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Jordan Peele's film Us vividly illustrates Jung's shadow–persona duality: the idea that all people and societies have a "shadow"—a collection of lamentable but often functional attributes—that encourages us to hide behind our laudable "persona" mask. We use the film and the critical reaction to it as source material to reveal the struggle of managing the shadow–persona duality. The root of the struggle is that that these elements must coexist; one cannot cancel the other without weakening the whole person (or society). The film is thus a cautionary tale about how the suppression of the shadow creates havoc for communities, and we apply this lesson to our own community of management scholars. We argue that the shadow aspects of our work must be acknowledged, lived, and integrated to create a more robust scientific imprint. To this end, a "holding environment" might be constructed by the Academy of Management to help scholars process shadow-activating events to create more integrated scientists and improve the impact of our work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the rise of a nascent film movement in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and its role in reflecting Emirati culture. Topics include the emergence of genres such as comedy and horror, the exploration of societal issues through film, and how the country's rapid development and the presence of expatriates shape the nation's identity in cinematic expressions.

The article starts from Gilles Deleuze's assumption of film being a philosophy in its own right and applies it to the horror genre. It reads Stanley Cavell's concept of genre, Timothy Jay Walker's work on the Horror of the Other (1) and Eugene Thacker's understanding of philosophical horror (2). It researches horror film as philosophically relevant access to nothingness (3) and shifts to the operations of assigning places to nothingness according to its respective place of access (off screen, on screen, behind the screen/behind the camera) (4). It then gives short analyses of Midsommar (5), Hereditary (6), Tarantula (7), and The Conjuring (8). In Tarantula, the screen functions as a shield against the agent of nothingness residing behind it. Once surmounted from behind by nothingness, the screen is finally purged. In Hereditary and Midsommar, nothingness is always already here, in full light, constantly transforming everything into nothing. In The Conjuring, the morphings and vectorial movements have nothingness evaporate from the screen to what lies behind it, namely (digital) picture technology. The screen turns into a membrane between nothingness and its condition, technology. As a consequence, we have to switch from philosophical horror to technological horror as access to nothingness (9). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agnieszka Holland's animal rights horror-thriller Spoor (2017) can be read as a revenge tale wherein women, non-hegemonic men and animals join forces against the hunters and, implicitly, against what they represent: the conservative worldview of the current nationalist government in Poland. Spoor offers a feminist, queer and ecological response to these values and, in the process, expands our comprehension of how ecocinema might look or feel. While narratively human-centred, the film uses several strategies to foster an aesthetic attunement to non-human beings and non-anthropocentric politics. However, Spoor also transcends ecocinema by putting itself in quotation marks. In its self-reflexive use of extreme genericity, Spoor exemplifies Nicole Seymour's observation that politically engaged cinema can sometimes fail to follow the available scripts for 'appropriate' environmental feeling. This paper argues that, by merging tenderness and despair with more distanced modes, including irony, humour and metageneric playfulness, Spoor departs from serious approaches prevalent in environmental filmmaking, questioning the authenticity and proximity central to the very concept of ecology. Spoor's aesthetic and affective complexity rests on blending fakery and feeling, which problematises existing ways of understanding how eco-films engage us. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I will attempt to show how horror movies function as societies' nightmares. They can be interpreted as depictions of our collective struggle to integrate and inevitably repress national trauma. In most psychotherapeutic traditions dreams are regarded as valuable communications from the unconscious and vital for psychological maturation. Among dreams, nightmares often point to indigestible experiences on an individual level. Similarly I will argue that horror movies grapple with our collective traumas and can be interpreted just like dreams. They are our collective nightmares. The logic of this approach is based on psychodynamic and analytic theory and the shared characteristics (isomorphism) of watching a movie and having a dream. Relevant psychodynamic theory and movie analysis will be used to further this point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the gory cover art of VHS tapes to the iconic imagery of chainsaws, horror films have long been misconstrued as mere vehicles for shock and sensation. However, Labors of Fear: The Modern Horror Film Goes to Work challenges the common misconception that these items are used because they’re horror staples and instead offers a socioeconomic analysis of the genre that explores representations of work and leisure with scholarly rigour and depth. Briefel and Middleton build upon the foundational work of Robin Wood to present a fresh framework for understanding horror cinema, delving into overlooked aspects of the genre and challenging conventional interpretations concerning how horror films depict work.

