Bad Seeds and Holy Terrors: The Child Villains of Horror Film

Bad Seeds and Holy Terrors: The Child Villains of Horror Film
ISBN-10
1438453302
ISBN-13
9781438453309
Category
Performing Arts
Pages
198
Language
English
Published
2014-10-09
Publisher
State University of New York Press
Author
Dominic Lennard

Description

Examines the complexities and contradictions that arise when the monsters in the movies are children. Since the 1950s, children have provided some of horror’s most effective and enduring villains, from dainty psychopath Rhoda Penmark of The Bad Seed (1956) and spectacularly possessed Regan MacNeil of The Exorcist (1973) to psychic ghost-girl Samara of The Ring (2002) and adopted terror Esther of Orphan (2009). Using a variety of critical approaches, including those of cinema studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and psychoanalysis, Bad Seeds and Holy Terrors offers the first full-length study of these child monsters. In doing so, the book highlights horror as a topic of analysis that is especially pertinent socially and politically, exposing the genre as a site of deep ambivalence toward—and even hatred of—children. Dominic Lennard is Associate Lecturer in the Centre for University Pathways and Partnerships at the University of Tasmania, Australia.

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