The Leatherface Prevention Society

In a horror fan's dictionary, "quarantine" generally comes before "zombie" and after "apocalypse." Movies like Night of the Living Dead, Train to Busan, and 28 Days Later (as well as 2019's fantastic Blood Quantum, if you're looking for the most relevant 21st century zombie film) are always worth a rewatch, but played out in real time, the loneliness of long-term isolation is rarely hidden behind metaphor. If World War Z just isn't doing it for you these days, check out these atmospheric isolation-themed horror movies:May (2002)Born with a lazy eye and a blunt, unintentionally traumatizing mother figure, May grew up with minimal social interaction. Her best "friend" is a doll named Susie...

No matter the genre, Hollywood has a long history of exploiting violence against women as entertainment. In her first feature-length film, Revenge, French director Coralie Fargeat acknowledges, rejects, and transcends this history, subverting the genre’s typical pitfalls and all-too-familiar camerawork. Before I go into why Fargeat’s gorgeously shot genre masterpiece deserves a mention in my “women who did it better” series, let’s talk about the rape-revenge subgenre and its grandfather, Meir Zarchi. Zarchi’s controversial (yet possibly well-intentioned?) rape-revenge film I Spit on Your Grave was the first of its ilk that dared to give its female victim a chance to fight back. Released at...

**Warning: Article contains spoilers**Contrary to popular opinion, I preferred the Soska Sisters' version of Rabid to the Cronenberg version (although it’s worth noting that I’m a rabid fan of the sisters … see what I did there?). I delighted in their feminist rewrite of the ending and got to thinking about other female directors who have subverted and reinvented conventional horror movie tropes, especially in the past decade or two. In honor of women’s history month, I’m going to dive into different horror subgenres and explore some female directors who (subjectively speaking) outdid their male counterparts. Make sure you check back throughout the month for more posts in this series....

Grief is a messy thing. In the last decade or so, directors like Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar), Jennifer Kent (The Babadook, The Nightingale), J.A. Bayona (The Orphanage), and Lars von Trier (Antichrist, Melancholia), have demonstrated that if grief has a face, perhaps horror is the genre most suited to capturing it. Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala were already on the list of grief-obsessed directors, but The Lodge, the follow-up to their debut feature film Goodnight Mommy (also about grief, but a bit sloppier in my humble opinion), wins them a place on my own personal "best-of grief and horror" list. There isn't much I can say about The Lodge without giving away spoilers so I'll...