Category: horror

The Many Lives of Laurie Strode

Halloween (1978) wasn’t the first slasher film, not by a long, long shot, and Laurie Strode wasn’t the first Final Girl, but — as I have discussed here before — the commercial appeal and success of Halloween codified the slasher subgenre and set the rules for at least […]

What Becomes a Legend Most?

Bernard Rose’s Clive Barker’s Candyman is an intensely 1990s film. Characters smoke a LOT inside public places. A senior professor, Philip Purcell, refers to our main character Helen (Virginia Madsen) and research partner/Black Best Friend trope Bernadette (Kasi Lemmons) as “my two most beautiful graduate students” and there […]

Live and Let Empathize

Happy Death Day (2017) and Happy Death Day 2U (2019) together tell the story of bitchy sorority sister Theresa “Tree” Gelbman (Jessica Rothe), a slasher film trope with a difference. Shallow, flighty, and rude, Tree courts exactly the kind of cosmic justice that usually comes at the end […]

The Cabin in the Woods: AITA?

I was selected to be the Fool in a ritual sacrifice by a secret government cabal that is part of an international effort to satisfy the requirements of ancient gods in exchange for not rising and destroying the world. After escaping death, I reconnected with the Virgin, when […]