, was the rare horror movie to have an urban setting and a Black villain, the iconic Tony Todd. Both feature Kasi Lemmons as the Black best friend.             In Silence of the Lambs , Lemmons goes jogging with Jodi Foster and gives her a pep talk. In Candyman , she voices anxieties around Cabrini Green and her white friend and coworker’s willingness to just barge in and start interviewing residents, and is brutally murdered

            I had a pretty dude-heavy lineup this week so it was a relief to arrive at grrrls day and Knives and Skin , Jennifer Reeder’s haunting 2019 thriller. The film begins with the disappearance of teenage Carolyn, marching band member and daughter of the choir director and, follows the aftermath as search parties are conducted, her mother dissolves with grief and, most of all, life goes on.             It’s not a mystery film; unusually, it begins with the circumstances of Carolyn’s disappearance, plain as day. It is not interested in giving its viewers a puzzle to solve. Instead, we see how the impact of Carolyn’s loss spirals outward, and as her peers lives continue, fucked up as always. The film takes on an ensemble feel, with a special focus on Carolyn’s grieving mother and three of her peers, various degrees removed from her and Andy, the boy who left her for dead. Joanna, daughter of an addict mother, sells underwear to pervs and dreams of escape. Laurel, Andy’s c

             Some of my favorite movies from this lineup have been movies that I underestimated, movies that I expected to be dated or dull but instead rocked my world. The Love Witch was never going to be that. From the moment I saw the marketing material for this auteur gem, I knew it was a movie for me. And sure enough, I watched it, and it was a movie for me! Great when things work out like that, huh?             The Love Witch is the story of young and beautiful Elaine Parks. After her shitty husband left her, the heartbroken Elaine needed to turn her life around. Like Joanie in Season of the Witch before her, Elaine turned to witchcraft. The movie begins as she yeets out of San Francisco to hang out with her witchy friends in small town California. Elaine has a very simple goal; she wants a man to love her, and she’s willing to use a little love magic to make that happen. But soon her string of unsatisfying paramours start dropping dead, and the town turns against Elain

            In Bailey Downs, a deadbeat Canadian suburb, something is killing the dogs. Sisters Ginger and Brigitte could care less. With the morbidity and misanthropy of young Winona Ryders, they spend their free time photographing each other in elaborate mock suicides. They are angsty and extra as hell and I love them. They loath their maturing bodies and the way the Greek chorus of skeevy boys objectify them, especially Ginger, who’s older and bustier. As the school weirdos, it’s them against the world – as Brigitte puts it, “united against life as we know it.”             Then, one October night, Ginger gets her first period and a werewolf bite. And you can guess what happens next.             As Halloween night and the full moon approaches, Ginger begins to transform. She grows fine, wolfish hairs over her scars, a spindly tail that wags, and pronounced canines. She gets a confidence boost, and before long she’s dressing sexy, smoking pot, and pursuing boys for unsatisfy

          When I added this movie to my lineup, I said to my Dearest Girlfriend, this is not a movie for you. And boy was I right. The one thing Dearest Girlfriend cannot abide in a horror film is child peril and (especially) death, and lo, here comes a movie whose whole premise is “here are some children and they are in peril” and where multiple children die. Very, very not for girlfriend. But, for Sara? Yes, very for Sara.             Wait, not because bad things happen to children. I like children very much! I just mean, because it is a good movie, see.             Tigers are not Afraid is one of the most recent films in my lineup, last year’s feature from Mexican director Issa Lopez. The film takes a child’s-eye view of Mexico’s drug war, following kids whose parents have been killed by cartels, traffickers, and other assorted ne’er-do-wells. After the murder of her mother, young Estrella takes up with a gang of similarly orphaned boys, who are trying to be fierce but ar

              Happy May Day! I hope you and yours celebrated with a solemn procession to the beach to set a cop on fire. Me, I celebrated by listening to The Wicker Man soundtrack and watching a different horror musical featuring nudity – The Lure !               Going into this one, I expected a spooky-singy confection light as seafoam, sparse on plot and heavy on style and nonsense. That’s not a complaint; I love those kinds of films, though I know many audiences see atmosphere and think emptiness, or are impatient with pretty-for-pretty’s sake. And while this movie does go off on plenty of musical tangents, especially in the frothier first half, there’s way more here than I expected.               As much a coming-of-age flick as a monster movie, the film follows two young siren/mermaid-types, Golden and Silver. On route to America, they decide to stop over in Poland and end up joining a nightclub band, where their mermaid tails are a big hit with the patrons. Everyone s

cw: mention of sexual violence. One of my first reading assignments when I started taking French was a French storybook version of Little Red Riding Hood, with the assumption that the story was familiar enough for us to muddle through the unfamiliar vocabulary. It’s simplicity and it’s sing-song climax make it memorable, it’s threat of violence offers a transgressive thrill to little children who may grow up to love horror or fear wolves. It’s usually interpreted as a stranger-danger warning to kids; in more specific and darker readings, the wolf is a sexual predator. His tempting Red off the path is a mock seduction, his visceral interest in bodily consumption represents violently untamed sexuality. The heroic woodsman who appears at the very end is perhaps a more appropriate romantic interest, and offers a male heroism where otherwise the only male character is bestial. In its basic form, the story has a conservative bent, but its simplicity and ubiquity make it easy to re

---contains spoilers for Jennifer's Body --- Few things are as ingrained in the horror fan’s imagination as the ad campaigns for scary movies released when we were too chicken-shit for the genre. Whether glimpsed in the late lamented Blockbusters, movie theaters, or poorly timed trailers, nothing will ever be half as scary as we imagined those movies to be. Here’s to you, obtuse Silent Hill poster, slasher franchise reboots that made me think Freddy and Jason were twenty-first century inventions, ten-second Saw sequel trailer I saw in the video store, and 1997 film Jack Frost. And here’s to you, Jennifer’s Body.             I was just barely twelve when Jennifer’s Body was released to sexy, sexy ad campaigns and tepid reviews. I remember casting judgment on a friend who’d been allowed to see it and who raved about how good it was. I’m not sure why I got the impression that this was a gross-out pic (by any standard, it’s pretty tame) but it was probably from misinterpret