This article examines the career of filmmaker Curtis Harrington and his contributions to queer avant-garde horror cinema. It argues that Harrington's films have been overlooked and are difficult to categorize, but they deserve attention for challenging heteronormative romance. The article analyzes specific films, such as "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Night Tide," and discusses their use of horror elements and exploration of gender and sexuality. It also explores the reception of Harrington's work and the potential reasons for its lack of recognition. [Extracted from the article]

G. M. Amza and Al. Bilciurescu's Vampirul (The Vampire), the first vampire novel in Romania, was published in 1938, a decade after the release of the first translation of Dracula into Romanian. Instead of emulating Stoker's bloodthirsty undead aristocrat, the two authors envision a priest who exploits the community's magical thinking, masquerading as a vampire-serial killer and haunting the increasingly industrialized community in the hopes of discouraging capitalistic ventures. Although evoking East-Central European representations of heretic vampire priests, there is textual and circumstantial evidence suggesting that the villain in Vampirul was (in)directly inspired by movies which revolutionized the Gothic trope of the vampire via exposure to real-life crime cases such as that of the Vampire of Düsseldorf. Through a close reading analysis, the article revisits Franco Moretti's theory of the (semi)peripheries importing "foreign plots" through "local characters" and expands Andrei Terian's concept of "cultural triangulation" to include cinema, which offers fresh insights into the evolution of literary tropes. As for the influence of this medium on the vampire myth, the article shows that the first vampire narrative in Romanian literature is the product of transmedial triangulation, a process whereby the narratives of 1930s horror cinema influenced the literary reception of the "foreign plot" in Dracula, which was, in turn, reinterpreted through a serial killer vampire priest, a "local character" who embodies the period's concerns about a lingering feudal order that threatens to hinder the development of the then fledgling Romanian society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By connecting Theodor Adorno's negative dialectics to Edvard Munch's concepts of artistic form, this study demonstrates the horror aesthetic in cinematic narrative structures that culminate toward discomforting endings. Negative dialectics is applicable as a cinema didactic via magnification of difficulty through narrative endings that depict elusive villains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the Holocaust film "The Zone of Interest," directed by Jonathan Glazer. Topics discussed include the portrayal of the life of Auschwitz concentration camp commandant Rudolf Höss, the view that "The Zone of Interest" is a horror film forcing its audience to identify with perpetrators, and the purpose of the film to represent itself as a complementary or alternative strategy to memorialization.

"Menacing Environments: Ecohorror in Contemporary Nordic Cinema" by Benjamin Bigelow explores the emergence of Nordic horror cinema as a counternarrative to the seemingly perfect and happy Nordic societies. Bigelow focuses on the subgenre of ecohorror, which critiques the Nordic countries' environmental exceptionalism and blurs the boundaries between society and nature. The book provides close readings of several Nordic horror films, highlighting their dystopic and threatening portrayal of the Nordic region. Bigelow argues that these films serve as a dissident voice, exposing the hollowness of Nordic ecohumanist environmentalism and challenging popular idealizations of life and politics in the Nordic region. [Extracted from the article]

While films are popular as teaching tools in social work education, to critique social inequalities, horror films have not been the conventional genre. This teaching note describes the creation and deployment of a course that uses horror films to address social justice issues as part of different critical reflection, which is linked to practice wisdom. The author describes the structure of course, readings, activities, and reflections for expanding the use of this genre and well as limitations. The use of horror films can be a useful and salient tool to engage students to draw upon social constructions of what it means to be fearful or scared, and teach about infractions to human nature from a social work perspective. Broad implications are discussed, including other genres and the availability of resources to replicate this course in other settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the influence of Hitchcockian suspense techniques and directing style on the horror genre, explored through neurocinematics. Topics include the scientific approach of neurocinema in studying film's impact on cognitive neuroscience, the emotional responses evoked by horror films such as fear, suspense, and catharsis.

