Grief in Contemporary Horror Cinema

Erica Joan Dymond is assistant professor of English at East Stroudsburg University.

Grief in Contemporary Horror Cinema: Screening Loss is an accessible and wide-ranging exploration of grief as represented in many of the most interesting recent horror films on the topic. Of particular interest is the collection's inclusion of insightful essays addressing the socialization of grief through gender, sexuality, the family, and colonialism and how these complexities manifest in the themes and aesthetics of horror films.

• Part I: Loss and the Child: Grief and Endangered YouthChapter 1. Horror at the Crossroads: Mapping the Child’s Grief in Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)Lindsey ScottChapter 2. “We Can Survive This”: An Examination of Loss and Grief in Juan Antonio Bayona’s El orfanato (The Orphanage) (2007)Erica Joan Dymond Chapter 3. Elevating Grief: Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018) and the A24 Horror FilmAndrew Grossman and Todd K. PlattsPart II: Loss and Gender: Grief and Motherhood/WomanhoodChapter 4. To Make You Feel My Love: Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014), Motherhood, and Loss Rebecca L. WilloughbyChapter 5. The Myth of the Natural Woman: Horror and Grief in Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019)Aspen Taylor BallasPart III: Loss and National Identity: Grief and HistoryChapter 6. O Father, Where Art Thou?: Grief and Cannibal Culture in Jorge Michel Grau’s Somos lo que hay (We Are What We Are) (2010)Megan DeVirgilisChapter 7. Sadness is Rebellion: The Ontopolitics of Queer Loss in Mladen Ðordevic’s Ž