Tina’s Death in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
ANALOG NIGHTMARES
The first time I watched Wes Craven’s seminal masterpiece, I was huddled around a 22’’ tube TV sitting on the shaggy carpeted floor of a friend’s spare bedroom. The room was full of...
How Setting and Soundtrack Make It Follows a Standout Horror Film
Welcome to the very first Everything But Bone, a column about storytelling in film that looks at everything BUT dialogue. I’m talking sets, costumes, editing, cinematography soundtrack, and all the other aspects that make...
The Female Gothic: Three Steps To Creating Authentic Women in Horror Literature by Meg...
There is a notion of the kick ass woman. She is strong, perhaps even muscular. She is a natural leader, tough, and quick-thinking. We’ve seen her in movies like Alien (1979) and Resident Evil (2002).
I’ve never...
The Dangers of Sitting Too Close to the TV in A Nightmare on Elm...
Freddy's Big Break
Many years passed between my introduction to Freddy Krueger and my subsequent foray into the remainder of the franchise. I was a different horror fan then, no longer the fresh faced teenager...
Deliberate Practice: A Neuroscience Informed Screenwriting Lesson
This week’s Scream Writing is going to be a little bit different. If you follow me on Twitter, then you know that I’m a big fan not just of horror movies and screenwriting but...
Introducing ‘Toku Tuesdays’ with Kamen Rider J (1994)
Tokusatsu, in its simplest explanation, is a Japanese special effects film. In the west, the most well known Tokusatsu franchise is easily Godzilla. The giant nuclear monster gets the majority of screentime and conversation....
American Tokusatsu: A Look At Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie
The year is 1995 and one Tokusatsu show rules North America. The Power Rangers. Rangermania didn't last long (it was eventually usurped but for a few years), but the show was so incredibly popular...
Good VS Evil: Murphy’s Death in Robocop (1987)
The pop culture zeitgeist is a machine that can metamorphose its icons into something digestible. Safe. Crowd— and therefore family— friendly. The more press and entertainment space awarded to a figure, the more familiar...
An Eye for Detail in THE TERMINATOR (1984)
I suppose I knew Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) was a sequel, but for all intents and purposes in my eight-year-old mind, that was definitively the only entry in the killer robot from the post-apocalyptic...
Art Imitates Life in Scream (1996)
Sometimes art imitates life. Other times, life imitates art. Suddenly there’s no line between what is fiction and what constitutes reality. In August of 1990, life and the art of horror collided when five...
Untreated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Takashi Miike’s Audition (1999)
I know that by now I have written a lot on PTSD and its portrayal in film. In Gerald’s Game (2017) and Strange Circus (2005), I explored the themes that resonated with me on...
Blood, Laughs and Yard Work in Tucker and Dale VS. Evil (2010)
I had been hearing about Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010) for over a year when it finally hit Netflix in late 2011. I was deeply entrenched in the horror genre then— scouring...
Found Footage Gets Religious in The Devil’s Doorway (2018)
Welcome back to Everything But Bone, and today we are delving into an oft maligned genre, the found footage film. Never has a horror sub-genre been so debated, with fans either hating or loving...
Gacy (2003): The American Jekyll and Hyde
In 1993 on death row in Chester, Illinois, John Wayne Gacy said: “If you serve other people, it will come back to serve you.” A chilling quote from a man who used his trusted...
Scream Writing Fiction: Research Foreign Cities Through YouTube Walks
Sometimes we can discover fantastic resources for writing while just kicking back and relaxing. That's what happened to me when I can up with the idea for this article. I've been going through some...
One Missed Pod: Exploring Japanese Found Footage
On Episode 21, we had Scriptophobic writer Rachel Bolton on to speak about the found footage masterpiece Noroi: The Curse (2005). We mentioned quite a few films in that episode, especially the work of Kōji Shiraishi.
Shiraishi's...
Reclaiming “Write What You Know”
‘Write What You Know’ is one of the oldest pieces of writing advice around. Even folks who’ve never even planned to write a book have heard that bit of ageless wisdom. Where did it...
Reasoning with the Unreasonable in No Country for Old Men
Horror, deep in its dark heart, is about forcing characters to confront the unimaginable: the killer with a knife, the book that raises the dead, the alien life-form that shouldn't exist, the haunted house...
How Setting Provides Context in The Village (2004)
In the world of horror movies, there is scarcely a name that produces more derision than M. Night Shyamalan’s. Now some of this is deserved. He did make that movie were Marky Mark fights...
Using Letterboxd as a Tool for Research, Collaboration and Fun
I’m almost done writing Scream Writing: A Comprehensive Guide to Writing the Horror Screenplay and that means I’m beginning to gear up research on my second book, Mindfulness at the Movies: A Cinephile’s Guide...
Citizen X (1995) and the Failure of Soviet Bureaucracy
Not long ago, Serial Killer Celluloid took a look at Joon-ho Bong’s Memories of Murder (2003)— a fantastic film about South Korean police’s first encounter with serial murder, which came with a steep learning...
Boob Guns and Butt Swords: A Look at RoboGeisha (2009)
The late 2000s and early 2010s were an interesting time for Japanese genre pictures. One of the most prevalent subgenres was the gory, the goofy, and the perverse. Films like Tokyo Gore Police (2008),...
RELIC (2020) film review
A haze of red and purple light fades in and out of the blackness, their source becoming more and more distinct as the hues continue to retreat and then reappear from the originating void....
An Interview with Author Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
Welcome back, Scream Scholars. As a part of our continuing education in horror, it only makes sense to reach out to academics who have spent far more time than us considering the genre. It...
Patty Jenkins and Levelling the Playing Field in Monster (2003)
The name Aileen Wuornos conjures to most the image of a wild eyed, crazed woman who shouted profanities in court after being condemned to death for the killing of several men in Florida between...