Jordan Peele's horror movie, Us, takes moral ambiguity to its logical extreme by creating a world, or, rather, two worlds, in which good and evil mirror each other on multiple planes—the narrative, the visual, the spatial, the racial, the ethical—and by its use of a biblical verse—Jer 11:11. The Wilsons, who inhabit "our" world, view the "Tethered", who inhabit a nether world, as evil insofar as they have emerged from the shadows to terrorize and kill them. The Tethered, however, view the humans as evil, insofar as they take for granted the ability to enjoy and act in the world. Like the prophet Jeremiah, the film draws the audience's attention to its own iniquity—and the consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how Han Taiwanese myths and urban legends have been associated with the environment and native fauna in the best-selling popular non-fiction publication Monstrous Taiwan and the hit horror film The Tag-Along. This article also looks at how these works can be considered within the framework of settler colonial studies in East Asia. Both works are interested in intervening in popular culture and genre cinema while reframing the horror or supernatural genre as particularly Taiwanese, drawing on urban legends and traditional folk tales. However, the creators of these works persistently characterise Han Taiwanese legends as interchangeable with the native fauna of Taiwan. This move positions Han Taiwanese as inheritors of the natural environment of Taiwan while minimising or, in some cases, tokenising the presence of indigenous Taiwanese people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our case study of Saw IV examines the possibility of using horror as a genre, a vehicle for teaching ethics, and its use in street-level bureaucrat (SLB) decision-making. Specifically, this film highlights the inherent violence of the police state, which illuminates the limits of ethical decision-making in constrained contexts. We propose using horror as a film genre to teach students about the complexity of personal, interpersonal, and professional ethics, bureaucratic discretion, and the impact of these decisions in real-world situations. We provide a brief analysis of the film through the lens of ethical dilemmas in a violent police state and the impact of this violence on governance. We conclude with recommendations for using Saw IV and horror more broadly as pedagogical tools in public administration and political science education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following article is a slight adapatation from past PAMLA President Martin Kevorkian's address at the 2021 conference in Las Vegas, in which the conference theme was "City of God, City of Destruction." In the address, Kevorkian discusses horror films, specifically Wes Craven's Scream, and the fundamentalist Christian language and themes included in it and its references to high school students studying English in the classroom, as well as Scream's relation to literary genres and narratives of predestinarian conversion and how those play out in Augustine's City of God too. Also discussed is Las Vegas and the desert themes in Dante's Inferno. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study critically examines the development of audiovisual and interactive content that draws on Edgar Allan Poe's oeuvre, with a particular focus on the interplay of transmedia storytelling and gothic elements within these narratives. Utilizing summative content analysis and non-participant observation, this research investigates five films and five independent video games that reinterpret Poe's literary themes. The results underscore the necessity of incorporating Mythos, Topos, and Ethos in adaptations to faithfully evoke the profound emotional resonance and explore the psychological and existential dilemmas inherent in Poe's works. Our analysis reveals distinct narrative strategies in cinema and video games: while horror predominates in film, integrating supernatural elements to evoke fear, video games predominantly leverage noir, crafting complex crime narratives infused with cynicism and dark ambiance. Additionally, the study highlights how gothic elements of abjection and sublimity are leveraged to navigate themes of mortality, morality, and the uncanny, thereby ensuring the continued relevance of Poe's legacy in contemporary media landscapes. This adaptation process not only preserves the essence of Poe's narrative but also dynamically engages a modern audience through innovative transmedia platforms, illustrating the enduring impact of his work on popular culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Goth emerged as a post-punk music genre and subcultural style in the late 1970s and early 1980s, its references to the past included nineteenth-century Gothic literature and classic Hollywood 'monster movies' such as 1931's Dracula starring Bela Lugosi. Less discussed, however, is Goth's inclusion of 1960s culture into its repertoire. While the 1960s are often synonymous with the Mod joys of 'Swinging London' and the cheerful flower power of San Francisco, it was also a period marked by the popular Hammer Horror films and the real-life terrors of the Moors and Manson Murders. As children of the 1960s, Goth's originators could not help but reference the sights and sounds that shaped their childhoods. In this light, the music produced by bands such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Cure, Bauhaus, The Sisters of Mercy conjure a darker side of that decade. This article assesses how the original wave of Goth musicians drew upon the 1960s to invent a dark psychedelia for a new generation of youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In mainstream culture, the horror genre is frequently looked down upon as trivial, shlocky and nasty – horror films are seen as being cheap to make, made for a younger, mass audience, and horror films tend to dwell on society's taboos, phobias and anxieties. Horror can also be a conservative genre – racist, misogynistic and queer phobic – enforcing rules that lead to horrible endings for characters that are non-white, queer or who are women. However, the horror genre also has the potential to be progressive, subversive and critical. We argue that if horror can rethink and renegotiate the