All tagged social horror

Grotesque Comedy, Part 2: Get Out of Stepford

Grotesque Comedy, Part 2: Get Out of Stepford

Meg Sipos & Eric Botts
Metahorror,

While not technically an adaptation or a remake, Get Out re-envisions The Stepford Wives--both the 1972 novel and the 1975 film--in what you could call a remake in spirit. (Oh, and it rightly ignores the 2004 atrocity.)

Forbes’ film and Levin’s novel dealt with feminist themes of gender power dynamics, ownership of female bodies, and the objectification of women. Get Out builds on how those issues intersect with racial power dynamics, ownership of Black bodies, and racist ideas of Black people as animals.

But Peele’s up to more than just swapping Women’s Liberation for Black Emancipation. He gives us a more hopeful film, lighter and funnier than The Stepford Wives, but at the same time heavier and more horrifying.

Grotesque Comedy, Part 1: The Stepford Wives

Grotesque Comedy, Part 1: The Stepford Wives

Meg Sipos

Ira Levin’s novel, The Stepford Wives, adapted to film in 1975 and again in 2004, marries comedy with the grotesque. That satire gives the book and its underlying feminism their power. The films miss this point in opposite ways. The ‘75 version downplays the humor, ignoring the absurdity of the novel’s premise, and the ‘04 version plays everything for laughs, seeming to mock the novel’s feminism.

Lost My Shape: Death & Rebirth of Identity in Midsommar

Lost My Shape: Death & Rebirth of Identity in Midsommar

Tim Barzditis
Folk Horror, Psychological Horror

In the wake of overwhelming tragedy and faced with the uncertainty of life beyond their four-year relationship, the main characters of director Ari Astor’s instant classic Midsommar (2017) reluctantly depart for the sunny hills of Hälsingland—a foreign town that serves the couple as a kind of limbo, testing each to see who they will become in the aftermath of a clearly failing relationship. Dani emerges with newfound purpose and identity, but her boyfriend Christian, loses himself at every turn, burning every social bridge that formed his identity until flames consume the little bit that’s left.