Monsters in God’s Country

At the end of the Cold War, America no longer had the cultural demon it had terrorized itself with for decades. In 1992, the void was quickly filled by the culture wars and free-market economic policies that would forever change American society. Horror movies naturally responded to this change. Monsters in God’s Country argues that the union of politically driven policy and markets created a new breed of horror that still haunts the United States. Moving away from traditional psychoanalytical interpretations, this volume shows how national fear was manufactured and commodified by the American system itself. Monsters in the 1990s did not hide under the bed, in the closet, or in the shadows. Instead, they were the brokers of power who took public office, ran large companies, commanded the military, and made the most money. Through incisive case studies of four films—Needful Things, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Ravenous, and American Psycho—author Matthew W. Jarvis shows how morality was rewritten around cultural value and how the system others its victims in its cruelest acts of monstrosity. Monsters in God’s Country reclaims what has been characterized as a "lost decade" of horror by showing that the movies were diagnostics of active systemic decay. These films tell not a story about end-of-millennium America, but they offer a horrifying explanation about the monsters of the present day.