Demon Possession and Sexual Violence in Post-Great Recession American Horror Cinema

This volume examines American horror films as key sites for exploring contemporary anxieties around gender, power and trauma. In this groundbreaking study, the author traces the resurgence of demon-possession narratives in US cinema following the 2008 financial crisis – a period marked by intensified misogyny, the rise of fourth-wave feminism, and shifting representations of sexual violence. Through incisive analysis of films such as Deliver Us from Evil (2014), The Neon Demon (2016) and The Scary of Sixty-First (2021), this study explores how the possessed body, particularly the possessed female body, emerges as a battleground for cultural fears about sexuality, violence and agency. Demon Possession demonstrates how demon-possession films reflect, reproduce and sometimes challenge dominant narratives about sexual violence and victimhood. Reframing possession as more than merely a horror trope, this book offers a vital lens for understanding gender and sexual politics in an age of economic precarity and social reckoning.

‘Casey’s rich study shrewdly correlates the renewal of the possession genre with the cacophonous gender discourse of the post-2008 period, finding it to be a productive site for engaging and working through debates over agency, intimacy and violence.’

Diane Negra, Professor of Film Studies and Screen Culture, University College Dublin