Blumhouse Productions
The New House of Horror
Editor(s) Todd K. Platts,Victoria McCollum,Mathias Clasen
Language: English
Genre(s): Media, Film and Theatre
Series: Horror Studies
- May 2022 · 288 pages ·216x138mm
- · Paperback - 9781786838636
- · eBook - pdf - 9781786838643
- · eBook - epub - 9781786838650
About The Book
Blumhouse Productions is the first book that systematically examines the corpus of Blumhouse’s cinematic output. Individual chapters written by emerging and established scholars consider thematic trends across Blumhouse films, such as the use of found footage, haunted bodies/haunted houses, and toxic masculinity. Blumhouse’s business strategies and funding model are considered – including the company’s high-profile franchises Paranormal Activity, Insidious, The Purge, Happy Death Day, and Halloween – alongside such key standalone films as Get Out and Black Christmas, and nonhorror films like BlackKklansman. Taken together, the chapters provide a thorough primer for one of the most significant drivers behind the contemporary resurgence of horror cinema.
Endorsements
‘An impressively meticulous collection of essays written by established and emerging scholars, this book deepens our understanding of the role that Blumhouse has played in reshaping the contours of mainstream horror entertainment since the theatrical release of Paranormal Activity in 2009. Encompassing a broad array of approaches, topics, and texts, Blumhouse Productions: The New House of Horror will prove to be essential reading for film, media, and cultural studies scholars alike. A must read!’
William Proctor, Associate Professor in Popular Culture, Bournemouth University, UK
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Tables
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Blumhouse at the Box Office, 2009-2018
‘Those Things You See Through’: Get Out, Signifyin’, and Hollywood’s Commodification of African American Independent Cinema
Haunted Bodies, Haunted Houses
Gothixity: Evoking the Gothic through New Forms of Toxic Masculinity
Space Invaders: Aliens and Recessionary Anxieties in Dark Skies
The (Blum)House Found Footage Horror Built
Insidious Patterns: An Integrative Analysis of Blumhouse’s Most Important Franchise
The Purge: Violence and Religion as Toxic Cocktail
Happy Death Day: Beyond the Neoslasher Cycle
Haunted Networks: Transparency and Exposure in Unfriended and Unfriended: Dark Web
Blumhouse’s Halloween (2018) the Shifting Ethos of Slasher Remakes
‘Disobedient Women’ and Malicious Men: A Comparative Assessment of the Politics of Black Christmas (1974) and (2019)
What Lies Behind the White Hood: Looking at Horror Through a Realistic Lens Through Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman
Bibliography
Index