meaning of gender, race, politics and power, then so should law. Despite the longevity of feminist legal theoretical recognition of intersectionality, the law still has an outdated and conservative conceptualisation of the legal subject and of its audience – for whom the law is written. Through our reading of the trajectory of the figure of the Final Girl, we argue that the law should see the evolution of the horror genre as a didactic text. We draw upon the insights of transformations of the Final Girl over recent decades and the remaking of the cultural imagination, to argue that the legal imagination likewise needs to be transformed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the inter-subjective touch in Ildikó Enyedi's film On Body and Soul (2017), employing a phenomenological approach by analyzing the aspects of horror, pleasure, dreaming, and breath. This film recontextualizes horror and reaffirms pleasure through the inter-subjective touch. The binary setting between the dreaming world and the waking world, through the perception of touch, is used not to disdain the cruel reality but to arouse inter-subjectivity. The representation of breath illuminates another tactility regarding spatiality and inter-subjectivity. I argue that On Body and Soul constructs layers of tactility and inter-subjectivity between the film and the spectator; the two protagonists (Mária and Endre); human and non-human; dreaming and waking; and mind and body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The horror franchise [Rec] (2007-2014) is one of the most remarkable accomplishments in 21st century Spanish cinema. While banking on transnational modes of address such as the 'found footage' aesthetics and the imperfect look of digital technology, these films also build upon existing traditions within Spanish cinema and television. At the same, from an financial standpoint, it is the most successful Spanish franchise ever in the international arena while obtaining sizeable box-office receipts in the domestic market. This article analyzes how the [Rec] saga deploys a variety of discourses to appeal to horror aficionados while utilizing popular cultural artifacts to engage national audiences. Firstly, it situates [Rec] within the history of recent Spanish cinema, scrutinizing the generic hybridity at the core of several post-1990 national film products to ultimately study how this interplay will turn central in the constant re-articulation of the franchise. Secondly, it positions [Rec] within the transnational rise of the 'found footage' horror subgenre, contextualizing it by analyzing other significant efforts such as The Blair Witch Project. Thirdly, it explores this transnational dimension through a detailed analysis of the different films's marketing campaigns and how they relate to other products like Quarantine (2008), US remake of the first Spanish film. In this regard, it approaches how [Rec] conceptualizes film spectators as Internet, socially networked, users who participate in diverse, complementary, discourses across multiple online platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2022 saw three Scandinavian films – Loving Adults, Black Crab and Troll – place highly on Netflix's lists of the most popular non-English language films on the service globally. These were led by Troll, a Norwegian feature that was fully financed by Netflix itself and branded as an 'original' film, which went on to become the most popular non-English language film ever on the platform. Using the popularity of these films and other Nordic titles on the world's leading subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) platform as a point of departure, this article investigates the changing industrial landscape for film production and distribution in the region in light of the influence that streaming platforms are having therein. The focus is on a detailed case study of the integrated studio SF Studios, which produced two of these three landmark films as well as numerous others that were released as Netflix original movies between 2020 and 2023. In addition to illuminating the business and creative practices of both SF and Netflix, the article argues that deals such as these are fomenting greater artistic diversity in Scandinavia by opening up distribution pathways and production resources for popular genre films from the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ghost raises fundamental questions of reality, identity and epistemology. The ghost is the shadow image of otherness that threatens our notions of life, humanity and permanence by intimating that if death is permanent and the afterlife eternal, then perhaps it is our present tangible reality that is the simulacrum. The ghost interrogates the quotidian, not vice versa. The fetishization, aesthesizing and ritualizing of death in the Gothic aims consistently to defer the final definitive ending of death and the state of non-existence. As a memento mori, ghosts remind us that our ruminations of death are not morbid, but life-affirming. This article will explore the depiction of the afterlife in The Others (Amenábar 2001) in which the living are simulations of the dead and vice versa. Unlike the typical horror movie, the predominant discourse of The Others is a postmodern interrogation of belief, truth and doctrine. The haunted house is an in-between land of purgatory, a death space of self-loss and separation that plays out in the conflict between religion and the supernatural. The questions with which the films ends – 'What does all this mean? Where are we?' – is not just a geographical question, but an ontological one. The interrogation of Biblical narratives causes the audience to evaluate the reliability of the discourse of established religion and its doctrine of the afterlife. By defying audience expectations of the generic conventions of the ghost story, the movie relies on the viewer's faith that what we see on-screen is real, when this cinematic reality is as deceptive as seeing dead people artificially propped up to appear alive. Suspended between being and nothingness, both absent and present, the ghost is a metaphor for the simulacrum of film. The cinematic thus serves as the Other by which the real can be defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]